Chapter 157: New Divine Powers! [Seeking Recommendation Votes]
October 27, 2016
Author: Floating Tower of All Beings
For the gods, manipulating something secretly is different from directly sending priests and believers to participate.
The God of Death – Naraku even sends out his own believers, which is equivalent to showing his cards and challenging the gods! Most deities do not accept undead as followers, while the God of Death – Naraku enjoys terminating life and resurrecting the undead!
At least thirty percent of his followers are high-level undead, around fifty percent are semi-undead monsters, and only the last one or two percent are half-alive living beings.
Naraku is an absolute supporter of those who commit evil for their own pleasure.
In Naraku’s cold worldview, everything is the same. To him, all living creatures are a great insult to him, the God of Death; on the contrary, all dying lives shine with dark blue sparks of pleasure, which he relishes. Some people pray to Naraku without true faith, hoping to gain his power, but most are instead rewarded with death by Naraku. Because few can treat Naraku’s priests with tolerance, they often operate secretly and independently. Besides in those places rife with evil, there is almost no organized Naraku church. Without a hierarchy, the independent small churches often engage in infighting. Moreover, the God of Death remains an object of fear, and those who commit many evils fear the God of Death. Naraku’s priests typically wear rust-red ceremonial robes when not in disguise. If their actions are discovered, they move to a new location to continue their “hunting.” Some of them lead a nomadic life, disguising themselves as good people in town after town. Naraku’s temples are generally hidden, often built underground as part of tombs, even in places teeming with evil.
Most temples keep undead creatures and other beings that spread or create death, such as banshees and demons.
“If we want to stop the Plague of the Undead, it looks like we can’t avoid a direct confrontation with the God of Death – Naraku!”
Soren frowned; to be honest, he felt a little intimidated by the God of Death – Naraku, as no deity can be absolutely confident against the God of Death. He stood deep in thought for a long time and murmured: “The God of Death – Naraku has many enemies, and he is also an otherworldly god.”
“To deal with him, we must draw on the power of other deities.”
“The Lord of Radiance is the first target; he cannot allow the God of Death – Naraku to end the lives of the material plane.”
Of course, Naraku did not have such grand ambitions to confront the Pantheon.
What he wants is death, massive death, and a multitude of life endings, ultimately to directly advance from Medium Divine Power to Strong Divine Power!
However.
Simply leveling up through death would require a truly terrifying number of deaths.
If the God of Death – Naraku wants to succeed in advancing, more than half of the mortals in the material plane must die! This issue touches upon the bottom line of the gods; the reason they haven’t acted yet is that, on one hand, their power is insufficient to overcome Naraku, on the other hand, those of similar strength dare not confront the God of Death head-on, while the powerful do not want to provoke a new enemy.
“Relying solely on the Lord of Radiance is not enough; we need to find an enemy for Naraku!”
The gods are generally selfish; in the face of a crisis threatening their own safety, few are willing to step forward first.
Soren pondered, murmuring: “Who else can stand up against the God of Death – Naraku?”
“The God of Suffering – Ilmat?”
“The Forest Goddess – Merike?”
“Lady Silver Moon – Soren?”
There are only a few in the human pantheon. The chances of the elven pantheon getting involved are uncertain, and it’s even harder to estimate the orc pantheon. The dwarven pantheon has never been reliable, while the halfling pantheon is decent; however, their racial inclinations are quite evident. If there isn’t a crisis affecting halflings, those deities are unlikely to take action.
“Wait a minute!”
Soren seemed to have thought of something and murmured: “If the God of Death – Naraku is so high-profile! What would I do if I were Sherek?”
In an instant, Soren began to think from a different perspective.
Sherek is the God of Murder, and his divine profession is quite special; the targets he can choose for recovery are limited.
Soren.
Vivian.
Klanvor.
Naraku.
Compared to Modo, which is far away in the Overseas Islands and has already attracted the attention of the gods, the God of Death – Naraku is clearly a more obvious target. If Soren were Sherek, the God of Death – Naraku would definitely become his target. As long as he seizes the power of the God of Death – Naraku, Sherek would recover his original strength.
“Perhaps I can lure him into the open!”
All the clues are subtly interconnected; now it depends on who acts first.
Soren’s patience is quite good; he currently has no particularly dangerous enemies, so he can quietly wait for Sherek and Naraku to expose themselves. However, at this moment, perhaps he should throw out some bait.
“Come here!”
Soren thought for a moment, and with a wave of his hand, a shadow appeared before him, kneeling on one knee and asking, “What are your orders, my lord?”
