Chapter 665: Fracture

The Holy Church had recently just received a major setback in San Antonio facing the Chaos Abyss. The Holy Knights and low-level angels had suffered severe losses due to the return of the Great Demon Empire and the demon army. Although the physical losses could be made up for, it would be far more difficult for the Holy Church to recover its reputation.

Not only that, the Northlands, a part of the Hell Faction, just had a glorious victory, which would make the Holy Church seem like even more of a loser… Indeed, the people of Eich viewed the result of what happened when fighting against Donatis and the demon wave as a victory. As for the death of all the Elven Gods? That was something destined the moment that the demon wave chose its first location to descend upon.

Everyone had been watching the results of these battles. The Holy Church suffered major losses and was absolutely crushed in their battle, while we obtained plentiful results, saved the elf species, and even transferred the Elven Empire into the Northlands. With such a comparison, it was only natural that the Holy Church’s reputation took a severe blow.

For some people, when they suffered a loss in battle that came with a loss of face, rather than thinking of how they could regain face, they would instead think about how to strike a blow at their allies and subordinates in order to prevent others from rebelling against them due to loss of authority…

The rise of the Southern Sect and the fact that the God of Holy Light had been impeded multiple times had all contributed to the constant diminishing of the Holy Church’s reputation all around the world. In fact, the power of belief they were receiving had noticeably decreased as well. This was something that could shake even the foundation of the Holy Church. That was why certain factions within the Holy Church felt that the individual behind the Hell Faction was even more loathsome and dangerous than the Chaos Faction.

Although it was understandable that they wanted to have a solid internal alliance first before dealing with enemies, the attempt to establish the Northern Divine Battlefront Alliance was the Holy Church’s way of testing us. If we didn’t respond well, their new alliance would become greatly effective at perhaps even truly exiling us, cutting us “barbarians” off from the mainland continent entirely.

As long as the Holy Church successfully sealed us in, the Mist Alliance would land in a worse strategic situation. If we wanted to go south at all, we would need to break through the blockade, and give the cardinals an excellent excuse to declare the Northlanders as “those who would attack their allies when everyone needed to be united”. Additionally, if we were truly sealed in, there would be even more benefits to the Holy Church than there appeared to be on paper.

The Northern Divine Battlefront Alliance’s threat to the Northlands was mostly because the Northlands was still incapable of achieving self-sufficiency. We still needed to trade with other countries for food, munitions, weapons, equipment, clothing, wood, and all sorts of other resources. If all these trade routes were cut off, it would have a tremendous negative influence on us. Not only that, the elves were currently on their way to the Northlands. If the elven caravan was prevented from reaching us… I would never underestimate the lack of boundaries for the Holy Church. With the combination of their greedy Gods and fanatics, they were completely capable of making even the most immoral actions sound righteous. They were definitely the type to declare every ordinary merchant on their way to trade with us as a demon worshipper and kill them all off. So, if the Northern Divine Battlefront Alliance was successfully established, we would indeed be completely cut off from the mainland.

Not only would our troops be unable to proceed south if we wanted to send reinforcements to one of our allies, even our aerial forces would be blockaded by angel armies. The Holy Church was trying to strategically isolate the entire Mist Alliance, and if the Mist Alliance tried to force its way through the blockade and go south, then we would be given the tarnished reputation of invaders who attacked their allies.

In a way, at least on paper, this scheme indeed seemed quite vicious and sly, but in my opinion…

“Is the person who planned this scheme a complete idiot? The schemer really thinks that all the other countries are idiots who are willing to be used as chess pieces? Who would fall for such an obvious method to make others cannon fodder?”

I was truly astonished. This was basically forcing the small northern countries south of the Mist Alliance’s border to choose between the Mist Alliance and the Holy Church. Just why was the Holy Church so confident that everyone would choose them? Even a dragon would have to respect the local authority. Even though the Holy Church still had a strong foundation, their strength was in the mainland continent. Here in the north, the Mist Alliance was still far more influential.

“…No, they’re not idiots. They just haven’t woken up from all their past years of glory yet. They still think that it’s just like 10 years ago, when the Holy Church could declare anything they wanted in the land, and royal authority would always submit to church authority. In their eyes, everything they command will be followed, and the northern barbarian human kingdoms should be grateful for this opportunity to lick their shoes and join their alliance.”

Glina’s words were quite vicious, but they were indeed the truth. Whoever made this scheme at the Holy Church probably felt that bringing a powerful army to the north—along with their advantage in having more belief in the land—would easily make these tiny northern countries submit.

“But, isn’t the Holy Church already succeeding with their scheme? There’s a total of 12 countries on our southern border, and the Holy Church invited all of them to join the Northern Divine Battlefront Alliance. Yet, the other 10 countries haven’t mentioned anything to us? Doesn’t this mean that the Holy Church has almost fully succeeded?”

