522 Faith & Existence
After arriving in the holy capital of the Holy Knight Empire with Astoria, Vaan briefly paused. He intended to land on the palace grounds, but he soon realized he was on the city's southern side.
His spatial shift had taken them much further than he had initially intended.
This seemed like quite a big deal because the miscalculation wasn't small. Vaan could only leap five kilometers with each spatial shift, but he was off the mark by an extra four kilometers.
However, the main issue wasn't the large discrepancy in the miscalculation but the total distance he covered with that last spatial shift.
It was almost twice his present limit for a spatial shift.
In fact, Vaan had also noticed miscalculations in his last several spatial shifts since he had entered the vicinity of the holy capital. But the difference wasn't as significant as his last spatial shift.
His spatial shift had been significantly augmented.
"It's the Sun God! The Sun God has returned and graced us with his divine presence!"
"All hail the Sun God! May your eternal radiance continue to bless and guide us, Sun God!"
"Long live His Divinity! Peace and prosperity to the empire!"
Not long after people discovered Vaan and Astoria's arrival, they ended their activities. They quickly crowded around Vaan and Astoria, prostrating in worship with complete devotion.
At the same time, their sincere praises and prayers touched Vaan's soul; they were like music to his ears.
However, Vaan also knew he wasn't the type who sought attention and enjoyed satisfying his vanity. Thus, it was improbable for him to be moved by the people's praises and prayers.
After careful observation, Vaan discovered that people's sincere and devoted worship produced intangible and invisible pure energy.
More importantly, this intangible and invisible pure energy automatically flowed into his body and washed over his soul. As such, his soul experienced a sense of cleansing.
It felt pleasant and soothing.
When Vaan acquired the Fire Dragon God's inheritance and reached the peak of the Demigod rank in his dragon soul, he felt like he had hit an absolute and unshakeable limit.
No matter what he did, the bottleneck would not budge.
However, to his pleasant surprise, the unknown pure energy could loosen his bottleneck, even if it was only by a meager fraction.
It gave him hope and direction for reaching the divine rank.
"This is faith energy... the power of faith is required to advance to the divine rank, Vaan thought as his eyes sparkled.
Nevertheless, a short moment later, he frowned.
'No, that's not right. It shouldn't be the only answer.
Although faith seemed like the answer, Vaan couldn't help but feel like the truth was much simpler than that.
There should be more than one answer.
If the power of faith was important to divine beings, would the Great Devils throw away the lives of their devoted followers at Pangea as they pleased? Or did the Great Devils reach a stage where such faith was no longer important?
Most likely, collecting faith energy wasn't the only way to achieve the divine rank.
There must be another way.
Existence.
The entirety of Chaos was built upon the power of existence. It was the only power that could oppose nihility.
Everything was existent and used the power of existence to continue existing.
'In order to become a higher level of existence, I must be acknowledged by other existences. People don't necessarily need to worship me; they just need to know me. And the more, the better,' Vaan speculated.
However, simply knowing him wasn't enough. People also had to believe he was powerful – that was the best kind of acknowledgment he needed to advance to a higher stage of existence.
That said, even Vaan could not guess how many people needed to acknowledge his existence before his peak Demigod-rank soul naturally advanced to the Divine rank.
As such, reaping the faith energy of devote worshippers was still easier compared to the acknowledgment of god knows how many people.
After all, he had already become the symbol of an existing religious belief with millions of worshippers.
"Vaan? Is something wrong?" Astoria creased her brows with doubt.
For some reason, Vaan had suddenly paused in deep thought. His changing expressions proved something was on his mind.
Nevertheless, Vaan shook his head.
"There's nothing wrong. I was just figuring some things out," Vaan smiled before suggesting,
"Let us walk to the palace together."
"Is that so? Alright." Astoria readily agreed.
Although she didn't get to spend a night of stargazing with Vaan, a leisure stroll together was also not bad.
She was simply content with just his accompanying presence.
Alas, Vaan had other ideas for suggesting to walk back to the palace together. He needed a deeper study of the faith energy and its effectiveness.
Along the way, many people paused their activities to offer their worship.
The casual and non-believers only lowered their heads to acknowledge Vaan's presence. On the other hand, the devoted believers prostrated on the ground and offered their most sincere praises and prayers.
More often than not, the most devoted believers were people who were also in the more desperate and poorest of situations.
Because they had nothing, they could only cling to hope for miracles.
"Your Divinity, I beg of you! Please save my child! I know I have nothing to offer my tainted body and soul... but if you are truly divine, please bless us with some of your divine miracles! As long as you save my child is saved, I will be your most devoted follower!"
Along the way, a desperate mother with messy black hair and ragged clothes broke away from the crowd and obstructed Vaan and Astoria's path. She knelt down and pleaded with a malnourished little boy in her arms despite the rising discontent from the rest of the crowd.
"Fuck! Who do you think you are, woman?! How dare you doubt the Sun God and block His Divinity's path!"
"Someone, quickly remove this filthy wench from the road at once! Throw her into the pen where she belongs! Don't let her upset the Sun God!"
Many people were quick to voice their outrage without compassion for the mother-son duo.
Although they seemed heartless, they were just afraid of getting implicated if the mother-son duo angered the Sun God. They feared Vaan's power after seeing his capability in the past.
And as such, they didn't hesitate to be ruthless to others to save themselves.
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