Ham sat cross-legged on the ground and stuffed a lollipop into his mouth to replenish sugar, then searched his fragmented memories. He said that besides the most fundamental nature of souls, there was another factor, which was faith. He explained that they once founded the Church of Holy Light precisely for this reason.
"We built it that way, the only difference is that what Crimson Gods use is mostly the most fundamental Soul Light Points, while we use scraps from the outer layer of souls, things closer to memories." "Compared to those forged directly from soul essence, our Divine Kingdom is of course much weaker, and it also grows far more slowly than systems that directly eat souls." "The only real advantage is that ours is more durable, it does not need to constantly consume souls to maintain its scale, and it avoids contamination from resentment."
The downside, of course, is that it is weak. Collecting faith compared to directly devouring souls is like fundraising versus robbing houses, the first can last long, but the second brings fast results. As for later problems, if you keep robbing and killing, there are no later problems.
As for the faith route, on the surface it really does look promising, but it is also only promising in theory. At that time, almost the entire population of World had been killed, so where were you supposed to find people who could believe in you. Even that tiny amount of faith had to be spent carefully, with strict accounting.
A portion had to be used to keep the basic operation of the sun running, then more had to be allocated to those fixing toilets, managing power switches, and handling restarts. Only after all that did the administrators get anything for themselves. In the end, the greedy Crimson God had already devoured World until only a small area remained, and even the safeguards were close to collapse.
Most of their own group was dead or injured, barely hanging on. If not for an unknown bug suddenly popping up in the local files, then following the original course of events, there would have been a feast in a few decades at most. As for why they were beaten so badly, it was simple, they were all administrators by nature, clerical staff.
Letting clerks carry guns onto a battlefield leads to an obvious result, just like a certain heartless company. The only true combat specialist with a direct counter, the Chosen Hero, had not even appeared back then. Even the concept of the Holy Sword of the Hero did not exist yet.
Listening to Hamna ramble on with increasing obsession over shards, Bella blinked. If this kept going, she would end up being treated like a trash bin, so it was better to change the topic quickly.
"Speaking of things like Dawn, Twilight, and the Daylight on Belial, according to the religious texts I checked, are they not all aspects of God of Light?" "They sound like a trinity. But the way you all pass them around makes it feel like anyone can use them, just hand them over and it works, which feels careless." "What exactly is God of Light's stance on this?"
"And in theory, there should be a complete trinity form of God of Light. But in all the materials I checked, most activity was from Dawn and Twilight. Daylight is nowhere to be found. What is going on?"
"Uh… well… this…" "If you start talking in riddles again, I am grabbing the tip of your tail."
Frightened, instinctively hugging her own tail and surrendering to the fear of that threat, Ham finally told the truth. The truth was actually simple.
"In theory, the true God of Light is very special, because it is hard to define it as a god with self-awareness." "It has a larger function elsewhere, in a very obvious place. As for why Daylight cannot be found, I can tell you part of the reason."
"These three major aspect Divine Kingdom were essentially created in advance, then suitable users were selected afterward." "That is why it looks like anyone who picks them up can use them. From the start, they were designed so later generations could use them, and then we accidentally lost two thirds of them."
"The second condition is that you still need a compatible user. At minimum, it has to be at least Crimson Ascension level. Anything below that cannot handle it, and compatibility still matters." "At that time, we really had no people left, so we had no choice but to leave them idle, barely maintaining them with a portion of faith so they would not collapse."
Thinking back, Ham remembered that when Dawn handed this thing to Belial, the idea was simply that leaving it unused was a waste. They thought they might as well give it to the dragon and see if it worked. In the end, it really did work.
She had once gone to take a look herself, and felt that the current Daylight Divine Kingdom was not only larger than when it was first given to Belial, but that something else had also changed. The question was why it had expanded at all, since even with believers, it should not have been enough to support growth. It was barely enough to sustain daily operations.
Yet after Belial returned from a trip to Abyss, it had grown noticeably. What exactly had Belial fed to Divine Kingdom to make it grow like that. Ham could not figure it out, but since nothing seemed wrong, she decided not to think about it further.
Bella had more or less understood by now. The situation with God of Light was like some kind of tool, with the three aspects essentially dismantled from it and modified into general-purpose models. It sounded like it had no consciousness of its own.
This led back to the original question Bella had asked at the start, where was the main body of God of Light. Ham took a sip of cola to moisten her throat, then revealed a rather terrifying truth.
"The later explanations are done, so let us return to the first question. Where exactly is God of Light?" "You already heard this earlier. The existence of World itself and the souls of living beings need both light and dark power to maintain balance."
"I heard that." Speaking inside the Floating City fortress made of Nanometal was no different from speaking directly beside Bella's ear.
"The source of Dark Power is the Rift connected to the Throne on Chloe's side, directly drawing from Abyss. Abyss gathers all resentment and darkness, so where do you think the brightest place is?"
The answer was almost obvious. Bella leaned her head back toward Prime World and took a look. Outside, it was noon, with a sun hanging high in the sky, pouring endless light and heat downward as usual.
"…Wow."
On the other side, countless devout believers moved through Cathedral City in groups. Among the crowd, several believers wearing seemingly ordinary White Tier robes passed each other without notice and confirmed each other's identities in that brief moment. They turned in unison into a hidden alley, then skillfully moved through secret passages like rats, heading toward the darkest depths underground.
By the time they gathered there, their White Tier robes were stained with filth and blood, dyed dark red. Countless runes and blasphemous eight-pointed star patterns were carved into them. Underground, there was a massive hidden space completely wrapped and concealed by a Barrier.
The walls were lined with skull torches, also carved with insane whispers and runic symbols. They pulsed with a blood-red glow, almost like breathing, and in many places one could hear beautiful screams and mad muttering. All kinds of figures in black robes moved through the underground along various routes, different in size, number, and shape, all clearly not good people.
The high-ranking priests who worshiped the Lord gathered in another concealed chamber within the underground Barrier. Inside a council hall beneath holy ground, they discussed how to divide the dishes of the Lord at the coming feast. Yes, for some unknown reason, the Abyss Church from other regions had all received messages from the great god who usually ignored them.
One after another, they rushed to descend immediately, with huge benefits promised. Although no one knew why, and although the number of Companion had suddenly dropped so much recently, this was still a great thing. The problem was how to solve the issue of sacrifices.
After the last discussion, the solution had already been found. They would directly sacrifice an entire Diocese. With hundreds of millions of souls offered up, it should be enough to allow a god's consciousness to descend.
After that, they just needed to let things snowball, and the true body appearing would only be a matter of minutes. Because of this, the council hall was now full of hostility, with people literally beating each other's heads bloody. Even if they sacrificed the entire Diocese, it would never be enough for too many godly consciousnesses to descend, so someone was bound to get nothing.
As for finding another place later, that was impossible. Other factions' godly projections had already appeared, so there would be no chance left. Not being sent straight to death was already a blessing.