Reyne’s words caused everyone else to shake their heads. She was the type who could only see what was on the surface if nobody assisted her. She wouldn’t know that someone had fooled her until it hit her in the face.

Once again, I confirmed that I needed to arrange for an expert politician to stay by Reyne’s side. Thankfully, her new concubine Avi would likely be able to fill that role. At this moment, Avi was secretly tugging on her wife Reyne’s sleeve, indicating that Reyne shouldn’t just blabber whatever she thought, while also giving an analysis that was likely true.

“No, the other 10 countries are waiting right now. They’re waiting for us to make an offer to them and respond to the first two countries which applied to join us as those two are testing the waters. They’re waiting for us to have a ‘showdown’ against the Holy Church.”

Courage would be needed in order to be decisive. No matter when and where, it would be most common for people to simply join whichever faction seemed stronger to them. Moreover, if those small countries were forced too far, it would be equivalent to pushing them over to the other side.

Now, I truly felt a headache. The situation was different now. If those two countries had simply wanted to join our Mist Alliance for the sake of improving their defenses, we could have rejected them with any sort of excuse. However, if we rejected them now, that would mean pushing a previously neutral country into the arms of the Holy Church.

If we agreed to let those two countries join our Mist Alliance, this would definitely be good for our long-term development. We would obtain a fertile territory with large food production, something we direly lacked. Yet, having them join us would be absolutely catastrophic for our defense lines, which would be greatly lengthened in the south, and we would have to abandon the natural obstacles in the Northlands and instead try and defend open plains. That would be such a tremendous strategic loss.

Perhaps it was just a coincidence, or perhaps it was all part of their plot. At the very least, the Holy Church’s scheme was indeed giving us a difficult time.

We were currently in the conference hall of the Mist Kingdom royal palace. Everyone present at this meeting was ranking very high in the Mist Kingdom, but when I mentioned the problems at hand, along with the potential negative influence on the Northlands’ defense lines, not a single person responded.

I even handed out my prepared information and documents to everyone to make myself more convincing. For the next 30 minutes, not a single word was spoken in the conference hall as everyone read the documents.

They all had strange expressions after they finally digested all the information. Basically, their expressions said, “Why didn’t you say so earlier?”, “Why are you so good at digging pitfalls for us?”, “Why do you have such a lack of trust in our allies?”, “Why do you have no confidence in our defenses?” and so on. Yet, they all frowned at the difficult problem I placed before them.

Afterward, time passed by with zero progress made. Some wanted to accept the two countries as new allies, but others asked them what to do about the defense lines. Some said to directly reject the two countries, but then they would immediately be asked what to do about potentially being sealed in.

One individual even wanted to scam the two countries, saying to first accept them and then change our minds afterwards. That idiot was instantly kicked out of the conference. It wasn’t easy in this day and age to obtain good reputation. It would be far too much of a waste to tarnish our good reputation for so little.

In the end, I could only helplessly shake my head.

“…Let’s just stall for time first.”

This wasn’t something that could be rushed. We needed more time to gather our opinions and think of a plan. The small northern countries would also need time as well. But right now, it was still absolutely necessary to maintain a good relationship with the northern countries.

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Most people had now left the conference, but I was still thinking.

Was there truly no method? Of course not. I had plenty of schemes up my sleeve. I had already come up with a scheme that would push my enemies into a pitfall for 10 years before they noticed. However, right now something to stabilize the situation was more important than a scheme. While scheming against others was easy, cleaning up wouldn’t be so simple. Rather than the current trouble, I placed more importance on how the Holy Church and other Order Faction members were viewing us with more hostility.

In fact, this hostility wasn’t even limited to only the God of Holy Light’s faction. Even the more neutral Nature Faction and Dwarven Gods had distanced themselves from us over the past years. Not only were they not as friendly as eight years ago, their vigilance and defensiveness against us was becoming more apparent every day.

“…We’ve made too much progress.”

I knew why all of this was like that. It wasn’t that we hadn’t done well. It was that we had done far too well.

For Gods who ascended through the power of belief, population would be an important resource. Since people were a resource, this naturally meant that if someone gained more of this resource, others would have less of it.

Previously, the more neutral factions had a good relationship with us because our ideals and characters were similar, but even more so because we had a mutual enemy. Within the Order Faction, we all needed to resist against the overwhelming power of the Holy Light Faction, and we also had a shared mutual mortal enemy in the Chaos Faction.

But now, the Hell Gods had been established as a new faction less than 10 years ago, but we were already overwhelming other Gods’ factions. Not only did our successive achievements and victories give significant pressure to the Holy Light Faction, even the neutral factions were having difficulty accepting this. Also, the fact that we were no longer a part of the Order Faction also worried the more neutral members of the Order Faction.

Plus, the Elven Gods had all indirectly died because of me recently. I refused to believe that the other Gods’ factions wouldn’t have any thoughts about this.

