Volume 11: Raids in the Dark Regions
Chapter 157: New Functions of the Book of Truth
Three days later, Donald had stolen a total of twenty drops of golden divine power from the statue. If he continued to draw more, the remaining faith power in his body would become insufficient.
After all, not many people knew him, even fewer had seen him in person, and even fewer worshipped him. It was estimated that the total number of such people was only in the tens of thousands, and they couldn’t worship him with the same devotion as gods.
To obtain another amount of faith power like this, he would need to wait at least half a year to gather enough, or he would have to take some astonishing action soon to attract more attention and worship.
However, even though there were only twenty drops of divine power stored in the Book of Truth, each drop, when converted into the energy provided by elemental crystals, was equivalent to the energy from ten thousand low-grade elemental crystals. This showed just how high the energy level of divine power was. In just half a day, Donald could be considered instantly wealthy, and he would no longer lack energy reserves for summoning items or building structures.
From then on, Donald basically wouldn’t have to worry about the cost of elemental crystals. The energy contained in one drop of basic divine power was equivalent to dozens of high-grade crystals, enough to offset the cost of tens of thousands of gold sols.
Even if he could only convert one drop per month, it would still allow him to accumulate vast wealth and strength.
It should be noted that the items and functions contained in the Book of Truth were beyond imagination in the outside world. Even if he exchanged for low-grade magical equipment or potions every day, it would still make him the richest person on the continent!
Of course, Donald wouldn’t waste time doing something that brought no benefit to him. He planned to save this divine power to enhance his own strength and develop his territory.
According to the Book of Truth’s tests, the divine essence remaining in this statue was extremely powerful, possessing at least ten types of fundamental forces. This indicated that its original owner was likely a great being of intermediate or higher divine status, a very powerful ancient god. Thus, the divine power gathered from this statue was much purer than that of ordinary lower-tier gods.
The Book of Truth collected the faith power surrounding Donald, purified it into pure faith energy, and then transformed it into divine power through the statue and the original divine essence of the evil god. It was like a prostitute meeting a client—the two combined to exert a power far greater than either could achieve on its own.
And transforming faith into divine power brings even more benefits. By absorbing that tenth of the divine power, the Truth Book, which had remained in a fragmented state after being ravaged by the temporal storm, has partially recovered. Although it can still only remain at the level of a sub-divine artifact, some of its once-powerful functions as a high-tier divine artifact have been restored ahead of time. Having absorbed so much energy over time, the Truth Book has finally regained some of its functions—a discovery that brought tremendous surprise to Donald! Donald immediately entered a deep state of meditation, and soon his figure appeared in the world of consciousness, in front of the pillar of soul light. His soul projection reached out and touched the dark golden body of the Truth Book before the pillar of light, and Donald’s consciousness was instantly drawn into the space within this high-tier divine artifact. Unlike his undeveloped world of consciousness, the world inside the Truth Book resembled a real world—with lush vegetation, vibrant flowers, distant mountains, forests, and rivers. The air was filled with a fresh scent, and visible energy particles floated around. Clearly, the environment here was brimming with energy. Aside from the absence of living creatures, it was like a true high-magic plane. Sensing Donald’s thoughts, the Truth Book provided an explanation. This world was called the Kingdom of Truth, a second divine realm that the previous owner of the Truth Book had planned to create based on his own vision. It should be noted that every true god, regardless of their rank or strength, could only have one divine realm. Even if they seized one from another true god, they could at most integrate it into their own realm and could not possess a second one. Yet that powerful true god from another world was exceptionally wise and came up with a highly feasible solution: to find or create a demi-plane and use a high-tier divine artifact as its foundation to build a divine realm, then implanting a portion of their own divinity within it. In this way, even if their original body and realm were destroyed, they could revive in the second realm, retaining their original divinity and memories, and quickly regain their strength as a powerful true god to once again ascend to the throne. The reason that this powerful deity was so eager to create a second realm as a backup was because his world was about to face a catastrophic disaster that could destroy the entire world. Even he, who ranked among the top three most powerful gods in his world, was not sure if he could survive such a calamity. The other true gods in that world were in the same situation, all searching for a way out.
