Age of Adepts

The process of creating the powers of faith was extremely wondrous. In fact, the very existence of faith was such an intangible concept.

Due to their constant conflict against deities of all sorts, there were quite a few among the adepts who had interest in the research of deities. Through their comprehensive and detailed experiments, they had already started to figure out the methods in which the gods communicated with their followers. They had uncovered the fact that all this seemed to be related to brain nodes known as Channels of Faith.

Ordinary beings upon converting to a god's believer would be left with a strange brand upon their soul by that god. This brand was like a mystical, magical switch. As long as the believer was in a state of devout prayer, it would be able to construct a narrow yet stable channel of faith between the believer and their god, thus allowing for the transfer of faith power.

Of course, this channel of faith went both ways.

When the believer devotedly opened up his mind and soul, his entire being and soul would be bared before the gods. However, the gods simply had no interest in understanding or researching the thoughts and secrets of an ordinary creature!

Through large numbers of experiments and amounts of research, the adepts realized that all they had to do was find a way to shut off part of a believer's brain to cut off their connection node with their god. That way, a simple Bewitch spell would be all it took to trick a believer into changing their faith.

However, this method of shutting off and sealing part of the brain was a real test of an adept's skill.

If the area of the brain being sealed was off by even a little bit, tremendous damage would be inflicted upon the victim's intelligence and capacity for rational thought; if the seal ended up working, the victim would be rendered an idiot. The location in the brain of the area to be sealed, and how big the area was supposed to be, were all factors that varied from person to person and from god to god. Thus, everything had to be slowly tested and calculated out.

Mary herself naturally couldn't master such high-grade magical knowledge, nor did she possess such refined magical techniques. That was why her attempt to Embrace a Second Grade female elf was mostly relying upon the racial abilities of a vampire.

In her dozens of experiments before, some high-grade elves had been coincidentally modified by her into blood elves. Sadly, this female elf captain was destined to cause her efforts to be in vain.

Who knew if it was because of her extraordinarily resilient Spirit, or because of her devotion to her faith. At any rate, a series of waves erupted from within the elf's soul flux just as the blood cocoon was about to engulf that faith node perfectly.

These waves were light and powerless and were instantly sealed off by the entangling blood cocoon. However, it indirectly alerted a strange existence tens of thousands of kilometers away.

Saoirse's divine manifestation, who was whispering with Goddess Meve in the Moonlight Temple, suddenly had a change in expression. She merely stopped speaking and turned to look in a direction southwest, silently sensing for something.

"Sister Saoirse, what is it?" Goddess Meve asked confusedly.

Saoirse hesitated for a moment and then betrayed a trace of anger upon her perfect and delicate face.

"At this moment, a high-grade believer cut off her faith connection with me."

Saoirse said in a very casual and vague manner. An ordinary mortal might not even be able to understand the meaning behind those words. However, the one in front of Saoirse was no other person than Moonlight Goddess Meve, a deity much like herself. Meve instantly picked up on the multiple critical points in Saoirse's words.

A high-grade believer...node of faith cut off.

An elf only needed to choose to believe in a particular god, and through some holy prayer ceremonies, the god would be able to leave a special brand within their souls successfully. Many believers who were favored and cherished by the gods could even materialize this brand and turn it into an extremely striking stigma.

Those who possessed stigmata were always watched over by a god!

Even within the system of spiritualists, many god messengers couldn't materialize stigmata. Only some believers who were notably favored by the gods could possess one.

Moreover, such a holy brand could only be wiped away with two methods once implanted.

One was through the death of the believer, and the other was the conversion of their faith.

However, both of these possibilities rarely happened upon Garan.

First, conversion.

A forest elf utterly abandoning their faith for Elven God Saoirse to believe in another god. This…this was practically impossible on Garan. Even Moonlight Goddess Meve's god messenger had to be a shallow believer of Saoirse, the chief goddess, even as she fanatically believed in Meve.

It was almost an unfaltering law of the elven pantheon!

No human or god dared to infringe upon this law.

That was why something like conversion couldn't ever possibly happen.

Then, the only possibility left was the believer dying.

However, if the high-grade believer had indeed died, then their holy brand should also have crumbled instantly, rather than being 'cut off' as Saoirse had mentioned! Didn't that mean that the faith node still existed, but Saoirse was no longer able to use that faith node to communicate with the believer?

No god would tolerate such a matter!

