Believers (1)
Hubert Trading Company, Tarak Main Branch.
“Diana, let’s talk for a moment.”
“Yes, Chairman. I’ll prepare tea and refreshments right away.”
“Good, please do.”
Around the time the day’s work was more or less coming to an end, Hubert, the head of the trading company, called Diana and arranged a private meeting.
It was to talk about the divine power that had begun to take root in her body.
‘Come to think of it, it’s already been well over four years since I first met this child.’
He looked at her with fresh eyes as she brought out warm tea and cookies.
Diana, whom he had met in Azantu, a city on the outskirts of the Kingdom of Talia—a weak nation at the western edge of the Ion Continent—had been the first proper bond he formed after coming to Auterica.
‘I never thought our connection would last this long back then.’
A shabby girl, small and gaunt from not even being able to eat proper meals, barely scraping by day to day while supporting her young brother.
Seeing that child now grown tall and dressed sharply in a fine suit as a career woman, he couldn’t help but feel moved.
‘Of course, she’s still young even now.’
Wasn’t she only seventeen years old now?
But perhaps because she didn’t want to be looked down on for being young, she wore mature makeup, and at a glance she looked like nothing but an adult.
And with her nutritional problems solved, she had grown explosively over the past few years.
“Is anything difficult for you? Is Aaron doing well?”
“Yes, thanks to your concern, Chairman, I’m spending every day meaningfully. Aaron is attending school well, too. Though these days, he seems to be receiving separate training to become a knight, because he comes home covered in dirt every day.”
As they exchanged updates, Hubert observed Diana carefully.
Her attitude was no different from usual.
But she could not completely evade his 「Analysis」.
‘She already has some idea.’
Well, since she had awakened divine power on her own, there was no way she wouldn’t know who her faith was directed toward.
She was probably just waiting without showing it until he told her himself.
Now that things had come to this, there was no need to hide it.
“...So that was it after all.”
When he roughly explained divine power to her, she nodded as if she had expected as much, her eyes sparkling.
What filled those eyes was only clear admiration, faith, and awe.
She did not question him or harbor any doubts in particular.
‘A trust level of 98%, huh. Seeing it like this, it’s almost a little frightening.’
Honestly, at this level, even if he told her to kill herself, she would probably think there must be some deep meaning behind it and obey without hesitation.
She was a smart child, so she might doubt whether the order had truly come from his own will, but she had long since passed the stage where she would flatly deny it or feel repulsed.
“I did think you were no ordinary person from the first time I saw you, but divinity... As expected, the Vampire King of the Kingdom of Talia was also one of your avatar bodies, Miste—no, Chairman, wasn’t he? And that dwarf craftsman holed up in the workshop, too.”
At those words, Hubert was the one who couldn’t help being surprised.
To think she knew even that much.
Diana had not even met the dwarf Howard face to face, had she?
Perhaps she had noticed far earlier and had simply been pretending not to know.
“But it’s strange. It’s true that I’ve prayed for you every day all this time, Chairman, but I’ve never once thought of you as a god. And yet divine power came to me.”
“...Come to think of it, that’s true as well.”
“Hmm.”
Certainly, apart from the depth of her faith, its form was far removed from true religion no matter how favorably one looked at it.
That applied not only to Diana, but also to his friend Kang Taesan.
From the perspective of someone who had already raised the paladin Heinrich into a saint, this was definitely異질적.
‘In other words, unlike other divinities, I can gain a certain effect from pure faith alone.’
He did not know why.
It might be because he was incomplete, not yet having ascended to a true divine throne; the system might have influenced it somehow; or it might be because he carried divine natures of various dispositions equal to the number of his avatars.
However, whatever the reason, the fact that the conditions for faith were not strict was not a bad thing for him.
“...If we use this well, we might be able to increase the number of believers all at once.”
“Oh? Is that so?”
“Yes! I just happened to think of a good idea!”
