Chapter 6: Renewed Faith

In the natures shrine situated on the trunk of the World Tree, the elven saint Alice and old priest Samuel knelt down in front of the headless effigy, feeling a little bit uneasy.

They lowered their heads with expressions of pure joy while feeling a deep shame as well

It seemed that some inexplicable change had occurred within Alices body at that moment as shes exuding a lot more pronounced sense of holiness and sanctity within her.

The elderly priest whom had regained his normal state has also seemed to have undergone some subtle changes as well.

The Oak Guardian Berserker stood from aside watching it all like a sculpture with a serious and fanatical expression etched onto his face.

Did I go too far in deceiving them?

While still inside her own Celestial Domain, Eve swallowed her saliva in anticipation whilst looking at the number of followers in her Status Screen.

[ Total Believers (3)]

Saint 1 Fanatic 2 Devout 0 Shallow 0

It seems that her timely choice of actions had a far much greater impact than she had once initially calculated.

The previously devout Saintess Alice, not only rekindled her faith after the turmoil, but also surpassed her prior level of fanaticism, becoming the only saint as shown in the data!

And the elderly priest, who was saved from the brink of death, had also became a fanatic believer just like the Oak Guardian!

Ev still couldnt forget the sight of the old priest falling to the ground as he berates himself while bawling out like a child, once he realized what had all transpired.

Their endless anticipation paired with ultimate despair cascading together for which hope appeared at their most dire moment brought about an extraordinary effect that they sure will never forget in their lives.

No wonder Gods even in my old world like to make their believers suffer first before helping them. it seems the reactions is far more stronger after some kind of tribulationshmm, could this be considered Stockholm Syndrome of some sort?

Eve nonsensically sighed before checking her divine power reserves.

Divine Power: 20/500

This result greatly exceeded her initial expectations.

Originally, Ev only had around 10 points of divine power left and in order to heal those two elves, she had to use 01 point of DP. But when the two of them recovered their faith, these believers instantly provided her with a whopping 6 points of divine power in exchange!

The returns were too exaggerated with among them, 04 points were provided by Alice alone, who was promoted to a Saintess.

Not only that, but killing more than twenty Beastmen with War Sacrifice skill, Berserker have also provided her with another 05 points of divine power.

In summary, her divine power not only didnt decrease, but instead increased to 20 points, even higher than before she revived the Oak Treant!

Looking at her current divine power reserves, Eve fell into a deep thought.

She had calculated early on that by increasing the number of believers she have can provide her with a constant supply of faith for which can be transformed it into divine power, thus making her recovery faster. However, what she didnt expected was the amount of faith brought by this incident alone.

Nonetheless she also knew that this kind of thing cannot be forcefully replicated, furthermore the two elves were already her believers whom persevered for a long time. This also indirectly indicates that they already had great potential for faith to begin with, after all not everyone can become a devout believer in an instant.

Thus, Eve proved one thing thru this incident: strengthening her religion is absolutely the correct path for her at the moment!

However

Remembering the 05 points of divine power that the Oak Guardian provided for her just now, Eve felt a bit strange in her heart.

A whole 05 points of divine power!

If the transformation of Alice and Samuel surprised her, then Berserkers situation was also nothing short of shocking to say the least.

He sacrificed onto her the vitality of all the twenty Orc mercenaries whose average strength was merely around Low to Mid-Iron rank. This however gave her around 05 points of divine power, which is rather surprising.

Forget about 05 points, she was only expecting around 01 point in return.

However, just now, those 05 points of divine power didnt seem to be entirely transformed from the vitality of the Orcs alone but rather seems like there was something else as well

After consulting the inheritance of the World Tree, Eve came up with a certain speculation.

Those Orcs were most probably seasoned elf hunters. They accumulated countless grievances from their victims, and as the patron god of the elves, killing these guys fulfilled the wishes of those haunting souls slain by these mercenaries.

The more powerful and intelligent a creature is, the stronger its grievances are after death.

Elves, on the other hand, are a long-lived and wise creatures, born with an innate magical capacity. The grievances gathered from countless elf victims over thousands of years are definitely not a small number to scoff at.

Ev surmised that grievances are also a type of spiritual energy, with a similar effect to the power of faith. The victims deep seated grudges will definitely lingers onto their killers even if the victims died and their soul enters into the underworld.

With Eve finally killing these slavers, her actions had inadvertently fulfilled the duty of the Patron Deity of the elves, so these accumulated grievances were thus transformed into gratitude, for which sublimated into the power of faith, and ultimately came across the void to feed back to Eve in the form of divine power.

This was a big surprise for Eve.

