A few moments after I somewhat jokingly talked about the best way to mobilize a city's guards was to become that city's deity, Riezel's facial expression became contemplative for a moment. She was thoughtfully considering something that to her and her experience was quite odd about the city of Jasper and this world. After a few moments in thought, she expressed her thoughts in words.
"What sort of deities exist in this world? I've only been here a handful of times and always at the behest of the National Arcane Academy, so I don't know all that much about religion on this planet." She asked, only for the two of us to see a change to the mental text boxes we both possessed thanks to "System access". We both silently read the changed text boxes and upon reading them I began to smile.
[The kingdom of Vanheim is an atheistic state. Other societies have deities, and this planet's star has a goddess, but the kingdom that you are currently here is an atheistic state. This is not out of dogma or anything like that it's just that this world's deities both aren't interested in Vanheim specifically and also aren't particularly interested in worshipers more generally. Most of them are divine retirees who tired of deific politics and chose to elevate their greatest servants to quasi-godhood to take their place, and then came here to rest and peacefully exist for the rest of time.]
[Beyond that, this particular planet is not the birthplace of any of the deities who reside here with the sole exception of Raul. Raul as an awakened grand adonis is a full-on deity every bit as powerful as other youthful gods. That said he is one who for the moment is restricted to specific divine domains and subdomains, most of which differ from the domains available to regular deities at around Raul's level of power.]
"So I really am a true god, in addition to being a grand adonis? Excellent that will no doubt make things easier. I won't be tricking anyone into thinking that I am a god, I will be opening their eyes to the truth concerning my divinity." I said, to myself and my companions. There was a wide smirk on my face as I spoke. Riezel's eyes also widened as she read the message.
"He's a full god. Goodness... The old myths about grand adonises were unclear and I had never met one before today so I didn't know... That is both incredible and scary." She softly and quietly whispered. I knew everything she knew about gods, and fortunately for me, that was a fair deal. Possessing her knowledge allowed me to more fully appreciate this moment and also was the means for me to understand things about the nature of divinity that without her I would not have known.
Vanheim being an atheistic state coupled with the fact that I came from a small town in the countryside meant that I actually hadn't known about deities until my own apotheosis. Now I understood a fair deal about them, thanks to Riezel whose knowledge was a great boon to my own thanks to her tremendous amount of experience in other worlds and dimensions.
Deities were, like grand adonises and grand venuses, a type of higher being. On average they were stronger than archdevils and demon lords which were the types of higher beings who ruled over vast stretches of Hell, the dimensional birthplace of Riezel.
Deities were the sort of higher beings who had the most freedom and widest spectrum as far as powers go. Grand adonises were innately linked to the domains and subdomains of life, fertility, lust, passion, sexuality, love, and joy and other deities were not. It seemed that assuming Riezel's knowledge was more or less accurate, that grand adonises with followings actually had some innate advantages over normal deities with followings, with the greatest examples being our ties to love, joy, and passion magnifying the intensity with which we were worshiped by our worshipers. I also knew that I possessed access to at least one domain that grand adonises did not have ties to; nature.
As a grand adonis I had the potential to fairly easily gain worshipers. My powers allowed me to be incredibly awe-inspiring if I wanted to be, and at the moment that's what I was planning to go for. I intended to build a following, or rather a religion, that worshiped me as a deity of civilization, heroism, life, and love. I even knew how I was going to that. My plan brought a smile to my face.
I gazed at the scrying table even as my back continued to be massaged and began to speak.
"Tell me about religions. If I am going to become the patron god of Jasper, which is the plan, then I need to have a better understanding of religions." I asked, speaking specifically to the system. The second after I finished speaking I watched as the text boxes in my mind's eye began to change.
[Religions for deities are the surest ways for them to grow in power. The reason why grand adonises grow in power if they are worshiped is that they are gods. They grow as surely as other gods do when properly worshiped. A religion, from the point of view of a mortal or even an extraplanar lesser being like a demon or devil, refers to the collection of beliefs and practices that stem from the worship of gods and other higher beings.]
[Properly building up a religion is a lengthy process even for a deity. That said, building up a religion is essential to becoming a stronger god and if you want to purify, and especially if you want to positively utilize, this world's dungeons it is in all likelihood necessary for you to build up faiths that are devoted to you around this world. Religions require believers, rituals, for you to answer prayers, for you to gain clerics, and a number of other things that will be challenging and time-consuming but if you do so you will gain an excellent route to more power, including eventually unlocking the other powers you possess that are still too much for your body to handle.]
