Being a Life Player in the Middle Ages

Martha and John are both believers with religious beliefs, and so is the original Mia. In other words, in Europe during this period, almost everyone has religious beliefs, and people without faith or who are not believers will be regarded as aliens.

The official religion of the Eastern Bai Empire is also Christianity. However, unlike Catholicism, which is centered on the Pope of Rome and later developed into the Papal States, and emphasizes that divine power is superior to imperial power, and therefore often conflicts with monarchs of various countries, the official religious belief of the Eastern Bai Empire is another branch of Christianity - Eastern Orthodoxy.

There are many differences between Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism, but for those in power, the biggest difference is that Eastern Orthodoxy emphasizes imperial power and does not establish a pope. It only has patriarchs in each region, and reveres the emperor as the Christ on earth and the supreme leader of the church. Catholicism, on the other hand, believes that the pope is God's agent, and his status is even higher than that of the emperor.

Moreover, because the Pope of the Orthodox Church is the emperor, and the emperor does not usually participate in the management of the church, the highest leadership team within the church is composed of patriarchs (bishops) from various regions. Therefore, the church structure in each region is autonomous, and as a result, many different sects have evolved within the Orthodox Church, and there is no internal unity.

This is probably one of the reasons why the powerful Eastern Baikal emperor abandoned the Roman polytheism that had continued from the ancient Roman period and converted to Eastern Orthodoxy and established it as the state religion. A religion that can help consolidate the faith of his people and will not threaten the emperor's status is a very useful religious tool for successive emperors.

By the way, although both are Christian, the relationship between Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy is not very good. In Mia's original world, the Fourth Crusade was launched by Catholicism against the Byzantine Empire, which believed in Eastern Orthodoxy. If this historical trend is followed, the Byzantine Empire should also be the target of the crusade in the later period.

But that should be hundreds of years later, and it is not Mia's turn to worry about it.

Mia was relieved that when she heard Martha talking about going to church for worship, she remembered that the Orthodox Easter had just passed, which meant that she had avoided the church's Lent after traveling through time.

The so-called Lent period means not eating meat or drinking alcohol. It is divided into Lent and Lent. The former requires fasting every Friday, while the latter often lasts for several weeks, so it is also called Lent.

The strictest and longest Lent in the Eastern Orthodox Church begins forty days before Easter (excluding every Sunday) and ends on the day before Easter. During this period, believers are prohibited from eating meat, eggs, fish and dairy products. At the same time, drinking alcohol is also prohibited on non-weekends. Only a little wine can be drunk on weekends.

Of course, for ordinary people who cannot afford wine, it is equivalent to not being able to drink any alcohol during the entire Lent.

I'm also thankful that Mia traveled through time earlier in the timeline, otherwise, in the later stages, the Orthodox Church would have fasted for 200 days a year, and there would be as many as four major Lents like this one, not to mention other minor Lents.

Now, the two hundred days can be reduced to about one hundred days. Although it is still very difficult to endure, it is much more relaxed than the situation in later generations.

Moreover, the Lent periods other than Lent are much more relaxed for ordinary believers. Meat is only prohibited on Fridays, and not all Fridays. For example, the Friday when Bayad was invited to celebrate her move in is a Friday when fasting is not required.

What is even more gratifying is that the so-called ban on meat and fish does not include shrimp, so shrimp can be eaten at any time. When the short fast prohibits meat, eating fish and other cold-blooded animals is not prohibited. This is probably the main reason why believers do not suffer from malnutrition even though they fast every day.

When Mia came here, Easter had already passed, so for the next year, she basically only needed to abstain from food on most Fridays.

However, not eating meat for just one day did not affect her at all. After all, there were still fish, shrimp and other seafood to eat. Moreover, both Martha and John liked seafood very much, so even on non-Fast days, there were often only fish and seafood on their dining table. That was why Mia did not notice this during this period until Martha suggested going to church on Sunday.

Neither Martha nor John were particularly keen on religious activities. Apart from religious holidays, they usually only went to church once a week. But last Sunday, Mia was still in a coma with a high fever, and Martha had to take care of her, so she naturally did not go to church. A lot of things happened in their family this week, so naturally they had to go to church to thank their Elohim (the Orthodox name for God).

Sunday is the official day of rest in Dongbai, and most commercial activities will stop. Churches often also abide by this rule and rest on Sundays, but they often choose this day to hold religious activities. Because everyone is resting, believers have time to come to church to worship, right?

Early in the morning, before daybreak, Mia got up yawning and started getting ready.

Because Martha said they were going to attend the ceremony which would start at five in the morning, Mia had to get up at three in the morning to prepare, even though she had stayed up all night the previous night.

