Warping the root-level information of known reality was an undeniably god-tier power. Mei could achieve similar results through Apeiron, but as a fusion material, Root Distortion was clearly in a league of its own.
Most importantly, [ Root Distortion ] wasn't a one-time use item. This meant that the final result of the fusion likely wouldn't be hampered by single-use limitations either.
"Saintess, do you have any idea what just happened?"
Visad asked, his voice still trembling with lingering fear.
The sky and earth had returned to their normal states, but the previous cataclysm—the world-shaking tremors and the stars shifting overhead—had been so terrifying that it felt like the apocalypse had truly arrived.
Stella shook her head slowly.
"I can't sense anything."
Visad's anxiety spiked. If even the Saintess couldn't perceive the cause of such a global upheaval, it only proved that a much deeper, higher-dimensional power was at play.
Was it the gods?
He couldn't help but wonder: did the gods even possess that kind of power?
And if they did...
What exactly were they trying to achieve?
Visad had always been plagued by questions, and he dedicated himself to finding the answers. By constantly seeking Stella's guidance, he had become the Mother God cult's foremost sage, second only to the Saintess herself.
"Saintess! Disaster!"
A believer came sprinting toward them, face pale with panic.
"What is it?"
"A plague!"
The believer panted, struggling to get the words out. "A massive plague has broken out nearby! It's already spreading toward us!"
"A plague?!"
Stella's expression shifted instantly. She gave a sharp command: "Take me there at once!"
Despite knowing Stella possessed miraculous powers, the believers paled at her words and tried repeatedly to hold her back.
It was no use; she wouldn't be stopped. They had no choice but to follow. Visad, meanwhile, kept his awakened telekinesis active at all times, weaving a barrier to isolate Stella from the outside world.
He was terrified she might catch the contagion.
In this era, a plague was no joke. Even with the existence of supernatural powers, people were often left helpless against a large-scale outbreak.
Supernatural individuals were a tiny minority, and because medical knowledge hadn't been systematically developed, there was simply no way to manage a massive epidemic.
Because of that, the traditional method of dealing with it was always the same: simple, brutal, and heartless.
Wherever a plague broke out, they would simply seal the area off to prevent people from fleeing and spreading the contagion elsewhere. Those who managed to survive the isolation were the only ones deemed untainted.
"Cough... cough..."
A pale, feverish patient lay on a bed of dry straw, coughing incessantly. Other commoners, terrified of catching the sickness, stayed as far away as possible, but Stella didn't hesitate for a second.
She moved with an air of pure compassion.
Gently, she placed her hand upon the patient's forehead.
It was like winter ice melting under the first rays of spring. The patient's pallor vanished, replaced by a visible, healthy flush. The coughing ceased instantly, and the man stood up, suddenly full of life.
He looked at his hands, his face a mask of disbelief.
"I'm... I'm cured? HAHAHA, I'm not going to die!!"
He was ecstatic.
The surrounding commoners witnessed this and saw it for what it was: a miracle. To them, it was a divine act performed by the Saintess, and they immediately began shouting, praising the grace of the Mother God and exalting Stella's mercy.
With the plague being cured so swiftly, it meant many more could be saved from death. Consequently, the vast majority of these survivors would cast their lot with the Mother God cult.
The Alaya Church of the Kingdom of Graham remained completely oblivious to this surging tide of new faith. The kingdom's high officials had learned of the outbreak early on, and many of the Alaya Church's healers were forced to intervene. They were currently scrambling from one place to another, overwhelmed and exhausted.
Fortunately, the infected zones were far from the capital. For now, there was no immediate fear of the contagion reaching the city, so the royal family treated it as just another routine epidemic.
The fanatics of the Alaya Church seized this opportunity to embed themselves in the plague zones. While offering treatment and relief to the sick, they simultaneously preached fire and brimstone.
"The world is ignorant, greedy, arrogant, and base... The heavens and the earth are enraged! A divine punishment has been sent to cleanse your sins. But the Supreme God Alaya is merciful. All who believe in Alaya shall have their sins washed away..."
