MoP: Ch. 158

---Thid POV---

After reading the last comment, Lux felt like she was floating on cloud nine.

"Of course, it's because of someone with both beauty and wisdom, hahaha!"

All that exhausting, painstaking work on the mission had been for this exact moment. That feeling of single-handedly changing a game function while other players noticed and praised her efforts, absolutely fucking incredible!

It felt like all those days of frustration and sneaking around had finally paid off.

She scrolled through the jumble of announcement messages until she found the global server notice about her exclusive mission. Without hesitation, she chose to make her ID public.

When you do something this epic, of course you should leave your name. Let the whole damn server know who pulled this off.

Just as she was basking in her moment of glory, faint voices echoed from outside the cathedral hall.

She snapped out of her celebration.

"Shit, the nuns I sent away are coming back!"

She quickly jammed the green sprout back into the statue's hand, making sure it looked natural. Then she buried the signal amplifier deep in the hidden compartment at the base, covering up any trace of her modifications. Finally, she grabbed the mirror from the window and shoved it into her inventory.

By the time the nuns passed by, all they saw was the perfectly intact statue and Lux standing before it.

Their laughter and chatter immediately died down to respectful whispers.

"That's... Sister Angie."

"So this is a nun from the Radiant Church? How tolerant... she's even willing to enter a shrine of another god."

"Maybe she'll convert to our church!"

"That would be wonderful! Bishop Kasse would surely reward us!"

"In that case, let's not disturb her prayer."

With that, they quietly shuffled away.

After their footsteps faded, Lux cracked one eye open and let out a breath.

"Thank god they didn't notice anything."

Once the altar was consecrated, she no longer needed to keep all those props in place. She only needed to come back and pray regularly to maintain the connection.

Before leaving, she double-checked the hidden compartment one more time, making sure every detail was concealed. Then she finally relaxed.

On her way out, she glanced back at the church. Thanks to constant upkeep by the dedicated nuns, the statue stood solemn and holy, and the great hall was spotless, as if it had just been built yesterday.

"This church is way better than the one in Honeyvale Town. If only we could take it over directly."

Then she shook her head at her own fantasy.

"What am I thinking?"

At most, they could stay for two weeks. After two weeks, whether their mission to rescue the sirens succeeded or failed, they would have to run like hell and never look back.

---

Compared with the church in Nary Town, Viktor's condition had changed quite dramatically.

[Name: Viktor von Vinesse]
[Race: Undead]
[Level: 71 (Grand Mage) / 159 (Demigod)]
[Skills: Divine Insight, Shapeshifter, Multiple Avatars (999/1000)]
[Authority: Life Revival, Life Purification, Eternal Light (34%), Divine Revelation]
[Divine Power: 213,432]
[Followers: 999]
[Special Items: Int??dim??Net??Spirit??, Divine Contract (Reversed), Game Console]
[Status: Severely Injured, Weakness, Frostbite, Burns, Poisoning, Inner Sanctum Collapse, ...]
[Summary: Critically injured Undead]

Although his level hadn't budged, he had gained a new authority, Divine Revelation, and his divine power had jumped to over 210,000!

"Just opening one divine altar brought returns far greater than what I invested?!"

He repeatedly checked the source of these benefits.

"Where did the extra divine power come from?"

He opened the new authority.

[Divine Revelation:
Light illuminates the soul, dispelling ignorance and doubt. Only through hardship can the fog be lifted and truth revealed; Through divine revelation, the God of Light can grant believers inspiration and wisdom.]

"Granting inspiration and wisdom... an enlightenment-type skill! Its purpose should be to help believers break through bottlenecks and temporarily boost their comprehension."

The moment he understood its function, he immediately grasped the source of both the authority and the surge in divine power.

"It's the artifact in the Nary Town church."

That artifact had quite the pedigree, its purpose was tied to one of Aureal's most important authorities in missionary work. With a divine fragment in hand, he had directly used it as a medium to convert part of Aureal's divine power.

Looking at the authority on his status panel, his thoughts stirred.

"So the divine fragment method... isn't completely impossible after all."

Luminaris had originally approached him for this very reason, hoping he could use a divine fragment to convert the stray authorities of the God of Light that lacked will or bias.

It had to be said: with a fragment of divinity, converting the powers of the former God of Light was easier than breathing.

Unfortunately, this authority was completely useless to Viktor. His divine power came entirely from players. The players' bodies were, in essence, avatars of a god. They had no bottlenecks, no need for enlightenment.

