178 What it means to be a god

To Gaia, this World was nothing short of an aberration. A dream-like existence that sparsely made any sense.

From the very day she had woken up, all kinds of crazy things had begun to reveal themselves one by one. And most of them were actually things that were beneficial to her. For example, she was now a goddess. A goddess that could travel beyond the planet's boundary at that.

Sacred Lands? The uber rare treasured territories that the most powerful factions in Sigothia had to spend innumerable resources to artificially create, and even more to exclusively occupy? She had seen over 10 of them in just this tiny Continent alone, and she hadn't even fully explored it.

What was worse was that these Sacred Lands that were usually owned by the most prestigious gods or ingenious immortals, were being freely occupied by Beasts that had never even touched the 5th Realm.

And she was sure that nobody else outside the continent had reached the 5th Realm either, after all, the shackles to the 4th Realm and beyond had apparently only been released 45 years ago. That was not enough time for anybody who didn't possess both precious cultivation resources and impeccable cultivation techniques to reach the 5th Realm.

The 4th Realm was a great hallmark to be in but it was also a depressing one. Cultivating was already hard (even if this World didn't make it seem like that), but after reaching the 4th Realm the difficulty increased exponentially. Only the great talents, hardest workers and alchemy chuggers could continue from there. But the 7th Realm? Forget it.

Too difficult.

But not everything about this so-called Eridius World was good. She had come across many daunting things that she was worried about such as the Monster race and the rabid creatures of the Sea. There were also locations that she had encountered that she had dared not to tread, even going as far as to ban the entire Dragon race from entering.

But those things couldn't compare to the threat that she had felt from the 7 beings known as the Demon gods, a concept she had never heard of before; Beings who were said to be the embodiment of the 7 deadly sins.

All those years ago, not too long after that strange man called Eridel had transformed her into a goddess, the entire world had been rocked by the awakening of its first Demon god, the Sin of Envy. It was an absolutely terrifying event and not something that she would easily forget.

Of course, she hadn't known what was going on at the time. How could she? But fortunately, thanks to her new status as the goddess of the Eridius World, when she had made her half-hearted attempt for answers from the System, she had actually been obliged. The system had told her of The 7 Deadly Sins, the 7 Demon gods who would eventually rise 1 by 1 to rule over the Monster race.

Unfortunately, when she had asked the System what their purpose was, she had been met with silence. Quite different to the times she had been told that 'she was unqualified to know'. If it had said that, she would have known that at least there WAS a purpose, she was just not allowed to know it. But now, even though she thought that there was one, she could never confirm it.

Ever since then, she had made attempts to collect any information about the Sin of Envy that she could find, only to meet with failure. The effects of Envy's awakening were easy to find, especially since they appeared within her own territory, but news about a being that could possibly be the Sin of Envy was nowhere to be found.

Which meant that he or she was not on this Continent.

When she had finally reached that conclusion, she had been struck by my multiple feelings. Worry and even a little bit of fear at the fact that despite the Sin of Envy not even being on the continent, the effects of its awakening still brought up troubles all over the continent. Some joy at the fact that she would not have to be forced to deal with the threat before she had gained adequate strength. And finally, contrary to the last feeling; regret.

Regret that she would not be able to deal with the threat before it grew even bigger. 15 Years ago (Year 157), she had finally gathered enough faith energy to enter the 1st Realm of the Divine Path; a cultivation system that was on par with the Essence Path and the Anatomy Path. Before then, she had been relying on the arduous Anatomy Path as she slowly gathered Faith Energy. But now that she was in it, gathering Faith Energy was multiple times easier than before, and she could now use the energy to form Divine Energy; something similar to but much greater than Mana.

The reason it had taken her 30 years to get to that point is because, before she could convert Faith Energy to Divine Energy, she needed her Divine Territory; a small (for now) pocket dimension that would exist with her Divine Core. But creating such a thing, as one could expect, required enormous amounts of Faith Energy. So for 30 years, she had been expanding her faith. Making the Dragons and other subordinate races pray and create things in her name; 2 things that gave her Faith Energy.

The Divine Awakening 15 years ago (which she had renamed 'Divinity Reclamation' so that it would fit into the weaving of lies) was an amazing event. The Dragons had adored her and nothing unexpected occurred. Well, the boy called Theodore that she had noticed was tainted by the Essence of Envy was a bit unexpected since she had been of the mind that she had exposed and gotten rid of all of them, but even that finding was a sign of good luck. Because for some reason, the Essence of Envy didn't affect the boy's personality too much like it did the others, so she had decided to keep an eye on him instead of exposing him so that she could study the effects of the Essence of Envy.

All in all, her Divine Awakening was a great success.

She had become a true goddess in every sense of the word unlike the pseudo goddess that she was before. And with that new status, she had been regretting the fact that she wouldn't be able to deal with the Sin of Envy. Because now, she was sure that with her own might along with the powerful forces she could rally, the Sin of Envy whoever it was, would be able to do nothing but die.

But that was nothing but a pipe dream. It was already unrealistic for her to bring her forces to the other side of the continent, talk less of across the seas and into another continent.

Her mood grew worse when she remembered that through studying little boy Theo, she had been able to find out that unlike a regular god, a demon god didn't need someone to act upon their Sin –in their name– to reap the benefits. They just had to do it. And whether or not the person wanted it or not, they would form Sin Essence and a portion of it would go to the Sin Inheritor.

But unlike them, despite the fact that she was the goddess of creation, she couldn't just obtain Faith Energy from anybody who created things. They needed to create things in her name for her to gain Faith Energy and it was completely unfair. Demon gods were clearly a cut above regular gods and it was absolutely daunting.

What's worse was that another one had awakened 2 months ago and it was none other than the Demon god of Gluttony.