In this specific era and environment, doomsday rhetoric was incredibly potent. It was a classic tactic for religious manipulation, and it worked perfectly to incite the masses.
Many who received aid from the Alaya Church were moved to tears, feeling as though they had been given a second life. They flocked to the Alaya faith, and the church's proselytizing efforts saw remarkable success.
However,
As the plague continued its rapid expansion, the situation began to spiral out of control. Desperate for the Alaya Church's healing, crowds began to flee in all directions, scattering the sickness further.
The plague's spread became increasingly aggressive.
Left with no other options, the Kingdom of Graham resorted to draconic measures: they rounded up the infected, corralling them into massive quarantine camps where they were given meager aid and left to rot.
The outcome was always one of two things: either everyone succumbed to the disease, or a tiny fraction survived. But even then, fearing these survivors might be "patient zeros" carrying a mutated strain, the soldiers usually "escorted" them to their deaths anyway.
Those who couldn't be rounded up were driven out—pushed into the desolate wilderness or forced across the borders to fend for themselves. The logic was simple: the further away, the better.
As a result, Graham's plague spilled over the borders, igniting outbreaks in neighboring kingdoms. Yet, while the plague zones turned into living hellscapes, one specific corner of the Graham frontier remained inexplicably peaceful.
Saintess of the Mother God performed miracles, and the news spread like a wildfire.
Desperate souls, clutching their last shreds of hope, flocked to her. To their absolute shock, their sickness was truly cured.
When the Saintess brushed their brows with her compassionate hand, they wept in gratitude, spontaneously singing her praises. To many, the "gods" were nothing more than cold, distant stone statues.
But the Saintess who gave them a second life was a living, breathing woman. No matter how silver-tongued the Alaya Church missionaries were, their parables stood no chance against Stella.
Those touched by her grace became the most loyal followers of the Mother God, forming a protective circle around Stella and assisting her in healing even more of the suffering.
[ Sanctity and Purity · Daughter of Pristine White · Fragment: She was born bathed in divine grace, the finest gift the heavens ever bestowed upon the mortal realm. Her purity is untainted, her sanctity inviolable. When heaven sent its punishment, the heathens claimed it was our sin; she alone declared we were always innocent... ]
In the beginning, the Mother God cult consisted of a single chapel in a small town.
Gradually, inspired masses began erecting chapels across the land. The faith rippled outward, claiming over a dozen surrounding towns.
The cured did not leave. Instead, they stayed near the chapels, tilling the earth, building homes, and settling permanently on the land with devout hearts.
Almost overnight, the Mother God cult's followers swelled to hundreds of thousands. Among them were tens of thousands of hardcore believers. When those thousands gathered around Stella, their collective willpower was enough to shake the very foundations of the world.
Neighboring kingdoms were driving away plague-ridden refugees, but Stella alone welcomed them. Consequently, with the original Mother God chapel as its heart, the recovered exiles gradually coalesced into a massive new settlement.
The scale grew gargantuan.
Unlike the fragmented kingdoms surrounding them, this community—built upon the bedrock of tens of thousands of hardcore devotees and hundreds of thousands of refugees—forged an unshakable monolith of faith centered on Stella the Saintess.
By the time the nearby powers took notice, the Mother God cult's followers had swelled to over a million, posing a massive existential threat to the status quo.
The Kingdom of Graham, especially, felt the heat. The Mother God cult was blooming right inside Graham's own borders.
Yet, fortune favored the Saintess.
With the plague still rampaging, Graham's leadership knew that if the Mother God cult stopped absorbing and curing the sick, the contagion would explode back into their lands with catastrophic results.
And so, Graham was forced to let the cult expand. However, faced with this rapid growth, the Alaya Church finally felt a true sense of crisis.
The Pope hastily convened a secret council. The Graham royalty and the Church hierarchy reached a consensus: they would launch a crusade—a "Holy War" against the Mother God cult.