At most, all he needed was to gather the complete Eternal Light. The other authorities were optional extras, nice to have, but not essential.

So he only gave it a glance before setting it aside.

What bothered him more was something else entirely.

"213,000 divine power now... so why is the number of divine avatars I can create still capped at one thousand?"

When he'd had 180,000 divine power, Viktor hadn't rushed to spend it updating the game's functions. He had deliberately saved it up, waiting to see if at 200,000 Divine Power, the Multiple Avatars skill would evolve at another threshold.

At 100 Divine Power, it had granted ten avatars. At 1,000, it gave a hundred. At 10,000, it gave a thousand...

Viktor had originally thought Multiple Avatars would evolve again once his Divine Power surpassed 100,000. But it hadn't at 100,000—and not even at 200,000.

Unlike Divine Insight, which had evolved to unlock a scanning function, Multiple Avatars seemed to have hit a wall, unable to advance further with sheer divine power alone.

He studied it for quite a while, turning the problem over in his mind like a puzzle with missing pieces.

"Could it be... that a god can only ever have one thousand avatars at most?"

That would mean he could only have one thousand players, a severe handicap for his planned swarm tactics and undead siege strategies. He had to find a solution, and fast.

But where could the breakthrough come from?

Knock, knock!

Two soft but steady knocks interrupted his brooding.

He turned back from the window. "Come in."

The visitor was Alyanne. Her arms were intact, and she carried in her hands a semi-transparent orb the size of a basketball.

"We found this in one of the caravans from the Ship-Carriage Guild. It seems to be... an artifact?"

Calling it an artifact, in truth, she was relying only on her dragon bloodline to sense a trace of inherited memory and the aura of divine rules. As for how it worked, or which god it belonged to, she couldn't sense at all.

On the surface, it looked like nothing more than an ordinary orb that had seen better days.

"Another artifact?"

Viktor's eyes flickered. Artifacts and divine authorities were rarer than unicorns in the outside world, yet lately he'd been coming across them like they were on sale at a discount store.

Could this all be because of meeting Luminaris?

"Let me take a look."

He took the orb from her hands, feeling its weight.

Across the orb was an obvious crack, splitting it into two halves. One half was completely transparent. The other was a hazy gray, covered with a small ring of hollow circular holes.

Just from its appearance, there was no way to guess its purpose.

Viktor, using his fake divine authority, carefully examined the divine remnants clinging to it.

Snow God divine power...

He opened his eyes.

"This isn't a divine artifact, just a fragment of one."

What's more, he already had three other pieces.

"A divine artifact fragment?"

Alyanne frowned and repeated the words.

Just as Viktor recalled where he'd encountered similar pieces before, he pulled out two black-and-white spheres, each smaller than a fist, from his storage space. Without ceremony, he pried open the crack in the transparent orb and stuffed them inside.

The moment he sealed it, the orb erupted in a blinding white light.

Alyanne's eyes widened. "It's the Snow God!"

An ice dragon couldn't possibly be more sensitive to divine remnants infused with ice and snow laws. Her gaze flickered between Viktor and the orb several times.

Just moments ago, she had been worried about how to gather all the fragments and uncover the artifact's function. And now, the artifact was suddenly complete?

Viktor looked at the orb in his hand.

The huge crack on its surface had disappeared completely after that flash of white light.

Inside, the two black-and-white spheres spun aimlessly, emanating a chilling aura.

Only now did the orb exude the kind of law-energy befitting a divine artifact. And that allowed him to easily discern its function: guidance and serving as a key.

But the places such artifacts pointed to were never simple vacation spots.

Viktor muttered to himself, "They really are doing everything they can to push me into this adventure game..."

He hadn't even stepped outside the past few days, spending most of the time half-unconscious and definitely not looking for trouble. And yet the last fragment had knocked on his door?

He turned toward the still-shaken Alyanne.

"Tell me again, where exactly did you find this thing?"

Alyanne snapped back to reality.

Earlier, a caravan from the Merchant Guild had delivered supplies using a transport vehicle. The chassis had been badly deformed, so Viktor told them to dismantle its farming components for reuse.

She had carried out the task with workers from the outpost. The vehicle had magical runes inscribed on it, which took some time to deal with.

By the time they finished dismantling it, Viktor had already fainted from exhaustion.

"The orb... the fragment was found wedged in a gap within the carriage."

"It must have gotten trapped there when the vehicle crashed into a tree near the territory during landing, catching branches, pinecones, and other debris inside."

After she finished speaking, Alyanne secretly glanced at Viktor's face, but his expression was unreadable.

