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“The Holy Church has been forced to such point?”

When I learned of the Holy Church’s shameless act of stealing the credit for that battle, I wasn’t angry at all. On the contrary, I was quite delighted.

Sometimes, being in the lead was synonymous with victory. As long as whoever was in the lead—for example, the Holy Church, which had a monopoly on over eighty percent of religion in Eich—didn’t take extreme risks or make significant mistakes, it would be almost impossible for others to catch up to them.

It would be quite difficult for outside forces to significantly pressure a behemoth like the Holy Church. As long as they didn’t have major internal strife and break into large, conflicting factions, they could probably remain in power for the next several centuries based on their foundation alone.

But this time the Holy Church made a mistake—a huge one.

I could understand why they made such a decision. It didn’t seem wrong to them amid the current situation. In fact, it appeared to be a superb decision in their eyes since the Holy Church had a matchlessly solid foundation.

Everyone understood that public opinion could distort the truth. The Holy Church had a massive advantage in this regard, so of course they felt they could twist the truth however they wanted. One could deduct from this that the Holy Church believed their status to be impregnable; it seemed they had been enjoying their success for far too long. And they were presumably looking down on the Ayer Faction.

What the Holy Church’s higher-ups most likely wanted was to use this combat report to stabilize the situation for a while. After some time had passed and the Holy War had entered its main phase, most countries would forget about this matter. Maybe some of them would want to falsify their combat reports of their own if things weren’t going their way.

Even if this issue became an incident in the future, this combat report had been vaguely written—it just said stuff like “The Holy Light guided us to victory.” Since most people, including the Contract Heroes, believed in the Holy Light to begin with, it was impossible claim that this statement a falsehood. They could simply maintain their position that the author had made some mistakes whilst writing.

And in the absolute hypothetical worst-case scenario, even if the Holy Church was put in a bad situation by people chasing the problem to the root cause, the Holy Church could just use the excuse: “Cardinal Stephen was worried about how the bad combat situation would affect his own future so he lied and fabricated military successes to the Holy Church. He has now been excommunicated, and he died of self-inflicted suicide in a mountain.” This type of explanation would be more than enough as he would be dead as well as a scapegoat.

In actuality, this type of occurrence was quite common for the Holy Church. As long as someone took the fall in the end, it would be akin to cutting off a branch to save the whole tree. Nothing could be done to the Holy Church itself.

What the Holy Church wanted the most right now was to eliminate any potential negative influences of people hearing that they lost the first major battle of the Holy War. They also wanted to increase the combat morale of the Holy Light Faction. Of course, it would be even better if they could lessen the presence of the Ayer Faction in the process.

But there was one issue that even Pope Caloma himself likely overlooked. And this issue was their biggest mistake of all.

Pope Caloma underestimated the Contract Heroes. He even completely ignored them!

In this incident, the biggest victim wasn’t me nor was it Oak Town’s Wood Spirits—it wasn’t even the Ayer Faction. None of us needed to prove our power to the world right here and now, and there were plenty of chances in the future for us. It could be said that the glory and honor from this particular battle wasn’t that important.

Yet for the Contract Heroes, the adventurers who risked their lives all for the sake of fame and glory, this mythical battle was more than enough to change their lives. They still had those shiny military achievement emblems pinned to their chests, yet the glory they had just obtained was robbed by someone else. And if they bragged about their accomplishments to others, it was likely that they would be treated as liars.

For these young adventurers who typically viewed “honor” as more important than their lives, this was utterly unacceptable. They would forever remember the hypocrisy and fake side of the villainous Holy Church. In fact, all the Holy Light job class members were on the receiving end of copious amounts of enmity from other adventurers in the past few days. Some young Holy Light priests even changed the God whom they worshipped.

The Pope and the Cardinals had long since gotten used to being on top, causing them to forget that the scariest part about humans was how fast humans could grow.

Perhaps right now these Contract Heroes were mostly only novice adventurers. But the Justice Points system would speedily help them grow. Once this first batch of Contract Heroes became the skilled veterans of this system, they would show off their newfound power throughout the land. They were hidden, living, and ticking time bombs for the Holy Church, which would go off and truly take effect sometime in the future.

Actually, not long after, the newly veteran Contract Heroes wrote a guidebook for novices joining the system. The third rule written in this guidebook stated “Perhaps you can trust Holy Light individuals that truly believe in the Holy Light, but the Holy Church’s higher-ups are nothing more than a group of old bastards. Never leave your back unguarded against them. Otherwise, they’ll steal the glory that should belong to you and then burn you alive as a heretic. Don’t believe us? Just look up Oak Town’s history.”