In truth, it was a "Holy War" in name only. It was a war for the monopoly on faith. Sosion remained trapped within the shattered Alaya Dimension, unable to offer his followers any real aid.
Ultimately, fearing the plague, Graham and the Alaya Church decided it was best to wait until the epidemic subsided before marching their troops.
The region surrounding the Mother God cult was currently a sea of infected refugees. Approaching it was a suicide mission; it would be a farce if the army collapsed from disease before even reaching the enemy.
History was littered with armies wiped out by pestilence on the march. Even with the fires of religious war stoking their hearts, the Alaya Church had no choice but to bide its time.
That wait lasted a full year.
Having been gifted ample time to integrate the refugees, the Mother God cult now boasted a million followers, with the number of hardcore devotees surging past one hundred thousand.
Over half of these fanatics congregated around the original chapel Stella had founded—a place now revered as the Holy Cathedral.
They tilled the land, built towns, and revitalized the economy, somehow managing to carve a thriving civilization out of the heart of a plague zone.
Now, the worst of the plague had passed. Having endured a full cycle of sweltering summer and freezing winter, the earth seemed to be blooming with fresh vitality once more.
When spies brought back word of the cult's hundred thousand hardcore believers, the Graham royals and the Church were shaken to their core. They could wait no longer. The crusade was called.
An army of thirty thousand—led by the Knights of Graham and the High Priests of the Alaya Church—marched out in a grand procession to crush the Mother God cult.
Such a massive military mobilization couldn't be hidden. Neighboring kingdoms watched the shifting tides with bated breath, wondering if the flames of war would spill across Graham's borders.
Yet, the course of the war defied everyone's expectations.
...
"Barkeeper, another round!"
The tavern was thick with the roar of hard-drinking men, a cacophony of voices rising through a haze of stale sweat and cheap ale. Laborers, craftsmen, and weary travelers were crammed together, shouting over one another.
"BURP—"
A hulking laborer let out a long, satisfied belch. "Thirty thousand men marched out," he barked, his voice booming over the din. "And they lost? How the hell is this Mother God cult that tough?"
Others chimed in immediately.
"Weren't they saying Alaya would protect the royal army? Turns out they couldn't handle some upstart goddess. I reckon Alaya is nothing but a—"
Before he could finish, a hand clamped firmly over his mouth. The big man's drunken bravado vanished instantly.
"SHH! Watch your tongue."
"But seriously, does anyone actually know how the battle went? All we hear is 'marched out' and 'defeated.' What about the casualties? How many did they kill? There's gotta be a body count!"
"If I knew, I'd have said it already. Kingdom's probably too ashamed to speak because they got their asses handed to them..."
In the corner,
A lone vagrant quietly sipped his malt liquor. He had just arrived from the frontier and had picked up several rumors along the way, though their credibility was questionable.
The word was:
The Knights of Graham and the High Priests of the Alaya Church, leading thirty thousand troops, had marched straight for the Mother God's Holy Cathedral.
They hadn't encountered a shred of resistance along the way. The cult's followers simply let the royal army sweep through, some even pointing out the quickest routes to the cathedral.
The army advanced at lightning speed.
The army met no obstacles.
The army reached the heart of the enemy's territory.
Under the blazing sun, thirty thousand elite soldiers stood before the gates of the Holy Cathedral. They came face-to-face with Saintess Stella. The Saintess spoke, declaring her wish for no bloodshed or sorrow. In that moment, the Knights of Graham and the High Priests of the Alaya Church simultaneously stripped off their armor and begged for forgiveness.
They had been touched.
They had joined the Mother God.
From then on, they followed only the Saintess.
If the rumors were true, the royal army hadn't actually been "defeated," because the battle never even started. Yet, they certainly hadn't won. In fact, the loss was far more devastating than a slaughter on the battlefield.
Still, rumors like these were best taken with a grain of salt. Believing them wholesale was just naïve. As he thought this, the wanderer recalled another story he'd heard on the road.
