The Power of Faith 2
Of the four of us, Sesaisa is by far the most desperate. Mihun, Wahando, and I have at least restored our worlds and possess the necessary weight class, but this guy fundamentally lacks the scale to begin with.
That weight-class-deficient Marquis Sesaisa is demanding dairy spirit lifeforms in hopes of raising his tier even a little, and I cannot hand them over unless they prove genuinely useful.
In that sense, a power I can be certain won’t result in any loss. I’m quite curious what it could be.
I shifted my consciousness to the clone stationed at the spot where Sesaisa was manipulating the Spiritual Realm of my ecosystem.
“This ‘immense power I haven’t realized’—you’re saying it can be done with what I currently possess?”
“Of course! Whether you simply don’t know about it or know but believe it impossible, this Sesaisa is convinced it can be achieved!”
Sesaisa spoke rapidly while never taking his eyes off the Spiritual Realm, his hands flying through adjustments. Since he was focusing on my business, I took my time.
“Very well. Tell me exactly what you intend to do.”
Sesaisa declared with grand ambition.
“Religion…?”
“Precisely! I shall create a religion for your lifeforms!”
I was at a loss for words.
“Rejected.”
“Wait! Why is it rejected!”
“We already have a religion… Some of them worship Yogur-tosoth, and there are those who serve the Dessert Legion commanders.”
“What? Hold on. No! That is not religion at all. It fails entirely to manifest Divinity as Mystery, does it not?”
“Huh?”
Once he put it that way, I understood what he meant.
He was saying he would enable my lifeforms to directly wield divine power and perform miracles.
It’s common in fantasy, isn’t it? Using holy power to heal others, expel disease, or even call down divine punishment.
Even my tenth opponent, Dindinaron, had been a civilization that wielded that kind of Faith-based mystery. In short, Sesaisa was proposing to let the Dessert Legion class-change into fantasy clerics.
Given that the most overflowing resource in my ecosystem is divine power obtained through Deity-World Oneness, and that every cleric entity in the game merely borrows their power from a god, adding clerics to my ecosystem seemed genuinely promising.
Right now I was only using the surplus divine power to open dimensional gates or evolve lifeforms.
But…
“Is that even possible?”
“It is possible.”
“I’ve used mystery through Divinity in game form myself, so I understand the theory. To wield Mystery with Faith, you need religion. To create religion, you must define religious virtues and construct a philosophy. No matter how I look at it, that’s impossible for the non-intelligent beings of the Dessert Desert.”
Wasn’t that obvious? How could something with a bad head possess religion? A dog has no religion. It simply follows the owner who feeds it.
When I argued along those lines, Sesaisa instead looked at me as if I were the strange one.
“Do you truly believe it impossible?”
“What?”
Sesaisa spoke in his usual crude, rambling manner.
“Are you not already using flow and mystery naturally without any understanding of them? You can even repair or modify them to a degree.”
“……?”
“I do not know why my Kogogi gain strength when they eat acorns. Nor do I understand the principle by which it is expelled as dung. Yet even without knowing the principle, I understand that planting many oak trees increases the food available to them.”
Was he saying that just as not knowing how to build a smartphone doesn’t stop me from using one, the same logic applied here? But religion was…
“Listen, Biin. Religion is not followed because it is correct, reasonable, or proven. What matters is the Technique. In fact, most religions emphasize practice far more than deep doctrinal understanding. Even if someone has never heard of a particular faith, faithfully following its religious virtues is enough to be considered exemplary.”
Was that how it worked?
I had no connection to religion, so I couldn’t tell whether he was right.
Using an Earth analogy, it sounded like the claim that even without knowing Jesus, practicing agape love like him could get you into Christian heaven, while believing in Jesus without following his teachings would send you to hell.
“I understand that religious behavior requires less intelligence than one might assume. Even animals with a degree of intellect will recognize an afterlife and perform acts such as burial.”
“Hoo. Is that so?”
I didn’t know the exact threshold, but it seemed that even animal-level intelligence could recognize an afterlife and develop belief in supernatural phenomena.
They could certainly recognize a companion’s death, mourn it, and perform funeral rites.
The problem was that the minimum threshold was somewhere between apes and elephants.
“But not every lifeform in my ecosystem is that intelligent. How could non-intelligent beings that operate on pure candy-level instinct possibly understand religious virtues?”
Once again Sesaisa scolded me.
“Foolish! That is precisely why I say understanding itself is unnecessary! Even without any comprehension whatsoever, even a being completely devoid of intellect can be made to follow defined virtues!”
“How the hell would that work? Give me a single example.”
I was starting to feel unfairly attacked. No example he gave was going to convince me…
“That long-named race of Wahando’s whose name I cannot recall follows rules even though they do not understand the underlying principles or virtues.”
“Eh?”
“Do you know why Wahando’s Faith is so high? Their rules are the virtues, and their rulebook is the scripture. By acting exactly as their god Wahando defined, they embody religious virtue. Therefore those virtues coalesce in the form of a 「Legacy」 and eventually 「Manifest」 in reality in a specific shape.”
My eyes flew open.
Because both 「Legacy」 and 「Manifest」 were game terms. I realized Sesaisa was using them in their precise mechanical sense.
「Legacy」 was different from material things like 「Structures」 or 「Equipment.」 It referred to something that remained spiritually within the world and defined it.
Jumito, who had once lived in my ecosystem, had created a 「Legacy」 by organizing, carving, and performing funerals for his ancestors’ achievements. That legacy was later consumed to create Wafflach-Nacha. In the game, such conceptual entities possessed real existence.
