Chapter 153: A New Path (2)
While Lynn was in seclusion, rumors about the new god Maesys had already begun to spread wildly across the Earldom of Mount Heidu, threatening to spill over into the surrounding territories.
Having been starved for countless years, Maesys had long forgotten the exquisite taste of the power of faith. Now, as it flowed into his divine spark like a burbling stream, the sensation left him as excited as a male dog in heat.
"Sixteen thousand two hundred and fifty-one... sixteen thousand two hundred and fifty-two... sixteen thousand..." Maesys counted his believers like sheep.
Spreading his faith was actually quite easy for him.
After all, this was his true profession.
As long as they weren't a fledgling, any mature deity had countless ways to gather believers.
What was faith? Faith was spiritual sustenance. A person with a perfectly flawless heart had no need for it; if they did, they would only believe in themselves or a personal ideal.
Simply put, people only sought what they lacked. Even if someone had no hardships, a god could always create some for them.
"Howl!"
Somewhere in a deep-sea region of the Continent of Vanquished Gods, an area shrouded in year-round storms, towering waves suddenly surged toward the sky.
Lying dormant at the bottom of the sea, Maesys had suddenly discovered a new problem: his mental energy had decreased!
It was decreasing!
Maesys's eyes snapped wide open. His food supply was shrinking.
How was this possible?!
Shock and fury overwhelmed him. "Mine! Mine! MINE!"
Out in the deep sea, massive swells rose one after another. The raging waves roared madly as the sky darkened, whipping the ocean surface into a frenzy of ferocious, towering crests.
"My sheep! My sheep!"
When Lynn stepped out of the wizard tower, he was greeted by the sight of Maesys's statue gone mad, bouncing erratically through the air.
It looked incredibly ridiculous.
However, considering that every time the statue flew around it smashed a large chunk of the wall into rubble, the scene quickly lost its comedic value.
"Enough. You're going to crash into something, acting like a husky," Lynn said mildly.
"No! You don't understand how important the thing I just lost is!" Maesys cried anxiously.
"If you keep being this unruly, I'm going to ignore everything you say from now on," Lynn said.
The statue, which had been darting around like a hyperactive husky, froze in midair.
"Do you mean that?" Maesys asked, his tone laced with panic.
"I do."
Watching Maesys's reaction, Lynn actually already had a pretty good guess about what was happening.
"What happened to you? Let me guess... your believers didn't get poached, did they?" Lynn teased.
Maesys didn't answer.
But watching the statue float in the air, its surface glowing with erratic, flickering light, Lynn found it utterly hilarious.
A smile touched Lynn's face. "Alright, so you lost some believers. We'll just figure out a way to gather some more."
"How did you know my believers are gone?"
Maesys sounded suspicious.
He hadn't said a word, and Lynn had been in seclusion this entire time. How could he know the situation the moment he came out?
"Just a guess," Lynn said nonchalantly.
It wasn't exactly hard to figure out. The guy had been sealed for ages; anyone could see what he cared about the most.
With his faith depleted, the only thing that could make him this frantic was his believers.
More importantly, this was the Feilan Plane—a world originally teeming with deities!
In a plane with so many gods, interactions among believers, churches, and deities were extremely frequent. To the gods, even though believers weren't the sole measure of their strength, they were absolutely a hotly contested and essential resource.
Given the chance, no god would ever pass up an opportunity to spread their faith.
Faith provided the power of faith and fostered zealots, which in turn helped the deity expand their influence and hoard resources.
Naturally, the most crucial part of this equation was the power of faith itself.
By relying on their divine fire, they could burn the power of faith and convert it into divine power, which served as a deity's most vital source of strength.
"Your faith was spreading very quickly. The others just didn't react right away, but it's only normal that they've finally caught on after all this time," Lynn said.
There was a very famous church in the Blue Sea Empire—a fact Lynn had read in the intelligence reports when he first arrived.
This church was called the Church of Dawn. It belonged to the God of Dawn, a deity of Weak Divine Power.
But even if it was only Weak Divine Power, to any existence beneath the divine level, there was virtually no difference between Weak Divine Power and Greater Divine Power.
After all, no matter how weak they were, they were still a true god!
Furthermore, the deity worshiped by the Church of Dawn, the God of Dawn, was a subordinate deity under the Light God.
The Light God was a deity of Greater Divine Power on the Feilan Continent, and notably, the very first god to defect to the wizards when they invaded this plane.
Ever since surrendering to the wizards, the deities of the Radiant Pantheon had put in a lot of work. Many gods had turned traitor, grandiosely and aggressively ostracizing other churches. As a result, the churches and empires under the Radiant Pantheon also became running dogs for the wizards, throwing their considerable weight around during wars of aggression against other kingdoms.
And Maesys spreading his faith here had already harmed the interests of the God of Dawn.
A fierce struggle between the two was inevitable.
And this conflict would only grow more intense as time went on.
Lynn understood this perfectly well.
Even though Maesys had him backing him up, he was just a wizard apprentice. He wasn't even an official wizard yet; he had absolutely no say in the grand scheme of things.
Meanwhile, the God of Dawn had surrendered a long time ago and was undoubtedly backed by other wizards.
Of course, even if the two sides fought, Lynn wasn't worried. The outcome of their struggle wouldn't implicate him.
He had already distanced himself far away, and his status was rather special: he was a student of the Abyss Wizard Academy. No matter how viciously they fought, the conflict would ultimately remain strictly between them and Maesys.
For example, they would just kill Maesys and then plunder his divine spark. That was all.
Lynn voiced his speculations with a beaming smile.
After hearing this, Maesys's expression flickered uncertainly. The statue shot up into the sky like a rocket and spun a full three hundred and sixty degrees.
"Hahahaha, I'm just scaring you. It's not that bad," Lynn laughed.
