“You plan on killing me, YOUR father, just so you can become richer and fatter under the rule of the church of malice. You could have at least chosen a benevolent god but you wanted to sell your own people to a demon. How did I raise three retards?” Randall was restraining his anger as he feared he’d end up killing his own children.

Lukas was furious from the very depths of his soul. He had tried his best to gain immortality through the offering of millions of potential believers to the God of malice. Becoming a half-astral was merely the first benefit. Later, he would be allowed to adventure in the higher planes in search of more fortune. The immortal body of a half-astral would give him a better chance at surviving the dangers within.

“I was so close. So close.” Lukas thought.

Randall was still trying to understand what could push his sons to such a behavior: “Who do you think rallied the island under one banner? My banner. Yet you think of my lifetime’s work as a simple object you can sell off just like that to anybody.” He said.

Osric who wanted to be the one to talk before his older brother decided to take drastic measures against their crazy father said: “Yet you couldn't succeed in becoming a god. And are you not doing the very same thing we are doing? Who is that nobody next to you compared to a god that is already well known all over the world. We have our families to think about. YOUR grandchildren. You think everybody is as crazy as you to believe in an unknown spell from the ruins of the high planes? Well, we cannot just blindly offer our lives hoping for a nobody to take care of everything for us, but from the looks of it, you appear to have succeeded. We thought you had died and had no choice but to call on the only god who gave us the most benefits.”

Randall thought of himself as crazy for doing what he did, but since he had succeeded, he had no room for regrets. He said: “Well, I did succeed. Meet the Netherwyrm God. He will be the god of this island from now on. In a few days, the whole island will know of him. The miracles he's performed are more than enough to earn him a place in the pantheon. Now, I will need your help to manage the construction of a palace for the Netherwyrm God as soon as possible. Any objections?”

No one answered but the answer was apparent. They had no choice but to comply.

“Ahem…” Alwyn lightly coughed to attract attention. He said: “Pleased to meet you all.” As he nodded towards the three sons. He then turned towards Randall: “I assume it will take months to complete such a massive project. Just show me the place you plan on constructing the palace and I will construct it myself. It will gain us some time.”

Himself? No one can do such a thing. Even astral gods could not afford to spend faith power on a palace in the real world. For the palace to keep its shape, it had to be continuously supplied faith power. Only in the astral planes was such a thing possible as the maintenance of a palace demanded an amount of faith power that was negligible.

“I know where he plans to construct it. It is nearby.” Devinn said.

“Just let the man say it. I do not want to scare another person with a high amount of faith inside of him.” Alwyn inwardly rolled his eyes.

Randall then reluctantly teleported away with Alwyn to the place.

“Devinn. Your idea is weird.” Alwyn remarked as he saw the plans for a church that Devinn had created.

“Yes, it will be easier to attract more faith this way. You’ll have to be closer to every pilgrim that comes to see you. Besides, you are the one who wanted to play god in the beginning. Better to do it right. This approach is even better than those Astral Gods who cowardly hide in their astral planes. We have unlimited mana and a ring that has all the soul elemental seeds it needs to cast any spell (Chapter 9). We can even bring every pilgrim close to us faster by building teleportation portals all over this planet. Channeling mana all over this planet to give power to the teleportation portals is even easier. Having unlimited mana is our only advantage on this planet. Faith power is limited on the material plane for some reason.” Devinn said.

“I wonder why I even asked. Let’s just do it.” Alwyn said.

The ring shone. A foundation was made tens of meters underground, A temple like circular structure with a diameter of three hundred meters and a height of seventy meters slowly appeared.

“This is enough. It is roughly made, but I will let you polish it as you see fit.” Said Alwyn before he added: “You should concentrate your efforts on accommodating the pilgrims who will soon start arriving. I am planning on constructing teleportation portals all over the Island so that they can arrive faster.”

“Teleportation portals? If I may ask what kind of power source allows for such an expenditure.” Randall asked.

Faith power made your imagination take physical form but the conjured target relied on the amount of faith you had accumulated as well as the faith you put in yourself and the object you conjured.

Spells were just a general way of conjuring the target of your imagination by faith power. To maintain the conjured target around also needed more channeling of the faith power but there was a limit.

Spells created from mana were in a sense more flexible. You could conjure something out of nothing with a spell model. If it needed to be supplied with mana to stay around like a fire, you had no choice but to continue channeling mana into it. If you created a log or any kind of object that could stay around without mana, it could stay around forever until destroyed.

“It is called mana. It's the only power source of my home just like faith power is your power source. From where I come from, we are born favored by the elements or inherit a bloodline element.” Alwyn said.

“I wonder if mana can be introduced in this world.” Alwyn wondered.

“If someone can introduce mana into this world, it would be us. Or Aragil.” Devinn conjectured.

