321. Twin Ascensions

    Year 287 (continued)

    “What are relics?”

    It was a simple question and came with a simple answer.

    It was a fragment of divinity, and anyone who held the relic could then channel a fragment of that world’s faith to create miracles. Miracles then took on many different forms. Miracles were things such as a sudden surge in the combat power of Hoyia, Ebon, and the others.

    Miracles, in their case, took the form of the power to single handedly overturn the tide of battle.

    Relics enabled miracles, and they were an inherent part of the old system.

    “The old gods moved to the World Faith System because they all knew that faith was powerful. Miracles were there even before the first gods came to be, through things such as worldly miracles. There was a time when the people used to worship and believe in the power of the land and the elements. That was faith as well. Faith in the world, faith in the old nature before an existence like yourself came to be.”

    “Faith is thoughts, beliefs. They are things in the hearts of men, and they linger within our souls. This is a power, even if unseen and untouchable. They flow into the aether, and thus empower the world as we know it.”

    Faith was the fuel that existed throughout the world. It was how the old masters exceeded their inherent level limitations.

    Faith existed, with or without the World Faith System.

    Relics were conduits. A connection to something more that took the form of gods, systems, and the Wills of the World. This connection relied on faith to fuel its effects.

    With all three, a relic, the faith of their user, and a world where there was sufficient faith flowing about, they enabled such miracles to occur.

    The old gods defended their core worlds with the use of relics and special champions empowered with multiple relic-grade items. It was likely the faith point cost of such an act was significantly cheaper than summoning heroes, and they would have more control.

    In other words, they’d managed to reliably trigger miracles in order to defeat the demon kings.

    In a similar way, Hoyia’s use of a relic enabled a miracle.

    She was a few levels behind Ebon, but triggering this miracle made her gain many, many levels. Enough that she reached Level 150.

    The matriarch’s choices were limited. Only two choices, but to her, it might as well be one.

    [Subdomain of Aeon - The Burning Tree. This subdomain channels the power of believers, grants the ability to sense the zeal of zealots and empower zealots. It is stronger in worlds with high levels of faith and weaker in worlds with no faith. The Burning Tree is able to temporarily condense the levels of its believers into the domain holder, to significantly increase their own power. The maximum increase in level is two times the current level. In addition, the Burning Tree is able to enter Sacrifice Form, where the user gains a temporary tripling of power for a period of three days. Once the use of power expires, the user will die and be eligible for resurrection. If the user dies this way, resurrection will take twice as long to complete]

    Hoyia considered it to be a defensive choice, strong in worlds with high faith, and the Sacrifice Form seemed exceptionally powerful in emergencies.

    [Domain of the Heartshaper. This domain channels one’s ability to shape the thoughts and hearts of those around it. The user is inherently able to sense the emotions, thoughts, fears and weaknesses of those around them, and form direct connections to reassure those around them.

    This domain holder can enthrall others who are of a slightly lower level, and the enthralled individuals will obey all commands of the domain holder. The Heartshaper can cause those enthralled to enter ‘Berserker’ form, where they gain a large increase in strength equal to 50% of their levels, though without the skills and abilities of the higher levels. The enthralled individuals can be broken out of their controlled state with sufficient time. Other Domain holders are immune to effects of the Enthrall]

    It was an option that reflected her recent actions, of how she manipulated her believers and her reputation in the non-believer nations as the great seductress.

    It was powerful in its own way, but Hoyia knew what her choice was.

    The other individual, Ebon, also finally crossed the level threshold.

    “You did it.” Hoyia approached the knight.

    “Well, you too.” Ebon took off his battered knight’s helmet and gave a long sigh of relief. The man was old, but the influence of the domain had begun to de-age him. “It’s- I almost thought it wouldn’t happen.”

    “Well, that was a miracle.”

    “Do you think they’ll let us replicate it?” Ebon wondered. “Aeon’s gotta make more of those relics for the others to step into the final realm.”

    Hoyia paused as she thought about it and then shook her head. “I believe, even if indirectly, that there is a penalty for taking the known path.”

