Ch.55. Sanctuary of the Gods

About three days after appointing Bjorn as my apostle.

‘Good, this should be enough…’

Thanks to the spread of Ma-Duk faith among the gladiators in the Colosseum, I successfully secured a decent space in the divine realm, also known as the spirit world.

Since the faith itself hasn’t developed much yet, it’s only about the size of two high school playgrounds…

Still, considering most of my believers are gladiators who could die at any moment, I needed to organize my domain as quickly as possible.

To put it more simply, I needed to create a heaven for my followers to go to.

In games, you can either manage it like a city-building simulation, keeping dead believers comfortable to steadily earn faith, or exploit them like slaves and consume their souls to grow stronger… But since those are usually just text and numbers, they often end up becoming factories or barracks.

But now that this has become reality with various degrees of freedom, and perhaps because receiving faith somehow makes me feel fulfilled inside, I want to properly act as a god, at least for my believers.

Therefore, despite it being somewhat taxing, I decided to make my domain both a resting place for those who have completed their revenge and a paradise for my followers.

First, I based the landscape on modern cities with skyscrapers from my memories.

However, like in some city-building game, there are abundant green spaces throughout the city. The overall design is clean, and each district is meticulously planned for efficient use of space, allowing me to comfortably accommodate as many people as possible in this limited area.

Most importantly, the infrastructure and resources of this heaven are all built to modern standards.

Everything from various foods recreated through the records engraved in my soul from when I was human, to beauty products, various media, all kinds of clothing, and even hundreds of games and virtual reality sports.

For people who lived in ancient times, not even medieval ones, I pride myself that just the food alone would make this a true heaven.

Anyway, after diligently using the records engraved in my soul—rather than memories—to decorate my domain.

‘Now… I need to find people to live here.’

I decided to seek souls to dwell in my completed domain.

Souls in my domain not only produce faith and stabilize my divine status, but can also be reborn as spiritual beings—like angels in Abrahamic religions—by sharing some of my power so they can work on my behalf.

Additionally, these souls can lend their strength in divine wars if other gods invade in the future, so the more souls residing in my domain, the better, as long as I can manage them.

A typical god would wait until their believers die to collect their souls, but… given the urgency of the current situation, I can’t afford to waste that much time.

‘Hmm… what should I do?’

So I spent a long time contemplating how to obtain souls—

‘Wait. That could work, couldn’t it?’

Suddenly, I came up with a brilliant idea.

※ ※ ※

That brilliant idea was to bring in masterless souls wandering the spirit realm—those abandoned by their gods or who never had a god to begin with.

In what’s commonly called the “main timeline” future after the collapse of the Rom Empire, these would be souls eagerly snatched up by the “demons” that entered this world…

But since Bjorn, the cause of that collapse, is now in my hands, the gods are still intact, and the demons probably don’t even know this world exists.

Moreover, while the current gods and their followers might know about the divine realm as established divine territories, they know nothing about masterless souls, let alone what exists outside their own divine realms.

So no one would object if I brought these souls in, leaving me with just two problems to solve:

Which souls to guide to my divine territory, and how to find souls wandering that vast space.

I’d prefer to avoid troublesome work and just pick up nearby souls, but here’s the issue:

Are souls wandering the spirit realm in a normal state after drifting aimlessly for hundreds or thousands of years?

The answer is, of course, “no.”

In this world, souls erode and deteriorate over time.

Unless protected by divine power or continuously restored through reincarnation, souls wear down and degrade over hundreds or thousands of years.

Even a great hero who achieved god-slaying in life would become less than a commoner after just 100 years of wandering the spirit realm.

Therefore, I need to find relatively recent souls for my domain, and I must be extremely careful in my selection.

While souls of those who worshipped me in life might be different, in a world where the afterlife clearly exists, souls who didn’t believe in gods or were abandoned by them would hardly follow me sincerely.

Of course, while the overwhelming status of a divine soul prevents direct rebellion or hostility, it’s enough for them to annoy me with work slowdowns or various acts of sabotage.

