Ardonis grimaced as he made an effort to scrape out the subspace he made. It felt as if he were forcibly trying to stretch his limbs to make them longer. He was doing it the same method one would normally use to deepen their mana pool. By forcing the mana down and to the sides. The placement of the subspace also had to do with the degree of pain, but he merely moved his to be beside his main pool.

  With the main pool being located in the center of the chest, about where the heart is, his sub-pool would be located about where his left lung is. Not the most pleasant spot, as it also made it hard for him to breathe as he was making and extending it. But at long last, he was at the final push, after a month of daily excruciating pain, he was nearly there.

  He took as deep a breath as he could and used all of his willpower to make the mana finish the depth and width of the pool he wanted. He opened his eyes with a gasp and breathed heavily, letting out a pained groan, “Finally, it’s finally over,” he muttered as he fell onto his back.

  Not being quite done yet, he sat back up and took another deep breath, once more closing his eyes and delving into his mental world, or rather, the projection of his psyche, where he could see both of the pools. All that was left was for him to take some more mana and refill the smaller pool, only this time, not use it up to make it larger.

  He still felt that it was surreal that he could use the mana he placed in this pool without alerting anyone, or anything, that he was using it. But being completely disconnected from his main source and opening it up to a different level of his soul was what caused such an effect. Once his secondary and much smaller pool was full, he once more opened his eyes and stood up.

  Just to test it, he conjured a small but blazing blue flame in his hand. He chuckled, “I don’t believe it, not only is it barely using any of my mana, but I can’t even sense the presence of my own mana being used like normal. Nor do I have to strain to conceal it.”

  He closed his hand and extinguished the flame, “The only drawback is that I have to consciously focus on using the second pool instead of my main source. But I’m sure even that will fade with time.”

  A knock on the door to his room within the manor the trio were staying in signified someone’s presence. Using his mana, he conjured clothes on himself, creating the second pool was sweaty work. And the clothes themselves, though made of mana, had a much higher defense than even some of the best armor out there.

  He opened the door to find one of the maids standing before him, “Good morning, sir, and sorry to disturb you, I just came to inform you that Lady Hyva wants to meet with you.”

  He sighed, “Let me guess, she was spying on me again, wasn’t she?”

  The maid bowed, “My apologies, sir, she seems to have quite the fixation on you. I’m not entirely sure why.”

  He waved her off, “There’s no need for you to apologize, the only one who should be is that boss of yours. Return to your duties, I’ll go see what she wants.”

  He had a fairly good idea why the priestess continuously spied on him despite telling her not to. It was fairly obvious, considering Lucy had started doing the same thing. Besides, Hyva wasn’t exactly trying to hide her advances. He just wasn’t quite sure what to think about it.

  He knocked on the door to her study, and after hearing an answer, he entered. “What is it you want from me this time, Hyva?”

  The woman in question was behind her desk with a soft smile on her face. “I see you’ve broken through and completed your subpool, a bit quicker than I anticipated, I have to admit. Whether you are a god or not, you managed to do it in one month, as I had projected. That was honestly more so a joke when I first said it. But you managed to turn it into a reality.”

  He sighed, “You are never going to heed my words of not spying on me, are you?”

  She shrugged, “It isn’t my fault you make for a fine figure of a man. A priestess I may be, but I do have my own likes in a man, you know.”

  “I don’t think your goddess would take too kindly to you pining after her enemy,” he said flatly. “Besides, why are you so interested? Isn’t it kind of against your code to try and win the affection of a god?”

  She giggled, “Fortunately for me, no. Besides… I can be convinced to leave my religion for another. I mean, there aren’t many who can say they’ve met their god face to face. And even fewer who can say they have a very intimate relationship with their god.”

  He narrowed his eyes, looking deeply into hers, “You aren’t joking, are you?” It was more an accusation than a question, there was a certain twinkle deep in her glowing eyes that confirmed his suspicion.

  She shrugged, “I am the wild priestess after all. Besides, every god needs a faithful believer and follower. I wouldn’t mind being your third, or even tenth wife, nine hells, I’d even take being your concubine.”

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  He took a deep breath, and when he opened his eyes, all traces of amusement left. The air turned heavy, and it became clear that she was in the presence of a god. “This is more than mere lust, right? I take relationships and feelings like this very seriously, Hyva. There are no guarantees, there are no promises, but I need to know, where does your loyalty truly lie?”

  Hyva was finding it hard to breathe under his gaze, as if she were barely even an ant before a galaxy. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before opening them again and looking up into his overpowering eyes. Not even realizing she had knelt before him. “I know you may have your doubts, especially considering who I am a priestess of. But truthfully, the only reason I have held off on turning my faith away from the goddess is because there were no other options available.”

