Chapter 1039 — The Power of Symbols and Rituals?
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 4
When she finished, Kamaier spoke up from the side: "On the battlefield at Winterhold, the soldiers who fought did not merely defeat a mad god—they also overcame the mortal instinct of awe toward the gods. Looking at it now, that was a very crucial 'factor.' Of course, most of those who fought were mages or magitech soldiers who did not themselves worship the God of War, but perhaps what mattered was not their particular faith but their identity as 'mortals.'"
"So an element of 'defying faith' is required," Gao Yang's brows knitted deeply. What Kamaier described was a direction he had vaguely grasped before but never seriously considered. "If it truly is as you say, then we may indeed be able to explain why what happened with the God of Nature and the Goddess of Magic is so utterly different from the God of War—when those two departed their divine seats, mortal thought and action played no part at all, so naturally there was no defying of faith, no process of overcoming awe."
Amber had been listening wide-eyed all this while; the parts involving specialized fields had mostly gone over her head, but this last part she grasped at once, and she was greatly startled: "Wait—are you saying we'd have to drag Amorn and Milmina out and kill them all over again? That doesn't seem right. They've already left their divine seats of their own accord, and Milmina has hidden herself somewhere no one can find..."
"Of course we won't do that," Gao Song waved a hand sharply. "The two of them have already left their divine seats; their hold over mortals has vanished. Neither natural divine arts nor magic rituals are constrained by divinity any longer—that already meets our expectations. As for certain relics, legacies, or remains of theirs carrying a bit of contamination, that's a secondary matter—at most it's equivalent to a hazardous material requiring cautious handling. We cannot move against them for such a reason."
Virodai nodded from the side, clearly agreeing with Gao Song: "Indeed. We are only working backward from changes in the contamination of divine remains to infer the connection between mortal faith and mental contamination. But this mental contamination has nothing to do with the gods' sanity; Amorn and Milmina will not become 'mad gods' because of it. On that point we need not worry."
"And on the other hand, the contamination carried by the 'divine products' of Amorn and Milmina is in fact fading as well—only far more slowly than these fragments of the God of War here," Kamaier said as he pondered. "The contamination carried by Amorn's flesh-and-blood sample has already faded by more than half compared to what I remember from a thousand years ago, and the fading has been especially pronounced of late. Milmina left no 'fragments' as such, but Nareitel once stripped a great deal of 'ash' from her, and the contamination of that ash is also weakening. On the whole, this contamination clearly dissipates on its own—it simply takes longer."
"Even without any process of 'defying faith,' as the divine seats of the God of Nature and the Goddess of Magic vanish and the religions corresponding to them gradually decline, the mental contamination they inflict on mortals will likewise fade little by little..." Gao Yang stroked his chin, his thoughts growing clearer. "So in essence, this is a process of faith's decline—and that great battle at Winterhold was the most violent, most extreme form that decline could take..."
Amber blinked and suddenly spoke up: "From what I know, Luoyan Augustus had tens of thousands of the God of War's priests executed that very day—he had clearly obtained knowledge of this from that 'Eye of God' long beforehand."
Her expression was somewhat complicated as she said this; plainly, even the mistress of intelligence who dealt with dark matters regularly could not help feeling a chill when speaking of Luoyan Augustus's bloody methods.