“What do you mean by only us? Any Cosmic God can channel his unlimited mana into this little world.” Alwyn asked.

“Well, any Cosmic God can indeed channel mana, but these humans were not favored by the elements. There is no way that they can communicate with mana. There would be no power levels at all. The only way for them to do so would be to give them an object that can interpret their thoughts and access mana in order to release the targeted spell. I can imbue a limited version of the all-seeing eye power directly into the object and then make the object process the information from their thoughts. The object would then use the ambient mana as a power source for the spell to take form.” Devinn said.

Alwyn almost felt scared as he said: “Then for these people who use their imagination to fight and conjure everyday objects, it is a godsend. They’d wield the power of cosmic gods instantly without having done anything at all. Just using their imagination. They’d channel our unlimited mana without as much restraint as they do when they channel faith power.”

“Well, any human would become a pseudo-cosmic god with that object. We can even do the same for the humans in the ring. It is just that Kron and the other leaders will never allow such a thing to exist. It is too much power for a feeble human being. This world is chaotic as it is. Imagine if we poured more oil to the fire by introducing mana to them.” Devinn said before he added: “Besides, with the appearance of mana, there is the possibility that elementals will emerge in the future. I am starting to think that faith power a good thing because it is regulated in a way. It is true that we do not know much about it but it doesn’t cross too many boundaries. Mana, however, once released, it will want to fuse with anything that is in its way. The only good thing about it is that it needs a cosmic god to release it. But even us cannot fill this ever-expanding universe with mana.”

Alwyn suddenly had an idea: “What if we conducted an experiment and stay long enough to see if mana can change this world by creating a being like us. Mana and faith in the same body. We could see the rise of elemental astral gods.”

“That was my plan. In order to separate myself from you, I have to become an astral god with my half of our elemental soul and so far the demonization seems to be working. But if you want to see such a being, it is highly possible that your violet offspring will inherit both…” said Devinn before he laughingly said:” But I would advise to let me get out of here first before you do anything.”

“Haha…I was thinking the same thing.” Said Alwyn.

He teleported Randall back to his palace and came back to his church that was now his home.

The gigantic interior and exterior still had to look grandiose but he had left it to Randall and his sons to take care of.

He went to an underground chamber that he had built and started brainstorming with Devinn about the correct way to minimize the new object’s output of power.

“If I add another function to the all-seeing power, it could work. I just need more time and someone to try it out. We will start by a simple version of it which is the cosmic level. We will keep degrading it until it eventually becomes the Novice level.” Devinn said as a bracelet appeared in front of Alwyn. Devinn continued: “Ask Randall to send a person for testing this bracelet.”

“We do not release mana?” Alwyn asked.

“No. This bracelet will access our mana directly. I still have some Cosmic god level prisoners left from the Myriad races. We will use them as Cosmic pools later if the experiment succeeds.” Devinn said.

He wanted to replicate the power levels of the elementals in the world of faith.

The bracelet would be the very first of an impressive lineup of powerful objects.

Devinn had made the bracelet indestructible by sealing a wisp of black fire inside to repair it should it ever be destroyed. To protect the wielder from their own spells or their enemies, the black fire could also be deployed to guarantee that the wielder stayed alive.

He called the future wearers Summoners as they summoned the power of their god.

To make sure that faith was never given to the objects rather than Alwyn, he had Alwyn tell the first summoner that the objects only drew the power from the Netherwyrm god. Or else they were simple objects.

The wisp of the all-seeing power imbued within acted like an automaton that read the summoner’s thoughts and deployed the spells. It oversaw everything.

If the summoner did not believe or bore ill will in the Netherwyrm God, the all-seeing power would know and the object would simply remain a simple object. It was crucial in gaining more believers. Skeptics will be slowly and rapidly eliminated.

The automaton made of the all-seeing power was an attempt to quantify faith with the summoner’s thoughts. The more faith, the more power could be accessed.

As for the spells, they were all inscribed in the automaton’s memory from Devinn’s own mental library. The targeted soul elemental seeds were streamed from the ring to the bracelet. The bracelet had enough soul elemental seeds to let the summoner do anything he could think of.

“Now everything is set. Make your first believer a true believer with this bracelet. You will even start gaining more faith before you start giving these objects out.” Said Devinn. He continued: ” I will come back regularly to check up on you.”

“Where can you go to?” Alwyn asked.

“The astral planes. You cannot leave me in the dust as you become a god. We might be one entity but we each have our own personalities. I can take advantage of that fact and go to the astral planes to investigate. A few things had been bugging me ever since we got here. It is the only place I can go to.” Devinn said before he said: ”Don’t worry I think I can evade death with my all-seeing power. It is my only advantage. I better use it well.” Devinn said as his voice faded away: “See you soon.”

He had entered the astral planes. Alwyn stayed in the room in a dazed state as he savored his moment of sanity.