I chuckled when I finished reading the messages and realized that that'd alert Riezel to the strange truth that I was only just starting out as far as my powers went. When she finished reading the message she turned to me and gave me a confused look. I chuckled and was silent for a moment while I considered how to break this news to her. When I was ready I sighed and began to speak.
"So... It's unclear precisely what all I am, but I am more than a grand adonis. Among other things, I appear to be an anael? I possess some anael powers already, including domain level ties to nature. I don't have access to the full suite of anael abilities, but I possess a few of them. Some of them I fully and consciously unlocked when we had sex, including an aura of joy and the ability to perform one resurrection of a willing soul a day, which is one of those utterly reality breaking powers." I told her, chuckling. She leaned back in her seat when I finished speaking.
"The anael... The National Arcane Academy really just fucked me didn't they? I can't believe those assholes sent me after you, a creature who's power is just unimaginable. I... Fuck." She uttered, as some part of her broke upon me revealing my true and mysterious, even to me, nature. She began speaking again after a few moments of contemplation.
"Do you even fully know what the anael is? Oh, wait... You seem to know everything I know, so I guess I shouldn't try to lecture you." She asked, before basically answering her own question. I nodded at her and began to grin.
"Now you're getting it! Annoyingly enough I didn't get any of the really big anael powers when we had sex, but the ones I did get were handy. I couldn't resurrect the dead at all until after you and I had sex, but now I can, and in time my limit on how many dead people I can resurrect a day will increase. Nor did I have any fun joy-based abilities. Which I do now. And which will be the key to us enacting my plan." I told her, grinning as I spoke.
"Speaking of which... You now know the plan. It's to become the deity of Jasper and thus gain the support of the government in purifying the Emerald Cavern. I suppose we ought to begin that plan shouldn't we?" I asked while raising my hand and readying myself for the next few hours. I planned to be quite busy. A portal appeared in a corner of the room and I glanced at my companion. On the other side of the portal was an empty alleyway near the keep of the baron of Jasper.
A few minutes after those sentences were uttered, a pair of strangers approached the heavily protected manor of Baron Gomez. They were stopped and approached by a single guard who demanded that they identify themselves when they approached the place's outermost gate.
The pair consisted of the tallest man that the guard had ever seen and an incredibly beautiful woman dressed like an unarmed ranger. When the guard stood right in front of the pair, the man gently smiled and began to speak.
"Hello, good sir! I am a traveling healer, and this lovely woman is my companion. We had heard that Baron Gomez's daughter is seemingly suffering from some sort of mysterious malady and you see I was just hoping that I could speak to the baron myself and offer my services. I've traveled the world and have identified and even cured countless strange afflictions." The man replied, before beginning to list off various illnesses and how he had cured them, guided by a question he asked the system.
As he spoke he activated one of his newest powers and the guard began to feel incredibly fond of the man, independent of the man's words. The guard was feeling the effects of an aura of joy and love that the man was emanating, which made the guard incredibly happy and made him view the man in front of him with the same esteem and love as he would view a beloved family member.
"Hmm... Well normally the baron isn't fond of accepting strangers into his keep but you are an experienced healer. I... Give me a few minutes. I'll go and see if I can't convince the baron's staff to let you in. If there's even a chance you can heal Sofia then it's worth letting you try." The guard replied, with a smile, before gesturing for the two figures to step back and wait for him to come back. The healer accepted this and with a gentle smile he and his companion did as they were asked.
The guard ran off to head into the manor and speak to the baron's staff. As he did the self-identified healer chuckled and refused to leave anything to chance. The guard reached the baron's staff and found they were all together, idly having a mid-day meal. When the guard spoke to them about the stranger he found that they were all in pleasant moods and were surprisingly easy to convince. This was because of the influence of the healer himself who was messing with their minds from a distance for the sake of moving this along.
Parts of the healer's plan were going to be trickier to pull off and in one case required something being left almost fully to chance so the deity didn't feel bad about making the parts of this that he could more easily control proceed smoothly. Especially since with his range of powers he could actually do this much more nefariously and just fill everyone's minds with false memories of him and convince them that they had always worshiped him but instead, he was determined to do this justly and to actually earn the worship of those he sought to help.
Within minutes the guard returned to the healer and his companion and ushered them into the baron's manor. The three of them proceeded excitedly into the estate and were quickly led to a grand chamber where a regally dressed nobleman with a look of constant concern was seated on an excellently crafted wooden chair fit for noblemen. Which was fitting, given that the man was the baron in charge of the city of Jasper.