  “If I left at any point and became a fallen priestess, she could freely strike me down as she pleased. And considering what I had seen of her before, the chances would not be all that low. But with two other gods before me, that gives me an out. Your divine protection from being your priestess would cancel hers out. And there would be nothing she could do about it. Granted, it would mean she would know our location, but that can be an easy enough fix.”

  “I truly do feel a pull towards you, Lord Ardonis. Something is calling out for me to become your priestess. Whether we develop a more intimate relationship or not is just a more personal goal of mine.”

  He went into thought as he continued staring at the beautiful elf, “And say we do take our relationship further, and you join my harem. I am a god, and though it may seem picky of me, I’d rather not be with a mortal. It would save both of us heartache.”

  She nodded, “I cannot deny that, though elves are fairly long-lived, we are still mortal. However, this does not mean that a mortal cannot become immortal. Especially a priest. This can only be done with one person, and it would not be surprising if you haven’t heard about it, but there is a way for a god to choose a priest and make them immortal. A divine priest who speaks with the voice and authority of their god. An immortal messenger of sorts to spread the word of their god, not just on their home planet but on many others.”

  “And how did you come across this knowledge?” he asked. “I’m not even sure if this is something my parents know. And that does include all three of my mothers.”

  “I happened upon some ancient texts and documents from my goddess a couple of centuries ago. Of course, I took much care to make sure she, nor anyone, ever found out. My guess is that they were quite personal as they seemed to detail her findings and day-to-day life.”

  “It would make sense if a goddess as old and powerful as her had found such knowledge, I suppose… we can worry about the divine priest stuff later if we cross that bridge. You’re certain about this, Hyva? If we do this and you become my priestess, there will be no going back, you will be with us no matter what happens and no matter what regrets you may have.”

  His pressure had lessened enough for her to look him in the eye without feeling as if she were at death’s door. She nodded, “Yes. Over this past month, I have learned that you share enough of the core values for me to put my faith in you. In fact, you even have a few I personally align with more that aren’t in the core values of Goddess Milsa’s religion.”

  He sighed, “Well, if you want to throw your lot in with an aspiring young god, I could use all the support I can get. So, how does this work? How do you become my priestess and swear off Milsa’s religion? It can’t be that easy to simply change beliefs, even if I share core values. Religion and faith are a bit more complicated than that, no?”

  “There certainly are mantras and other prayer habits that will take time to shake off. But as I said before, I’ve already lost faith in Goddess Milsa. It’s why I left the main church to begin with and formed my own pseudo one. I’ve simply been making an excuse until I could validly put my faith and belief into a different god. My church will become the first to establish a new religion, yours.”

  “Well, if you’re personal beliefs align with mine enough… and you probably know better than I what starting a new religion will entail. Hmm, you are really making it hard for me to find a way to turn this down.”

  “New religions are started all the time from diverging beliefs, are they not?” she asked sagely. “It will mean differing to you and your word, as well as whatever rules and commandments you set out, but we can get those details down later. Establishing a religious belief is the easy part… on the individual level, establishing the actual religion itself is the hard part, primarily done by mortal believers after receiving a guideline of beliefs.”

  After a couple of minutes of silence, he finally heaved a heavy sigh, “Fine, I give up, you can become my priestess, let me just inform the other two, and then we’ll teleport somewhere to throw Milsa off our true location. I’d rather not have a repeat of a certain port town.”

  Hyva smiled brightly, the brightest one he had seen from her thus far. “Thank you, Lord Ardonis, or rather, God Ardonis, you won’t regret this. I’ve always wanted to start a new religion and stick it to those assholes.”

  Ardonis knew why she changed it; lord and lady were used to formerly address other gods, one didn’t believe in. While God or Goddess was used for the believed in one. Even when he first learned about it, he found it interesting. He chuckled wryly, “You really are serious about this, huh? I honestly can’t say I imagined that I would be starting to use faith magic so soon into my journey. Even if it won’t exactly be usable for a good while, it is still quite the head start.”

  She nodded, “That it is, but I can’t help if I feel more aligned with you than Lady Milsa.”

  He sighed once more as he began to leave, only to stop and look back. “Oh, one last thing before I go, let's hold off on the whole religion thing for a while. That would not only draw unnecessary attention but start a conflict with the main church and Milsa's religion as a whole. One that we would be guaranteed to lose. We first need to build up a base of believers under the radar. Which would mean keeping this church as one of a new religion secret. Until we've built enough to handle such things.”

  Hyva smiled, “As wise as I would expect a scholar like yourself to be. Even if you are younger than me. I will be sure to be careful after officially becoming your priestess. Your word is my command.”

  He nodded and continued on his way to look for Lucy and Viana. He used a bit of mana to sense their Presences, smiling as he figured out where they were. Happy that he could use magic again, he teleported to their location.