“If we truly serve that Great One, will we all survive?”
“Perhaps not just survive, but gain even more.”
Celia decided to first conduct a large-scale holy power extraction experiment on the Yordles. She told them whom they were worshiping and what kind of rewards they would receive.
During this process, Celia and the Great Devourer colony also had to invest a significant amount.
The Yordles were already deeply fractured, even engaging in infighting over whether to cooperate with the Goddess of Light Association. Celia had to appease and unite them.
“Moving from trust to faith is by no means simple... In other words, one must use the power of the heart to transform the nature of the energy they possess. The servants must witness the power of the Great One with their own eyes, be moved by it, and thus come to worship and praise it.”
Kane, the former Chief Tech of the Goddess of Light Association, had now become a loyal collaborator. Left with no other choice, he offered this advice to the troubled Celia.
‘The Goddess of Light Association ruled many worlds this way, so there is no reason for us to deliberately ignore or reject their methods. Since we started with nothing, mimicking and learning from them will be much more efficient.’
Both Celia and Elise were the type who would unhesitatingly adopt and absorb others' technologies as long as they were useful.
Thanks to this mindset, the Great Devourer-style belief system and structure re-established under Celia's direction did not differ much from that of the Goddess.
“Third Queen, please send down sweet rain upon the place I designate.”
To demonstrate that authority and power—to replicate the miracles that the Goddess Hestia had once performed with her own strength—Celia borrowed the power of the Third Queen, Gaia.
Gia tuned the world through her vast root systems and antennae, allowing her to interfere with the flow of energy.
She manipulated the atmosphere to bring rain to the regions Celia specified, and regulated the nutrients in the soil to ensure a bountiful harvest.
To the low-civilization Yordles, even this was a sufficient display of miracles and divine power.
“How can this be? It's actually raining!”
“In the end, has anything really changed? We don't have any other choice anyway, and we have nothing to lose by having faith. Lady Celia said that the Great Devourer is different from the Goddess of Light Association; they won't drag us onto the battlefield.”
The depth of faith among the Yordles gradually deepened.
In particular, Celia's emphasis on the fact that the Great Devourer would not drag them onto the battlefield was the biggest difference from the Goddess of Light Association.
Simply by offering their faith and worship, extracting the resource of holy power was enough to fulfill their purpose.
None of the queens, including Elise, had any intention of bringing them into the hive mind to use as an army.
If they wanted to, they could easily invest resources to produce far stronger and more efficient forces.
“Since those lords came to this land, the soil has become much more fertile.”
“There's no more fighting among us either. Aren't we all serving those lords now? Anyone who harms our own kind will be punished.”
“Isn't this wonderful? They have truly brought peace and tranquility to this land.”
Naturally, the number of people who sincerely worshiped and praised the Great Devourer colony, rather than doing so out of coercion, began to grow.
As their quality of life became abundant, those Yordles—acting as resources—were managed by the Great Devourer. Anyone who harmed their own kind or incited division was publicly seized and executed.
As such events repeated, the surviving Yordles became even more proactive in continuing their life of faith. Celia marked them, appointed them as priests, and instructed them to spread the faith further.
【Successfully moved and dominated a large number of servants through faith and belief.】
【Achieved an orthodox god's achievement as an Evil God. The achievement has been recognized and rewarded.】
【Mid-Tier Deity, Grade V → Mid-to-High-Tier Deity, Grade I】
【All restricted permissions have been unlocked.】
Furthermore, the Divine Net deemed this achievement to be nearly comparable to the achievement of conquering a world through war.
Lin Miao turned off all the lights, leaving only the faint glow from the television screen.
He stood quietly in the living room, silently reading the text blinking before his eyes.
He only had two worlds under his banner.
Even if the population and development level of those two worlds were relatively low, the achievements accumulated through them were by no means measurable by his current rank.
The Great Devourer, which served as the core of these achievements, was gradually shaping Lin Miao into an unprecedented deity.
...
“Captain! Captain!”
“What is it?”
Arcadia. This was the homeland of the Goddess Hestia, as well as the home planet of the Goddess of Light Association.
Adian, the captain of the starship Rum, which had come here for trade and exchange, heard the hurried shouts of the Archbishop.
Adian had originally planned to relax a bit after finishing all official schedules before setting sail to leave.
However, when he heard the words of the Archbishop, with whom he had formally met just a few days ago, he couldn't help but be shocked.
“The Goddess is looking for you!”
It was actually the Goddess Hestia herself summoning him.
Adian was momentarily at a loss for words.
This was not his first time visiting a home planet where a deity personally resided, but before this, he had never seen a deity's true form.
Even the official schedule that had been ongoing until a few days ago had been completed with the Archbishop, the Goddess's proxy.
“No, I...”
“Her Ladyship said she has already finished speaking with your master. However, she still wishes to meet you in person. Please do not miss this honor; it is an opportunity to receive the Goddess's blessing.”
Adian barely managed to open his mouth, but the Archbishop stroked his snow-white beard and exaggeratedly said that this was not an opportunity one came across every day.
