Millennium Witch

Book 3: Chapter 257: Grand Plans and Tales of the Snow Country

Two days later, on a drizzly afternoon, after wrapping up their two-month trip to Adelock, Yvette and Lucia once again arrived at the Aerial Port of the City of Truth.Fine strands of rain wove a gray curtain in the air, blurring the outlines of the Academy spires in the distance. Yvette used Wind Magic to create a rain-blocking barrier overhead; such extravagant use of magic drew plenty of sidelong glances. Lucia trailed behind her, pulling an oversized suitcase, a gold one-star Adventurer’s badge pinned proudly to her chest.

That gold Adventurer badge was her biggest gain of the summer. Back in the village, her dad Eamon’s proudest boast had always been that he’d once been a gold-rank adventurer—now, less than a year after leaving home, Lucia had already matched that achievement. It was hard for her to keep from wearing a small, smug smile as she walked.

Half an hour later, after a carriage ride, the two of them were back in their Scholar’s Haven apartment on Blossom Street. Lucia started cleaning the place, and Yvette didn’t completely slack off either—she helped with Wind Magic while thinking back on some of the details of the divine battle from two nights before.

After her experience hijacking and disrupting the Sun God’s faith spell, Yvette felt she understood something more clearly than ever—that is, faith magic really wasn’t all that different from any other kind of magic.

The only difference was that faith-element was incredibly, incredibly scarce.

When a mage casts a spell, internal mana and external mana both have to be supplied. Internal mana has no innate attribute and gains one by channeling external mana, and because the world is full of elemental mana just waiting to be used, the five great elemental magics dominate the field.

But when it comes to faith magic, there’s a key problem: faith-element in nature is basically zero. If it isn’t stored for a period of time, it decomposes into soul runes and becomes ordinary mental-element, losing its original properties.

So to use faith magic, you have to pre-load the external-mana “rail” with a certain amount of faith-element in advance.

That limitation shackles faith magic, making it one of those rare special branches of magic where you have to bring your own raw materials.

That realization instantly raised the importance of the Silver Witch Church in Yvette’s mind.

There was another point worth mentioning: the gods’ hunger for faith-element kept making her suspect that Aberrant Mana’s source might also be tied to faith-element somehow.

Otherwise, where did the Aberrant Mana they put into their Benedictions—used as the core—come from? It had to be a form of divine power unique to gods, right?

And gods needed faith. Wasn’t that a closed loop?

Fortunately, she had already added a Contribution Point mechanic into the serendipity system, using faith-element as the metric.

With that incentive structure in place, her future Apostles ought to be able to show a lot more initiative.

A few days after the divine battle ended, in Lute Village—

On a summer morning, sunlight filtered through the patchy clouds and fell upon this village at the foot of the hills on Adelock’s outskirts. It had rained the night before; moisture hung in the air, carrying the fresh scent of grass and trees.

In the village’s central square, in front of the newly built temple of the Silver Witch, several dozen believers had spontaneously gathered. They stood in a semicircle, faces devout. In the center of the crowd, Ezra—now in priestly robes and beginning to show a hint of mature bearing—stood before the temple, leading them in worship.

Not far away sat a donation box. From time to time, believers walked over and dropped in gold, silver, or copper coins of the Free Alliance, each landing with a clear chime. Watching over the box was Ena, also dressed in a miniature priest’s robe. Every time someone donated, she would bow deeply in thanks.

After that night’s divine battle, the hostility from the Sunflame Sect and the Cloudpeak Sect only further hardened Ezra’s resolve to make the Silver Witch Church big and strong—even to build a great temple in Adelock and compete head-on with the two local churches.

The Throne had no particular objection, but did add an extra reminder: the church would not be providing him with financial support. All development would be on a self-sustaining basis.

—Not because Yvette wanted to withhold money, but because the scale of funds needed to grow a church couldn’t be compared to her personal expenses at all. Whether she was thinking about the waste of Aberrant Mana or the impact on everyday people’s economy, this was something Ezra had to handle himself. Besides, looking to the future, they couldn’t rely on her conjuring money from the void forever.

Ezra readily agreed.

But he soon realized that money wasn’t as easy to solve as he’d imagined. He still had a bit left from the financial support the Throne had given him at the start, but his goal wasn’t just a small chapel—it was a grand, imposing, awe-inspiring temple that could showcase the Goddess’s greatness. For that, the leftover funds were nowhere near enough.