And once hatred for the Holy Church set in from the very foundation, no matter what the Holy Church did, it would be quite difficult to recover from it.

Of course, for the Holy Church, their “Holy Warriors” system was sufficient. How could they possibly guess the full extent of the influence our “Contract Heroes” system would have on the world in the future? And that our young adventurers would become real heroes in the end?

Of course, even though I was quite pleased with how the Holy Church shot itself in the foot this time, there were still actions needed to be taken.

Even if our Ayer Faction was weaker than the Holy Light Faction, we would seem far too weak for us to take an attack like this without taking our revenge. In this world, weakness itself was a sin. Should they detect any weakness, the wolves forever circling around you would jump in for the kill.

“What’s Ayer intending to do? Or what has he done already?”

It was only natural for the big boss to make the call at such a time. From what I knew of him, Ayer was no individual who would take something like this lying down.

“...Over the past few days, two stars have fallen. Although the Holy Church hasn’t made any public announcements, the God of Precepts and the God of Punishment’s tiny churches are no longer able to get into contact with their True Gods. Their few priests have lost all their divine powers. Although these two Gods were weak ones with very little sense of presence, as they were both only ordinary mortals that ascended to become Half Gods, they were still Follower Gods under the God of Ascetism, Tremat. You should understand why these two Gods quietly died off.”

In ancient fairy tales, a star falling would represent a God’s death. In this world, while not all falling stars represented a God’s death, a God’s death would indeed create a falling star... Well, it was more that a God’s death would cause their Divine Kingdom and Throne to burn up in the sky, so every lifeform would instinctively understand that a God had perished upon seeing such a sight. It was the same for any mortal existence that ascended to Godhood—the entire world would learn about it.

I had never heard of either of these two unknown Gods before. Only by looking up their information did I find out that the God of Precepts and the God of Punishment were both former SemiGods from the Holy Church. They had successfully become God Envoys and then swore loyalty to the Holy Light True Gods in order to obtain Divine Concepts and become Follower Gods. These two Gods’ churches were both located solely within the Holy Church’s headquarters. The God of Precepts provided heretic seekers with some Divine Arts that could search out heretics, while the God of Punishments was a master of torture. Both Gods were very weak, nothing more than Tremat’s, the God of Ascetism’s, loyal followers, while Tremat in turn was a loyal follower of the God of Holy Light.

“...I heard, well, at least on the surface, that this incident was caused by the powerful God of Ascetism. His teachings are very close to masochism as he believes that everyone should live in austerity and poorness, which will erase all conflict from this world. He believes that people should wear light clothing in winter to strengthen their bodies, have only rice and water in the summer, and constantly improve themselves through ascetism. Although Tremat is quite venerated by people in the monk job class, his teachings make him the mortal enemy of Beyana, whose teachings are about people seeking wealth in order to improve their lives. Of course, this explanation about Tremat was provided by the Holy Church’s bastards themselves, and I feel that the Holy Church bastards are all responsible for this incident as well. Well, I suppose that they’re just upgrading the level of the scapegoat to blame.”

Solo, the God of Music and Dance, was quite casual about things as he told me this through one of his follower bards. He was currently chatting with me using this bard.

Ever since the previous fight, he had kept in contact with me... Although I would have preferred to stay away from all gentlemanly Gods, it was indeed necessary for me to obtain information about what was happening with the Gods. It also wouldn’t do to contact Ayer about every little thing.

The other Gods I knew were even more unreliable, and it wasn’t like I knew many True Gods to begin with. Mary, being a Dwarf Goddess along with her Divine Concept of Alcohol Barrels, was typically in a drunken state most of the time. And as for Beyana... I wasn’t foolish enough to give myself over on a silver platter to her. I heard that recently, any time she heard my name, she—a Goddess, mind you—would go into a berserk state.

“Ayer killed them?”

“Yep, he directly invaded Tremat’s Divine Kingdom, heavily injured Tremat and killed off these two Follower Gods from the Follower Gods that tried to stop him. He also stole their Divine Souls and Divine Concepts.”

“There was no reaction from the other Main Gods? Or any response at all from Order’s Origin? After all, doesn’t this count as internal strife right at the beginning of the Holy War? Isn’t Ayer breaking the rules?”

“He didn’t, because the Holy Light faction broke the rules first, so the other Main Gods are quite displeased at their actions. But since the Holy Light Faction lost two Follower Gods, and Tremat was seriously injured, this incident came to an end. Neither side will bring up this issue again.”