「Legacy」 played a critical role in defining the religious virtues that allowed divine power to be used as miracles.
And 「Manifestation」 referred to the ‘disasters’ that struck during each calamity phase or the miracles activated by Divinity—supernatural phenomena that could only occur in a specific world for a specific god.
Why did using divine power in religion heal people? Why could it call lightning upon enemies, create protective shields, or restore the earth’s vitality?
All of it was the 「Manifestation」 of religious virtues defined by 「Legacy」.
Put that way, it made sense. Wahando’s abnormal Politics score—where he followed his god’s will so perfectly that he actually got ahead of it—might, upon proper analysis, be named something like 「Legendary Unique Manifestation.」 In a sense, Wahando’s civilization wasn’t a Politics civilization at all, but a divine one where political ideology itself functioned as religion.
“There are other examples. Our comrade Mihun! He splits his will countless times and imbues all creation with that Divinity to control everything as he desires. Though the form differs, it is still the will of a participant called a god, manifested in a certain shape.”
“That bastard Mihun just calls what he does immortal arts or whatever and acts smug about it.”
“He must have been sincere. That is simply how he expresses the technique of handling divinity.”
So, to summarize…
“You’re saying you’ll make it possible for me to do what Wahando and Mihun are doing?”
“Correct. Your 「World」 contains many powerful legendary 「Entities,」 possesses high 「Terrain」 levels, and for some reason even has 「Celestial Bodies」 that should be unobtainable at this stage, along with 「Structures.」
However, you have no 「Equipment,」 no 「Legacy,」 and naturally no 「Manifestation.」 If your anti-intellectualism build cannot obtain good 「Equipment」 that requires Technology, should you not at least fully develop the other elements?”
It was persuasive.
On Earth, after ten thousand hours of anti-intellectualism building, I had simply thought, ‘Guess this build means giving up on 「Equipment,」 「Legacy,」 and 「Manifestation.」 Instead, let’s make powerful lifeforms and fight.’
But if I could create the rest even without equipment, the picture changed. Maybe the bare-bodied Dessert Legion would have a fighting chance against powerful 20-level technical civilizations.
“If you have understood what I am offering, shall we make the deal?”
I thought it over one last time, then slowly nodded.
“Fine, Sesaisa. I’ll hand over the lifeforms you want. Teach me how to 「Manifest」 divine power into reality.”
Thus began the ambitious project of creating religion in the Dessert Desert.
“Pathetic! How can you still fail after I have taught you everything!”
“Then teach better! I genuinely don’t understand how I’m supposed to manipulate the flow or what I’m even making!”
……Objectively speaking, progress was terrible, but ten full years remained until the world collision. I would simply have to train relentlessly and complete it within that time.
Nearly ten years passed. Sesaisa’s readjustment of the Spiritual Realm had long since been completed. The Kogogi had been thoroughly bred—or rather, faithfully reproduced—in Wahando’s world before crossing back to Sesaisa’s original realm. There they rebuilt their civilization and prepared to fight in the coming world collision.
Roughly thirty-five percent of Sesaisa’s world was farmland I had ordered preserved, while another thirty-five percent had become a resource extraction site for Mihun and Wahando. The silver lining was that the resources mined there had slowly allowed Sesaisa’s civilization to recover.
In the sky, the dairy spirits I had sent continued expanding the already abnormally oversized Spiritual Realm, pouring additional power into Sesaisa’s 『Avatar.』
Sesaisa was now ready for the next world collision. So were Mihun and Wahando. Over the decade, through desperate exchanges of materials and knowledge among our group, we had raised our most fundamental weight class to its absolute limit.
And after receiving instruction from Sesaisa and advice from both Mihun and Wahando, I finally succeeded in creating my own 「Legacy」 and 「Manifestation.」
Dessert Legion
Stats (Expand ▼)
Description: The collective name for a series of lifeform groups capable of surviving in the harsh ecosystem known as the Dessert Desert. They worship powerful entities called Dessert Legion Commanders and compete with other beings to secure greater territory and resources within the ecosystem.
The Dessert Legion is extremely hostile toward any lifeforms not belonging to it. They will do anything to drive out other beings and turn the entire world into territory for the Dessert Legion. For that purpose, predators and prey within the legion will even cooperate.
I completed it by pouring divine power infused with my will into every single lifeform in the Dessert Desert—from microorganism-level Nectar jelly to gels to the gigantic Dessert Legion Commanders—endlessly imprinting upon them the single thought: ‘You are one legion.’
After all that backbreaking effort, the result was merely Heroic grade. Jumito had created an Epic-grade legacy just by splitting rocks and organizing a ruined city by himself, yet I had poured in nearly half the divine power generated over ten years and only reached Heroic rank.
“Most satisfactory.”
This much was sufficient. Creating a providence that affected even the individual microorganisms of the Dessert Desert required at least this level of investment.
Until now, my ecosystem had simply ‘somehow’ crossed into enemy worlds and reproduced.
But now it was different. From the smallest microorganisms to the greatest legion commanders, every lifeform—plants, insects, and beasts alike—would maliciously spread into the enemy world and tear it apart.
It felt like I had created the kind of alien lifeform that appears in fantasy games, the kind that seeks to devour all living things…
Still, what Sesaisa had wanted to teach was the method of directly converting divine power into mystery. The 「Manifestation」 that would trigger such an effect was already complete.
The very 「Manifestation」 that would plunge the enemy world straight into Affogatolypse.
If it hit properly, their minds would simply go blank and the world before their eyes would turn pitch black.
The world collision will begin soon. Only surviving players may advance to the next round.
I’ll show those pathetic colluders exactly why we are the meteor.