Six days. That was how long it took to organize the Prayer Log.

It only took a little over a day to design the automated system for the organization of prayers, but in that timeframe several hundred thousand prayers came in that were unsorted. I had to read and manually sort every prayer.

Well, I didn’t have to do it, but the idea of having a few hundred thousand unread and unsorted messages sitting in my inbox for the rest of eternity made me cringe.

A sense of satisfaction welled up inside of me as I looked at the Prayer Log. I couldn’t help but feel a little proud to see the results of my efforts. With the previous automatic response function that I had set up, all the prayers I received with the keywords ‘bless this food’ were automatically answered. As I experimented more with automating the system, I discovered a way to route prayers into groups.

I made eight categories:

Assistance, Romance, Miracle, Vows, Gratitude, Curses, Steve, Misc

Any prayers primarily asking me for some form of non-romance-related aid were filtered into the Assistance category.

Petitions of a romantic nature were numerous enough that they had their own group.

Requests for divine intervention to solve their problems for them went into the Miracle category.

Those who made promises towards any being who fulfilled their request entered the Vows category and another group was made up of prayers that contained only Gratitude.

The Misc section was for prayers that didn’t fit under any of the other six groups.

As for the Curses category, that one was created after I figured out the origin of some strange prayers I frequently received. Many of these strange prayers were fragmented and nonsensical, often containing words that hinted at the sender's anger or surprise. After reading a few hundred of these prayers, I noticed that every single one of them would make sense if preceded by a phrase along the lines of:

'Oh god' or 'Oh my god'.

Then I realized what was happening. These words were keywords that acted like a prayer and, as a god without official followers, I received their unaffiliated prayers. The contents were whatever words or thoughts immediately following their usage of the phrase. I labeled it as cursing cause most people use that phrase in the same place that another might use a curse word. They weren’t actually praying; they were just expressing their emotions. I briefly wondered how those people would react if they knew they were unintentionally spamming a god’s inbox.

After spending about five days skimming through and sorting prayers, I finally had the previously unread messages sorted. Any new messages containing preset keywords would automatically be filtered into the correct groups while messages that hit none of the keywords would land in Misc.

Assistance: 554,832 (Unread - 4,532)

Romance: 92,954 (Unread - 21,210)

Miracle: 1,439,549 (Unread - 900,304)

Vows: 515 (Unread - 3)

Gratitude: 112,222 (Unread - 10)

Curses: 2,942,352 (Unread - 750,047)

Steve: 394 (Unread - 1)

Misc: 2 (Unread - 0)

Total Prayers: 5,142,820 (Unread - 1,676,107)

Since many prayers could fit into multiple categories, it also had a priority system. The order of highest value to lowest was ranked: Vows, Gratitude, Assistance, Romance, Miracle, and Misc. Any prayer that would fit in multiple categories would land in the category it qualifies for that has the highest priority.

I tried to keep up on the Gratitude and Vows as soon as I received them. I had also tried with Assistance at first, but it was depressing to read a bunch of prayers I could do nothing about. I ignored the Romance prayers for the most part and didn’t even touch any of the new Miracle requests. The distinction on whether a prayer landed in the Assistance or Miracle section was mostly in whether the individual had asked me to do something for them or whether they had asked me to help them do something.

And honestly, most of the requests for miracles were things people could do themselves if they just put in the effort. I personally had little interest in solving people’s problems for them. This was a religion, not a charity.

Finally, I had a little subsection titled Steve. The system copied any prayers I received from him and placed the copies here so I could access them quickly. Over three hundred of the Vows were his prayers. Most of the vows were promises to serve well if some entity that is not one of the four gods made him into one of their paladins… he made this promise dozens of times a day.

Though he wasn’t my follower yet, he was on the road to becoming my favorite.

I opened the Steve section and found one that I had bookmarked yesterday to look at closer.

Yo, buddy! Thanks so much for dropping that gnome in my backyard! Mr. Swaggins is an awesome breakdancing teacher. I hope you can find some way to let me know your name. Once I know who you are, as promised, I will find a way to claim a temple in your name down here in New America. Hope you keep me in mind if any open paladin slots open up!

Wow, this guy…

Obviously, I didn’t send the gnome. Either he was insanely lucky, or some otherworldly force was granting him his wishes. Whatever was going on, it had made Steve aware that there was another existence out there. If I could somehow let him know about me, I could obtain a follower…

Unfortunately, I had no idea who this Steve was and had no way to contact him yet. Hopefully, I would find some hints in his prayers or maybe Ray or another follower would cross paths with him someday. At that time, if he could do what he promised then I most definitely wouldn't complain about getting a temple dedicated in my name.

Fingers crossed.

And then the new prayer that I had just received moments ago.

