Science/Magic

The next morning, the group left the city and continued on their way.

They used Leto to fly part of the way, and when Leto's energy was exhausted, they moved on foot.

Following the plan they made in Academy City, they moved while avoiding meeting with other people. The fewer people they met during the way, the lesser the chance of their purpose being discovered.

The trip was rather boring, especially when they were flying on Leto. At first, the girls found the sight from Leto's back fresh and entertaining, but eventually, they became tired of it.

Thus, the group tried to find things to do to pass the time. Liu Ying decided to use her free time to get used to her abilities after the breakthrough, Princess Elwha was training the technique that Regina taught her, [Soul Severing Blade], and Eres occasionally sparred with them or with Regina.

Regina and Bloed, on the other hand, were experimenting with possible countermeasures just in case the Sun God descended.

However, their experiment was not going that well.

Right now, Bloed had his eyes closed as he tried to self-hypnotize into believing in the Goddess of Fate.

He was in a state of meditation, repeating to himself the words 'I believe in the Goddess of Fate', and 'I'm grateful for her help, her grace, and her mercy'.

His goal was to try to produce faith towards the goddess.

However, it was not easy.

After almost one hour like that, Bloed opened his eyes and sighed.

"How was it?" He asked Regina.

The Valkyrie shook her head. "Nothing. I did not register any change in your psychic energy."

"I thought so." Bloed smiled wryly and sighed in resignation.

His purpose with this experiment was to develop faith towards a god, however, it was much harder than he expected.

Due to Camilla's teachings inside the spaceship and his knowledge about science, Bloed had a hard time believing in 'gods'.

Even though he knew that gods were real in this world, he found it hard to hold a feeling of 'worship' towards these gods.

His critical and scientific mind told him that these gods were just stronger living beings and that there was no need to worship them.

Due to it, no matter how much he tried, he could not 'produce faith' towards them.

Not even the Goddess of Fate, who had helped and shown favor towards him several times, could make him generate a feeling of worship. He was grateful, but he could not see her as a higher being.

"This is just the first step of the experiment, but we are already stuck. How frustrating…" Bloed sighed.

"Should we find someone else?" Regina asked while looking in Liu Ying, Elwha, and Eres's direction.

Bloed thought for a moment and looked at Liu Ying.

"Liu Ying, can you come here for a second?"

"Huh? What is it?"

"Do you believe in any god?"

The demon girl furrowed her brows before shaking her head.

"No god helped my family when it was destroyed. Why should I believe in them?"

Bloed was helpless. He then looked at Elwha and Eres, but in the end, he did not bother to ask them.

Elves did not believe in gods, and Eres was the princess of a kingdom that disliked gods. He was sure that neither of them believed in any god either.

"I guess we can only continue trying, huh."

The goal of this experiment was to determine the nature of faith.

During his chat with Eve, she had told them that faith was a two-way connection between god and believers. The faith of the believers empowered the god, and the god's power cleansed the believers' souls, making them healthier and increasing their attunement to the god's concept.

The stronger the faith, the stronger the connection to the god, and in some cases, this connection could allow the believers to borrow the powers of the god, albeit partially.

That was the origin of divine arts.

However, why did faith have that ability? What was faith in the first place?

Bloed had the theory that faith was a kind of energy related to the soul, like psychic energy.

He was not certain, though. That was why he thought about this experiment.

His goal was to generate a bit of this 'faith energy' and then find a way to interfere with it through Regina's ESP ability, [Energy Materialization]. This way, perhaps they could find a way to stop a god's descent.

But Bloed never thought that he would face a wall just after starting the experiment.

"It's so hard..." Bloed groaned and started the process of self-hypnosis again.

Perhaps it was because the Goddess of Fate was helping him(?), but after three days, Bloed finally managed to generate a bit of 'faith'.

The faith he generated was almost negligible (about 100 Joules of energy). Even a potato could produce many times that energy, but to Bloed, these 100 Joules of Faith Energy almost made him cry.

He could finally continue with the next step of the experiment.

Just like that, the group's leisure trip continued.

But about five days after they left Academy City, they met something odd.

While they were flying on Leto, the group saw smoke coming from a small village in the distance.

Bloed and the others looked at each other in doubt. Driven by curiosity, Bloed sent one of his pets, Oculus, to check on the situation in the village.

But when the images of the village were transmitted to Bloed's sight, his expression could not help but change.

Dead bodies, destroyed houses, torn limbs, and blood; a lot of blood.

That was everything that remained from the village.

The scene was so horrifying that a normal person would have vomited after seeing that.

The entire village had been exterminated.

...

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