World Keeper

Chapter 782: Between A Rock And A Hard Place

I gave a small sigh as I watched the meeting between the two groups coming to a close. It was nice that they did not break into armed conflict during the meeting, but I also couldn’t help but question internally if Udona might have gone a bit overboard with her demonstration of a god’s might. That said, it had been the other party that invited this demonstration and set the rules for it, so I could not really lay the blame on her shoulders. Even if she did take great joy in watching the Lord of Blackstone shudder at the might of a god.

“It looks like we don’t really have anything to worry about on this front. Speaking of… how strong is that stone father?” I asked, glancing over towards Aurivy and Accalia. The lycan goddess perked her ears up, smiling as she noticed my gaze.

“That’s actually really interesting! It’s like Udona said, it gets stronger every time the siphon happens! But at the same time, its power diminishes over time because it is reliant on the ‘faith’ of its people. Because of this little combination, it’s about as strong as a god in its home territory, but it is unable to leave the vicinity of the crystal spire. Without the constant mana siphons sustaining its existence, it’s nothing but the shadow of a thought.”

“It’s worse than that.” Aurivy chuckled, a small grin creeping over her lips. “From what I can see, this isn’t the first ‘stone father’. If the stone father at any point leaves the homeland or begins acting against the beliefs of the ‘Ashenborn’, a new one appears in the next round of siphons. So not only is the stone father afraid to leave the territory it governs, it’s afraid to act against the wishes of the Ashenborn. After all, it probably saw its predecessor dying right before its eyes.”

“How do you figure that?” I looked at her curiously, and she winked towards me. With a snap of her fingers, the screen changed to display a hulking behemoth of stone, towering over a hundred meters tall while sitting in an obsidian throne. Ashen-skinned dwarves worshiped the creature, though it maintained its stony facade.

Just as I was about to ask Aurivy why she was showing me this scene, the viewpoint shifted to the back of the throne, where words were carved into the surface. There were rows of text, and it took me quite some time to fully decipher it even with my Keeper advantage.

‘I don’t know how many came before me. If you’re reading this, then I failed to maintain my identity, and you are the new me. There are some rules you need to know, or you’ll end up just like every me before. First… never let them see this. If they see it, you’ll become like me, and someone else will replace us.’

‘Second rule, never leave this room. The Stone Father governs the world from his throne. It is our duty to be an unchanging mountain for our people. If you leave the room, you will lose your identity.’

‘Third rule, memorize the doctrine that the small ones preach. That is your identity. Plan all your actions with that identity in mind. If they suspect you are different from what they believe, you will lose your identity.’

‘Fourth rule, every me that came before is also me, and every me that will come after is still me. However, when we lose our identity, we cease to be ‘me’. This is important. If one of us leaves, that is no longer ‘me’, and that person was merely an agent of chaos pretending to be me until the new ‘me’ appears. This is the only way to protect our identity.’

‘Fifth rule, and this is the one that you must absolutely never break. You are the ‘one true god’. You must not allow the idea of other gods to exist in the minds of the small ones. If they believe in other gods, our existence will end forever. There can only be one creator, or we will be undone.’

Beneath that, there was another line written in a different style, likely by a different version of the ‘stone father’. ‘Any new ‘me’, leave a mark to serve as a warning to those of us in the future. I shall be the first.’

There was a long row of scratches numbering in the dozens beneath that line of text. I felt a small shudder at the idea that each scratch represented a generation of the existence known as ‘stone father’. “Wow… I suddenly feel sorry for that guy.”

“I know, right?” Accalia chuckled, shaking her head. “There’s not much that can be done, though. His very existence is going to be antagonistic towards us. That law about only one deity means that he’d wage a full-blown war of extinction if he learned that there were other gods roaming the world. That skirmish Petra walked in on would just be a Sunday stroll in comparison.”

I gave a small nod, stroking my chin in thought. “I’m not sure how we can preserve that race. I’d rather not go gung-ho straight to an extinction event if possible, but religion is a tricky thing to navigate around. Especially when the other party’s religious figure is there in the flesh… stone, whatever. It’d probably be easy for me to defeat it myself, but that would only stir up the hatred of the dwarves even more.”

“You could disprove the foundation of its existence?” Accalia suggested, but I simply shook my head at that.

“Can’t work. Even in my old world, there were people who believed completely idiotic ideas when presented with countless pieces of evidence to the contrary. Right up until I died, there was a group of people that believed the world was flat, or that an entire continent didn’t exist, or even that birds were just puppets of the government.” Accalia’s eyes went wide at that last one, though I shook my head again. “Doesn’t matter. Either way, that’s what people will believe even in the absence of evidence.”

“Now, take a fact that this group has existed with for hundreds of generations, and tell them that it is a lie. It’d be like trying to tell the Lycans that you weren’t real. They know you are, they’ve seen you and interacted with you, and were born knowing you. So no, I don’t think that we can get around them simply by trying to disprove the credibility of their stone father.” I let out a long sigh when I said that, looking to the other two for ideas.