Hey, it’s Steve again! I wanted to thank you for guiding Grandmaster William to me! I’m sure you already know, but he has taken me as his apprentice. I was already an accomplished dark mage, so now he just needs to teach me about being a guardian. Once I learn to fight as a guardian, He’ll help me combine it with my dark magic and I’ll be a dark knight! After that, I will fulfill my vow to claim a temple in your name.

Before the time comes, please let me know your name!

P.S. Mr. Swaggins says I’m a natural!

P.P.S. Once I get a temple for you, please allow me to be one of your paladins!

Okay, what?!

Everything this guy asked me for just seemed to fall into his lap!

Anyways, if he really did acquire a temple for me then I would absolutely make him one of my paladins. He hadn’t even officially become one of my followers yet and, for whatever reason, he was this dedicated.

Also, apparently, he was a dark mage. If it weren’t for Master Rambalt’s explanation a week ago about magic, then my knowledge of fantasy stories and video games from Earth would have made me slightly hesitant to trust the character of an individual that would mess with dark magic…

But then again, if I were judging by the standards of those stories, I wasn’t exactly on the path to rainbow unicorns and fluffy bunnies.

There was another prayer that I had been surprised to find as I was sorting through the logs.

There was a name that I knew… a prayer from Leximea Bloodclaw.

I don’t know if there is anyone out there for us beastkin. I don’t know if anyone or anything is listening to me right now. If there is someone listening… and if you have any kind of power, please… please help me become stronger. Please help me overcome my fear.

For my little brother... for my friends and family… for Ray…

I want to be strong.

Wow, what a sincere prayer. I wanted to grant it. Someday soon, when I started gathering more followers, I decided that she would be my first follower aside from Ray.

“Where do I even start…?” I mumbled to myself.

“Suggestion. Choose a domain,” Auto replied.

“Huh?”

“I believe the other Overseers already mentioned this earlier. Decide what you will be the god of. Will you rule over something abstract, such as peace or freedom? Or perhaps something more visible, such as the sun or the moon? A domain will assist you in understanding what you should build your religion towards.”

That made perfect sense.

So then, what should I be the god of?

There were many gods in ancient stories of Earth that I could use for reference. If I looked at the Greek, Roman, or Norse gods, for example, most of them had distinct domains.

What I was most curious about, however, was the domains of the Christian God and the Islamic Allah. They were supposedly supreme deities. What was their domain? Or did they even have a specific domain?

Maybe they tried to rule over everything?

The last option would seem to make sense, considering that historically both Christianity and Islam had a lower tolerance for belief in other gods than polytheistic religions did.

Regardless, I didn’t want to be the same as any of the gods from Earth. I could use them as references, but I had no intention of copying any of them.

Speaking of stories from the gods of Earth, there’s something that I had been curious about.

“Hey Auto, I have a question.”

“Is it related to your domain?”

“Uhh, maybe? When I was thinking about that, I remembered something that I was curious about.”

“What might that be?”

“In the stories of the gods of Earth, there are references to beings such as ‘angels’, ‘demons’, ‘valkyries’, ‘demigods’, and so on. There are also various monsters that appear such as the hydra or Cerberus. Are any of those true?”

“Many of those stories carry some degree of fabrication. However, all of the stories contain some truth as well.”

“Does that mean that I will have my own divine servants, like the angels or valkyries?”

“That entirely depends on your will and your followers. When you eventually design the afterlife for your followers, you can input a clause indicating that the most devout of your followers will have the option of becoming a divine servant when they die.”

“I get to design my own afterlife?”

Whoa.

“Affirmative. However, the afterlife you design must be in line with your domain. You cannot be the god of evil and torture and send all your most faithful followers to a heaven full of pacifists. A god of darkness must send his most loyal followers to a dark place. The god of light must send his loyal followers to a place full of light and so on. This is absolute.”

Hmmm. That made a lot of sense as I thought about it. Any person who would worship a god of evil and follow all their ‘evil’ tenets would probably be happiest in an ‘evil’ place, as abstract as that was. While this system seemed limiting, it was forcing the Overseers to give out the promised rewards.

“What about the souls of those who don’t believe in gods?”

“To a certain extent, they get exactly what they believe in. Those who believe there is no afterlife will get no afterlife. The biggest complication is those who believe in reincarnation. Some souls are certainly recycled, and Overseers attempt to use those who believe in reincarnation when that happens.”

“What about the souls harvested by Meridian?”

“All souls are harvested by Meridian. It is merely a copy of the soul that is sent to the afterlife.”

“What are the souls used for?”

“You are not yet eligible for that information.”

Right. I needed to have presided over a thousand worlds or something like that. Not sure if I was patient enough to wait that long though…

“What about the ‘demons’ and beings like ‘Satan’?”

