Ch.1008Are there really only lunatics here?

Gods, by their very existence, are objects of worship and awe.

They are absolute beings before whom all intelligent creatures kneel and pay reverence. Not merely different from mortals, but transcendent beings far above them.

That was the status of gods as viewed by humans.

For me, who had conversed with goddesses, literally buried one demigod, and even burned a racial deity to death, they were merely beings that made me think, “Hmm… is that all?” But…

I was the only one who thought that way.

Even those who had witnessed the death of the World Tree couldn’t abandon the notion that gods were untouchable beings, fundamentally different from mortal creatures of the earth.

All who walked the earth revered and worshipped their gods.

If even the celestial gods who conveyed their will through signs and omens rather than voices received such respect, how would people react to a deity who descended directly before them?

Ending with one cardiac arrest and four fainting spells was actually getting off lightly for the revelation of divinity.

…Of course, this was merely the beginning.

—-

Lacy, who had barely returned from the brink of death but still seemed disoriented from her near-death experience, was laid on a makeshift bed in the tent.

I walked out, leaving her behind, and boldly revealed myself as a demigod to the Crusaders who were busy roasting fairies.

To heighten the mystique, I deliberately infused my voice with divinity, creating an eerily resonant sound like the divine messages I had heard from goddesses.

【Behold and listen. A celestial star has descended here to illuminate the path you must follow.】

Divine words uttered to capture the Crusaders’ attention and calm them.

In an instant, silence fell over the gathering.

Everyone stared at me with jaws dropped.

The paladins who were tying fairy prisoners to makeshift stakes in place of light crosses.

The priests of various denominations who had stepped back to tend to the wounded or were creating flames to burn the fairies beside the stakes.

Agnes, who had been evacuated to the rear due to exhaustion. The heroes and masters of Hestella I had brought with me.

Even the fairies who were bound and waiting to be roasted, their faces devoid of all hope.

【The successor who carries the light of Ausrine, Goddess of Stars and Dawn, commands you as a god. Cease this. What you must do is not such disorderly venting of anger.】

I commanded them again as a god. To stop their inefficient nonsense and restore order by following my words.

“Uh…”

The response was quite dramatic.

The numerous paladins and priests gathered at the forest border, in the next moment, defied evolution by reverting to monkey-like ancestors and howled:

“Uh, uhhh, uuuhhh, ooouuuhhh!”

They forgot language, pointed at me while making strange noises, then hastily folded their fingers and knelt, pressing their foreheads to the ground.

“That light…! That liiiiight!”

Priests who seemed to have collectively developed exophthalmos.

“Goddess…? The Holy Maiden is a goddess? What does that…?”

“Stars? Dawn? Ausrine…? Good heavens. This is, this is…?!”

Members of the Church of Astraea looked like they’d just witnessed their lover pledging obedience to another man.

“My Goddess…!”

Members of the Church of Ausrine simply shed tears with faces full of emotion.

Some stood frozen. Others clutched their hearts and fell backward. Some hurriedly prostrated themselves while others dropped their swords and prayed.

“Iä! Iä! N’tse-Kaambl…!”

There were even those who trembled while muttering strange incantations that could have been either praise or shock. Those Church of Vimos bastards really don’t speak human language, do they?

…Anyway, the descent of a goddess walking the earth transformed the already chaotic fairy burning site into something even more disorderly.

The confusion was barely contained after the fairy they had just set on fire before my appearance turned to ashes.

—-

It is not right to kill all fairies.

To prevent humans from becoming murderers like them, I would separate those who deserved capital punishment from those who didn’t, and take the latter as my people.

After calming the clergy—well, honestly, they didn’t seem calm at all, but at least they were in a state where they could listen—I declared to them:

I would select fairies who were innocent or whose crimes were extremely minor and make them citizens of Hestella. For the sake of humans who weren’t fairies.

That statement provoked tremendous opposition. Opposition far beyond my expectations.

Did they foam at the mouth and protest that this couldn’t be allowed, that fairies should rightfully be exterminated?

No, quite the opposite.

“This is unfair! Why do you bestow such blessings upon those creatures!”

“We would rather go ourselves! We could cede part of our church territory to those things, and instead…”

The clergy weren’t protesting that fairies shouldn’t be spared, but rather that if someone was to be accepted as citizens, it should be them rather than the fairies.

They even suggested designating part of the Holy State’s territory as a special district for fairies.

They claimed it would be far better to give up part of the Holy State’s territory to fairies than to grant them the honor of becoming citizens of a country where a god had descended.

They spoke with such madness in their eyes that I couldn’t help but break into a cold sweat despite maintaining my demigod dignity.

It was fortunate that most of them belonged to different denominations than mine; had they all been members of the Church of Ausrine, I couldn’t even imagine what kind of chaos would have erupted.

—-

The clergy’s opposition wasn’t stubborn rejection of my proposition, but merely an expression of envy, regret, and religious yearning.

Though its intensity was alarming enough to momentarily confuse me, it was ultimately just a commotion that could be resolved with proper placation.

“Enough, enough! What disgraceful behavior is this! Everyone, please come to your senses! The gods are watching over us, is it right to show them such a spectacle?”

“Everyone, please calm down. None of the celestial beings would desire such chaos. The one who has descended to earth would feel the same.”