From the standpoint of someone accumulating divine nature, having many believers was not a bad thing.
As was true for any church, even if they did not reach the level of clergy, each believer with a small amount of faith gathered together to become a great power.
“However, if there is one uncertain factor... the problem is how the Main God Church will react. No matter how little it resembles a religion, the moment we’re found out, it could be seen as a challenge to the Main God Church.”
“Hmm, that’s true. It would be troublesome if inquisitors suddenly came barging in.”
This Auterica was, strictly speaking, already land with owners.
There was the Main God, the creator god, and even racial gods including the World Tree.
In such a situation, there was no way the other gods would welcome him, someone no different from an outer god, quietly trying to wedge himself in.
‘Still, since one of my avatars, Heinrich, is an angel of the Main God, maybe they’ll overlook it a little? Strictly speaking, I’m no different from a lower divinity, too. Should I somehow receive separate permission...’
Then, suddenly.
A certain intuition brushed through his mind.
At the same time, a memory buried in the flow of time slowly began to surface in his thoughts.
The word of God that the pope of the Main God Church had delivered just before his passing.
Permission that had begun in the distant past had finally reached his present self.
“Ha.”
At the question and answer that transcended time, a hollow breath escaped him before he knew it.
As expected, this was what it meant to be a chief-god-class divinity, said to be closest to omniscience and omnipotence.
‘When I first heard it, I wondered what on earth it meant.’
Had he foreseen this situation even back then?
In any case, it was fortunate that approval had been granted.
Otherwise, Saint Heinrich and High Elf Harris might have been placed in an awkward position for no reason.
When he told that fact to Diana, who had been pondering something with a serious expression, she clapped her hands and brightened.
“That’s a relief! I was thinking about which side’s logistics distribution we should block first to more efficiently choke the Main God Church. It seems we won’t have to go that far.”
“...Were you perhaps planning to start a war if things went wrong?”
“Yes? Of course, weren’t we? If things went badly, you might have been judged as a heretic, Chairman, so we’d have to try anything we could. We couldn’t just sit still and let it happen.”
The girl tilted her head and asked back innocently.
Indeed, after hearing her out, he found that she had already drawn up concrete drafts to some extent in her mind.
Blocking the flow of goods to the church and hiring mercenaries on a large scale to secure military power was only the basics.
She had planned to shake the nations whose commercial rights they had swallowed and induce them to reject the church, use hybrid vampires to assassinate key figures, and even join hands with the Immortal Army.
It was a plan with not even a speck of mercy in it, despite the target having maintained a friendly relationship with them from the beginning until this very moment.
‘Ah, no wonder those eyes looked familiar.’
Bright, sparkling, innocent eyes.
But the subtle fire burning deep within them was not so different from that of the fanatics of the Main God Church.
Did this mean that only a fanatic could oppose a fanatic after all?
‘Diana, what a frightening child.’
Such tricks would have dealt a fatal blow to the Main God Church, which was devoting all its strength to preparing for war against the Immortal King.
It was safe to say that humanity as a whole falling into great chaos would have been a foregone conclusion.
And yet she had planned such an operation without hesitation and even intended to carry it out.
‘That makes her all the more reliable, though.’
The judgment to seek the best path no matter what crisis arose, the bold decisiveness that did not hesitate in the face of sentiment, and blind loyalty superior to anyone else’s.
With qualities like these, he could trust her enough to entrust her with it.
The position of chief administrator overseeing Auterica’s believers.
“Then there won’t be any problem proceeding with the plan now!”
“...Yes. I’ll delegate full authority to you, so try doing as you like.”
“Yes! Just leave it to me. I’ll make sure to secure a number of believers no less than the Main God Church!”
At Diana’s spirited, motivated answer, Hubert let out a faint laugh.
The Main God Church was, in name and reality, the largest religion in the Auterica dimension.
Even those who were not believers did not doubt the existence of the Main God or his authority.
