Over the next couple of days Aghora would learn more about the culture and history of his people.
Firstly, many of the questions he asked were taboo and would have gotten him punished if he were older but his people believed in the Daji the Advowrer who was a goddess of war and protection and the most practiced of her belief was being honest and having a quick mind.
This particular lesson was drilled into him slowly and painfully.
When he asked why women seemed to be hidden he was given a warning first before a quiet elaborate explanation about the goddess being r-ped by invaders before she ascended to godhood.
Though everyday the tenets of the goddess would be forced on every Naviran child, there were actually three other religious beliefs.
There was Sinna the creator, god of beauty and art who was more followed by the Onites in the north, then there was the creator god faith which had no god because no one knew the god of creation, and lastly the ancestral plane faith that believed all the people who died went to a sort of spiritual plane and existed alongside the gods.
So aside from daily visits to the plaza Aghora would spend a great deal of his time in this early stage of life at the large temple in the town.
It was here that Aghora would receive the greatest surprise of his two lives.
The temple was actually less a place for prayers and more a place for administration.
Noi was effectively a theocracy and a monk was like a medieval noble albeit the title was equivalent to the lowest rank noble.
As for why children would go to the temple? There were two reasons for this, and while the first reason was related to the tenets of the goddess about developing your mind and body.
The other reason was really what changed Aghoras view of the world.
Men and women of all ages would find time to come to the temple to learn prayers and to worship the statue of the goddess. These daily ceremonies were followed by the performance of miracles.
There were many people who could open a literal third eye on their foreheads and this he learned, was why some people had those green circles drawn on their faces. Yet, his own father had the most shocking feat, by summoning a ghost-like copy of himself and using it to perform an execution.
Aghora nearly went mad from trying to comprehend what he saw, especially because of his occupation in his past life.
Deep down inside him he was still a believer of that religion and he never took the teachings in this world to heart he may even have slowly tried to start preaching the good news if not for fear and shame, but no matter what he thought of their beliefs he couldn't deny the overwhelming amount of evidence in place.
To his family, things were fine, they even had high expectations of him because he clearly displayed signs of high intelligence and was growing into a strong youth.
These expectations would begin to collapse on his twelfth birthday.
In Noi it was the normal practice to measure the faith from the age of twelve since this age was considered the beginning of adulthood.
Yes, in this world not only could normal everyday people perform miracles by simply chanting prayers. It was also possible to measure faith.
Aghora witnessed the first times they measured Grypha, the twins and Maaec.
Each time they would be presented with beads and told to recite a prayer with all their heart.
Time and time again, when the boys took the beads in hand and chanted the prayer :
"Mother of dawn, I offer my life to you.
Shine your light upon my soul.
Accept my worship and enlighten my path."
The prayer would only be chanted three times at most and the beads would begin to glow a bright green.
The specific number of beads that would glow was directly correlated to a ranking system.
Grypha had above average talent and ranked to the second level of faith, Kroll and Krey had what was essentially average level talent and where at the first level of faith. Meanwhile Maaec had the most talent of everyone in that town and was ranked at the fourth level.
To put things into perspective, their father was a monk which put him at the fifth level of faith and this was after he had spent a lifetime studying and worshiping to raise it to that level.
Aghora had no such luck.
His faith didn't measure and deep down he knew why. He didn't believe in the goddess, he as a modern man he could not believe in a god that everyone else knew was just a person, a person acclaimed to sitting at the capital, alive and breathing the same air as him.
Though the rest of his society saw things differently.
Aghora had become a small celebrity in the plaza and many other grown adults would invite him to their own circles occasionally to hear his opinions.
If anyone in Gristis's household was going to become an influential person it was supposed to be Aghora.
But for a people that thrived on warfare a person with no faith in the goddess of war was a bad omen.
Aghora had many theories, he was sure there was more at play like, maybe some sort of magic they wrongly attributed to be faith.
Whatever ideas and explanations he gave where completely ignored. Aghora was ostracized and any high opinions anyone held of him had long disappeared.
It took a long whiles but Aghora slowly accepted he needed to reconcile his faith and trick himself into believing in the goddess or spend the rest of his life as an outcast.
In truth there was no hope for him, it needs to said that in his past life he was an ordinary person who never put serious thought into whether or not there was a god. In this life he was smarter and he had proof that these gods where not gods.
The fact that he was a transmigrator was his proof, you could even say he was a follower of what they called "The Divine Creator Faith", an all powerful creator made more sense than a war goddess living in the capital.
The ostracization Aghora faced was so severe it began to affect his mentality.
Even his own brothers slowly withdrew from him, only Daran, Zamir and Maaec would maintain a relationship with him.
Zamir was partly from another race so he was never fully accepted, Daran was his friend and obviously had a soft spot for outcasts talk less of his own blood brother and as for Maaec, he and Aghora where born of the same mother so they had the closest bond despite having the most contrasting personalities.