The Girl Who Hacked The Magic System

It's late at night, and Lovelace and I are in my room, sitting on chairs around a tea table. We both wear our military uniforms, as has been our habit since the beginning of the war.

The room has an atmosphere of intimacy and shared secrets.

I wish the war would end already so I could have more moments like this.

I want to live this romance, to give Lovelace the attention she deserves and that I know that she actually craves.

But we can't. Not yet. Not when there are so many lives at stake.

Including our own lives, when the goddess comes back.

"In Juno's case, the religion came first, and her divinity later."

"Huh? How did she pull it off?"

"At that time, there weren't any religions or gods. Just some sort of collective anger and desire for revenge."

"No religions or gods? That's unusual. As far as I know, humans living in society always tend to create some sort of religion."

"I remember Julia having the exact same reaction. She seemed to be very bothered by it, so she researched it thoroughly."

"And did she discover what the reason for it was?"

"Yes. Apparently, the humans were betrayed by some godly beings before their migration to this planet. They carried an innate mistrust for everything related to religion for generations upon generations."

"I see… but by the time she appeared, that mistrust had already waned, is that right?"

"Exactly. That was when she decided to create a religion, as the Hero of humankind, to be able to unify the humans under a single banner without the need for internal war."

"So, she created the religion as a way to control the human nations without having to conquer them one by one."

"Yes. That was before she thought about the adventuring system."

"And because the mistrust had waned, and humans are, by nature, bound to search for a bigger picture to bond with, she had no problems doing that."

"She also weaponized the collective desire for revenge that humans shared at that moment."

"Of course. Humans lived in plight, but instead of offering them compassion, like Mom does, she offered an enemy. That's how her tenets became so chauvinistic and racist."

It all makes so much sense now.

"And she also wanted all that power for herself. From the beginning, she wasn't afraid of killing or betraying in the name of gaining more power. And I was so blind to it all…"

"It's not your fault, Lovvy."

"Again with that pet name."

"It's cute. Like you."

"Whatever floats your boat. Anyway, I feel that there's more to it, but my memories are still full of gaps."

"Yes. She was a hero, and her religion put up a front. But empty prayers don't fill a bucket of mana. How did she truly conquer the people's hearts?"

"That's the thing with her temples… the way they pool the mana on top of them before it goes to the godly being. It doesn't happen in new temples to your mother that aren't just the temples of the goddess repurposed."

"So she coerced the people into praying to her?"

"That's a part of it, but she already had some sort of charming power before ascending to godhood. It might have played a part in that beginning."

"A charm power?"

"Yeah. It was not something like direct hypnosis but more of a slow brainwash that built up over time, and the only effect was to make people like her more."

"Oh, more like some sort of Presence effect? Like what we used to call 'aura farming' back on Earth?"

"Yeah, something like that. It's in one of the memories I retrieved. The more someone interacts with her, even at a distance, the more the person tends to have positive impressions of her."

"The wet dream of every dictator… to have the people love you without you needing to lift a finger."

We both fall into a silence full of thoughts and worries.

"Well, it seems that there's even less reason for you to find fault in yourself for being so head over heels for her. There was a magical effect in place."

"I should technically have been immune to it, though, as I'm not human."

"Oh? Is that a limitation?"

"Yes, her ability has that caveat. It only works in humans."

"Then she really had half the work done for her. It was just a matter of ostracizing the other races so you could have the whole society in your favor. Having beastkin and fae folk as free people in her countries would only work against her."

"That's true, yeah. The situation played very well into her hands."

"So she used that ability and her status as a hero to create a religion that was legitimized by the state from the very beginning. And then used something in her temples to get some output from the prayers even if they were half-hearted."

"Exactly. I told you that I had worked on some sort of siphoning technology for her to pull it off, right? I still don't have the memories pertaining to that, but now I think that I already have something to work with."

"That's great. Focus on that, while I'll focus on the annotations about the system. We have little time left."

"One week, right?"

"Yeah. In one week I'm seventeen. Which means that in one week she will come back, somehow."

"We will find a way. I have no doubts about it."

"Lovvy… would you please sleep here with me today?"

"Of course. But you need to sleep properly, okay?"

"I know."

:::

PoV: Saint Lily

Here I am again, in the sea of statues.

I mean the endless hall full of statues. But sea of statues has a nice ring to it.

Anyway, I still don't know what I'm supposed to do here.

In the 'real' world it's late night, but my body doesn't need any sleep anymore. So I'm doing paperwork for the institute, as there are too many problems to solve lately.

It's not so much that I don't need to sleep, but that I actually can't sleep, even if I try. With all the prayers and stuff, my divine consciousness is always alert.

Now that I pulled off the thing about fragmented attention, while a part of me is doing that paperwork, another part is listening to the prayers, another is guiding my priests, and another is here.

It's actually fun to do all those things at once. It makes me really feel like a proper goddess. But it doesn't help me solve the puzzle that I'm supposed to solve.

I get to one little girl, 'goddess of wisdom and plants,' her plaque reads. She has delicate features resembling an elf, and her heart is white and green, with leaf patterns.

She has such an innocent face. It's weird to have a child as a god of wisdom, but it makes a certain sense. Maybe wisdom is in the purity and innocence of childhood, after all.

One thing that I noticed is that, as much as the things gods rule over might be varied and sometimes oddly specific, there are things that have more than one god with that aspect.

For example, I've already counted three sun gods, five moon goddesses, and four gods of death.

Probably they rule over the same thing, but in different worlds.

Is there some sort of… oh!

I didn't notice it sooner, but now that I pay attention to it, there are different floor levels in this sea of statues.

I didn't give it importance earlier, but now, it seems that higher steps have fewer gods in them than lower steps.

Does this mean a hierarchy between gods? If so, both I and Juno are in the lowest tier possible.

I'll take a look at the gods in the higher steps.