Even the black mages standing at the opposite end of faith were like that, so what more needed to be said?
‘If we reach even one-tenth of that... no, one-hundredth, it would be no different from exceeding expectations.’
And so Hubert encouraged Diana, whose eyes were gleaming, and ended the meeting.
Naturally, he did not expect results to appear quickly.
But a few days later.
Hubert was able to learn that Diana’s boast had truly come from the heart.
—Sign the application and join the membership to receive generous free gifts?
—Membership members receive lifetime discounts on all goods distributed by Hubert Trading Company! Usable at any branch worldwide!
—All these benefits for free?!
Huge posters were put up all over Tarak.
...No, it was not only Tarak.
The western kingdom alliance of the Ion Continent where the Kingdom of Tulk was located, the central Azerion Empire, the eastern Republic of Zepia, the southern Chalkos Tribal Federation, and the small island nation to the southeast, the Wizet Magic Kingdom.
Even the Demon Realm connected through 「Dimensional Merchant」 and the Enamel Continent of the nonhuman races, where they had only just begun opening branch stores.
Thus, an all-directional marketing campaign began, mobilizing every capability of Hubert Trading Company, which had become the continent’s greatest merchant group in both name and reality.
In the end, application forms for joining the faith, packaged under the name of “membership,” were distributed throughout all of Auterica.
“Ha, hahaha...”
A hollow laugh escaped Hubert’s mouth as he looked over the application form.
Certainly, it did not include a single sentence that gave off a religious feeling.
It merely emphasized trust and belief in Hubert, the chairman, in a subtle manner.
‘With this, even a believer of the Main God Church would sign without much resistance.’
There was no particular problem.
After all, that believer’s “faith” would still be directed toward the Main God.
And the same would likely be true for the nonhuman races and the demons of the Demon Realm.
It was a method possible only because the faith he needed was not limited to the form of religion.
On top of that, Diana did not forget to promote the “premium membership,” which presented even more demanding conditions.
It was a measure to cultivate elite believers with stronger faith than ordinary believers.
“I see. I’ve learned something from this.”
As Hubert gathered the faint “faith” that had begun to increase exponentially, he quietly closed his eyes.
That day, he realized one truth.
That enough money could buy even faith.
***
A land filled only with death.
[Ahh...! O great King...!]
[This servant Karam offers loyalty to the Immortal King!]
[Ooooooh—!]
At its center, pitch-black energy surged violently.
A pure power of death that howled like a typhoon, on a level wholly different from simple dark magic.
Seated upon a towering, enormous throne at the center of it, the Immortal King Hans looked down indifferently at his “believers.”
‘So this is how the divinity of death manifests.’
He flicked a finger wreathed in black energy and nodded slightly.
Negative divine power, different from what was generally known.
In truth, although it was called divine power, it was closer to the “death” he had been using all this time.
Only its purity had become incomparably denser than before.
‘It’s a shame. Low-ranking undead aren’t of much help in growing divinity.’
Fundamentally, undead were beings formed from the gathering and corruption of the lingering obsessions they had possessed in life.
Only high-ranking undead possessed proper self-awareness; the numerous low-ranking undead were merely monsters that moved according to instinct.
‘But there was also an unexpected gain.’
The fear and hatred he had steadily accumulated all this time under the pretext of acquiring karma.
They were of no small help in growing his divinity.
‘I hadn’t expected this at all. Well, all’s well that ends well.’
Thanks to that, he was able to bestow upon several officers who followed him a power on a different level than before.
A deathly energy brought to its extreme, enough to let them overcome even the limitation of undead, who should have been vulnerable to divine power because they were reborn in defiance of providence.
It was only natural that the undead who witnessed that sight went wild in awe.
[Praise the new god of death!]
[Homage to the eternal lord of immortality...]
[Despair to all dimensions—! Pain—! Infinite death—!]
Hans was faithfully walking the path of an evil god.