So, in addition to strengthening my religion, I can also rebuild the glory of the elven race and regain my power by eliminating the enemies of the elves and gaining recognition from the spirits of the deceased. Moreover, the skill war sacrifice seems to have significant potential to indirectly provide me with power as well

Eve came to this conclusion.

But after some deliberations, in the end she felt like it was not really a good strategy to implement

The elf enemies that I can deal with should mostly belong to the hunting slavers category. In fact, the number of these slave hunters are rather limited. Even if I eliminate them all, Im afraid I still wont be able to recover much energy with this method. As for those hidden enemies which are the real culprits, I am currently still powerless to deal with them at the moment

If I want to rebuild the glory of the elven race, I must first gather enough forces of my own, which means I must unite the remaining elven people together. In addition, I require a huge population so that these believers could provide me with divine power through war sacrifice as well

But calculating the numbers, Im afraid it has to be at least within the tens of thousands, or perhaps even millions to make it all feasible

What a dilemma.

Anyhow how many elves still remains to this day?

Earlier, Eve overheard Alice and Samuels conversation and had various understanding of the current situation of the elven race.

In general, once the world tree had fallen, most elves have scattered all throughout the world, and over time less than ten percent of the population remains, with most of them also hiding everywhere. The once glorious civilization has been decimatedand on the brink of extinction.

Seems like gathering all my people is a must if I wanted to restore my religion to its past glory but alas such an undertaking will consume a lot of time and theres not really a shortcut to it

Furthermore it will be even more difficult if I want to rebuild the elven civilization back to its heydays, as a significant population base are required for a fully functional civilization to work.

The more she thought about it, the more disappointed Ev felt.

Im still far too weak. If only I were like the World Tree during its prime, then I wouldnt need to worry about population issues at all. I could just directly use divine power and produce Primordial Elves by myself.

The Primordial Elves are the first generation of the Elven race. They didnt evolve from animals but rather created by the World Tree itself.

But then again if I really had the power to give birth to Primordial Elves, then there would be no need for me to rely on rebuilding Elven civilization to restore my power at all!

Thinking of this, Eve felt helpless.

The amount of divine power required to create Primordial Elves is far too great.

More precisely, the consumption required to produce the soul required by Primordial Elves is far too great.

Even if Eve has the Divinity of Life and the ability to create souls, she still cannot use this power at this time.

Not to mention giving birth to souls, even reviving Berserkers soul consumed five points of divine power!

Yes, revive rather than create the treants soul.

Among the five points of divine power used to revive Berserker, the vast majority were used entirely on his soul. The DP consumption to give the Oak Guardian a Silver strength power actually accounted for so very little

Creating the soul of the Primordial Elves out of nothing would require even greater DP consumption.

If she only produces the bodies alone, then the consumption would not be that high. But without a soul to operate the body, then its merely an empty vessel with no further use whatsoever.

Haaah so in the end, do I still have to rely on slowly gathering my people and restore faith at a turtles pace just to enhance my power? In that case it may take what, several decades or even centuries?

Thats far too long!

Moreover, its not like she doesnt have any enemies. After inheriting the World Tree, Eve also inherited the enemies of the previous World Tree, those old cunning foxes are also gods as well no doubt!

The body of World Tree still persisted to this day even after a thousand years have passed since the end of the Heavenly War due to the former World Tree using a last resort protection spell onto itself. It cast a spell so powerful that no one could harm its body and only its believers could touch it.

The world tree consumed most of the magical powers on the mortal world to cast this protection spell for which also inadvertently depleted the mana supply within Saiges up to this day.

Due to this circumstances, the passage between the heavenly realm and the mortal realm has been temporarily closed, and the Gods could no longer descend easily on the ground, while some Demigods whom are stuck in Saiges have chosen to slumber instead in order to conserve their power

However her sudden appearance had broken the protection spell.

Currently Ev still doesnt have enough power and is still in a quasi-death state. In the likely event that the World Trees old enemies really do come, then its entirely possible that Eve herself will be in grave danger.

It would nice if theres was a way for me to find a large number of souls. Speaking of which, if there are already readily-made souls, then I could just focus on producing the body and create Elves in a shortened manner The population problem would be solved, then Ill just continue gathering all the Elven tribes thus making my recovery quicker

But where to find ready-made souls? Because of the existence of religion, almost all souls in this world already have protections of their patron deities! She would definitely alert her enemies if she tried to snatch one and she cannot enter the underworld as well

Moreover, even if Eve can find usable souls, the other party must be willing to worship her.

Its too difficult.

As Eve exhaled in frustration as she boredly surfed the internet within the Celestial Domain for any inspiration. She idly watched all the users on the popular social media sites converse with each other when she suddenly thought of something.

Wait a minute

Ev trembled in excitement as she stared intently at the lively netizens of her former world as a sudden bold idea began forming within her minds.

It seems like there really is a way