Word had it that once the royal army fell under the Saintess's influence, the Holy Son of Alaya had erupted in rage, denouncing them all as traitors. He reportedly tried to single-handedly strike down the Saintess, only to be subdued by the combined force of the Royal Knights and the High Priests.
He was later exiled back to the kingdom's interior.
The wanderer had encountered a dozen different versions of the story on his journey, each more dramatic than the last. But one undeniable fact remained: the Kingdom of Graham had lost its crusade.
History often works this way: the outcome is certain, but the events leading to it are shrouded in a mist of legend and theatricality, blurring the line between myth and reality.
As the solemn hymns echoed through the Holy Cathedral, Saintess Stella bestowed her blessings upon the faithful. Their collective, unshakable willpower began to manifest as an awakened form of subjective power.
One hundred thousand devout believers, their subjective powers awakened in unison, formed a tidal wave of conviction so immense it began to physically reshape reality itself.
Faced with such power, even the gods would tremble.
...
Inside the Holy Cathedral.
Stella stood bathed in warm sunlight, the picture of absolute devotion. Maidens of pristine purity chanted hymns, their voices soaring with a clarity that seemed to cleanse the very souls of those who heard them.
The Cathedral Guard stood tall and vigilant, their postures unyielding, sworn to let no enemy harm the Saintess. As the melodious hymns drifted through the air, the farmers and laborers felt a surge of vitality, their faces lighting up with happiness.
"What do you think?"
Visad asked Mei, his voice filled with an unprecedented sense of pride and fulfillment. "A scene like this is rare even in the grandest myths, wouldn't you say, Great One?"
Visad had never dared to dream he would one day live in a land as beautiful as a waking dream—and that he would be one of the architects who helped build it.
Here, people lived in peace. They were free from the fires of war, the ravages of plague, and the crushing weight of royal and aristocratic oppression.
Children played freely, their laughter ringing through the streets.
Farmers and workers saw the fruits of their labor, no longer haunted by the specter of starvation.
It was all so perfect it felt almost fragile, which was why Visad proudly told Mei that such a sight was a rarity even in legend.
As word of this haven spread, more and more people arrived, drawn by a longing for a better life. They began calling this land, blessed by Saintess Stella's compassion: Antut.
The Land of Miracles.
"High Priest, the influx of people is growing. If this continues, even expanding our farmland won't be enough to solve the food crisis."
An administrative official brought a pressing concern to Visad. As Stella's right-hand man, Visad was the Chief High Priest, his authority second only to the Saintess herself.
Under Stella's personal tutelage and with his awakened subjective power, a form of telekinesis, Visad had become a wise sage, capable of solving nearly any problem that came his way.
Visad pondered for a moment.
He took up a quill and wrote down a resolution.
"Our arable land is finite; we cannot reclaim the wilderness indefinitely. We must find ways to improve crop yields. Tomorrow, I will convene with the other priests to deliberate on a solution."
"High Priest, regarding the water sources..."
"..."
Late at night.
The flickering candlelight cast long, rhythmic shadows. Visad labored without complaint, losing himself in his work as he addressed the mountain of petitions and problems brought before him.
Though he was exhausted, he felt a sense of fulfillment and pride he had never known before. He was truly creating happiness for the people, and for the first time, his life had a clear, noble purpose.
"If I could have lived in a place like this before, I probably would never have turned to theft, nor joined the resistance just to fill my belly."
Visad often thought this, but he quickly dismissed the notion. The Saintess had told him that no one chooses their birth.
None of this had appeared out of thin air.
It had to be forged by their own hands.
Without that realization and resolve, even possessing power would only turn one into a tool of tyranny rather than a means to build a blessed life.
Looking back at his former self, Visad realized how much he had changed. Possessing faith, he was no longer base or lost; his heart was brimming with hope.
One day,
Visad learned that the Holy Son of Alaya had been imprisoned by the Church upon his return to the capital of Graham. The Holy Son had personally recounted how the royal army had converted during the war of faith, but the Church dismissed it as heresy and madness, locking him away.
