Chapter 138. The Temple Learned From The Best Expert
Inside the Crystal Cube world.
Lacius woke up from his petrification the instant he received Cedric's message.
After learning about the demon cult’s existence, Lacius fell into thought.
‘The creator didn’t tell me the exact location of those demon cults. Does this mean the creator is not as omniscient as I thought?’ Lacius quickly discarded that guess, ‘No, during my time helping Yuma kills demons, the creator can pinpoint the exact location of a demon. I suppose the creator should be capable of seeing every corner of the world.’
‘But why didn’t the creator told me the exact location of a cult that’s constantly creating demons? I though the creator didn’t wish for more demons and demon king to be born? Did something has changed? Or is this some sort of test? The thought of a divine being is indeed difficult to guess.’
While trying to guess the creator’s thought, Lacius left his secret room and summoned the current high priest.
Once he met the high priest, Lacius issued his command, “Investigate the cults that’s been causing chaos by creating demons. You can use all means to destroy those cults.”
He then discussed the fortress’s conditions with the High Priest, instructing him to begin collecting earth element resources and recent research, and brought it to his underground secret chamber before retreating to his own chamber to petrify himself.
Following Lacius’s orders, the Temple, which had largely maintained a transcendental stance since the great purge Lacius initiated, started a significant movement across the human kingdoms and empires for the first time in centuries.
The Temple’s extensive intelligence network that covers the entire human territory, combined with its seemingly endless human resources, prompted the demon cult to go to great lengths to conceal itself.
Whenever the Temple detected traces of a demon cult branch, an endless swarm of knights and priests would be dispatched to flatten the cult to the ground. They’d even dig several meters deep to ensure there were no secret rooms or passages where demon-related knowledge or demon cultists were hiding.
The Temple also executed many nobles, commoners, and even an entire village suspected of working with the demon cults or of providing them with daily necessities like food and water.
Aside from punishing those associated with demon cults, the Temple also actively spreads propaganda claiming that these cults are responsible for creating every demon in the world.
Most high-ranking nobles are aware that the recently formed demon cults are not responsible for the demons that have existed since ancient times. However, the propaganda effectively instills fear and hatred of the demon cults among commoners and lower nobles who lack detailed information.
Through a dual approach of hunting demon cultists and making it harder for the cults to recruit low-ranking members, the Temple has successfully dismantled one-fifth of the cults.
They even successfully killed one of the radical faction’s former Magic Association Council members. This caused fear to spread among the other high-ranking members of the radical faction under Verdian’s lead.
The amount of blood shed over the year could fill a lake. The unnecessary casualties alone are almost on par with a war between two kingdoms.
It even caught Cedric’s attention, leaving him speechless before purchasing another [Divine Intervention: Word] to ask Lacius to prevent his subordinates from causing further needless deaths.
Lacius, still in a petrified state to decrease his lifespan consumption, woke up when he found Cedric’s message.
Upon seeing the creator’s request to control his subordinates and stop the unnecessary killing, Lacius frowned before summoning the current High Priest.
The High Priest entered his secret room and kneeled, “Allmighty god of magic, this servant has followed your order to use all means to eliminate those culltists.”
Lacius sensed something was off in the High Priest’s wording. “Report to me on your progress over the past few years."
The High Priest eagerly recounted their efforts to locate and eliminate every demon cultist.
When Lacius realized the Temple had indeed exhausted all means to dismantle the cults and in doing so, caused more casualties than the cult itself, he started getting a headache. ‘No wonder the creator notified me.’
As someone who's lived for so long and has met the creator pretty often, Lacius knew the creator's bottom line is not to cause numerous deaths.
There might be some exceptions that he didn't understand, like why the creator seems to show favor to the demon cult by not telling him the direct location of their base. But as long as that bottom line isn't breached, the creator most likely won’t intervene.
If Cedric saw Lacius with a headache over his subordinate’s insane act, he would’ve felt a sense of camaraderie with him. But if he heard what Lacius was thinking, Cedric might've tried to study psychology the next time he visited Earth. That way, it'll be harder for others to guess his intentions.
If it’s a normal person who learned his personality, Cedric definitely won’t mind. But Lacius definitely can’t be categorized amongst normal people.
After receiving the news, Lacius gave several orders to the High Priest. Upon leaving the secret chamber, the High Priest gathered the senior priests of the Temple.
Standing on the temple grounds amid other high-ranking clergy, he proclaimed, “I have received a divine revelation from the god of magic and the creator to reduce sacrifices offered by the common people during our fight against the evil demon cults. Therefore, with the gods' blessing, I will establish the Order of Inquisition to investigate and gather evidence before dispatching knights to eliminate these heretical cultists!”
The Order of Inquisition was soon established. Its members traveled across human territories in search of demon cultists.
While the Order and the cultists engaged in a game of hide-and-seek, the fortress in the valley that connected the continent finally completed its construction, and humans officially began contact with other races.
The representatives from the Temples took the lead in these exchanges, dispatching a caravan laden with alchemical potions and various trinkets for trade.
After selling those items, the group ventured further into elven and dwarven lands to assess their current conditions and explore their technologies.