I left the task of calming them to the two holy maidens.

Lacy, who staggered out of the tent and was aghast at the chaos unfolding before her, and Agnes, whose complexion was just as pale as Lacy’s.

I asked them to try to calm the crowd, and they fulfilled my request wholeheartedly without a word of complaint.

Their eyes occasionally glanced at me as if they still couldn’t believe it.

Their faces clearly revealed their inner thoughts—they had much to say but feared committing blasphemy, leaving them unable to act one way or another.

Had a celestial god they’d never seen before descended, they would have obeyed without hesitation, showing extreme reverence and respect.

Though they served Elpinel and Menes, the other human gods were also respected as principal deities of the Ten Major Gods religion.

But now, instead of a god descending from heaven, an acquaintance had suddenly become a god.

So they seemed extremely confused about how to treat me.

Well, they weren’t the only ones.

“Really, what on earth is happening… Haschal—no, Lady Haschal is a goddess…?”

Millia was so shocked she even forgot to cling to Demian, pinching her own cheeks to see if she was dreaming.

“Um… so… Goddess…? Should I… kneel and bow… uh, no, I mean… am I… am I going to hell…?”

Leonore was displaying unprecedented submissiveness, completely unlike her usual self. She was sweating profusely in an awkward half-kneeling position, unsure how to treat me.

If I had joked that she was hell-bound, she looked ready to collapse and beg for confession.

“Uh… umm… uhhh…”

Even Nigel and Jahan could only stare blankly, uttering dazed moans, while Joshua and Heinrich didn’t even dare approach me.

“…The world’s gone to hell. Or maybe it was always like this?”

“Maybe so…?”

Ophelia and Demian seemed relatively composed, but not in a positive sense.

Those two had always been missing about four hundred screws in various ways to begin with.

“Look, the World Tree is just a big tree! And now it’s a dead tree!”

Perneisia had completely lost it. At least, that’s how the other fairies saw her.

“So everyone bow down! The true god fairies should serve isn’t that bloodsucking firewood, but this person right here!”

She was standing before the fairy sentinels whose burning had been temporarily suspended, holding a liquor bottle from who knows where, insulting the World Tree and praising me.

“Come on, repeat after me! The World Tree is just a big piece of firewood, and the fairy god is this person before us!”

Of course, she wasn’t sincerely praising me as a god; it was merely to provoke and mock the captured fairies.

“Say it! Maybe she’ll find you endearing and spare you? Come on, come on!”

She looked happier than anyone else gathered here.

“Shut your filthy mouth!! Dirty, disgusting traitor!!”

“Ptui! You’re just a whore sucking up to humans!”

An enraged sentinel spat toward Perneisia’s face.

Perneisia calmly wiped the spit from her cheek, then with a bright smile, brought down the liquor bottle on the sentinel’s head.

“You’re the filthy one!”

– Crack!

The fairy sentinel who had destroyed the bottle with her scalp convulsed and went limp. Bloody liquor dripped down like brain matter.

…That wasn’t the work of a novice.

I decided to pretend I hadn’t seen it since she hadn’t killed the fairy. Besides, I was planning to execute all the sentinels and guardians anyway.

======[ Feirius ]======

“As expected. The servants of the ascended gods never change. Even after hundreds of years, nothing has changed.”

Feirius laughed.

Standing before crumbling marble structures, looking down at dismembered bodies strewn about.

Mockingly surveying his enemies who had become far more vulnerable and powerless than usual, exactly as he had predicted.

“…Was it necessary to kill them? Subduing or knocking them unconscious would have been sufficient.”

The second apostle, Paulus, frowned and sighed. The enemy forces were merely a handful; was it really necessary to slaughter them all?

“They were going to die anyway. Their end was merely hastened a bit.”

Feirius responded to that clumsy compassion, that near-hypocritical statement, with a sneer.

“Of course, if you wish, I could resurrect them…”

“No, no. How cruel—would that even count as being alive?”

Paulus shook his head. Following through on Feirius’s half-joking suggestion by reviving the corpses with necromancy would be tantamount to killing the dead twice.

“My lord, we’ve recovered the items you mentioned.”

“To think I’d end up stealing such things. I could understand stealing ladies’ chastity, but I never thought I’d be pilfering such antiques.”

While the two were engaged in such idle talk, two knights emerged from the ruins of the building, approaching them with enormous bundles on their backs.

They were the phantom knights Renault and Astolfo, created from the thought-forms of the Great’s Twelve Knights.

The two phantom knights who had suffered serious damage from the karmic sun Haschal had manifested. Feirius had recovered them and restored their bodies, then headed to their destination with them as soon as the right moment came.

Here, to Alhebron, the capital of the Holy State.

Paulus had opened the way. Although Paulus had become a wanted fugitive after being exposed as an apostle of the ancient gods, he still had his loyal followers scattered throughout the Holy State.

A tiny minority of traitors that Agnes had failed to detect.

With their help, Paulus had smuggled himself and Feirius into Elphirem. They had exploited the vulnerability in the capital’s defenses, as most of the Holy State’s forces had been deployed to the war against the fairies.

That day, the relic repository of Alhebron collapsed into ruins.

It happened just hours before Haschal confronted Varnir.