The statue stabilized for exactly two seconds.
"At worst, they'll capture you and drain you dry every day like a living medicine jar," Lynn added.
"..."
"You can't just abandon me! You promised we would cooperate," Maesys whined, looking remarkably like a terrified little wife afraid of being thrown out.
"Yeah, yeah, I promised,"
Lynn said.
Maesys still didn't seem reassured.
"How about this? Why don't you just contact that wizard from before?"
"?"
"The wizard from the ship, when you did it for the first time," Maesys said. "I think his strength is pretty impressive."
"Oh? Then go find him," Lynn said, his smile vanishing as his tone turned ice-cold.
"I was just joking." Seeing that Lynn was truly angry, Maesys immediately shut his mouth.
Otherwise, if he failed to contact that wizard and ended up offending Lynn as well, it would be a case of chickens fly and eggs break—he would be left with nothing.
"I'm being serious. If you don't want to work with me, you can go find him. His name is Harlin, an official wizard of the Abyss Wizard Academy. His title is the Seventh Demon Wizard."
"You can go ask around right now. Any wizard from our academy would know him." Lynn's expression was unreadable.
"No, really, I was just joking." How could Maesys actually be stupid enough to go ask around?
Even if he did want to look into it, he certainly wouldn't agree to it right to the human's face. He would definitely ask around secretly afterward like crazy.
"You cooperated with us. In the eyes of other wizards, you've already been branded with our faction's mark. Besides, we are one entity with Mentor Harlin," Selena said from the side, a half-smile on her face.
"You didn't think our Abyss Wizard Academy was just a monolithic block, did you?" Selena added.
"Lynn, do you know Harlin's actual identity?" Selena asked.
"No idea." Lynn shook his head.
"Isn't he called the Seventh Demon or something?" Lynn asked.
He had heard this nickname for Harlin before when other wizards referred to him. It sounded pretty imposing.
However, he didn't know what it actually meant.
"Then do you know why he is called the Seventh Demon?" Selena pressed.
"Why?" Lynn shook his head.
"The 'Seventh Demon' is a special title within the Abyss Wizard Academy, and it has an age limit. Candidates for this title must be between one hundred and one thousand years old,"
Selena explained.
Lynn was a little surprised. "Under a thousand years old? That's a pretty broad range."
"Mentor Harlin is the Seventh Demon. There are a total of nine people with this title, ranked from the First Demon to the Ninth Demon," Selena said.
A thousand years was an incredibly old age—it was practically an astronomical number to him. Right now, he was still just a young man who wasn't even forty yet.
"Mentor Harlin is only a little over three hundred years old, which is considered very young among those wizards. But what can you do? This title is awarded by the academy's Teaching Directorate," Selena said.
"The Teaching Directorate?" Lynn murmured the name thoughtfully, linking it back to what Selena had said earlier about there being different factions among the wizards.
This Teaching Directorate was likely the faction Mentor Harlin belonged to.
"What factions are there in the academy?"
"There are three main factions in total."
"The first is the Dean's faction. They are also the strongest. As long as the Dean is still around, their faction's strength will forever be number one."
"Mhm." Lynn nodded.
The position of Dean could only be held by the strongest person in the academy. Even if he wasn't the absolute strongest, he was definitely one of the top few.
"But the Dean has been in seclusion for a long time. Rumor has it that he's trying to break through to a higher realm. Right now, the Dean's faction has the fewest active wizards; it's mostly made up of the older generation from the academy's early days. They also frequently go into seclusion, since the more powerful a wizard is, the longer they spend in isolation conducting experiments."
"Currently, the largest and most active force in the academy is the new faction formed by the two Vice Deans," Selena said.
"Because these two Vice Deans employ ruthless methods, the number of wizards flocking to them is the highest in the academy."
"Other than that, the only one left is the Teaching Director's faction," Selena said.
Seeing Selena's serious expression when she mentioned the Teaching Director, Lynn figured Harlin must belong to that faction.
"The Teaching Director manages the Teaching Directorate. A lot of the academy's resources and awards are evaluated and distributed by them."
"Then what are those two Vice Deans responsible for?" Lynn asked curiously. If the Teaching Director handed out all the rewards, what did the Vice Deans use to reel in other wizards?
"Invasions," Selena spat out the word.
"All external conquests and invasions are initiated and coordinated by those two Vice Deans," Selena said.
Lynn suddenly understood.
No wonder those two Vice Deans held the most power.
"Although the Teaching Director holds immense authority, as time has passed, his power has gradually begun to wane compared to before," Selena said with a hint of helplessness.
"I see," Lynn nodded.
The Teaching Director belonged to the conservative faction, while the two Vice Deans represented the aggressive faction.
Although the conservative faction's power was initially vast, wizards were not a conservative profession by nature.
They were like locusts, greedily plundering resources from other worlds to strengthen themselves.
Under these circumstances, the Vice Deans' faction naturally won over more hearts. More importantly, the resources plundered by the aggressive faction were undoubtedly kept for themselves. Over the years, they had definitely accumulated a massive hoard of loot.
Furthermore, when it came to distributing the academy's resources and awards, the Teaching Director could only lean toward and favor the wizards of his own faction; he couldn't completely block the wizards of the aggressive faction from earning them. Otherwise, all sense of fairness would be destroyed, which was absolutely not permitted.
Lynn pondered for a moment. "Then what does the Dean belong to? The neutral faction?"
"You could say that. I heard that before the Dean fell into his slumber, his word was absolute law in the academy, purely because he was the strongest."
Hearing Selena's words, Lynn couldn't help but wonder what level the Dean had actually reached to be capable of suppressing all dissenting voices in the academy single-handedly. Such a feat could only be achieved if one's personal might far surpassed the combined strength of everyone else.