Mythology: Spiritual Ruler

Since the war outside Mount Olympus ended, the world finally returned to its former peace.

The sun and the moon rotated in the sky, and the world was changing. Except for the gods who occasionally came and went, the earth suddenly became quiet. Perhaps on another level, there were many changes, but at least for mortals, when the night of strange phenomena passed, nothing similar happened again.

So gradually, as it had been going on before, the footprints of mankind continued to spread to the entire earth with the passage of time. At the same time, churches that believed in the gods began to fill the place.

At first, it was Hestia and Themis. They were composed of those who were firm in their beliefs and willing to swear to open up the wilderness for mankind and protect the sacred fire, as well as warriors who were willing to listen to the teachings of the goddess of justice and eradicate evil and eliminate injustice in the world. They received the guidance of the two goddesses and decided to spread the will of the goddess to more people, so they compiled scriptures, divided powers, wandered between different city-states, and preached the teachings of the gods.

And their behavior was undoubtedly very successful. In this era when information exchange was inconvenient and humans were separated, this organized and large-scale spread of faith was like a dimensionality reduction attack, and soon occupied the mainstream thought in quite a few places.

Even according to the scope of faith defined in advance by the gods, many monarchs of city-states promoted certain beliefs in the name of the king after seeing the gods, but they still had no resistance under this church organization. Obviously, compared with the empty description of the greatness of the gods, the behavior of those clergy is more attractive.

They made up stories about the deeds of the gods and beautified the thoughts of the gods into doctrines. It happened that the two goddesses, both in thought and behavior, were in line with human understanding of beauty. So even though no city listed the two goddesses as orthodox objects of worship because of the division among the gods, it still did not affect their influence among humans that was greater than that of every Olympian god.

At the beginning, this was not taken seriously by the gods, and few gods paid attention to this kind of communication between mortals. They still followed past experience and simply revealed their existence by showing miracles in front of mortals. But gradually, when the names of the two goddesses spread more and more widely among humans, the gods who finally noticed it suddenly realized that perhaps their casual approach saved time and energy, but it seemed too backward.

The primitive worship of nature and power was ultimately no match for convincing ideas and real clergy, so in just a few decades, large and small cults were established. The gods chose their own representatives in the world according to their preferences, or simply chose the kings who believed in their own city-states, and then ordered them to learn the church of the two goddesses and spread their names.

From then on, the power structure that had just been established among humans changed again. Like the bronze humans, the clergy who served the gods became an indispensable member of it. Although unlike the previous human generation, the priests held absolute power, their identities were still extraordinary.

Before that, a small incident in the middle brought about something that greatly accelerated the process of evolution. After all, in this still wild era, power is what humans value most.

Fortunately, because of this little thing, believers in gods also have the possibility of mastering power.

About ten years after the end of the God War, at a banquet to welcome Apollo's return, the goddess of wisdom announced a special discovery to the gods. She claimed that she had invented another special energy by observing the magic net, analyzing the elements, and finally using divine power as the cornerstone.

It is not powerful, and even seems weaker than divine power, because it is a weakening of divine power. However, this does not diminish its value, because it is a power that can be used by gods in the mortal world, and even more than gods.

As long as this power is passed on to mortals, and then a structure similar to witchcraft is "fixed" on the magic net, then any human, no matter whether his "qualification" is mediocre or extraordinary, can master this extraordinary power with the help of the existence of gods and magic nets.

Compared to the path that requires self-training and sufficient talent to achieve, this system that only depends on whether the gods favor or not, has no talent restrictions, and has a natural upper limit is undoubtedly the most satisfying to the gods - after all, they still remember the mortal who swung the sword at the son of the Sea King.

If there are more such people, the gods may not be as comfortable as they are now in the mortal world. But they can't ban this power, because the humans spread across the land are no longer like the previous generation, and they can't be easily protected because they live in one place. If they can't master the power to fight against the beasts in the wilderness, then the deterrence of the holy fire alone can't expand their numbers.

