Chapter 338 – The Church and the Secrets of the Gods that Ignore Reality

The “grassroots” intelligence gathering had concluded. To avoid further trouble—or more precisely, to prevent Ben Lajie from growing restless and meddling again—Punk decisively left the increasingly desolate town late at night. As for the Old Man and Little Girl… Punk’s solution was to leave ample food supplies while pointing out a “safe route” revealed by a Divination Spell. Ben Lajie had no better suggestions anyway.

After finally resolving the inexplicably incurred troubles, Punk dragged the still-worried-about-the-little-girl Ben Lajie across the fields while seriously organizing the intelligence about the Maple Leaf Kingdom.

To summarize concisely, the current state of the Maple Leaf Kingdom was actually quite clear:

Joni Zordas, the Kingdom Protector, was single-mindedly determined to wage war against the Dragon Roar Kingdom. Even though it drained resources and cost lives with no victories to show, he refused to give up.

For both the commoners and Nobles of the Maple Leaf Kingdom—when Master-Level Holy Warrior Grand General Joni decided to go to war, who dared voice opposition no matter how dissatisfied they were? With protests being impossible, the royal family could only further increase taxes, the military had to more frequently conscript young laborers into service, and the Nobles seized the opportunity to intensify their exploitation of the poor. Everyone across the kingdom had to pay the price for Joni Zordas’s obsession.

Ultimately, all oppression and exploitation inevitably fell upon the ordinary poor. After over a century of this, massive numbers of laborers had fallen on battlefields. Overburdened commoners began large-scale “passive nonviolent noncooperation,” compounded by the Nobles showing no intention of curbing their exploitation. Thus, “Slums” towns like the one Punk passed through emerged throughout the Maple Leaf Kingdom.

Frankly, Punk thought it was remarkably resilient that the Maple Leaf Kingdom had managed to survive until today despite Joni Zordas’s century of “suicidal stubbornness.” He suspected the kingdom’s endurance might partly owe to relief efforts from kind-hearted wealthy citizens of the Dragon Roar Kingdom.

Facing the Maple Leaf Kingdom’s impoverished and famine-stricken reality, Punk felt completely indifferent. Whether the kingdom prospered or lay dying was irrelevant to him. Throughout the journey, the only thing that concerned Punk was the fact he’d deduced from this intelligence: “Joni Zordas possesses an obstinate, obsessive personality.”

Ben Lajie, however, had significant doubts about the situation:

“Though pigheaded Master-Level experts are common, and those mentally-rigid holy types often get stuck in centuries-long fixations… but wouldn’t the Church of the God of Justice intervene? How can they let such a stubborn Holy Warrior mess things up unchecked? Aren’t they afraid of losing followers?”

Ben Lajie muttered his confusion throughout the journey, though mostly to himself. The various “foolish” actions of divine Churches had always perplexed many sub-Legendary experts. He didn’t expect Punk to have answers.

Unlike Ben Lajie’s rambling complaints, Punk remained silent while continuing their travel. In truth, Punk actually knew the reason behind Ben Lajie’s question.Punk’s cheap parents were both experts just one step away from the Legendary realm, so the information they collected about deities was quite extensive. Thus, regarding “secrets of the gods” that might not even be considered secrets in Legendary circles, Punk knew no less than the average Legendary Expert.

Many people found it strange—why did numerous deities, despite their broad perspectives and undeniable wisdom, insist on filling their Churches with rigid regulations that hindered development? Were they truly so stubborn and inflexible?

In fact, many had fallen into a misconception: that deities craved the power of hope, desiring as many followers as possible and as many powerful Church members as they could get.

But what was the real answer?

Did deities strive to develop their Churches? Not at all. The truth was quite the opposite—the vast majority of deities were racking their brains to obstruct the expansion and empowerment of their followers through roundabout methods! How about that? Sounds unbelievable, doesn’t it?

To ordinary mages, deities might appear as loyal slaves to their Divinity, dutifully fulfilling their responsibilities with utmost dedication while also being rigid and foolish.

However, although deities theoretically couldn’t rebel against the enslavement of Divinity—and there were no successful examples of such rebellion—this didn’t mean they had given up resisting. No deity could accept the extreme enslavement of Divinity or the erosion of their emotions and reason. No matter how slim the opportunity or how inefficient the resistance, no deity was willing to gradually become a puppet of Divinity. Thus, those who hadn’t yet lost their self-awareness were secretly straining their minds to resist—even if these efforts were largely futile.

Direct confrontation was clearly suicidal, so many deities opted for indirect methods. With hope so faint, the most basic form of resistance was delay. Slowing down the rate at which Divinity consumed their will became the primary task for almost all deities.

As for how to hinder Divinity, the method was quite simple—self-sabotage!

Faith power was the foundation of a deity’s survival, the sole means of maintaining their strength and advancing. However, faith power was also the energy and driving force of Divinity—the best catalyst for accelerating its consumption of a deity’s will.

Precisely because of this, many deities didn’t devote themselves wholeheartedly to developing their Churches. Even many ancient deities would rather endure periods of scarcity than expand their followers, because the more prosperous a Church became, the stronger a deity’s Divinity would grow, and the faster it would consume that deity’s consciousness!

A Church as flourishing as that of the Lord of the Dawn didn’t prove the deity’s might—it only demonstrated that the once cheerful expert named Lathander had become a pitiable puppet of an intelligent Divinity.However, it is forbidden by the Divinity for deities to directly intervene and command the Church to cease its development. Under such circumstances, many long-established deities, in order to preserve their “self,” often resort to making their doctrines stricter to raise the threshold for followers, dispatching exceptionally talented believers to carry out perilous missions to weaken their own Church, loosening the Church’s organizational structure, allowing harmful elements to thrive, and even instigating meaningless internal conflicts under various pretexts… All with the aim of keeping their Church in a state where it barely survives without collapsing but is absolutely prevented from achieving significant growth.

Perhaps such self-sabotaging behavior puts the deities in a precarious position, delays their advancement indefinitely, and forces them to meticulously conserve every bit of divine power, living “frugally”… But at least this allows a deity to retain their self and “live” for tens of thousands of years longer.

This is also why the most gifted Saints and Saintesses in the Church are often assigned the most dangerous, even suicidal, missions—because the deities can no longer tolerate the excellence and piety of these followers, and it becomes necessary to “reasonably” eliminate them as quickly as possible!

Do not assume that deities of the benevolent alignment are truly kind. Unless their self-awareness has completely faded, what remains benevolent is only the Divinity, not the deity themselves!

Because these seemingly foolish actions of the deities are beyond the comprehension of those at lower levels, many people believe that deities are rigid and stubborn beings. In reality, when it comes to shrewdness, it is hard to say who outsmarts whom.

(End of Chapter)