Last night, Mia tried to make a bracelet in the dark. Not to mention, even without an oil lamp and only with a little starlight, she was able to make the bracelet. Even when Mia closed her eyes, her hands never stopped moving, and the bracelet she made was not affected at all.

Of course, she also tried to do it while sleeping, but as soon as Mia's consciousness began to fade, the movement of her hands would automatically stop, which shows that it is not possible to do it while sleeping.

The bracelets produced by the system are very beautiful even if they are just low-level equipment.

Since coming here, the game system has been automatically modified, and the finished products of all recipes are in typical early Byzantine style, with strong religious elements and oriental characteristics, and jewelry and clothing are mainly colorful, and such characteristics are obviously also sought after by the current East Byzantine Empire.

The first piece of equipment Mia made was a hollow copper bracelet inlaid with colorful stones.

The two-finger-wide bracelet is made entirely of red copper, but because it is hollow, it is actually not particularly heavy. The fiery-colored bracelet is inlaid with ten oval-shaped turquoises the size of swollen soybeans.

These prehnites are also a kind of gemstone, but the price is relatively low, and the quality of the ones Mia bought is poor, so the price is even cheaper. They are gemstones that few ordinary people can afford. The polished prehnites are as round as jade. In modern times, good quality prehnites are even used to impersonate ice jadeite. It can be seen that they have many similarities.

The grape stones that Mia bought contained a lot of impurities and had low transparency, so they looked like they were not good things. However, a bracelet like this that would not attract covetous eyes was exactly what Mia, a commoner, could wear safely.

Moreover, the effect of this bracelet is strength +2, agility +2. Although it adds the lowest value, Mia is very satisfied with the fact that it has two attributes. This is the easiest to assemble among all dual-attribute equipment. It does not even require the quality and type of gems. As long as it is a gem and the size is suitable, it will be fine.

Mia spent a full five hours making the bracelet, so she had to get up early the next morning and was naturally sleep-deprived. She also suspected that although it was not mentioned in the skill column, using life skills would actually accelerate the consumption of her energy. The evidence was that according to her expectations of the bracelet's effect, she should have used the equipment directly to check the effect after it was made, but she was so sleepy that she fell asleep and had no time to test the effect of the bracelet.

But this is unscientific. Even if she was busy for five hours, Mia returned to her room shortly after dinner. At that time, the church bells rang in the distance. It was six o'clock, and it was not even dark yet. When she went to bed, it was not long after the eleven o'clock bell.

Based on Mia's past experience, this time is definitely not too late. Even if she has been used to going to bed early and getting up early recently, it is impossible for her to be so sleepy at this time.

Originally, using life skills in the game would consume energy. Before she saw the energy bar, she thought there was no such limit. Now it seems that there is, it’s just that the energy bar is no longer displayed, and the consumption of energy is obviously reflected directly on her.

However, she felt that this time it was because the production time was too long and it was done at night, which resulted in excessive energy consumption. She didn't feel much when she made the bracelet before. She didn't know whether making it in the dark without a light also increased the energy consumption.

It was only more than four hours from the time she fell asleep to the time she woke up again, but Mia was still sleepy, as if she had not rested at all.

In the morning she did not even hear the rooster crowing downstairs; it was Martha who came up to call her that woke her up.

This feeling, as if she hadn't slept for a whole day, was particularly uncomfortable. Mia warned herself not to try it again next time. Anyway, stopping to rest in the middle would not lead to production failure, so she didn't have to rush to complete the production in one go.

Seeing that she looked sleepless, Martha didn't say anything. After all, it was only three o'clock in the morning. It was normal to feel sleepy after being woken up suddenly. She would be fine after a while.

Martha put down the oil lamp in her hand, picked up the wooden comb from the table and combed her hair.

According to church regulations, women need to wear a headscarf and a long robe when entering the church, so Mia had to wrap her hair with a cloth. However, this period was not as scary as in later generations, where not even a strand of hair could be exposed. So Martha just helped her braid her hair, then put it behind her head, and finally wrapped her hair with a rectangular piece of cloth called "bel (veil)".

During this time, Mia kept dozing off and didn't look like she would wake up at all, which made Martha very helpless and puzzled.

"Honey, did you not sleep last night? Why are you so sleepy?"

She had clearly reminded Mia to go to bed early, and judging from the situation in the past few days, Mia didn't have the habit of staying up late and suffering from insomnia.

Mia was startled awake by Martha's words. She didn't dare to say that she had really stayed up late, so she could only say, "I was a little excited last night and didn't sleep well."