Therefore, the power named "divine art" by the goddess is particularly important, so the gods did not hesitate to ask Athena for the secret of the holy power, and praised the goddess' wisdom, and then developed various special divine arts based on their innate authority.

As for the areas outside of innate authority... this belongs to the blind spot of the innate gods. Therefore, apart from the help of Athena, the gods simplified some common divine arts by taking advantage of the omnipotent nature of their divine power. However, the "holy power models" mastered by different gods often have huge differences and have various different functions.

When this power was introduced to the human world, this difference seemed to confirm the absoluteness of different gods within their own authority, which also made the compilation of many scriptures more biased. Of course, there were also mortals who questioned the greatness of the gods, but this did not cause any impact.

After all, all gods are like this, and no one has ever existed, whether it is a god or something else who claims to be omniscient and omnipotent, so this kind of speech only comes and goes, and few people even remember that it once existed.

In any case, holy power and divine arts have been integrated into the world. After a few generations of simple replacement, it seems to have become a natural existence, understood and accepted by humans. Even the gods have gradually become accustomed to this convenient energy.

However, there was an additional episode in the middle. On Mount Olympus, the God King who also learned about the birth of divine arts seemed particularly surprised, and even said that he actually discovered this special system, but he had not had time to tell the gods.

However, for his words, the gods only responded verbally, but few believed in their hearts.

After all, in the past, Zeus had never shown his talent for creation and invention.

They would rather believe that this was related to the goddess of wisdom Metis of the previous generation, and would not think that the king of gods could research such things. After all, power and wisdom are not equivalent, which is something that the gods themselves are very clear about.

In short, this episode did not affect the spread of divine arts and the establishment of the church. Human society is also constantly exploring balance and order in the process of integrating new things.

From rough scriptures to increasingly clear doctrines, and conflicts that occur from time to time but are still restrained. The contradictions that gradually emerged between the king and the priests, in places that the gods could not pay much attention to, there was a secret spying on the beliefs of mortals, and various changes underground and in the sky.

Time flies, one generation grows old, and another generation grows up. On the vast land, some city-states have collapsed, and some have begun to expand the areas they rule, evolving towards kingdoms in the true sense. In the marginal areas where humans are active, there are also humans who have not been able to live in one place for a long time and continue to migrate.

For a time, the vast eastern land became more and more different from the previous eras, and more and more lively and prosperous. Compared with the classical city-states recorded in mythology, it is more like a magical and gorgeous fantasy world.

But in general, everything is developing in a good direction. The overall number of humans is still increasing, and even the most distant human branches have not yet reached the vast ocean. In this case, the conflicts between believers are mostly just laughed off by the gods.

They are all busy "racing for land" instead of dragging their energy for a little bit of trivial matters. More and more faiths are pouring into Olympus, and the gods are immersed in joy. Even the God King, whose body has been sleeping, is happy to see the rising power help him to consume the strange power faster.

The era has opened a new chapter. The communication and connection between people and gods are unprecedentedly close, and the situation in the world is gradually becoming complicated. All gods are immersed in the joy of this "harvest", feeling that their past efforts have not been in vain.

Until this day, the unprecedented cold wind blew from the north of the earth all the way to the south, causing everything to wither and decay, and the gods suddenly woke up. Human development was hindered, and the foreseeable famine seemed to be coming. The gods hurried to find out what happened, but nothing came of it.

The culprit who caused all this had left Olympus after a big quarrel with the king of gods and walked towards the human world. And Zeus, the only one who knew the inside story, chose to remain silent after being angry for a while.

Since she wants to make a fuss, then let her make a fuss. The promise he made cannot be violated, but if all other gods express dissatisfaction, it will have nothing to do with him.

On that day, naturally someone put pressure on Hades, who lived in the underworld for a long time. After all, the consequences he caused affected the interests of all gods.

······

The human world.

If a central axis is drawn for the land of Chaos, then the former Mount Odiles is undoubtedly on this central line. It supports the sky and the earth, and separates the north, south, east and west. Even Olympus today cannot compare with it.