Regarding this,
Visad merely remarked: "Though he stood on the opposite side, he was a knight acknowledged and blessed by the Saintess. He is a man worthy of respect."
While the Mother God cult flourished, the surrounding kingdoms trembled in fear. The Kingdom of Graham, in particular, had fallen into a slump after its failed offensive.
The wealth they had painstakingly gathered over years of recovery was nearly wiped out in a single stroke. They now understood that the Mother God cult was not a power they could hope to shake.
With Graham serving as a grim warning, the other kingdoms dared not act rashly. They could only watch helplessly as the Mother God cult expanded further, entrenching itself firmly across the borders of several major realms.
...
Several years later.
The Mother God cult's followers had surpassed several million, and this land had truly become a nation—especially once Visad and the others officially adopted the name Antut.
Antut, the Land of Miracles, was formally established.
Antut never initiated foreign wars, nor did it seize territory by force. To the followers, wherever a believer blessed by the Saintess walked, there was the soil of Antut.
In other words, Antut had no defined borders.
The surrounding kingdoms were powerless and dared not risk a military confrontation. But as the saying goes, "The tall tree catches the wind." When Antut's light grew too bright, it naturally drew the attention of the world's power players.
A few tiny nations playing house was one thing; the Tier 3 Void Wanderers, those bent on world conquest—didn't spare them a second thought. But now, Antut's meteoric rise was impossible for them to ignore.
They could no longer turn a blind eye.
Antut and the Graham-affiliated kingdoms were situated on the periphery of an empire—a vast, powerful realm ruled by a single Tier 3 Void Wanderer.
Its territory was ten times that of Graham. All the lands of Antut and the neighboring kingdoms combined didn't amount to half of this empire's size. Unlike those who treated the gods as playthings, this Void Wanderer clearly preferred the mantle of a king, crushing all who stood before his armies.
"Antut?"
"Yes, Your Majesty."
From atop his throne,
A black-haired, gold-eyed tyrant looked down upon his imperial subjects. Seated high above like a god, his overwhelming presence left the mortals below trembling in silence.
A faint glimmer of interest flickered across his face.
"Good. I've been a bit bored lately."
"Your Majesty's intention is..."
The tyrant's gaze was cold and haughty, and the skin at the corners of his eyes seemed to shimmer with faint dragon-like scales. His word was law: "Mobilize the legions. I will personally crush that insignificant upstart."
RUMBLE!
With those words,
A palace of unimaginable splendor erupted from the earth. A sprawling, magnificent structure forged entirely of solid gold, it radiated an ancient power and a sense of timeless history.
Then there was the terrifying, god-like power that loomed over the secular world.
The tyrant's crusade immediately drew the gaze of many powerful beings—Void Wanderers and Transcenders alike, every Tier 3 individual turned their eyes toward him.
They were rivals, constantly monitoring one another's movements.
When the tide of hundreds of thousands of troops, an endless ocean of iron-clad cavalry, crossed the desert to set foot on this land, the earth trembled. The kings of Graham and their neighbors were paralyzed with fear, praying desperately to their gods for aid.
The arrival of the Golden Ark was the final straw. From atop his throne, the tyrant's gaze alone was enough to shatter the will of those who would grovel at his feet.
The minor gods of those small nations dared not face him; they could only slink away.
In the distance,
Mei watched silently as the tyrant's army approached. The hundred-thousand-strong host was a juggernaut, crushing everything in its path, their ancient Ark a testament to the tyrant's grandeur.
As the Golden Ark neared Antut, the world assumed the outcome was a foregone conclusion. But on that day, a solemn, sacred hymn rose from the direction of Antut.
Inside the Holy Cathedral.
Stella chanted with unwavering devotion.
The resonant, majestic hymn echoed across the heavens and the earth. When the subjective powers of millions converged, their combined conviction and willpower triggered a reality known as a miracle.
In the midst of the hymn,
The iron-clad cavalry fell.
The Golden Ark crashed permanently to the earth.