Since the Goddess had already spoken with the deity he was normally close to, Adian, as one of the countless servants, had no choice.
Ultimately, Adian made full preparations and, with a tense expression, personally headed to the Palace of Sacred Radiance designated by the Goddess.
“An outsider visiting this place... as far as I know, this is the first time in nearly five hundred years.”
On the path leading to the massive landmass of the Sky Island, the Archbishop was the one who couldn't hide his excitement.
This was because even the Archbishop himself rarely had the chance to ascend to the Palace of Sacred Radiance, where the Goddess's true body resided, more than once every ten years.
“Ah.”
Adian was completely captivated by the magnificent sight before him.
Floating above the clouds, the Palace of Sacred Radiance on the Sky Island was large enough to accommodate an entire city.
The outer walls were decorated with white-gold stone and a special gold known as empyrean gold. At the peak of each spire, a ring of radiance hovered, casting brilliant beams of light into the sky.
Above the palace, holy mist drifted, artificially created to disrupt coordinate detection.
A river shining like the Milky Way sparkled with light, engraved with ancient sacred characters and the achievements of the Goddess of Light Association and the Goddess herself. These lights and shadows seemed to come alive, leaving behind lingering trails of light.
“Welcome, Captain.”
In a magnificent and splendid side palace of this massive palace, Adian, in the capacity of a humble servant, paid his respects to the great deity.
‘The Goddess!’
Adian waited tensely, not even daring to look at her directly.
In his hurriedly lowered gaze, he could only see a pair of pristine, faintly visible feet.
“Raise your head and look at me.”
Hearing Hestia's words, Adian forced his drooping head upward and looked at her.
As he gazed upon her, he felt that the word “beauty” had completely taken over his mind.
At first glance, her appearance was like that of a human female with golden hair cascading down to her hips.
However, the halo surrounding her was the spiritual light emitted by the Transcendent Divine Status itself. Thus, even for countless races with different values and standards, anyone who saw her would, without exception, be captivated by her ethereal beauty.
“May I ask... what business Your Ladyship has with me...”
“I have spoken with Leona. Although sending troops to assist is somewhat difficult, since your ship is currently docked here, I can provide some support.”
Hestia did not beat around the bush with the tense and rigid Adian, cutting straight to the point.
Just as Adian's eyes widened in shock, Hestia clenched her fist without hesitation.
“I need your strength to punish that despicable Outer God who dared to offend me.”
Hestia spoke of her plan to use Adian's ship to punish the Great Devourer that had attacked her pioneering zone.
Hestia had already paid the price to Adian's deity. Having been provoked by the Great Devourer's consecutive strikes, her desire for revenge was now aroused, and she could care less about anything else.
“G-Goddess. My ship is not built for combat; our armaments are weak, and the crew has almost no battle experience...”
“Even so, doesn't your ship carry a fair amount of self-defense weapons? Leona has already told me everything.”
Before the deity, Adian forced himself to speak, driven by his sense of responsibility as a captain.
But Hestia gave him no opportunity to escape.
In truth, his ship, the Rum, was indeed equipped with defensive weapons, leaving Adian with no way to refute her.
“Those monsters can use peculiar spells to complete world observations in a short amount of time. Because of this, our Stargate can no longer support the pioneering zones under attack. Your ship needs to head into outer space and bombard the core of their nest.”
“That, that...”
Adian had originally been on a relaxed diplomatic and trade mission, only to be helplessly dragged into a war.
He desperately racked his brain, but with an agreement already reached between the deities, he had no room to back out.
“Though you are mercenaries hired with money, at this moment, you shall become knights fighting for me... I bestow my blessing upon you.”
Not only that, but Hestia also blew a gentle breath toward him, infusing him with a massive amount of holy power.
For the first time in his life, Adian felt a vast wave of holy power flood his body, experiencing a tingling sensation of pleasure and excitement. Yet, the pressure in his heart could not be erased even by holy power.
This holy power had instead become a shackle he could not escape.
“...I shall execute your command.”
Ultimately, Adian bowed to the Goddess and walked out of the Palace of Sacred Radiance with faltering steps.
‘What a disaster out of nowhere.’
Breaking this news to his subordinates was also going to be a massive headache.
No one would have expected them to get involved in a war.
Fortunately, his subordinates had also received quite a few gifts from the Goddess of Light Association and were currently in high spirits.
“I heard it's a mission to clear out some Outer God's bugs.”
“Don't worry, Captain! According to the intel we received, those things can't possibly catch up to us!”
The employees, who were of military origin, felt that this mission was entirely worth doing and showed full confidence.
They confidently believed that no matter how formidable the Great Devourer was, it was ultimately just a bunch of bugs. With their ship's current armaments, they could easily sweep them away.
“Well, we don't have a choice anyway. We've taken what we were given, so let's set out and complete the mission.”
Adian let out a wry chuckle, comforted by their words, and ordered the docked ship to set sail.
The Rum, a long-distance warp ship modified from an old flagship, slowly sailed out of the atmosphere under a powerful thrust, preparing to initiate its warp.
Rate on N.U.