If we draw another axis for the eastern land, Olympus is slightly closer to the northeast, and the human settlement is further east.

The closer to the sacred mountain, the denser the human population, because this is the direction of the fourth generation of human migration. They moved from west to east on the eastern land after the flood, looking for a suitable place to live.

The closer to Mount Olympus, the shorter the migration distance and the longer the time of settlement and reproduction. They have a clear leading advantage in both population and culture.

Of course, this often means that the gods pay more attention to it. It is common for a city to have seven or eight temples of gods.

In contrast, those emerging city-states that are farther away seem to be ignored. No one knows how many small cities that have been established for less than a hundred years in the entire eastern land are. In fact, quite a few of them have not even built temples of gods, and no clergy have ever come here.

This is normal. After all, the church is developing very fast, but the human race is developing even faster. Those remote places are naturally neglected. For example, the Kingdom of Eleusis is a country that was established only two generations ago.

Its founder has died, not because of aging, but because of the pain caused by fighting all the way. As the son of the founder Eleusis, Kleus naturally inherited his throne and became the king of this so-called kingdom, but in fact there was only one city and a few small towns as its territory.

In the first twenty years of his succession, everything went smoothly. The country, which originally had only tens of thousands of people, became stronger and stronger under Kleus's governance. However, in the past year, the king has been frowning.

The climate change was too abrupt. Not only did the temperature drop, but even the crops stopped growing.

The land became barren, the source of food became less and less, and wild animals began to attack humans regardless of the danger. The Kingdom of Eleusis, which had never encountered such a situation, had no way to deal with it, and the little food reserves could not last for a few years. A famine was imminent, but as a king, Kleus had no way to deal with it.

Until this day, the king, who was still thinking hard about countermeasures, received news that his daughters brought him back an unimaginable guest.

…

"Ms. Moir, this is our home. It is also the only palace in this city."

Walking on the compacted dirt road, four girls with ordinary looks but obviously unusual clothes were surrounding an old woman.

They supported the old woman and introduced her to the city and their home - the Eleusis Palace at the end of the road.

Of course, it is called a palace, but it is just an ordinary building with a taller and larger area. Eleusis, which has only experienced two generations of monarchs, has not yet had a hedonistic style, whether it is the king or the people.

They are more pragmatic, and this simple style is clearly reflected in many corners of this city.

"Really? Haha, thank you so much."

Looking at the palace at the end of her sight, the old woman called Moir smiled and thanked her. But in her eyes, there was still a flash of disgust.

But after all, it was a mortal's palace, so she reluctantly accepted it. The king of mortals was already the highest-ranking person, and she couldn't ask for more, so Moir tried her best to put on a satisfied and grateful look, but she didn't know that her thoughts were clearly seen by the people around her.

"Providing help to fellow tribesmen who came from afar is what our grandfather often taught us when he was still alive."

The oldest of the four girls supported the old woman and asked casually:

"The weather is getting colder... I wonder why you are walking alone in the wilderness?"

"..."

In silence, Moir's expression changed slightly. After a while, just when several people thought she would not speak, the old woman said lightly:

"I came to find my daughter, she is so innocent and lively... But she was taken away, just like me at the beginning."

The atmosphere became a little cold, even though the girls tried their best to say something to liven up the atmosphere, but the result did not change anything. Until several people entered the palace, they were unable to return to their previous state.

"I'm tired."

Moir expressed his opinion lightly after entering the palace.

She had no awareness of being a guest, or rather, this was already a very polite behavior towards mortals in her understanding.

So the daughters of King Kleus looked at each other, and their elder sister stood up again.

"Please follow me, I will take you to my room."

"Then lead the way."

Nodding, Moir agreed as a matter of course.

Behind her, the other three girls did not follow, but hurried away after watching their eldest sister and the woman leave. They didn't know who this old woman who seemed to be "begging" but was actually arrogant when they met outside the city was. Maybe in this era, crossing the wilderness alone was something that their fathers could not do.

Invite the other party to the palace and try to express their goodwill, this is what they can do. As for the rest, it is up to the king to decide.