Chapter 156: Stealing Divine Power
After being nourished by the power of pure faith, Donald felt that the trace of divinity he had acquired within him had doubled in strength. Though it was still very weak, he noticed that as the divinity grew stronger, his own soul’s core also became more powerful and solid.
“Too bad!”
If the divinity hadn’t been unable to support a second enhancement in such a short time and required some time to stabilize, Donald would have used up all the faith power he could obtain at once.
“The conditions here are already better than those of those legendary strongmen. I’d better not be too greedy. It’s safer to take things slowly—no need to try to achieve everything at once!”
In addition to the direct effects of faith power mentioned earlier, Donald learned from the Book of Truth that its indirect effects were also extremely mysterious.
When a person is surrounded by faith power, it not only nourishes their body constantly but also slowly purifies and strengthens their soul’s core, with no side effects whatsoever.
Understanding this, Donald suddenly realized, “This must be one of the reasons why those noble families without any cultivation still possess stronger mental strength and presence than ordinary people.”
Furthermore, faith power is formed from the thoughts of many beings in this world. By gaining the respect of some of the beings in the main material world, one can receive the favor of that world’s plane will in return. When this favor accumulates to a certain extent, its benefits become less abstract.
Any entity that attempts to attack or kill those who receive the plane’s favor will suffer backlash from the plane’s power, depending on the amount of favor they have received.
Those who receive this favor also gain invisible blessings of luck.
Although luck is intangible, at certain moments, a little bit of it can play a decisive role in determining success or failure!
Given all these benefits brought by faith power, Donald naturally wanted as much as possible and accepted everything that came his way.
Since he couldn’t continue strengthening his divinity for now, Donald planned to explore other applications of faith power, such as converting it into divine power.
However, there was still one challenge: although the Book of Truth had almost reached the pinnacle of this world’s hierarchy, it was still just a tool. Without a user at the level of a true god, it was difficult to unleash its full potential.
“In other words, although the Book of Truth possesses powerful abilities such as gathering faith, it cannot transform that faith into divine power for its own use, as it lacks the essential conditions for such transformation—such as a divine essence or priesthood—and even lacks a complete divine sacrifice.” Donald sighed. This was the tragedy of existing merely as a tool rather than a truly independent being. Although the Book of Truth had a certain degree of wisdom and strong computational capabilities, like any technological creation akin to a computer, the spirit of a high-level divine artifact was strictly restricted—it was not allowed to have its own thoughts or will; everything had to serve its master. This was a rule established through the bloody lessons of the gods who created divine artifacts over the ages, and it was precisely this universal rule that allowed Donald to be reborn in this world, rather than being overshadowed by the Book of Truth, becoming a puppet or having his soul completely vanish from this world. Thinking of the famous Terminator series from his past life, didn’t it depict artificial electronic devices gaining intelligence and then trying to exterminate their human creators? Presumably, such restrictions on divine artifacts were put in place to prevent such scenarios! Still, even so, the powers of the Book of Truth were extremely extraordinary. It quickly figured out another way for it to absorb faith and transform it into divine power—by leveraging the divinity of other gods. “Other gods?” Donald was shocked. When had the Book of Truth become so bold as to dare provoke the true gods of this world? Then he immediately realized that they didn’t even need to provoke other true gods—they already had the necessary conditions right in their hands! With that thought, Donald smiled as he took out a wolf-shaped statue. “Oh, evil god! It wasn’t in vain that I freed you from the imprisonment of the great archmage Hanra—you’ve really helped me out a lot!” Indeed! This evil god not only contributed a trace of its divinity to enable Donald to acquire divine bloodline but could now be used by him again. Since the true god’s divine essence and body were sealed, even if he and the Book of Truth used this source of divinity devoid of a soul or will for other purposes, the evil god wouldn’t sense anything. And even if it did sense something, it couldn’t break free from the seals set by the great archmage using his sky city as a prison. Thus, Donald could use this statue and its divine essence with complete confidence.
