### Chapter Twenty: Historical Remnants (Part 2)
I dimly remember when I was at the Royal Academy, Teacher Morgan’s theology class kicked off with a riveting tale about the origins of humanity. It was the saga of a young hero named Patrick who bumped into a deity and, lo and behold, scored some divine perks!
This was also the origin story of the Holy Church, mind you.
Back in those days, the world was overflowing with all sorts of quirky races. You had the Immortal Race hiding out in the Amigil Mountain Range, the boozy Fairy Clan, the winged Flying Ones, and many more. To humans, these races seemed like the favored children of the gods, while we, in their eyes, were like those unfortunate ants that could barely survive, teetering on the brink of extinction!
Over a millennium ago, at some untraceable time, our boy Patrick encountered the great Mother God of Abundance. He approached her, lamenting that his fellow humans were on the path to obliteration, and asked for a helping hand. The great Mother God, feeling a wave of compassion, bestowed upon him the Fire Seed of Faith. After that, humanity was gifted the power of belief!
With this nifty ability called “Natural Miracle,” which boosted plant growth, Patrick took charge and expanded civilization. Suddenly, fields were bursting with rice and fruit trees, and we no longer had to endure the torment of hunger! We began crafting homes and, as we caught our breath, got into metallurgy—swords and armor galore to better arm ourselves!
Then, our pal Patrick went back to the healing god for help, and the early clergymen gained a shiny new power: the Healing Miracle! Even the terrifying plague found it hard to take us down after that. Once the first Holy City was built, humans kept spreading out, and soon, there was the second city, the third city…
But such rapid growth caught the attention of the other races.
The Ogres thought humans were no different from those stinky rats—multiplying everywhere and wrecking everything, risking their home turf. Thus, war broke out. A whole bunch of races teamed up for an all-out slaughter against us, wiping out cities left and right and putting thousands of our kin to the sword. Good-hearted clergymen were utterly defenseless until they pleaded for the Goddess of Sin’s blessing, gaining the power of Divine Punishment, and that’s when the tables started to turn.
The war shifted, and those unstoppable races began to retreat—then along came the Dragons! But just when things looked dire, humanity snagged new power from God Danalcis, getting the same Order Power as the other races, and even had angels swooping in to help. Together, we smacked down those brutish dragons and banished them to a black wasteland now known as the Land of Dragons—better known as Dragon’s Grave!
In the following centuries, those other races slowly faded and vanished into the long river of history, while the deity followers, the mighty clergymen, credited this to the gods’ favoritism and blessings toward humanity.
And then came the Common Era and the official formation of the Holy Church.
That was the version of history I learned in theology class—it sounded like a motivational speaker’s take on the Church’s origins. But now, it seems, it’s just a story.
From the shelves in the cellar of Ailna, I found a weathered manuscript, missing its cover, with the parchment yellowing and rotting, and half the pages missing. Yet, miraculously, I could still make out most of the content.
What it recorded was an entirely different history from the Church’s narrative.
The first half matched what I had heard before: a young man named Patrick meeting a deity and becoming the first human bestowed with divine powers, leading his kin toward prosperity. This entity that granted him powerful natural abilities was later revered as the “Mother God of Abundance.”
After the Holy City of Abedoria was established, it had faced a massive plague that claimed countless lives. The mighty Natural Miracle couldn’t help, and when Patrick again asked the Mother God for help, she said she was at a dead end this time. Just when Patrick was about to lose hope, she called upon the God of Healing, a powerful being of her kind, capable of curing everything.
Oh yes.
This manuscript described the deities in a way that starkly contrasted with the Church’s mysterious, airy fairy tales. To me, it seemed these so-called deities were just higher forms of life, superior to humans, the other races, and dragons, but essentially, they were still just forms of existence.
These beings, stronger than dragons, perched atop the food chain, were rare—this is what I gathered from the book about these deities.
The ancient races referred to them as “Gidels.”
Meanwhile, humans dubbed them “gods.”
These “deities” didn’t just wield incredible power; they seemed to have this magical knack for passing their strength onto other living beings. The summoned God of Healing bestowed new miracles upon the believers, who used them to disperse the plague and bring renewed hope and light to the Holy City.
As for the Church’s tales of Patrick kneeling and praying for over ten days without food or water… that’s just silly nonsense, a story to fool kids, which I never bought into.
After that, under the protection of these “gods,” aka the Clan of Jideers, the once weak humans lost the threats of nature and natural enemies. Cities and settlements flourished, and as life stabilized, the population soared. When the Holy City couldn’t hold everyone, we sought new lands with good vibes to establish new cities.
One, two… five, ten… countless towns and cities sprang up across the vast, fertile lands of the Western Continent. Towering buildings and sturdy walls replaced the once green pastures and majestic forests.
With metallurgy maturing, the Church Army was formed, and trade systems blossomed, leading to the advent of currency. These two things sparked an all-out frenzy of mining and stone quarrying, while the population boom and urban development forced humans to clear forests at an alarming rate, turning vast woodlands into barren stumps.
Those once ferocious beasts, once a nuisance everywhere, became mere prey, slowly dwindling under the weight of human armor and blades. Over time, they became rare and hard to find.
Soil erosion, depletion of forestry resources in some areas, ground subsidence and water pollution from mining, loss of wildlife habitats, severe biodiversity loss, and more—all these disasters spawned from humanity’s breakneck development and unchecked greed began pushing the other races to pick up arms and fight to protect their homes.
War was upon us.
And this manuscript ended here, diverging greatly from the Church’s version of historical events.
