Only God

Ausenco.

An empire located on the southern frontier of the Danschel Empire, here nearly two-thirds of the land is covered by forests, with scarce arable land suitable for farming. Hundreds of years ago, it was the realm of the Beastmen.

However, as humans entered, the territory of the Beastmen rapidly diminished, and ultimately, a great war erupted three hundred years ago, which became the foundation of the Ausenco Kingdom.

Due to geographic reasons, the Ausenco Kingdom was not wealthy, and humans, upon entering this nation, were unable to create much wealth. Often, aside from worshipping different Divine beings and having different racial customs, their way of life was not particularly different from that of the Beastmen.

This situation changed with the Danschel Empire's southward expansion.

About two hundred years ago, the Danschel Empire had just recovered from a nationwide civil war. Though the Empire survived, its territory had greatly diminished, especially the borders to the north and east, which had contracted severely due to weakened national power.

For this reason, to compensate for the losses in the north and east, successive Emperors of the Empire were determined to expand southward or westward, to extract the nutrients to sustain the Empire from those lands.

These methods included commercial trade, military conquest, immigration and colonization, purchasing land, and accepting city-states as vassals. The Empire's westward expansion was not particularly successful, to say the least, but it was a different story to the south. There, not only were there vast ownerless lands, but also weak city-states. The Danschel Empire's southward expansion halted when it reached Ausenco.

There were reasons for this: first, Ausenco had maintained a friendly relationship with the Empire early on; second, Ausenco was not a small city-state, and its people were still martial, maintaining many of the fierce and valiant customs from their tribal era; third, the local forests in Ausenco were numerous, and arable land was scarce, making conquest and annexation by force hardly worth the effort.

Given all these reasons, the Emperors of the Danschel Empire had never considered conquering Ausenco. On the contrary, almost every Emperor worked hard to improve relations between the two countries. By the time of Constantine VI, the hope was, through peaceful means such as marriage alliances and trade, to make Ausenco a vassal of the Empire, to forever guard the southern border of the Empire.

To make Ausenco a vassal of the Empire was easier said than done.

Although the two countries maintained friendly relations over the years, swearing allegiance and loyalty to the Empire as a vassal was far from easy. After all, how many kings are willing to submit to others?

Additionally, the two countries followed different faiths. The Ausenco Kingdom worshipped the Hunting God, the Forest God, the Dragon God, and other Divine entities, whereas the Danschel Empire prided itself as the guardian of the True Religion world. There was a lack of a strong bond and sense of identity between the two.

Therefore, despite the increasingly warm relationship between the Danschel Empire and the Ausenco Kingdom over the years, the matter of becoming a vassal of the Empire remained indefinitely delayed.

Only, in the past ten years, the situation began to change gradually.

The Fahela Sect, originally active on the Empire's borders, gradually penetrated into the Ausenco Kingdom, and in a short period, their presence nearly spread across the entire Kingdom. Numerous citizens of the Kingdom who originally worshipped other gods converted en masse, bathing in the light of God.

Eventually, even the Royal Family of Ausenco converted. The King and his son received baptism and pledged to uphold the True Religion as the state religion. By then, nearly one-third of the population of Ausenco Kingdom had converted to the True Religion.

For Constantine VI, far away in the capital, this almost happened overnight—it was an incredibly surprising and unimaginable delight. The conversion of Ausenco was undoubtedly an important step in incorporating the latter as a vassal of the Empire.

The Emperor, steeped in politics, cared little about which sect facilitated the conversion of the Ausenco Royal Family, nor did he care about the unique doctrines of that sect. To the Emperor, as long as Ausenco converted, that was all that mattered.

Thus, if it was not for the Queen's unintentional discovery, perhaps no one would have doubted the sincerity of Ausenco's conversion, nor would they have known that the Fahela Sect that led to Ausenco's conversion was not only very different from the mainstream but could even be considered a heresy.

...

Within the territories of Ausenco, inside a certain castle.

In a hall usually used for banquets, about fifty to sixty individuals dressed in monks' robes gathered together, with the heads of wild animals such as elk and bears hanging on the walls. At the highest spot was the head of a griffin, its sharp beak giving a glimpse of its ferocity in life.

There was a spell of silence in the hall, an atmosphere so quiet it seemed no one dared to break it first.

After an unknown period, an old man walked in. The old man wore neither the mitre of a Pastor nor a laurel wreath, nor did he have a gilded Magic Wand in hand, but only a simple Oak Staff. His robe too was a plain monk's robe, patched in many places.

Yet, for such an ordinary old man, when he appeared, everyone in the room stood up as if by agreement.

The old man offered a blessing to everyone, then knelt down. The others also knelt down together. The crackling of the fireplace echoed through the hall, and after a long while, they began their prayers.

Following the end of the prayers, everyone stood up with the old man, and at that moment, the old man began to speak,

"Among you, who planned this?"

Silence fell among them, and an extraordinary quiet filled the room. Ash fluttered into the air amidst the crackling flames, and many hardly dared to breathe.