While there has already been trade between humans and these races via Lacius or the magic association spreading across the continent, direct visits allow for a much richer exchange of information.
Like the humans, both dwarves and elves sent over a hundred representatives each. The dwarves’ caravan is led by a council member, while the elves’ caravan is led by a trusted subordinate of the current elven queen, who is also Elisa’s subordinate.
Apart from the leader, the other members are either combatants with Level 3 blessed power, scholars who have learned human language from those in the Magic Association, or merchants tasked with ensuring they won’t get scammed.
The elves and dwarves soon entered human territory.
Unlike the elven territory, where cities are nestled amid forests, or the dwarven territory, where most cities are constructed on mountains. The human cities, primarily built on flat plains, captured their interest. The distinct architecture, different from that of their own cities, held their attention for a long time.
As time passes, except for the few months when the elves and dwarves seriously explore and investigate the cities they visit, the group slowly changes from a diplomatic group into a travel group.
The elves visited clothing stores, art supply stores, bookstores, and theaters, which is already a rustic form of entertainment compared to the movies that have spread across the elven territory.
They bought numerous alchemical dyeing techniques to create more vivid clothing colors than they could produce themselves. In addition, the most purchased items were books and personal hygiene products such as soaps, perfumes, and alchemical detergents.
Meanwhile, the dwarves embarked on a wine and beer tasting journey, occasionally visiting casinos and discovering the variety of human gambling games.
As for the humans who visited the elven territory, they could only gasp in awe at the elves’ internet, which, upon sudden exposure, overwhelmed their willpower and gradually turned them into internet addicts.
While those humans who visited the dwarves could only marvel at the dwarf city’s sky, a sky that was filled with clouds due to the numerous steam engines.
A few centuries ago, the dwarves had continued advancing their steam engine to the point where it became commercially viable. With the convenience of the steam engine, the dwarves had begun taking half a step toward industrialization.
Unlike the steam engine on Earth, the dwarves' steam engine causes minimal pollution thanks to Ghiana and Elisa’s preparatory work centuries ago.
As people summoned from Earth, they understood the problems pollution caused. Before her death, Ghiana had developed several plants capable of capturing most of the pollution produced by the engines.
Although it couldn’t entirely remove the effect of pollution on the steam engine, it was enough to reduce pollution by more than 90%.
***
After the first group of humans, dwarves, and elves traveled around the other’s territory for half a year, they returned with lists of items that’ll be useful to purchase.
The representatives of the three races held a meeting to ensure continuous trade and to deepen their cooperation by allowing more people to visit each other's territories.
Decades quickly pass as trade between the northern and southern parts of the continent becomes more frequent.
Inside the Divine Space, Cedric saw the world’s peaceful state and grew doubtful.
“I honestly thought they’ll start a war the instant I opened this valley road. Who kows these guys actually only calmly trades with each others?”
They haven't started a war solely because the valley's path is narrow. The System dares you to create a larger opening, and we’ll see all hell break loose. The System has seen this kind of situation too many times. Most short-lived species like humans and goblins are generally unsuitable for a world with multiple intelligent species.]
Cedric agreed because that’s indeed what he had in mind when he opened only a small valley to let humans meet with other races.
After checking the situation in the valley, Cedric observed the overall state of the world.
In human territory, the number of elven and dwarven merchants and travelers slowly increased. Some of them fell in love with humans, creating a beautiful love story that Cedric knew would definitely end in tragedy because of their different lifespans.
Those love stories soon led to marriage, and children from interracial marriages between humans and elves or humans and dwarves began to be born.
Actually, dwarves and elves have been intermarrying for a long time, but dwarf-elf couples face great difficulty in having children. Their relatively long lifespans and different racial backgrounds make procreation very challenging. .
The few mixed dwarf-and-elf individuals who are born usually marry pure-blooded members of their original races, causing their descendants' bloodlines to gradually revert to either dwarf or elf over several generations.
As a result, establishing a dwarf-elf mixed race is nearly impossible.
Compared to dwarf-elf interracial marriage, the elf-human or dwarf-human marriage has a higher chance of conceiving children because of the human’s relatively low lifespan.
Actually, Cedric has another theory for the birth rate.
The dwarf and elf genes are vastly different, making it difficult for them to produce mixed-blood children. However, both races' genes are quite similar to those of humans.
If the genetic similarity between a random dwarf and elf is 99.5%, then the similarity between a random human and either an elf or a dwarf is approximately 99.7%.
This led Cedric to suspect that the humanoid races template sold in the System may actually be based on humans.
To his guess, the System only gave a simple reply.
[Duh, there’s a reason it’s called HUMANoid race.]
The answer leaves Cedric utterly speechless. “I thought the term 'humanoid' was exclusive to human language. Shouldn’t they be called 'elvenoid' or 'dwarvnoid' in their respective languages?”
[Some worlds probably have a term like you mentioned. But even in the Divine Language, the word for humanoid means ‘a likeness to humans.’ Not elves, not dwarves, but humans. Honestly, the System also didn’t understand why humans serve as the primary template for other humanoid races.]