Anyone who was too attention-catching would attract jealousy. Only those who were average or incompetent wouldn’t attract hatred. Although this sounded easy, attracting far too much attention and making the entire world your enemy would be incredibly foolish.

These were the unwritten rules of the many Gods’ factions within the Order Faction. The Order Faction members had always warred against each other indirectly, without any direct fights. Basically, the power struggles of the Order Faction weren’t allowed to reach the point where blood was shed, but anything else would be permitted. As long as some God’s faction became too powerful, it was only natural that the other factions would team up to resist that faction. It was just that I didn’t think that this would happen so quickly to us.

I hoped that I was wrong, and that this trouble was simply from the Holy Church alone. However, my spies had given me information that the Nature Faction had been quite close to the Holy Church lately, which made me think more about things.

“…The Goddesses of Joy and Laughter? Sigh, it’s all Amelia’s fault…”

This time, I really wasn’t just placing the blame randomly. It was more than 70% Amelia’s fault that the Nature Faction was becoming ever more distant from us.

The wood spirits had been born with far more authority over nature than the ancient children of nature. Meanwhile, the wood spirits and Amelia had been highly active over the past eight years. They helped to massively expand the authority of the Hell Faction. The wood spirits had also shown powers over nature, life, and plants that far exceeded the divine miracles of the Nature Faction.

Some things would be quite difficult to explain, especially when it came to Divine Concepts…

“You claim to be the Lord of Ancient Trees? The King of Treants? But, the wood spirits’ mother tree is several times taller than any of your trees.”

“You call yourself the Guardian of Life? Are you capable of reattaching an entire limb that was cut off? What, you’re saying that you need sacrifices and donations? You must first achieve incredible things for your True God? You must be a False God! The wood spirits simply require a payment of some Justice Points in order to construct an entire new limb for you!”

Such things were far too common now. I could definitely understand the frustrations of the Nature Faction. I also knew that the Nature Faction had shown friendly intentions towards Amelia, sending her a God Envoy to invite her to take a Nature Faction Divine Concept and become a Nature God in addition to being part of the Hell Faction.

Actually, there wouldn’t have been anything wrong with nominally being a part of the Nature Faction, but…

“This is Amelia, that insane witch…”

Not only did she kick out the God Envoy sent to invite her, her response was now famous in the entire world. The three difficult tasks she proclaimed were proving the uselessness of the Nature Gods even today. Every time that someone mentioned this, it would be a slap in the face to the Nature Faction.

“You want me to be a Nature God? Haha, as long as any of you are capable of achieving three things that I already can, I’ll happily join the Nature Faction!”

The first difficult task: the secret of life. Have someone with a plant body be capable of giving birth to sentient life. This was completely impossible for any of the Nature Gods as it was far beyond their Divine Concepts.

The second difficult task: the secret of nature. Have an apple tree bloom, flower, produce fruit, and expand into a forest from the fruit’s seeds in a single day… While some Nature Gods were indeed capable of such a feat, such forceful hastening of the natural order was a major taboo for the Nature Gods as it broke the natural laws of nature.

The third difficult task: the secret of souls. Have the souls of any nature species obtain true eternity within a forest. (The wood spirits were truly indestructible while within the Forest of Dreams. While it was possible for their physical bodies to perish, their souls would be reborn.) This was evidently breaking the Cycle of Reincarnation. Even the Nature Gods capable of it wouldn’t dare to do so.

These three difficult tasks were the best evidence of Amelia and the wood spirits’ power. However, they also became the greatest humiliation to the Nature Faction. In fact, many arch druids were doing their very best to research methods to complete these three difficult tasks without breaking any of the Nature Faction’s taboos even now.

Alright, so this was basically a direct and vicious slap in the face to the Nature Faction. The Nature Faction was already paying respect to the Hell Faction by not listing Amelia as a mortal enemy. For the Gods, it was often that their face would equal reputation, and thus power of belief. Concrete benefits and power would be involved.

Numerous nature priests and druids had also betrayed the Nature Faction to join Amelia’s side over the years, which further increased the Nature Faction’s grudge against her. This grudge naturally expanded to affect the Nature Faction’s view of the entire Hell Faction.

I felt a headache as I thought of Amelia whose temper was becoming ever stranger. Although it sounded amazing to be someone who was public enemy #1, in real life that would be the equivalent of people trying to swarm and kill you everywhere you went. I definitely didn’t want such a development.

“Perhaps it’s time for us to ‘suffer some losses.’ Rather than constantly having everything go well, which will only end in everyone teaming up against us, it might not be a bad thing for us to appear to receive an impact and suffer some losses… But, it won’t be that easy to take anything from me, Roland. They’d better be careful not to actually lose more than what they obtain.”

After coming up with the general plan, the specifics became much easier. I took out pen and paper, and started creating my first new scheme… er, I meant plan for the next year.