Ch.190190. Meanwhile, Magica

The Soul Realm.

Often called the Divine Realm, it is one of the many dimensions overlapping with the physical-material world. However, this Soul Realm is particularly close to the material world compared to other dimensions…

This is because the Soul Realm is the final destination for souls that have met their physical death in the material world.

Furthermore, the Soul Realm receives not only souls but also all emotions felt by souls, and during this process, sometimes things close to concepts get mixed in as well.

And when something specific accumulated in the Soul Realm gains power and eventually acquires self-awareness, a spiritual transcendent appears in this world.

Born in this form is what’s called an emotional complex, or thought complex—

—a god, an inherently transcendent being closest to omnipotence.

Regardless of whether a being from the material world becomes a transcendent and ascends after obtaining divine status, or whether a semi-transcendent divine being of godly lineage is deified.

However a god is born, their soul is typically sent to the Divine Realm by the world’s restraining force to prevent the collapse of the world.

And the proportion that such a soul sent to the Divine Realm occupies is commonly called a “divine territory.”

To maintain a divine territory in the Divine Realm, where time, space, and any concept of the material world do not apply—a bond with the material world is essential.

Metaphorically speaking, divine status is an anchor that fixes one’s existence to reality, while believers serve as roots supplying nourishment (faith) to the divine territory.

Therefore, with the exception of a few primordial gods who exist by themselves, the rest were ultimately just deficient beings who appeared omnipotent but were infinitely dependent.

Anyway, among the gods maintaining their divine territories in the Divine Realm, there are some who have recently been expanding their presence and increasing their proportion in the Divine Realm.

These were the Seven Great Evil Gods, the very ones who brought about the Age of Dark in the material world.

And one of those Seven Great Evil Gods.

Magica, the Evil God of ‘Conspiracy,’ ‘Magic,’ and ‘Wisdom.’

The interior of her divine territory was a vast labyrinth composed of countless ‘rooms.’

The rooms constituting the labyrinth share only the common feature of being enclosed spaces, with countless rooms that even Magica herself, the owner, does not fully know.

In fact, the reason the owner Magica cannot understand the internal structure is because there are things absorbed from the outside, but let’s move past that as it’s not particularly important.

What’s more important is that the interior of this divine territory is nothing short of the embodiment of the word ‘conspiracy.’

The Doppelgänger Lords, Magica’s high-ranking subordinates, have been granted divided rulership over this labyrinth of infinite rooms.

True to being high-ranking subordinates of Magica, the Evil God of Conspiracy, the Doppelgänger Lords compete with each other while expanding and privatizing their territories, somehow plotting to replace Magica’s position.

Of course, no matter how they plot, they remain in the palm of Magica’s hand.

From the beginning, all conspiracies within this space are equated with Magica’s conspiracies, and the Doppelgänger Lords cannot devise conspiracies that Magica cannot conceive.

Rather, the more they try to devise sophisticated conspiracies, the more their actions end up empowering Magica, the Evil God of ‘Conspiracy.’

So in the end, they are acting like clowns, blinded by their immediate desires, not even realizing they are being played in Magica’s hands.

Anyway, Magica’s divine territory placed in such a special environment.

A space where it’s hard to tell which way is up or down, what’s a wall, floor, or ceiling—different in each room—to the point where it seems to reflect the concept of chaos.

However, even in such a divine territory, there is one area that uniquely functions as a ‘standard,’ and that is the Crystal Palace—the domain where Magica resides.

A strange palace made of blue crystals imbued with extremely powerful magical forces, somewhere in a massive building where all kinds of bizarre magical energies move.

《…So, this is the end.》

There, Magica, a grotesque monster with six different bird heads, looking like a mix between a bird and a hydra, was working diligently.

Of course, her direct Doppelgänger Lords were also working, but every one of them was a potential traitor harboring ulterior motives at every opportunity.

Moreover, since Magica herself created these Doppelgänger Lords in this form, she had nothing to say as it was her own karma.

Therefore, she ended up having only 36 direct Doppelgänger Lords under her command, and even then, she could only assign them simple tasks.

No matter how quickly she could resolve issues using divine power, as a being with emotions, she couldn’t help but feel mentally exhausted.

So, Magica, who was finally rejoicing in the sense of accomplishment after finishing her work, was refreshing her mind by turning her heads this way and that—when suddenly, she had a thought.

‘This guy… is truly dangerous.’

Though it may seem obvious, Magica, befitting the Evil God of Conspiracy, excels at behind-the-scenes manipulation more than anyone.

Naturally, the world’s greatest mastermind had spies planted everywhere.

Especially with ‘Doppelgängers’ who sacrificed everything solely for infiltration and disguise, and ‘Evil Blue Birds’ who were superior to anyone in terms of sheer quantity of information gathering.

And even the Doppelgänger Lords, who were at the pinnacle of infiltration with their relatively low cost for high-ranking beings and ability to copy even the specs of mid-ranking beings.

Each one was explicitly created for espionage, so Magica had spies planted in all sorts of places…

Yet even Magica could not properly dispatch spies to one organization, and that was the Revenge Cult of Ma-Duk, the Evil God of Vengeance.

She could easily insert them into the recently established Dawn Empire, but the real problem began when trying to place informants in official positions.

As if possessed by a god, they accurately identified spies as soon as they were dispatched, and even government building janitors were no exception.

Through this, Magica could very easily understand the secret of this intelligence operation.

‘This reckless guy… could it be that he’s checking each believer periodically?’

In the end, the conclusion was that Ma-Duk was periodically checking each and every one of his believers individually.

And this reckless aspect was one of the reasons why Magica found Ma-Duk troublesome.

Looking at Ma-Duk with a cold eye, his skill in strategic thinking is just mediocre.

Even in mind games, he’s merely struggling to defend without being able to imagine counterattacking, and though he may be unpredictable at first, one can analyze his thought patterns to some extent with enough mental effort.

However, the reason Ma-Duk gives Magica a headache is his distinctively prominent ability to overturn the board.

While Magica meticulously prepares various cards over a long period of time and moves by understanding and responding to the cards her opponents play.

Ma-Duk unexpectedly brings something somewhat bizarre yet impossible to ignore, using it to completely flip the board and change the fundamental situation.

To use a rock-paper-scissors analogy, Magica can throw all three at once, while Ma-Duk claims to throw rock but brings a stone to beat his opponent with.

Perhaps knowing that he’s at a disadvantage in terms of strategy, Ma-Duk has chosen to acknowledge his weakness and compensate in other ways.

But even this is just one of many reasons. The fundamental reason for Magica’s misaligned feelings toward Ma-Duk was…

A unique sense of incongruity that was somehow ‘different’ from the other evil gods.

A god may appear omnipotent, but in reality, they are more helpless than anyone.

This is because without any medium, a god cannot exert any influence on the material world.

In other words, metaphorically speaking, an evil god is ultimately just a beast trapped in a cage, unable to exert any influence in that state—just a hollow ‘something.’

But the problem here is that fanatical animal rights activists (believers of evil gods) use faith as a key to open the cage.

Therefore, while inevitably becoming infinitely dependent on believers, gods typically treat their believers as disposable tools.

No, rather, it would be stranger for an evil god to care for their believers.

For an evil god to treat believers as tools is instinctual, comparable to the human need for sleep.

So, an evil god devoted to their believers…

‘Wait a minute. Is Ma-Duk even a real evil god to begin with?’

Magica suddenly thought, feeling a strong sense of discomfort.