He had originally planned to draw out another trace of divine essence in a few days to merge it with the recent one, but now that he thought about the potential of this statue, he wasn’t in a hurry to do so. This was after all a trace of the primal divinity of an ancient deity! If he could refine it completely, he would not only become an existence beyond the ordinary—such beings are called divine creatures—but he would also rise to the highest rank among them. Generally, even the weakest divine creatures can reach gold-tier strength after some time of accumulation, while the stronger ones can even rival legendary or demi-god entities. Taking Donald himself as an example, although his strength was only at the bronze level, he now possessed divine bloodline. Though he wouldn’t experience an instant leap in strength, he would gain abilities comparable to or even surpassing those of gold-tier warriors. These abilities mostly manifested in aspects like the soul and life force. Although they didn’t directly boost his strength, they opened a path for him to reach legendary status. From there onward, the path to becoming a legend would be almost smooth for him, without the bottlenecks and limitations that other professionals faced. Thus, divine bloodline is one of the most powerful talents in the world, and only beings related to true gods or similar tiers could possess it. Of course, even if Donald wanted to fully refine this primal divinity now, it would be impossible. The reason it’s called primal divinity is that it represents the core of the rules held by a true god, usually existing within the soul and divinity. Unlike those derived secondary divinities, it’s virtually impossible for outsiders to obtain, unless a true god perishes and they happen to inherit something left behind by that fallen god. Even then, they must consider whether they can handle such power! With Donald’s current soul level and strength, he couldn’t withstand too much intense divine power. The trace he already had was the maximum amount determined by the Book of Truth after calculations. Forcing too much divine power to merge would result in his soul being destroyed by the divinity, followed by that evil god’s memories taking over his body. In the worst case, his brain might explode instantly. Moreover, although it was unknown whether this great god was awake now or if he had a clone lurking somewhere in the world waiting for the chance to return to power, if the latter was the case, any attempt to seize this trace of divinity would be detected by its master—a truly god-like enemy that Donald certainly didn’t want to provoke.
Fortunately, the rules of the Book of Truth can completely block this divinity’s connection to the outside world. Even the divinity of an ancient evil god is merely a trace of divinity. Without a divine will, it lacks wisdom, and after being separated from its true form for so many years, its true divine will has lost its strength and is essentially exhausted, leaving only instinctive reactions. With the Book of Truth suppressing it, there’s no need to worry about this divinity rebelling.
What excited Donald the most was that the Book of Truth could mimic the aura of its divine master to control this divinity.
With the existence of this ancient statue, he could finally transform the faith power he had acquired into tangible divine power.
When Donald ordered the Book of Truth to purify the remaining faith power in him and then inject these purified essences into the strange wolf statue, the remaining true divinity within the statue devoured the essence of faith like a magical beast that had been starving in the desert for a thousand years, transforming it into drops of golden divine power that emitted an icy blue glow.
Yet before the divinity in the statue could absorb this power to strengthen itself, the spirit of the Book of Truth, relying on its more powerful rule-based abilities, seized all the divine power generated by the statue. It absorbed 10% for itself to repair the damage to the artifact, while storing the remaining 90% according to Donald’s wishes.
The original divinity in the statue had no wisdom, only instincts, and it didn’t question why its power was disappearing. It simply continued to devour faith essence and transform it into power.
This is why the remaining divinity in the statue had no independent consciousness. Once it discovered the faith power, it only knew to instinctively transform it into power, without realizing that it would soon be seized by the Book of Truth. Although the fragmented remnants of its will were furious at having its “food” stolen, its instinct to transform faith prevented it from stopping this behavior.
If given a few more years to gradually absorb the remaining faith power scattered around the world, it might regain its wisdom. Then, it wouldn’t be so easy for the Book of Truth to steal its power.
After all, though the Book of Truth is of high rank, it is not a true god but merely a tool of gods. There are certain fundamental abilities it cannot possess; otherwise, it wouldn’t be an artifact but a true deity.
But this limitation also has its advantages. Even if the Book of Truth regains its full strength, it cannot betray its master, Donald, unless Donald voluntarily breaks the spiritual connection between them.
The gods created divine artifacts and tools, not deities themselves. These artifacts possess a spirit but are constrained by innate limitations; no matter how powerful they are, they cannot exist independently of their master. As a result, the primal divinity of this evil god became Donald’s free labor force! It should be noted that this drop of pure golden divine power contains an energy equivalent to the simultaneous explosion of tens of thousands of lower-grade elemental crystals. Since his arrival here, Donald has not accumulated much faith power—most of it comes from his summoned warriors and subjects, as well as those who admire him out of respect for his deeds. Apart from those summoned warriors, the rest of the faith power is rather unstable, with an estimated total of only a few thousand people, resulting in merely fifteen drops of divine power after refinement through the Book of Truth, with no waste at all. Fortunately, as long as those who worship him exist and hold admiration for his deeds in their hearts, new faith power can be continuously generated. Just after half a day, Donald felt a thin layer of faith mist gathering around him once again, allowing him to convert another half drop of divine power through the evil god statue.