"That's everything."

"Mm."

Supporting his head with one hand, Viktor struck a thinking pose.

Just happened to hit a tree, just happened to wedge in a divine fragment, and the pieces just happened to fit together perfectly...

What kind of coincidence was that?

It was as if these divine fragments were lining up to deliver themselves into his hands.

But then he shook his head. No, he was looking at this wrong. The first fragment had indeed involved coincidence, but at least it required defeating a Level 4 Blackrock Toad, and destroying its spawning nest.

The stele resonant with the artifact came from the Sky God's ruins, which first required clearing out the goblins.

Yet the more he ignored the fragments and tried to mind his own business, the easier they seemed to appear right in front of him.

He had every reason to suspect that behind all this was a manipulator, at the very least, a high-ranking god.

This was a setup aimed specifically at him.

Of course, it could also be that he was just being paranoid. But considering the countless enemies he'd made, being overly cautious was safer than lying down and accepting whatever came his way.

A high-ranking god... If not the Snow God, worshipped by countless believers for ending the volcanic hellscape, then it was the Sky God, bearing the name of an ancient deity.

But what was their purpose in luring him over? With such a crude trap, it was impossible for him not to notice. And likewise, impossible for them not to know that he'd noticed.

Some old relic that had been dead for hundreds of years, did it really think he would definitely take the bait? On what grounds?

With that question in mind, Viktor returned once again to the Great Pit Ruins.

From the edge of the pit, he looked down. Because of the recent collapse, there was now a sheer cliff almost a hundred meters deep.

Beneath the cliff, the ruins remained as welcoming as a graveyard, barren, without a blade of grass, littered with shattered walls and weapon fragments.

Worried that Viktor might run into trouble alone again, Alyanne had simply followed him. When she saw that the cliff was even deeper than before, she couldn't help but ask, "What are you here for?"

Players had done little to develop the Great Pit, aside from the makeshift camp to the north, there was no reason for anyone to hang around this crater.

"To see what price the puppet master is offering me."

With that statement, his wheelchair rolled forward again.

Alyanne hurried after him.

The stone stele of the Great Pit Ruins stood tall against the wind. Fallen leaves blown from distant trees clung to its surface for a moment before being swept away again by the breeze.

Two lines of text still stood out clearly:

[Welcome to Saequs. Let this serve as a reminder of the great God of Sky, Kalil.

The Wolcen Mountains will forever protect the children of the sky, carrying their final hope.]

Viktor brushed his hand over its surface.

"Let's hope you're not just amusing yourselves and making me waste the trip."

He took out the reassembled artifact from his storage space.

As before, it didn't take long for the magic to kick in.

The surface of the stele began to glow, first a few points of light, then connecting lines between them that formed constellations, and finally a complete map.

Alyanne quickly stepped forward, covering her mouth as she stared at the map displayed on the stone wall.

"That place... the mountaintop is flat?"

"It's Mount Wolcen," Viktor explained. "It used to be a volcano. Of course it's flat."

"The crater's core once contained the largest elemental magic node on the continent of Aeltia."

"At that time, what is now the Yoan Empire and the Principality of Elise were both within its influence, back then, just a burning desert where nothing could survive."

"A single eruption of volcanic ash from that mountain stretched as far as the Frostwind Plains and the Misty Coast."

"Even the Misty Coast was affected?"

That place lay beyond the Sea of Mist, with not only the Kingdom of Yoan but also two other nations of comparable size between here and there.

One eruption of the volcano, and at least six nations had suffered the consequences.

She drew in a sharp breath.

"No wonder the Snow God earned a legion of devoted followers just by extinguishing the volcano."

Ash that had accumulated for centuries finally cleared. The people once again saw sunlight, the land turned green, rivers ran fresh and clean... It was no exaggeration to call it an act of creation, or at least really impressive landscaping.

Viktor chuckled.

"Not quite. His feat at ascension did indeed grant him many believers, but it wasn't enough to carry him forever."

"To climb higher in the divine hierarchy, you need something else."

Time always distorted stories, exaggerating the deeds of gods, placing them high above the clouds where mortals couldn't reach. Every retelling made them more magnificent than the last.

Clang, clatter!

Both of them looked down.

Inside the hollow orb, the two black-and-white spheres were colliding violently, sparks bursting forth with each impact.

The force grew greater and greater, the collisions more violent, until they broke free of Viktor's hand entirely.

They slammed straight into the glowing two-meter stele.

BOOM!

A deafening explosion erupted, followed by a massive shockwave that surged outward.