That was why Saoirse's face was already filled with unconcealable emotion, even as she shut her eyes to sense for what had happened.

No one knew when, but twenty-seven such occurrences had already happened one after the other.

The only difference was that Saoirse's true form had been residing high in her god kingdom when it happened before. It had been hard for her to sense this abnormality through the plane barrier clearly.

Gods might be omnipotent, but they weren't omniscient!

Gods might naturally be able to instantly pick up on everything happening to the believers that they were paying attention to. However, when dealing with tens of thousands of ordinary believers, the gods could only afford momentary awareness when they went to temples or altars to pray to them.

Of course, this also required the believer to do something that could attract the god's attention! Otherwise, even the most diligent deity had no interest in paying attention to the thoughts of an ant; no, a sheep.

Yet, it was precisely this phenomenon that caused it to be the darkest under the lamp itself. Saoirse was shocked to find that twenty-seven–no, twenty-eight–of her followers had mysteriously lost their faith connection with her. However, Saoirse was exceedingly sure that they had not died.

It was fortunate that she had cast down a holy will because of the matter of her believer being tortured. Otherwise, this matter of her believer being 'stolen' from her would probably have taken far longer before being uncovered.

Saoirse nodded at Meve and then moved to return to her main temple without any hesitation.

Here, with the massive amounts of faith power that had been gathered upon the idol over thousands of years, Saoirse could more efficiently utilize her godly senses and power.

Saoirse instantly flew into a rage upon feeling out!

An incident involving many deaths of her believers had occurred near an elven city known as Skywater City near the west coast of Garan. Goddess Saoirse went berserk upon sensing the faith nodes disappearing and collapsing one after another!

There was no need for any gestures. A simple thought from her, and the entire main temple lit up with blinding holy radiance. From a distance, it looked as if the main temple had been coated in a layer of golden light. It was shining, pure and holy.

All elves within the temple district, be they near or far, immediately knelt upon witnessing this sight and began religiously chanting words of praise for the chief elven god, Saoirse.

Saoirse's temple priests were the only ones to move upon sensing the abnormality of this golden light, hurrying to the temple and kneeling before the towering idol of their goddess.

Skywater City…elven believers being massacred.

The few temple priests looked at each other in the face of Saoirse's divine decree.

Elven God Saoirse had never given such a clear holy decree for the defense of one specific location in all of history. The priests could also vaguely sense the fury of the goddess through Saoirse's cold and chilling tone.

They didn't dare hesitate. The priests quickly hurried out of the temple and went to contact the high-grade believers of Skywater City.

They might have powerful and vast divine power, but they were helpless in stopping a slaughter occurring tens of thousands of kilometers away. All they could do was pass this news to the elven garrison of Skywater, inform the nearby high-grade believers, and have them become the avengers of the Goddess, killing all evildoers that dared enrage the gods!

Sadly, the four god messengers of Elven God Saoirse were all occupied. Two were stationed upon the frontlines of the south coast, one was stationed on Faen Continent, and the last was guarding the elven goddess; none of them could be easily mobilized. Thus, the priests could only communicate with the local priests through the temples and altars, hoping to find a way to mobilize high-grade believers with immense power.

And who'd have known? After a series of intense arguments and shouting, they managed to find the most appropriate person for the job.

Eijae, the Spear of Vengeance!

She was a female elven warrior that had been able to advance to become the rare Spear of Vengeance profession within the kingdom.

Female elves had always been weak and frail in everyone's opinion. They weren't precisely unbearably fragile, but compared to the females of other races, they were somewhat slender and delicate and gave off the feeling that they might shatter upon touch.

This Spear of Vengeance Eijae might be a female elf, but she had none of the usual frailty of an ordinary female elf. Instead, she gave off an impression of masculine toughness and fearlessness.

Her appearance wasn't ugly. It couldn't possibly be ugly.

However, the way she dressed was utterly different from an ordinary female elf. She went for a brutal and savage aura, not unlike the Amazons. She wore carved black leather armor along with a girdle soaked in sweat on her waist. That was all that she wore.

No earrings or pendants, no necklaces or headbands, no bracelets or flowers; in conclusion, she didn't like anything that ordinary female elves fancied, dressing like an Amazon warrior and bringing her favorite throwing spears everywhere she went.

Indeed, her preferred weapon wasn't an elven longbow, nor was it an elven longsword or saber. They were throwing spears filled with murderous aura.