From a certain standpoint, this was a type of compromise, mediated by the other Main Gods and the Origin of Order. On the surface, it would appear that the Ayer Faction even lost out in this compromise. After all, the Ayer Faction had lost the opportunity to gain fame and reputation from this first major battle. Although two Gods had died in the Holy Light Faction, they were two weak Follower Gods that very few people even knew existed. In the eyes of the most powerful existences, the loss of these two Gods was ignorable.

But only I knew that we had profited enormously this time!

“We obtained the two Divine Concepts of Precepts and Punishment? Ayer truly went all out this time.”

Neither of these two Divine Concepts counted for much in the current world of Eich. Precepts were followed only by a minute number of ascetic monks and the most pious of believers. Punishment was also a weak Concept that was barely worth mentioning. Neither of these two Divine Concepts appeared to have any potential.

While these two Concepts weren’t valued in this world, all the Gods’ churches recognized as common sense that “Ascetism can help absolve you of your sins so that your purified soul may be led into a Divine Kingdom by a God.” Thus, the Divine Concept of Ascetism was very powerful in this world, where Divine Concepts had actual power. The God of Ascetism was actually far stronger than the Goddess of Wealth.

Since ascetics and monks were able to obtain great combat strength through practicing ascetism, thus arose a church composed of powerful elite warriors skilled in combat. This helped make this “God of Masochism” into one of the most powerful Gods under the God of Holy Light. As a result, the two Divine Concepts of Precepts and Punishment became Concepts underneath this Concept of Ascetism, making them rather unknown.

It was precisely because Tremat felt that these two Divine Concepts had almost zero potential that he gave them over to his Follower Gods.

“So Ayer’s goal all along was to steal these two Divine Concepts?”

But, only I, Ayer, and very few others were aware that Precepts and Punishment were the two most critical Divine Concepts to our plan to “Reconstruct Hell.” [1] 1 In our astoundingly thick notes containing our plans, these two Follower Gods’ names were on the top of our list of existences we needed to kill as soon as possible.

If Precepts and Punishment remained as follower Concepts underneath Ascetism based in religion, they could only remain as second-rate Concepts among second-rate Concepts. But if they instead became follower Concepts under Law, making Punishment into the “what happened if you broke the law” Punishment, and Precepts into a subordinate Concept of Law, I would even be able to create new Concepts such as “Judicial Self-Discipline” and “Moral Self-Discipline.” These were key nutrients the Law Throne would need in order to further advance, as well as Follower Gods critical to establishing my imagined version of Hell.

Of course, the aftereffects of this incident were still ongoing. Perhaps the Gods up above had already come to an accord, but we mortals still needed to make an issue of this to the Holy Church, which also consisted of mortals. This would depend on our timing and opportunity.

As for these two Divine Concepts that were pre-destined to “suddenly vanish,” I merely nodded without explaining anything to Solo even though he, too, might be in the know. Some things were simply far too important. Even if Solo was a True God allied with our faction, I didn’t want a single extra person to know about my plans.

“It would seem that I need to speed up my plans... Of course, I should take care of what’s before me first. Great Stone Sculptor Ainslo, what else do you have to say for yourself?”

Currently standing before me, anxious, was the incredibly ugly Ainslo—the Mother of Ten Thousand Stones!

When the earlier battle sunk into a stalemate, I unhesitatingly summoned reinforcements. Since the Great Stone Sculptor Ainslo had already moved into the Forest of Dreams, it meant in a way that she had joined my side as well. So, of course I wouldn’t forget to have a top-level combat strength individual like her join my battle.

But the result was that from the Seven Saints—which consisted of the six Saint-ranked existences from the Earth Elemental Plane and... Beifeng—only the youngest among them, the dracon, answered my summons and joined me in battle... but he did indeed achieve something miraculous. Was it really true that the youngest sibling would always be the strongest and most difficult to deal with?

Cough, getting back to the main point, there naturally wouldn’t be anything left to say if we had lost that battle. But since we won, it was only natural that it was time to deal with these Earth Elemental Lords who wouldn’t listen to commands to go into battle when it was required of them. Otherwise, if everyone acted like them, chaos would permeate our army. Leadership would be impossible.

“Milord, I’m truly not to blame! You should know that we’re all Earth Elemental Lords. But the Titan Giants are children of the earth. None of us can even move in front of them!”

A trail of tears dropped down from each of her two eyes, creating diamonds with every teardrop. She must really have such high carbon content within her body... I suddenly recalled the fairy tale about how the Little Mermaid was able to cry pearls with her tears. The main component of pearls was calcium carbonate. If the Little Mermaid was able to cry pearls, was it because there was far too much lime within her tear ducts? Or was she some strange creature that ate rocks for food?

