"Alright, let me think about something more pleasant."
After a moment of silence, Ryan set aside the more distant anxieties. He hadn't even figured out his Sequence 8 yet — there was nothing to be gained from worrying about things that far ahead.
So: the entertainment value in the sacred texts.
"The Creator awoke from the primordial chaos, shattered the darkness, and called forth the first light. Then the Creator dissolved entirely into the cosmos, becoming all things. Its body became the earth. Part of its blood rushed forth as seas and rivers, nourishing and giving rise to life. One of its eyes blazed into light, from which the Eternal Blazing Sun awakened. The other scattered into stars, within which the Evernight Goddess slumbers. Its breath became lightning and tempest, from which the Lord of Storms was born…
…Its lungs gave rise to the elves; its heart to the giants… the impure portions of its body became demons, evil spirits, and various unknown malevolent entities. The spirit representing exploration was the first to transform, becoming the God of Knowledge and Wisdom. The spirit representing resilience nurtured the God of War; the spirit representing compassion gave rise to the Earth Mother Goddess.
Humanity was born from the Creator's wisdom, while its knowledge became the God of Steam and Machinery, hidden within truth, awaiting discovery. This is the First Era — the Primordial Age of Chaos."
This was the sacred texts' account of creation and the First Era.
All he could say was: familiar, unoriginal, and could they have gone bigger? This was a world with actual gods.
The most entertaining part was the second passage. Elves, giants, tree-folk, dragons, feathered serpents, phoenixes, demon wolves, abominations, sea creatures, nagas, demons, and evil spirits — each of the supernatural races that appeared in myth and legend corresponded to one of the Creator's organs. The scene this conjured — every creature neatly assigned to a body part in orderly succession — was the kind of thing you'd expect from a children's game, not a divine origin story. Whoever had written it must have struggled to keep a straight face. What made it more striking was that both churches' records aligned closely on this point — which almost certainly meant representatives of all seven churches had once sat down together and composed it jointly. The fact that seven church factions had managed to cooperate in producing this without internal conflict, and it had held for 1,352 years, said something about their coordination.
These races formed the core of humanity's struggle during the Second Era — the Age of Darkness — even with the Eternal Blazing Sun, the Lord of Storms, and the God of Knowledge and Wisdom offering protection. The texts managed to describe all of this without casting the other races in an explicitly negative light, which showed more restraint than expected. The situation only began to improve at the end of the Second Era, when the God of War, the Earth Mother Goddess, and the Evernight Goddess awakened. Their awakening marked the end of the Age of Darkness.
Then all six deities together guided humanity through the cataclysms of the Third Era — commonly known as the Age of Calamity.
Ryan had been reading with a faint, sardonic smile — right up until he reached something in the Night Revelations that wasn't in the Book of Storms:
In the final period of the Age of Darkness, the Earth Mother Goddess had offered assistance to the Evernight Goddess, enabling the latter to awaken earlier than she otherwise would have. In gratitude, the Evernight Goddess presented the Earth Mother Goddess with the most resplendent jewel of the night sky — the Crimson Moon.
Ryan thought about this for a while, then traced through the big idiot's memories until he found what had struck him as wrong. The big idiot hadn't been a devout Storm worshipper, but he'd been around enough followers of the Night Goddess to know their prayer gesture — and it was the Crimson Moon. He also dimly remembered that the Evernight Goddess had once held theHonorific Names "Lady of Crimson."
AHonorific Names can change?
This was different from "God of Craftsmen" becoming "God of Steam and Machinery." Terms like "Evernight Goddess" and "Lord of Storms" appeared in the sacred texts, but they were shorthands for the faithful — the actual Honorific Names were long and unwieldy, so abbreviations made sense. But those abbreviations didn't encode divine power the way the full titles did. Swapping "Lady of Crimson" for "Mistress of Night" was an entirely different matter.
When did the title change? He flipped to the publication date of the Night Revelations: December 1351. Shortly after the end of the divine war that began two years ago.
Worth noting: during that war, the southern Feynport Kingdom — and its God of Earth Mother — had not attacked Ruen from the start, but had quickly turned on Lenburg, a small nation allied to Ruen that followed the God of Knowledge and Wisdom. In the war's later stages, Feynport had declared war on Ruen directly, joining a three-nation coalition that launched an invasion.
Against that backdrop, this footnote — a brief addition, not part of the main text, easy to miss — felt peculiar. Combined with the fact that the war had ended abruptly with the defeat of the Forsaken Empire and the Church of the Storm God, shortly after Feynport declared on Ruen — and taking into account the well-known enmity between the Church of the Evernight Goddess and the Church of the War God that even the big idiot, a Storm follower, had heard about — Ryan strongly suspected that whatever the War God of the Forsaken Empire had suffered in this conflict went far beyond a simple battlefield defeat.
Incidentally: the seven gods of the Northern Continent had coexisted for 1,352 years without open conflict, but that didn't mean they were friendly. The rift between the Church of the Evernight Goddess and the War God's Church ran deep; the Storm Church and the Church of the God of Knowledge and Wisdom, as well as Intis's Church of the Eternal Blazing Sun, were outright hostile — all of this was common knowledge. Rumor had it that the Church of the Evernight Goddess's headquarters — the Tranquil Cathedral — was established in Coldwinter County, the northernmost county of Ruen, precisely because the Ruen-Forsaken Empire border lay just to the north.
If the Earth Mother Goddess had simply been opportunistically joining the stronger side, the Church of the Evernight Goddess would have had no need to add a footnote. So Ryan was more inclined to read it as a transaction. What would be worth the Goddess trading away "Lady of Crimson" as a Honorific Names? Obviously, something better.
He nodded slowly, feeling like he was beginning to understand why such clear divisions existed between the churches.
This was why keeping up with current events and reading broadly was useful.
He filed the inference away and turned back to the sacred texts' account of history.
There was plenty to question, but even the most manipulated historical record was never entirely false. The same held here — texts devoted to praising their own gods still weren't pure fabrication. Wholesale invention was more work and more easily exposed.
For instance: the three gods struggling during the Second Era was relatively credible, regardless of whether protecting humanity was the actual reason. They wouldn't have invented their own difficulties just to elevate the other three.
Similarly, the claim that the God of War, Earth Mother Goddess, and Evernight Goddess only awakened at the end of the Age of Darkness — this didn't necessarily mean they became gods at that point, but it was safe to say they'd had no meaningful presence in the Age of Darkness. Otherwise, the texts would have found a way to mention it.
Beyond that, certainty was harder to come by. Why the six prevailed, and why they chose to protect humanity — the most reasonable inference was the faith humans provided, given that both texts noted the violent, bloodthirsty nature of the other races during the Age of Darkness, which would have made them poor candidates for worship. But whether this was the actual reason, or a cover story concealing something more significant, was impossible to confirm from the text alone.
You could see only so much. But more than nothing, at least.
Author's Note (this chapter):"The Creator awoke from the primordial chaos, shattered the darkness, and called forth the first light. Then the Creator dissolved entirely into the cosmos, becoming all things. Its body became the earth. Part of its blood rushed forth as seas and rivers, nourishing and giving rise to life. One of its eyes blazed into light, from which the Eternal Blazing Sun awakened. The other scattered into stars, within which the Evernight Goddess slumbers. Its breath became lightning and tempest, from which the Lord of Storms was born."