She had watched him while biting a handkerchief and thinking hard. From his birth onward, she had observed him for most of the time, yet she still could not tell where that divine status came from. She even suspected some ancient relic or a Crimson God from Abyss sneaking through reincarnation, but none matched.
The more she tried to understand, the more confused she became. Meanwhile, somewhere in the sky, Belial was thinking about a serious matter. He had run out of phone credit.
More precisely, the small translation space he owned had run out of credit. He had just sent two messages, and the credit was gone in an instant. Belial realized that whenever he used the Lord's power to communicate or send something, it consumed what he called credit, which from a thousand-year dragon king's perspective was probably faith.
He had not noticed it before. Who would have thought that the space not only used power but also burned credit? After a few casual chats, he had burned through the little credit he somehow had. This was far too inefficient. He had only sent his name, and it was all gone.
"It feels like there must be more to it. The problem might be with the two of us." For example, Miss Witch, or rather Lilith now. It really was a fitting name for a Witch. Maybe Lilith herself was too far away, or the signal there was bad, so it cost extra. Or perhaps it depended on the strength of the contact. Estimating Lilith's power, she was probably quite strong among those in the Otherworld.
He sighed as he looked at his friend list, which now had only two names. The credit had been burned away, and he had planned to invite a few more. Now this was all he could manage.
That meant he had to think about another issue. "These credits, I mean the source of faith. How am I supposed to get them?" Belial scratched his head. Right now, this faith served two purposes. One was letting him use the space to pull people in and talk, and the other was using the power of the thousand-year dragon king.
Once he realized this, he felt a sharp headache. By the setting, that embarrassing Ghidorah counted as a proper god worshiped with incense, so its power naturally came from offerings, which meant faith. In other words, faith was the dragon king's mana bar, and its use went beyond that. With enough faith, he could enter that strange form like last time.
That form did not directly increase raw output, but it had many damage bonuses and was more flexible than his main body. If he could master it, it would be a good thing. But asking him to gather faith like this was asking too much. He conjured a mirror and looked at himself, and the result was clear. His appearance could scare anyone from an elderly mother to a six-year-old child.
Should he learn from some seniors and put on a skin instead? Even preachers at least looked human and could talk well. He lacked even that basic requirement.
Belial fell into thought, then suddenly realized something strange. "I have had the thousand-year dragon king template for a long time, but I have barely interacted with humans." "So where did the faith credit in my space come from in the first place? Who has been secretly worshiping me?"
The space had been picked up from his first friend, and the faith recharge channel had only been opened recently. Yet he had still had faith to use the first time. That meant even before he got the space, there had already been people secretly treating him as a god.
Realizing that someone might be secretly building him a perfect city and possibly turning him into something unpleasant, Belial hurried back into the space to search. "I have done many things, but either no one saw them, or no one could see them, or even I did not think they were good deeds. Who believes in me?"
When he examined it carefully, he was startled. There were actually tens of thousands of believers. Let me take a look. He narrowed his eyes and saw that while the total number was not huge, they were clearly layered.
There were dozens with the highest contribution, several thousand at a middle level, and over ten thousand at the lowest level. He wanted to follow the link and see who they were, but considering his credit was gone and forcing his way in might literally burn their brains, he decided against it.
"Spreading faith really is not something I can do alone. Maybe I can outsource it." "For example, pull someone into the space and let them handle it for me. Have them spread it around. That should work."
After all, his Ghidorah Clone inside the space looked decent enough, at least it was golden. It would scare people better than some poor god, and he could cooperate by performing a few miracles. He could not do grand spectacles, but small tricks like reversing time or reviving the dead should be enough to impress.
"I will study it some more. The nature of this faith is quite interesting." "Basically, it is also made of light and dark memories, but if I have to put it simply, these believers are more like assembly line workers for gods."
After waiting a bit and gaining a little faith, Belial examined it under his dual templates and saw its essence clearly. That faith was similar to light and dark memories, which were important parts of the soul, but it was not that simple. In common terms, when a believer focused on a certain being and performed prayer-like actions with strong intent, their soul light would pull surrounding light and dark memories, forming a special kind of fluctuation.
If such prayer continued over time, the light and dark filling the world would produce a slightly different power within this prayer assembly line. Because of its directional nature, it could be used by him. It was somewhat like soul power, but compared to directly killing people and taking everything at once, it was more like sustainable harvesting.
This power could not be used as direct energy, but after experimenting within himself, Belial found that it reacted strongly as a catalyst for exerting power. And the space he controlled also seemed to be composed of many processes mixed with faith. That was truly interesting.
"Now that I think about it, it feels like many old acquaintances from the past had similar qualities." Belial frowned slightly.
After getting a rough understanding of the relationship between believers and faith, he formed a simple explanation. At its core, faith power was light and dark energy that had been processed, and that processing could only be done through the souls of believers by prayer. In other words, gods were basically factory owners, and the Lord relied on promising their believer employees rewards so they would pray and refine the world's light and dark power into a specific kind of faith that could be used directly.
Thinking about it like that felt strange. He muttered that if that beam of light could deliver something like this to him, then it had to be an existence related to gods. This small and magical space was probably some kind of divine item, which was why it reacted to his King Ghidorah template.
Maybe that light was just some errand runner under a god, something like a divine messenger. After spending so long wandering around Otherworld, he had finally brushed up against beings on the level of gods. If he rounded things up a bit, as long as the background forces did not act directly, he could more or less walk sideways through the story as top tier combat power, as long as he protected his vital parts.
Still, he really wanted to see it. He wondered what a real god actually looked like, and figured it would be impressive. He was also curious about how gods were related to those old familiar enemies he had fought along the way, the Great Beast, since having that level of power had to mean some connection.
But those monsters were not weak either. Then why did the inherited memories from his broken Shard include impressions of gods and Chosen Hero, yet had no record of those monsters. If those monsters were all connected to real gods, then after fighting so many of them, had he already offended a whole crowd of gods, and why had nothing happened to him yet.
Thinking back, many of those old familiar enemies could use light and dark power. That seemed to suggest that in Otherworld, this kind of power was basically the entry ticket to high end combat. If those bastards were also using something similar to faith power, could they really be considered gods.
After considering the possibility, he almost laughed at himself. What had he fought before, a knockoff Mechagodzilla that never paid copyright fees, a weak Biollante that barely resisted, a Gigan that went down in one hit, and a Great Dragon that was useless except for taking hits. Would real gods be things like that.