    “Heh. We are lucky, then.”

    “That is so. What options did you get?” Hoyia asked.

    The knight had three choices.

    [Domain of the Knight-Trainer - This domain’s focus is on training and perseverance. It excels at training others and can formally take up to three students as a [Domain’s Squire], who are granted a significant experience boost, and a single non-rechargeable instant respawn ability. The respawn ability will not apply to those above Level 100. The effect of the experience boost is significantly stronger in older, more mature students. In addition, the domain holder will be able to sense and influence the type of skills and classes of students and also remove unwanted classes. While in the presence of students, the Knight-Trainer gains significant defensive abilities and can protect students from harm.

    In addition, the Knight-Trainer gains a passive boost to overall abilities and strength proportional to the number of levels gained by the [Domain’s Squire] while under their tutelage. If the squires eventually ascend to a [domain] of their own, the Knight-Trainer will receive a special skill based on the [domain] of their students.]

    [Domain of the Enduring Knight - This domain has a focus on long, pitched battles, and can name a target as a ‘marked’ target. The domain knight’s regeneration, and overall strength will increase at a stepped basis, relative to how long a marked target remains alive during battle and the target’s starting level. In addition, the Enduring Knight also gains an ability to [Lock] it’s target, which enables the domain holder to instantaneously teleport next to the target. The strength increase can be up to three times the current level of the domain knight. It will take about half a day for the effect to reach a 50% increase in power, a full day for a doubling of power, and five days for an effective increase equal to three times of the current level. However, if the Enduring Knight or the Marked Target leaves the battle during this time frame the timer is reset. This domain will also significantly enhance defensive, healing, and also targeting abilities.]

    This option seemed to focus on long battles against a strong, highly-defensive opponent. I wondered whether the targeting function worked for fixed, stationary objects, or only moving creatures.

    Then, the last option.

    Alka returned to the world of Darkgard and continued to train the dwarves to prepare for their role.

    Over the past two years, we’d gotten fairly comfortable with the Delvegardian dwarves and began to send groups of them to Treehome and a few other worlds for them to experience life outside of Delvegard.

    At the same time, we’d also started the first series of technological exchanges between Treehome and the Delvegardians and also started work on the dwarven war machines that combined the resources, equipment, and materials of both sides.

    We had advantages in terms of sheer levels, wider variety of materials, weaponry designs, and magical powers, but the Delvegardians did have details and finesse honed over a much longer period of continuous improvements.

    As a whole, I still considered ourselves technologically superior to the Delvegardians. But there was no use hoarding some of the lower and middle tier techniques, and these dwarves had joined our Great War.

    ***

    Twinspace

    The defeat of Twinspace’s demon king had a significant impact on the overall strength of the demons on the demonic continent.

    In an instant, it was as if all the weaker demons had lost about one-fifth to one-third of their individual combat strength, likely due to loss of some aura or passive enhancement from the demon king.

    Expedition’s Landing, buoyed by the victory over the demon king, quickly expanded. With the threat of the demon king removed from the demon’s continent, more zealots came over to the new lands and began a new wave of expansion into the demonic continent.

    The druids and priests had to do some work to purge the lands of the demonic corruption before the lands were usable, but whatever was beneath the thick layer of demonic sludge and blight was fertile, mineral rich soil that promised a future of prosperity.

    The gold rush for the promised land had begun, and even the other non-believing nations had begun to set sail towards the promised land. Ironically, the act of doing so only proved Hoyia’s propaganda as right.

    It was also much easier to recruit large amounts of zealots now that the wealth of the demon’s continent was proven by Hoyia’s few treasure ships. Each of those treasure ships landed with multiple gigantic rocks and stones filled with unprocessed gems and ores embedded within them. Some had unprocessed gold ore the size of wagons, and the arrival of these treasure ships were actual fanfares as everyone crowded along the piers to see what they brought home.

    Of course, for those who were not a member of the temple, they had to pay a hefty tax to use the ports about midway between the two continents or risk sailing from one end of the ocean to another without any rest.