Lacking any real business experience, the only revenue stream he could think of for now was the believers’ support.

Thinking about that, he couldn’t help feeling that for a Throne personally chosen by the Goddess, Lady Loxivia might be just a bit too relaxed. A month ago, she’d said the doctrine was almost finished, but when he asked her about it through prayer a couple of days ago, her progress still hadn’t even hit halfway.

Which left him making up the preaching material on the fly.

But—

Fortunately, the Goddess was already a household name as the God of Serendipity, not some brand-new deity, and her name was already written into the doctrines of all the major churches.

So, strictly speaking, the Silver Witch Church didn’t need its own doctrine to tell the Goddess’s story, because all those other churches had already written plenty of stories about the Silver Witch. Exaggerated as it sounded, it really did feel a bit like, “your doctrine is my doctrine.”

All Ezra had to do was string together the various mythic tales from other churches’ doctrines, tweak and patch them, and a ready-to-use Silver Bible would basically write itself. Any problems could be fixed later with more patches.

As noon drew near, the believers slowly dispersed, most of them heading for the village’s newly opened taverns or eateries for lunch.

Ezra was just about to invite Ena to grab a meal when an unexpected visitor drew his attention—a carriage with a closed compartment, a silver spiral wind emblem engraved on its side. Because he often went to preach at the plaza outside Adelock’s Adventurers’ Guild, he recognized it at a glance as belonging to the famous Silverwind Trading Company.

He waited where he was, watching the coachman hop lightly down from the driver’s bench and open the carriage door. A tall figure stepped down from within.

The visitor was, of course, Leilani Vales.

“Pleasure to meet you for the first time, Apostle Ezra Yarrow. I am Leilani Vales, regional chief of the Silverwind Trading Company in the Free Alliance,” she said with a smile as she approached.

Ezra replied cautiously, “Ms. Vales, I didn’t expect you to grace Lute Village with your presence. To what do we owe the honor?”

“Please, I wouldn’t dare call it an honor. I’m here today purely in a personal capacity, hoping I can contribute a little to the church’s growth,” Leilani said with a smile.

“Contribute?” Ezra blurted, then couldn’t help the joy that flashed across his face. If that was the case, wouldn’t the funding for the temple in Adelock be as good as secured?

At the same time, though, he was puzzled. From what he remembered, most of the Silverwind Trading Company’s upper management were half-elves, who should be Tree God worshipers. The Silver Witch Church had only just gotten started—how had it managed to attract the regional chief of Silverwind?

The thing was, this decision hadn’t actually been made by Leilani herself.

After finishing her conversation with Yvette that day, she’d had absolutely no concept of “spreading the Goddess’s radiance in her own way.” She’d intended to keep watching cautiously. She recorded everything as-is and sent it up as a report to the Silverwind Trading Company’s acting leader, Lady Nightshade Lan of the Council of Five.

In response, Lady Nightshade gave her a new set of orders. It turned out that the Silverwind Trading Company had planned to support the Silver Witch Church’s development long ago—on the personal decision of the Wandering Wind Ranger herself. It was just that the mysterious Councilor Nameless had never appeared, so the company’s church-building plan had never actually started. Now that Councilor Nameless had resolved to establish the Silver Witch Church, Silverwind was, of course, to give its full cooperation.

—

Which led to a different problem: what about the Evergreen Revelation?

Just as the Obsidian Union and the Sunflame Sect were deeply partnered in the Free Alliance, the Silverwind Trading Company and the Evergreen Revelation were likewise tightly bound. If they now turned to working with the Silver Witch Church, didn’t that mean betraying Evergreen, a church of a True God?

On that point, Lady Nightshade’s answer was: publicly, Leilani would be stripped of most of her effective authority in Silverwind, retaining only her rank; privately, she would be appointed as a “special envoy” tasked with assisting the Silver Witch Church’s growth—secretly supporting its missionary work in a personal capacity. Once things reached a certain scale, the Silverwind Trading Company would declare its support for the Silver Witch Church openly.

Leilani was sure Lady Nightshade had lost her mind. Even if the Silver Witch were real, how could she possibly compare to a True God like the Tree God?

The Tree God was the progenitor of the elves and half-elves—there was a built-in closeness there. At most, the Silver Witch would be on the same level as the Sun God or the Lord of Sky and Air, right? Leilani herself was one thing, but the Silverwind Trading Company was a massive entity, with all kinds of factions in internal struggle—could they really pivot this casually to a new church whose future was still uncertain? Where did this level of confidence even come from?

