Chapter 133
Gray hair. Bellaria's tomboy. The one who comes looking for you if you bully the children at the orphanage.
Grace, a pretty woman—whether one called her a beautiful girl or a beauty—with various other nicknames, thought:
‘Hmm. This seems to have gone completely wrong.’
Murmurs. Hubbub.
Every time she walked down the street, stopped by a shop, or even just breathed, she could feel the eyes and whispers around her.
That in itself was something she was already used to.
It had been her daily routine ever since she acquired this damn title of “priestess” or whatever it was.
The problem was that, while it looked similar on the surface, the substance was quite different.
“Oh, Priestess. Your face is glowing again today!”
“Priestess, you remember me, don't you? The director used to buy a great many leather shoes from our shop….”
“Here, here, Priestess. Try this. It's juice squeezed from apples picked just this morning. The price? Goodness, thanks to the Priestess's grace, we're living in such peace and comfort—how could I possibly accept something like money from you!”
“P-Priestess. Here, please just hold my child's hand once. I beg you…!”
“Ahem! All right! You lot! Do your very best to keep this city safe today too, understood!!”
People who used to dart their eyes away for fear of even meeting Grace's gaze now did their best to strike up a conversation with her.
Shopkeepers were frantic to give her anything they could, treating contact with her hand as though it were an honor, while the guards stood unnaturally rigid and snapped into action near the edge of her vision.
Had a third party witnessed this, they might have clicked their tongue at the citizens' behavior.
After all, they had subjected her to such cold indifference and disdain all this time, and now they were being shameless, of all things.
To get straight to the conclusion, that interpretation was wrong.
The citizens were not acting that way because they were shameless and brazen, or because they had neatly forgotten the past.
Quite the opposite: the more guilty they felt, the harder they struggled to ingratiate themselves with Grace, as if desperately trying to make amends.
-What if Grace remembered everything the citizens had done to her, became a guardian deity, and then sought revenge?
A guardian deity's power did not merely apply to farming—digging the earth and planting seeds—but extended evenly to fruit growing on the mountains and fish caught while fishing.
And Bellaria's liquor industry was part of the primary sector.
If that was difficult to understand intuitively, imagine, roughly speaking, that Grace had been given the power to freely set other people's bank balances.
The moment she declared a +100% farming buff, the balance in my account would multiply by two, and the moment she turned her back on me, my balance would charge furiously toward zero—or rather, into the negatives—even if I did nothing but breathe.
They had to get on her good side.
No, even if they couldn't win her favor, they had to avoid at least getting on her bad side.
Those who considered themselves wise and well-informed rushed to Grace and showered her with flattery the moment they heard the “rumor” spreading in secret.
Of course, not all of them believed the rumor was true.
No—more of them actually thought it seemed suspicious.
But that was beside the point.
What did it matter if the rumor was fake? Even if Grace was merely a priestess rather than a guardian deity, would they really suffer any great loss? At worst, it would cost them a moment of embarrassment and a little wasted time.
If they did nothing, they would go under in the worst-case scenario.
If they did, they had nothing much to lose, even in the worst case.
They made their choice through thoroughly rational judgment, and seeing their actions, others came to believe the “rumor” they had heard was true.
It couldn't simply be nonsense, they reasoned; there had to be something real behind it, or people wouldn't be acting like that.
The rumor prompted action, and the action reinforced its credibility.
What had unquestionably begun as a secret eventually became a truth shared by the entire city.
“No, seriously, is this really okay!?”
Bang!
Grace shouted as she slammed her palm down on the table.
On the sofa across from her sat an entire wooden barrel, and a calm voice drifted out from inside it.
“Hey, whether it's a desk or a dining table, you shouldn't keep pounding it with your palm like that. People will curse the parents who raised you, not you.”
“Mm, the matron definitely would have smacked me across the back first thing if she'd seen that—no, that's not the point!”
Grace raised her palm to slam the table again, then flinched and stopped herself.
Gritz watched her and chuckled that she certainly knew how to obey, but his laughter was somewhat premature.
Grace had slipped forward like a snake pouncing on prey, gone around the table, grabbed the barrel, and begun shaking it vigorously.
“Hmm, I didn't see this coming.”
“What are we going to do about this situation? Everyone I meet has started looking strange—their eyes, their tone, all of it!”
“Girl, if you're going to demand an answer from a person, shouldn't you stop shaking the barrel? Hmm?”
“Oh my gosh, do you know what I heard when I went to the orphanage today? My little siblings asked me, ‘Big Sis, are you a goddess?’ Even Giselle said, ‘Sis… no… right? Okay, if you say so, I'll believe you…’ That was absolutely not the look of someone who believed me! It was just the reaction of someone saying she'd nod for now because I said so!?”
“Ho ho ho, you little wench. You do have a talent for letting people's words go in one ear and out the other.”
Whack!
“Ow!”
The self-proclaimed beggar, who subdued Grace in an instant with a staff knuckle tap, continued speaking as he polished the wooden barrel, which had recently grown notably clean and gleaming thanks to the Carnelian family head's painstaking care.
“The fact that people around you are reacting that way means things are going according to plan. What are you so unhappy about?”