He took a scroll from his desk and handed it over, saying, “Have the assassins from the Shadow Department act according to the arrangements in this scroll and inform me immediately if they discover anything unusual.”
“Yes.” The shadow bowed and retreated.
………………
The extraction of the diamond asteroid has entered the right track, and it is expected to take three months to complete the mining.
The Bottomless Abyss has suffered great losses in its attack on the Kingdom of Fear; currently, the Demon Avatars are continuously recruiting, and it is estimated that it will take over a month to regroup the demon army. The Tower Spirit of the Clockwork Nirvana is already producing high-level golem factories, and the completion time is expected to be around half a month. Gloria’s research is still ongoing, Alice is busy with puppet making, and the Fallen Witch is still operating in the City of Imprints. The undead war on the Southern Coast is under the management of the High Priest; unless a True God intervenes, Soren does not plan to take action personally.
In this case, Soren, while stationed in Modo, also has a rare buffer period.
He decided to use this time to teach Vivian how to become a new god. Although the little girl is very intelligent, she is still too young.
Vivian lacks Soren’s data, and managing the prayers of her believers consumes her entire day. In fact, other deities rarely show up, primarily due to the energy spent responding to prayers.
Currently.
Vivian’s church has around thirty thousand members.
By integrating everything from the Church of Fear, Vivian’s total number of believers is approximately two hundred thousand, with a very high ratio of generic faith.
Nevertheless, Vivian still must respond to a massive number of prayers daily.
Generic believers pray about once every three days, devout believers pray at least once a day, and zealots pray at least three times a day; among the believers of the material plane, Vivian responds to more than thirty thousand prayers daily. Moreover, the members of the divine realm, the Prayer Weavers, also pray, and currently, there are over a million people in the Kingdom of Fear. This means that Vivian responds to at least one million prayers each day. Even though not every prayer requires a complete response, devout believers and priests must respond to the divine techniques granted; even if processing one hundred divine techniques per minute, an hour would only handle six thousand.
It’s easy to imagine how immense Vivian’s workload is!
What Soren needs to do now is to teach the little girl how to respond quickly to divine techniques, requiring some mastery of divine secrets.
At the same time, Soren himself should also improve his strength.
There are many types of divine powers that deities can master; currently, Soren possesses powers such as altering space, changing size, the hand of death, altering reality, changing forms, divine shields, area divine shields, divine shockwaves, area divine shockwaves, understanding languages, understanding scripts, interplanar communication, astral teleportation, and planar teleportation.
Vivian has even fewer divine abilities than he does.
This is currently the biggest gap between them and other deities, so Soren needs to narrow those gaps.
“If I want to rise to the standard of normal Medium Divine Power, the divine abilities I currently lack include [Divine Descent], [Destructive Strike], [Create Magical Items], [Create High-Level Magical Items], [Divine Acceleration], [Divine Creation], [Divine Spell Specialization], [Divine Spell Resistance], [Divine Spell Penetration], [Automatic Arcane Casting], and [Absolute Initiative].”
In the study, Soren listed the divine powers he needed to master one by one.
After thinking for a moment, he murmured: “[Divine Descent] must be mastered first, then [Destructive Strike], [Divine Acceleration] is equivalent to Time Stop, and finally, [Absolute Initiative] is also necessary to master.”
Divine Descent is a powerful combat ability; Destructive Strike equates to crushing attacks, Divine Acceleration can replace Time Stop, and Absolute Initiative ensures the first strike.
These are all combat abilities that Soren greatly needs.
“However,” Soren thought for a moment and then added: “[Automatic Arcane Casting] is equivalent to greater than legendary unexpected spells; it is also a very important ability.”
He contemplated again.
Subsequently, Soren listed the divine powers that he should help Vivian master: “Divine Spell Specialization, Divine Spell Penetration, Automatic Arcane Casting, Arcane Proficiency, Divine Shields, Altering Reality…”
“It seems that Vivian has a lot to learn!”…
Unlike Soren, Vivian is a pure spellcaster, so her divine abilities prioritize spell effects.
He thought for quite a while before determining which abilities Vivian needs to master most, and then began to consider how to teach these abilities to her. The growth of a deity is very slow; under normal circumstances, it would take hundreds of years to gradually master them. However, for now, Soren can only rely on cramming to teach the little girl.
Because if they were to confront the Death Pantheon, Vivian must be able to adapt to the combat level of deities!
……………… (To be continued ~^~)