From what I knew, the only aquatic animal which ate rocks were crocodiles. Although they ate rocks in order to help them digest food, crocodiles were amphibious as well. Could it be that the Little Mermaid’s true identity was that of a crocodile who had cultivated into another form?

Cough—cough—it would seem that I had accidentally let my imagination run wild in ruining childhood fairy tales. I’ll be getting back to the main topic for real this time. As for the old fossil Little Mermaid—er, Stone Mother—I’ll think about researching her components another time.

I swept up all the diamonds she cried in order to see if I could sell them for some money later... this wasn’t because I was stingy, it was because I had recently been robbed clean of all my money. If I find the bastard who stole my wallet, I’ll definitely... What? You’re saying I’m going off topic yet again? Fine then, I’ll discuss my recent troubles with money later and will definitely do my best to stay on topic.

Ainslo cried continuously, but I treated it as nothing more than crocodile tears. I was no idiot, after all. Although the Titan Giants called themselves the children of the earth, the Winged Tribes also called themselves the children of the sky, and the Elves called themselves the children of nature or the children of the forest. These were all just self-proclaimed titles, with no actual meaning behind them whatsoever.

Titan Giants weren’t elemental creatures. Their name of children of the earth simply meant that they recognized that the earth itself gave birth to them, and that they were products of nature rather than some God that created them. If they actually had anything to do with the earth element, Emordilorcan would never have been able to become the Earth Elemental God.

“Unable to move in front of the Titan Giants? Hmph, I think it’s because you knew that the Titan Giants would be your opponents that you didn’t even dare to go into battle.”

Ainslo didn’t reply, and she stopped crying as well. It would seem that she felt herself that her acting was meaningless.

This ugly Elemental Lord who was incredibly small and short was from the same generation as Emordilorcan. She was far older than even the majority of True Gods. Perhaps she had even seen the Titan Giants in their full glory and power. In that case, it would be quite easy to understand why she was so scared of them. Even if she actually possessed sufficient power to fight against the Titan Giants’ incarnations, she would be worried about the Titan Giants’ true bodies later taking revenge upon her. And with her stopping the others, none of the other Seven Saints would even consider entering the battle.

Upon realizing this, I surreptitiously glanced over the short and stocky Stone Mother. Her Saint rank power level might not count for much among all the top-level combat strength in this world, but her knowledge from Immemorial or even Great Immemorial generations would likely be more important than her combat strength.

Of course, it would be quite difficult to obtain answers if I directly asked such things. From a certain standpoint, since Ainslo had lost my trust, she was also in the process of losing an incredibly rare opportunity.

“Until I figure out various things from her, I’m not going to discuss that matter with Ainslo.”

Originally, I had intended to discuss with her about fixing the Earth Elemental Throne and having her become the next Earth Elemental God. However, having such a sly and selfish individual like Ainslo obtaining that position might not be a good thing for us.

The birth of a new Earth Elemental God would naturally and greatly slow down the revival of the Titan Giants. A sufficiently powerful earth elemental creature and an established Earth Elemental Throne were the two necessary factors for establishing a new Earth Elemental God. And, to my knowledge, Ainslo the Great Stone Sculptor was the most powerful Earth Elemental Lord in existence, making her the candidate closest to becoming the next Earth Elemental God. As for the shards of the Earth Elemental Throne, two individuals had obtained them. One was me, while the other was...

“Beifeng, what do you say? What’s with how unscrupulous your brothers and sister are? I didn’t treat them poorly at all—I gave them plenty to eat and a great place to live. Yet they all acted cowardly when I needed them to fight. Isn’t that just terrible of them?”

At the time, the Sand Worm King tamed by Beifeng, who was now one of the Seven Saints, was the one who directly destroyed the Earth Elemental Throne, meaning that part of the Throne’s shards were definitely held by the Sand Worm King. Technically, as this was the Sand Worm King’s loot, I would need to directly exchange for the shards with him.

What I had just asked was a difficult question to answer. But I wasn’t making anything up as the Forest of Dreams had obvious benefits for the Earth Elemental Lords. Although I said that I was asking Beifeng, I was still staring at Ainslo, forcing her to give me an answer.

Beifeng knew what I meant. He simply continued playing with his new white lion friend and didn’t reply to my question. Meanwhile, Ainslo remained silent.

But she knew very well that pretending to be dumb wouldn’t work.

She would have to come to a decision.

Note:

[1] Reconstruct Hell (再造冥府) – Does anyone know if something similar has previously appeared? It seems like something that should have been mentioned before, but it’s not in our glossary.