And she had spent decades clawing her way up to the position of regional chief—she was nearly a hundred years old now—reaching the highest rank under the Council of Five, “five above, ten thousand below.” And now—snap—she was being dropped to the bottom, made into a special envoy helping develop the Silver Witch Church?

She almost blacked out from it.

But there was nothing she could do. This was Lady Nightshade’s order, and it was also the Windspeaker Councilor’s strategic plan, as well as an external operation personally overseen by Councilor Nameless.

Forget a regional chief—if the other two Councilors were here, they’d have to bow to the majority as well. So in the end, she could only obey with tear-bright eyes. That was how she ended up personally coming to Lute Village, intending to sit down with Ezra the Lightning Apostle and discuss the church’s grand development plan.

Within a couple of days of Yvette and Lucia’s return to the Academy of Truth, the start of term was nearly upon them. Because it was fall admissions season, both of them noticed that the streets of the City of Truth were fuller of unfamiliar faces in Academy uniforms—students from the four academies north of the Xien River.

Lucia, as a member of the Battle Arts College, had entered through spring admissions, which meant she was from the south bank.

Unsurprisingly, that kind of split between fall and spring admissions made it all too easy for “north-bankers” and “south-bankers” to develop their own regional prejudices—but fortunately, the College of General Studies existed at the very bottom of the social ladder. By sacrificing itself as everyone’s favorite target of contempt, it brought the rest of the divisions together in harmony.

On the night before classes began, using the Disciplinary Committee branch office as their shared base, Lucia invited Anya and their squad leader Palea out for a small get-together.

She was a little more flush than before now. During her time in Adelock, while she’d raised her Adventurer rank, she had also saved up a bit of money—two gold coins and a dozen silver coins. There was a bit of loss when she exchanged them into gold and silver notes, but all in all, for a student, she was doing quite well.

Not to mention that Room 606 of the Scholar’s Haven apartment had now been bought by her teacher. Living in her teacher’s place meant she didn’t have to pay rent.

Of course, to avoid unnecessary trouble, Lucia still called her teacher “Yvette” in front of Anya and Palea, leaving off any honorifics.

Over dinner, Anya talked about her hot-spring trip to the Snowfields with her parents, and while she was at it, gave the three of them a rundown on the customs of the Snow Country.

Yvette listened more attentively than usual, since her next travel destination was precisely the Snowfields.

According to Anya, although the Snowfields were known as the Snow Country, they weren’t really a proper kingdom. The region was more like a confederation of tribes, each ruling its own territory, interacting with the others only through a loosely structured council that could barely impose any constraints at all—primitive, in other words.

Even so, when it came to religion, the tribes of the Snow Country were remarkably unified. They all worshiped the great deity known as the Snow Emperor and all honored the Snow Country’s Great Prophet, an old man named Esvia Solomon.

“When did the legend of the Snow Emperor begin? Before or after the Legendary Mage?” Yvette asked suddenly, after quietly listening to Anya’s excited retelling of her Snow Country trip.

She was reminded of what Professor Evans had said in the Adelock Great Labyrinth.

Had the Snow Emperor appeared after the Legendary Mage fell?

“That I don’t know,” Anya said after thinking for a bit. “But I’ve heard that in the old days, the Snow Country worshiped the Legendary Mage. The Snow Emperor appeared later, and according to the doctrine, his role is that of the Legendary Mage’s successor. He’s been protecting the people of the Snow Country from the frost wraiths deep in the Snowfields, so over time, he became the shared faith of everyone there. But there are still quite a lot of people who worship the Legendary Mage, too.”

From Anya’s explanation, Yvette pieced together a rough picture. In the Snow Country, besides the deity Snow Emperor, there were two other household-name “general beliefs.”

Namely, the Silver Witch and the Legendary Mage, that master and disciple pair.

And in Snow Country legend, the Snow Emperor appeared to be ranked below the two of them, unlike in other doctrines, where local gods preferred to exalt themselves and turn the Silver Witch and the Legendary Mage into incarnations of their own deity, or fragments of their body and so on.

From that alone, it seemed the Snow Emperor’s attitude toward the Silver Witch and the Legendary Mage was, surprisingly, a bit more respectful.