“The only way I can think of is for us to convert the faith of the majority of those dwarves without letting the stone father know. It’s not the best scenario, planning to wipe him out, but his existence sort of hinges on him being the only god. It’s either that… or buying their race and making Tubrock their patron deity in the system. If the entire race suddenly learns of Tubrock at once, they might envision the stone father as him, robbing the energy away from Tubrock and leaving them more open to manipulation.”

Accalia shook her head at Aurivy’s suggestion. “Then we’re back to the same problem that Dale talked about, I think. Their beliefs are quite literally set in stone. Even if Tubrock became present in all of their minds, they may simply dismiss him as an unwanted thought. I do think your other idea could work, it would just be tricky. Teaching the dwarves without alerting the stone father, or having them report back… worse yet, they’re mana-resistant so it’s harder to simply brainwash them.”

Accalia groaned, bringing her hands up to grab the sides of her head. “Ugh! Why does this have to be so hard?! Why are our only options to either kill an ancient pseudo-deity tormented by the very law of his existence through cultural manipulation, or a mass genocide waiting to happen? Can we just pretend they don’t exist like the Solii?”

Aurivy chuckled, leaning back on the couch to stare up at the ceiling. “Sadly, that would mean abandoning the rainbow-eyed humans. If word gets out to the dwarves, and a big war starts, we will have to make a choice. Do we sever ties, or subjugate them through force? Keep in mind that they live around the central pillar. The only ones of us that can really go all out in a fight in that area are Udona and Irena, and they’re not the type that would be fond of erasing an entire species. Anyone else tries and causes collateral damage… and that floor is sealed for at least a month, maybe a century depending on the scale of damage.”

I gave a small nod, glancing towards the screen. “And if we want to simply subjugate them instead of wiping them out, we have to be even more careful. If they realize we’re trying to avoid damaging the crystal, they may attack it themselves simply as a last resort to spite us. In many ways, this is a no-win scenario. I’d suggest a forced relocation, get them to their own area, but you won’t find another planet with the atmospheric conditions of that floor. That’s what makes Fyor so unique in the first place.”

Aurivy tilted her head at that. “Relocation might work, actually.” She said, holding her chin and furrowing her brow. “I mean, they’re already energy beings. Air pressure and shifts in gravity might be uncomfortable, but it would never be lethal for them. The problem is their food chain, since their diet consists of products that can only grow in high mana concentrations. But if we relocate them to an uninhabited world, and seed that world with a few veins of that Magicite, we should be able to get the right kinds of crops to grow.”

“Would I need to buy the Magicite through the system to do that, or do you think Tubrock could handle it with his domain?” I looked over for their opinions, though Aurivy shook her head.

“Tubrock can’t do it alone. Not easily, at least. If it were just picking the vein up and moving it, he could probably handle it, but seeding the vein throughout a planet would be a lot harder on him. We’ll need to get Ashley involved with the Maps domain to assist.”

“Wait, since when does Ashley have the Maps domain?” I blinked in confusion at Aurivy’s sudden reveal, though she simply chuckled.

“A while now, actually. Well, not really her. One of her subordinates has it. It’s not really a figure that you pay attention to, so I’m not surprised you never noticed.” I couldn’t help but raise a brow at that, but Aurivy simply waved the subject off. “Anyways, the Map domain would make it a lot easier. Combine it with the Game domain, and you’ve got a good trinity right there. Though, I’m not sure if you can make a trinity with multiple gods… I guess we’ll find out?”

I let out a small sigh, deciding that I’d need to investigate the matter of this new Maps deity later. “I suppose. So, the plan is to relocate them en masse if they begin to go into a war of extinction?” I asked, making sure that the three of us were all on the same page. We’d have to run this by the others as well, but this was the best that we seemed able to come up with for the moment.

“I’d be fine with doing it now, honestly.” Aurivy admitted with a shrug. “But waiting to see how it pans out works, too. After all, we might get a surprise and they somehow accept the new information easily? We just need to make sure that everyone involved in the plan is aware of their part before we hit the big red button. Also, we need to find a world for them to live on. Obviously not one of ours, given the circumstances, so we’ll need one of the uninhabited worlds that people have been looking up through planar exploration. It shouldn’t be hard to buy the coordinates off of the centaurs.”

I was about to ask why we wouldn’t just use the demons, before realizing that the demons had apparently stopped their random exploration projects long ago. I wonder if they decided that they have enough space for now, or maybe being able to actually explore space is encouraging them to expand outwards?

As it stood now, the only race really focusing on planar exploration over stellar expansion were the centaurs of Sher Dien. Their bodies weren’t quite built for long, enclosed voyages, so they have simply been seeking out new worlds through their own means. I even got a world off of them at one point in the past, though I did so under a disguise by teaching them how to train the Saint of Five Lights class. That world was eventually given to Tsubaki and Dana for their personal use, or else I would bring it up for this…

With a sigh, I nodded towards Aurivy. “Hopefully, Tryval can help with those negotiations, and making sure that the mana-enriched plants grow on the new world.” On the bright side, we managed to settle on a decision that did not involve mass genocide. Though, it was still likely to cause the death of the ‘stone father’ if they were moved away from the crystal pillar. There was unfortunately little that we could do to prevent that one.

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