    That was a difficult act and probably many would die taking such a risk. So in the end, the newly set up Twin Orders of Twinspace made good money charging high taxes on non-Temple of Aeon affiliated ships.

    Central, the management body within the Valtrian Order, was partly concerned that the presence of a surge in material goods could heavily destabilize the economies of Twinspace over the long term. One of the exit plans for that was to remove some of that excess production and wealth and redirect them to the other worlds, where the economies were much larger and could better absorb that sort of mineral boom.

    On the other hand, the relatively poor conditions throughout the main inhabited continent meant most of the resources went into improving living conditions.

    ***

    Gigantadragon and Capra didn’t give us too many problems, as the Order was quickly able to set up offices and buildings.

    The local Caprans were rather welcoming, and it was a great relief that we didn’t have to deal with a combative native population, though we did have to educate the Caprans on certain sensibilities when it came to some of our other Order races such as treefolks.

    The Caprans nibbled and gnawed on plants, and they had a large appetite for food. So, they initially considered treefolks to be a plant. It didn’t help that the first few times they nibbled on treefolks, they found their leaves to be exceptionally tasty.

    The distinction between plant and treefolk needed to be clarified, and unfortunately, that made Treefolks ill equipped to work with the Caprans. The rumors of the Treefolk’s amazing taste only spread among Capran circles and created an underground movement of people who wanted to taste treefolk leaves.

    So, we sent lizardfolks and dwarves to set up offices and manage our outposts on Capra. Thankfully, it was only a minority, and the Caprans who were recruited to join the first few Order operations were reasonable, good folk who could resist such actions.

    Gigantadragon’s dragonlings were also quite easy to work with, and in fact, they were outright mercantile with their approach. They viewed the Order’s offer entirely on a cost-benefit basis and quite a few dragonlings, who are a sort of half-dragon-humans, joined us merely to receive higher quality equipment and tools.

    The initial mercantile approach did make us a little suspicious of their loyalties, but we soon discovered that the dragonlings were generally honest folks who worked and agreed to contracts. They had a culture of honoring deals and agreements, and as long as our agreement was fair, they would do their part without betraying us.

    It also turned out that after a few good contracts, the dragonlings did develop some sort of loyalty to their employers, so it is not as if they were that easily swayed.

    The Order’s operative recruited about one to two thousand new soldiers and candidates for Capra and Gigantadragon respectively and sent them over to a few of the nearby demon worlds for ‘practice’.

    It was a similar exercise as the dwarves of Delvegard, and through this sort of tests we could largely figure out how well they tolerated the expeditionary lifestyle, where they spent long periods away from home.

    To my amusement, Caprans and the Dragonlings were both very tolerant of long periods away from home. Caprans, perhaps owing to their base as half goat-people, were tolerant of distant lands with very harsh environments, as they all had some kind of coping mechanism.

    Even my existing lizardfolks, humans, elven, and dwarven warriors all had their own coping mechanisms. For some, that meant the construction of little outposts where they could let loose and be themselves for a bit. The armies rotated frequently to ensure that the soldiers’ mental state were generally healthy.

    For all these new outposts, they would be tested through smaller real battles against the demons, and over time, they would be exposed to harder foes on new demonic worlds.

    It’d be a long, two decade wait until the Sun-Rings fall, and when that happened, we would need an army ready.

    With more worlds, we also started smaller scale manufacturing of crystal bombs and explosives. We had used up a large chunk against the demon’s comet, and even if we no longer needed these bombs to deal with demon kings, it was still possible that there were more demon’s comets and countermeasures of that level of power.

    A few suggested that we speak to Hawa as well, to construct a relic able to destroy demon’s comets without a need for so many different explosives. But now that I’d seen Hoyia use my Greatstaff as a relic, I wondered whether I could do so myself and had the levels of power needed to do so.

    I suspect the shift to the World Faith System was motivated by the potential they saw in these relics, and how they enabled and weaponized miracles.

    ***