“You are also not eligible to receive that information. It is sufficient to say that when there is any goal there will be opposition.”

Well, damn. There just might be some cosmic battle between gods and demons. I should avoid that for now. It was probably way outside of my paygrade. Especially since I didn’t get paid to do this job.

I decided to think about happy things like my ideal afterlife instead. Maybe working backward from there would help me pick a domain.

What would my ideal afterlife be?

I pondered this question as I followed behind Ray and Lexi moving towards their seventh day of training.

***

After six days, Siegfried let Ray join the training with the other students. He had used the time to personally invest in her foundation and to teach her the things the other students had already learned earlier in the year.

As far as stances went, Ray honestly felt that the shortsword and shield were a bit boring compared to the two-handed longsword. The first style was much safer, of course, but Ray wasn’t all that concerned with safety since she knew she could regenerate. She was much more impressed with the power that she could manifest while wielding the longsword.

Siegfried was thorough in his teaching and he showed her clear advantages and disadvantages to each guard. Ray’s personal favorites were the Wrath Guard, where she held the sword up above and behind her shoulder, poised to strike with a heavy blow, and the Fool’s Guard, a stance in which she held the longsword at a low angle in front of her body.

Of course, she learned several other stances as well.

Today, she joined the line of students practicing their techniques against the wooden targets covered in cloth and straw. The ‘training dummies’ looked like poorly constructed stick figures with a few extra horizontal beams attached in the torso area. Some of the targets even had button eyes glued on.

Ray stood in front of one of the training dummies with her longsword held poised to strike. She waited for the go-ahead from Siegfried as she felt the weight of the sword attempting to pull her down. After days of training, it was now a comfortable and familiar weight.

“Begin!”

Ray stepped forward and violently swung her sword. It was a controlling swing following the motions that she had practiced against the air. The sword arced downwards in an overhead slice and smashed into the gap between the ‘shoulder’ and the ‘head’ of the training dummy.

The dummy exploded in a shower of splinters and straw. Through some miracle, it was still standing but her sword was firmly lodged in its ‘chest’. Ray tugged on the hilt for a moment, meeting unexpected resistance as she tried to withdraw it. She planted her feet and pulled back with all her might.

The sword slowly dislodged and then shot out, launching her backward as she tumbled and crashed into the ground.

Ray pushed herself to her feet and dusted herself off. She felt the stares of various individuals and noticed that she didn’t hear the repetitive sounds of the other students striking their respective training dummies.

She hefted the sword onto her shoulder with her left hand.

As she observed the other students, she wanted to laugh. If Jonathan’s jaw dropped any further, it would probably hit the floor. Vick looked a bit pale, and she could see Lexi off in the distance practically rolling on the floor, covering her mouth as she tried not to laugh. Helen and Ven looked more curious than anything else but their wide eyes clearly displayed their shock.

Bill, the archer that she had killed when she got ambushed by adventurers, just grimaced, and turned away. He had suddenly shown up the previous day for practice and he didn’t say anything to anyone.

Siegfried smirked while shaking his head as if he knew something like this would happen. Rick and the Echo Fist were staring at him with questioning eyes, but he ignored them as he clapped his hands.

“What are y'all standing around for? Get to work!”

Each of the students jumped at the sudden noise before turning back to their practice with somewhat disheartened expressions.

Siegfried walked over to Ray.

“Swinging with a lot of power is good, but there’s no need to hit it as hard as you can. Any opponent would have still died if you used a quarter of that force.”

Ray scratched the back of her neck and laughed nervously.

“That wasn’t all of my strength though…”

“Hmm?” Siegfried froze, a hint of surprise crossing his features.

“I wanted to test out the feeling of striking something a bit before I tried hitting it as hard as I could. I didn’t put very much force into that strike…” she explained.

Siegfried covered his face with his palm as he shook his head in disbelief.

“I wonder how to explain this one…” he muttered so softly that Ray wasn’t sure if she heard it correctly.

“Is there a problem?” Ray asked.

Siegfried shook his head.

“I’ll take care of it. Try not to completely break the dummy. They were made to last through a few sessions worth of swings so if you break it in one go, the big bosses will get mad at me.”

As he was walking away, Ray chuckled to herself when she overheard his barely audible musing.

“I wonder who I should have her spar against…”

Ray started humming to herself as she held herself back and swung at the targets with a greatly restrained amount of force. She used the amount of damage taken by the training dummy, as well as the volume of the impact, as a reference as she set a new goal for herself for the training session:

Within the next two hours, she would figure out exactly how much strength she had to use to create an identical force to Jonathan’s swings.

Thud

Still too hard. Ray listened for his next strike and made a quick estimation. She then swung again at half the strength of her previous swing.

Thud

Closer, but still too loud. Ray reduced the strength of her next swing by another half.