“Because the rumor itself is entirely fabricated and fictional!”
“Whether it's fiction or not is irrelevant. What matters is that people believe it and perceive it that way.”
Gritz sneered.
“Do you think that guardian deity fellow at that sanctuary or whatever was a guardian deity from the very beginning? People recognized him as one and believed he possessed the power to control abundant harvests, so that's what he became.”
“That's because that guardian deity already had special powers before anyone believed in him! I don't have anything at all!”
Grace was livelier, healthier, and more tenacious than an ordinary village girl, but that was as far as it went.
She had never been born into a hero's family and trained in special swordsmanship, nor had she learned magic as the archmage's disciple.
She couldn't use even something like mana, and naturally possessed not the slightest power connected to farming.
The starting points were different from the outset, so what was she supposed to do about it?
“Hwahaha.”
Despite Grace's valid and reasonable objection, Gritz lightly ignored her words as though asking where a dog was barking.
Instead, he went so far as to make her a proposal.
“Then let's conduct an experiment.”
Gritz's staff pointed toward a flowerpot in the corner of the room.
The Carnelian household's many varieties of flowers and plants were normally managed meticulously, if only because of its strict traditions. But lately, perhaps because the household itself had been in an uproar over this festival and that, the flower in the pot was looking somewhat wilted.
“Put your hands on that and think about it. Think, ‘I wish this flower would become healthy.’”
“…No, what is that supposed to—”
“Just try it. If you trust me.”
Unlike usual, Gritz's voice was oddly serious, and Grace fell silent too.
She extended both hands toward the flower and concentrated with her eyes closed.
I hope the flower becomes healthy. I hope it blooms in full. I hope it becomes beautiful once more.
Without questioning what meaning this act held, she simply wished for it with all her heart.
Suddenly, Grace felt something like warmth flowing from her hands.
It wasn't a direct, searing heat like a flame.
Rather, it was more indirect, and more comforting.
A warmth like earth brimming with sunlight.
And the moment she opened her eyes again, Grace could do nothing but gape and let out a dazed sound.
“Huh?”
The flower that had been wilting and dying just moments ago was now blooming brilliantly.
Countless question marks rose and vanished in Grace's mind.
Her head creaked around toward Gritz, moving like a wooden doll.
There was no way to know what expression Gritz wore inside the barrel.
But for some reason, Grace had a strong intuition that Gritz was grinning with utter arrogance.
***
There is a power in this world called “blessing.” It refers to a celestial god taking pity on their followers and granting them a portion of their divine power. A priest who worships the God of War receives aggressive powers such as enhancement and destruction, while a priest who worships the Goddess of Mercy receives supportive powers such as healing and protection.
That is why the power wielded by priests and priestesses has little to do with the size of the mana they themselves possess. What matters is solely how close they are to their god and how favored they are by that god.
But there is a question worth considering here. Priests and priestesses receive their power from gods. Where, then, does a god receive power?
Some say that gods are inherently transcendent and mighty beings, noble solely by their own nature and with no need to receive power from outside. Thus, they merely bestow power as an act of mercy upon followers they happen to favor.
At least in my opinion, that's bullshit.
Faith is longing. The human heart possesses power in and of itself. The faith of one or two people might end as mere delusion, but faith numbering in the hundreds or thousands becomes immense power in its own right.
Of course, it isn't a power just anyone can use. It's like how sunlight is a potent force, but humans, unlike plants, cannot perform photosynthesis.
But gods can. So they bestow blessings upon the earth, reveal their existence through those blessings, and thereby gather faith. In vulgar terms, it's a kind of promotional bait.
Too blasphemous? Well, who knows.
There may be gods who genuinely love and cherish humanity. But they probably weren't the majority.
If they had been the majority, the Godslayer would never have been born. Nor would the pantheon have been smashed by the Godslayer's hand, leaving the temples to fall into the ruin they are in now.
Who is the Godslayer? Just skip over that. It isn't particularly important to you right now.
What is now called the “guardian deity” was probably something that had once been a god, or perhaps one of its incarnations.
It must have been a fallen being, so diminished that it could no longer remember what it originally was or what sort of being it had been.
If it had simply been left alone, it would have faded away on its own. But some fool created faith in it, giving it a new identity and allowing it to revive.
Right now, it is playing tyrant on earth with no more than enough faith for a single domain, but if faith in it had spread beyond this place, it would have ascended to the heavens someday.
And you are that guardian deity's priestess.
In other words, you are the catalyst and kindling that reveals the guardian deity's power to people and draws out their faith.
Until now, you couldn't use any power because people viewed you too strongly as a “sacrifice,” but they no longer see you as one.
Is that all? People now regard you as the next guardian deity.
So if the guardian deity can do something, you can do it too. The actual magnitude of your power will differ considerably, of course.
And if the guardian deity disappears, all the faith directed toward it will turn toward you.
This is how you eliminate a god while keeping the blessings that existed in this land intact.
You ask whether your power would disappear if the god that converted faith into actual power were gone? That can be solved by defeating the god and absorbing the bastard yourself.
You have quite the face of someone who doesn't know what to say.
Then I'll tell you what to say. Shout this:
I am in the process of inheriting divine authority, Father.