However, because the disaster came so suddenly, that great being lost this advanced divine artifact before his plans could be completed, causing it to drift outside of time and space. It wandered for countless years before ending up in Donald’s hands, leading to his journey through dimensions. This Kingdom of Truth was built entirely according to the standards of a powerful true god’s realm; all its facilities and structures were designed based on that great being’s vision of an ideal divine kingdom. It was not only meant as a backup for himself but also, once he successfully withstood the calamity, he could merge his own kingdom with it, thereby utilizing the numerous powerful functions within the Kingdom of Truth to ascend to the level of a true creator god and attain the supreme position in that universe. Yet since the final step had not yet been completed, the rules of this kingdom were incomplete. Thus, aside from the authorized master, unless one was a believer of the master, any outsider who entered would be assimilated by the rules within three days and become part of the kingdom’s power. As the contract host of the Book of Truth, they could be considered one entity, so Donald could also be regarded as half-owner of this kingdom, akin to possessing a vast realm. Just this alone already filled him with joy. The area of this kingdom’s realm was comparable to that of the northern continents and even larger than the combined territory of Celt. With such vast lands, even just growing wheat would make him the richest man in the main world. “It’s a pity I haven’t truly mastered the core of the kingdom and can’t modify its rules. Managing all this land by myself would exhaust me. To achieve control over the kingdom, one would need at least the strength of a legendary being to start, so there’s no rush to take over here for now. I’ll go check out what new functions have been unlocked in the Kingdom of Truth first.” The core of the kingdom was also the Divine City of Wisdom, where the true god intended to reside in the future. This divine city was right behind Donald. The City of Wisdom was located on a square plateau, covering an area at least equivalent to ten times that of Celt’s capital, Kosovo. Only the main part of the Divine Palace had been built; the city was empty, with most buildings yet to be constructed. These were originally planned to be built after believers and worshippers moved into the kingdom, but the true god never made it that far.
From his current location to the Divine City, there was at least a hundred kilometers of distance, and it would likely take several days to cover on foot. Fortunately, although Donald still didn’t understand the rules of the Divine Kingdom, he possessed teleportation magic, allowing him to arrive at the gates of the City of Wisdom in an instant. In the Divine Kingdom, where rules were strict, one could not fly unless they had the appropriate permissions—especially since this was the very core of the Divine Kingdom!
So Donald resigned himself to walking and made his way to the gates of the central palace, which was at least ten thousand meters away from the city gates.
After pushing open the doors and entering this magnificent complex of palaces, Donald first searched through his memories to get a general idea, spending a few minutes familiarizing himself with the entire palace complex.
With the detailed information provided by the Book of Truth about the Divine Kingdom, Donald learned that, aside from the vast world outside, its core consisted of eight parts: the eight palaces in the center of the Divine City and the most grand Main Temple.
Among the eight palaces, aside from one ordinary palace used for receiving guests, the other seven were part of the functions of the divine artifacts, each serving a different purpose. However, most of their functions were disabled due to the damage to the artifacts, preventing them from being utilized.
In fact, the main functions that allowed Donald to survive in this world—summoning, permanent summoning, and exchange—were the Summoning Altar and the Creation Factory, which were the first to be activated. But due to insufficient energy and damaged structures, these functions had never been manifested in the True Kingdom before, relying instead on the illusions created by the divine artifacts.
Now that he had truly entered the True Kingdom, he could finally see with his own eyes the two palaces where the Summoning Altar and the Creation Factory were located.
Entering the palace containing the Summoning Altar, he saw a vast space far larger than what could be perceived from outside the palace. Donald understood that this was achieved by using spatial rules to expand the interior space. The rules weren’t too complex; even he, if he mastered some related arcane matrices, could create something similar, though not as effortlessly as a true god.
The Summoning Altar was a large altar with a diameter of thousands of feet. On it, six square stone tablets were arranged according to the directions of the six star patterns. The tablets were colored like green jade, each covered with hundreds of mysterious and ancient runes connected together. The runes at the center of each set of runes were the most profound; just a glance at them made one feel as though countless creatures were constantly reproducing and changing, in a cycle of life and death.
This is the law of creation. Even with the power of that True God, only an extremely small fraction can be utilized, allowing only the creation of soulless beings. The ability to create perfect creatures relies instead on the transformation of divine power, along with the soul energy provided by Donald himself. Souls have always been the most mysterious and wondrous existence in the universe; even the True God finds it increasingly impossible to fully understand them. A living body can be created quite easily with divine power, but endowing it with a soul is something only a creator can accomplish. If one could reach the level of a creator, the one who created the Book of Truth would likely fear no great calamity. After summoning the altar, Donald went to the Creation Factory, whose environment resembled a massive alchemy workshop. Tens of thousands of alchemical instruments and devices were operated by puppets, utilizing the knowledge accumulated by that True God over countless years. Basically, there was no equipment or potion they could not create. For enchantment spells that the puppets could not perform, there were specialized workbenches that utilized divine power for transformation, at the cost of consuming energy.