So I needed to be very careful about which souls to bring in… Fortunately, I already had clear candidates in mind.

‘Bjorn would like this too.’

Specifically, the souls of Bjorn’s tribe members and family.

Thanks to my connection with my believer—an apostle, no less—finding the connections between Bjorn and them would be trivial with just a little faith, and such an action would undoubtedly strengthen Bjorn’s faith in me.

《Come, children of the wolf. Come to the resting place of avengers. I, Ma-Duk, master of the lord of wolves, shall guide you.》

So there was only one thing for me to do:

Bring their souls to my territory.

※ ※ ※

Rael Auredottir (Rael, daughter of Aure), the young female chieftain of the Red Wolf tribe, had been wandering this void aimlessly with an empty heart.

Her soul, which perished in the Rom Empire’s invasion, should have been collected by the great Wolf God her tribe worshipped, but the Wolf God abandoned her and her tribe to join the despicable pantheon.

The shock of being abandoned by the god she worshipped her entire life was great, but the problem came after:

With no god to collect her soul after death, her soul was left to drift meaninglessly in this incomprehensible space.

She wanted to rage and express her fury, but that only lasted for the first few years.

After drifting for three whole years without any external stimulation, her heart was filled with a sticky mass of hatred—vengeance and endless emptiness.

By now, Rael could gradually realize what awaited her:

Her fate was to have her soul continuously eroded and consumed until she completely vanished from this world.

No matter how many millions of times she wished to stop thinking, no matter how much endless anger she vented, the fact that her end would be so insignificant…

It was a truth unbearable for a human mind.

So, as she barely held on by thinking of the memories of her family that remained in a corner of her soul—

《Come, children of the wolf. Come to the resting place of avengers. I, Ma-Duk, master of the lord of wolves, shall guide you.》

‘…?!!’

A call from some transcendent being reached toward her soul.

Three years. A full three years.

For someone who had received no stimulation for three years, merely passively absorbing external information, this call was impossible to refuse.

So she didn’t resist the somehow familiar pull on her soul and allowed herself to be guided to the source of the call.

And at the end of that guidance—

‘…Ah?’

She found herself in some alien place, possessing the body she had when still alive.

This large rectangular space that appeared to be indoors was isolated by strange walls, ceiling, and floor.

A floor tougher than leather yet slightly soft, making it comfortable to walk on.

Clean walls with white backgrounds and colorful lines that prevented any sense of blandness.

And a ceiling filled with light sources whose nature she couldn’t comprehend.

As she was overwhelmed by this scenery, incomprehensible to someone who had lived her entire life in an ancient tribe—

“This is…”

“What…”

“A divine realm?”

Like her, hundreds, thousands—perhaps tens of thousands of people rapidly arrived at this place, and they were all people she knew.

Of course, they were members of the tribe her husband had led.

Everyone was initially tense due to the situation, but as they gradually adapted and looked around—

“Mom?”

“Darling…?”

“…It’s you!”

“My child…”

The space became a sea of tears as families reunited after death.

Embracing, kissing, laughing, or sobbing uncontrollably.

Amid these emotional reunions, Rael was no exception.

“Mother…”

“Yes, I’m here.”

Everyone except her youngest daughter and husband (Bjorn) gathered, embracing and crying, rejoicing at being reunited in this form.

And at that moment:

《Listen.》

The voice that had guided them came from directly above, accompanied by an overwhelming presence that none could ignore.

In the tense atmosphere where no one could even breathe, the transcendent voice continued:

《I am the will of the great god of vengeance, Ma-Duk. The master of your lord Bjorn, and the one who conveys the voice of the being who led you here.》

《Abandoned ones, you have arrived at this divine realm through the mercy of the god, granted by your lord Bjorn. Praise the mercy of the avenger, and continue your afterlife.》

《You have been saved.》

It was a voice that exuded arrogance, but paradoxically, this reassured the souls gathered here.

The salvation from a transcendent being, an absolute entity arriving after endless emptiness and silence, was enough to make them all devout believers.