Chapter 02
▪️Connections in the Online World
As soon as she proclaimed his name, the massive body of the oak guardian trembled in reverence, as his half-kneeling posture turned into a full on gesture of kowtowing.
He deeply bowed and spoke with a voice that seemed to be excited and trembling akin to a child who had just been praised by their mother:
"Praise be the Mother Goddess, I will serve thee until my last dying breath!"
After hearing his bold proclamation of loyalty, Evé then felt a pure and warm energy coming out from the oak guardian as if it had crossed the void and directly blessed her, ultimately converging with her own natural divine power whom sits at the deepest part of her body and coalescing with the rest of her Divinity.
Evé was then surprised to find that her originally depleted divine power reserves had actually recovered just a little bit.
After considering the information in her consciousness for a moment, Evé quickly came to an conclusion.
"The power of faith?"
The power that just came from the Oak Guardian is undoubtedly the power of faith!
Being personally blessed by Eve's natural divine power, this Oak Treant has now fully become a loyal advocate of the Mother Goddess, and will naturally provide consistent power of faith through daily practice of his religion.
Looking at the respectful and obedient Berserker in front of her, Evé became even more satisfied, feeling that she had touched upon some ideas on how to restore her powers.
Thinking of this, Evé once again checked the information passed down to her and unsurprisingly found relevant information to such matters.
The Saigües realm is a magically enriched world that is home to mortals and a few Demigods for which the latter are mostly in control the world.
The power of the deities comes from faith, and the power of the faith of all living things is what empowers the deities with them transforming the raw faith into pure divine power through their Divinity.
The World Tree is a mythical creature that exists on the same level as the Gods. Henceforth the power of the World Tree and the deities are somewhat similar. The World Tree also is an esteemed being widely recognized by all living things within Saigües.
True gods had once walked the surface of the mortal realm long ago but currently there's some problem that's preventing them from descending into this realm thus most of the True Gods resides in another plane called the Heavenly Realm.
Also according to the World Tree's Inheritance, there are different types of Deities but they are mostly classified by the method for which they can garner power.
The popular term for distinction amongst them are the 'New Gods' and the 'Old Ancient Ones.'
The new gods, also known as the faith-based deities, are often deities that are born much later. They mainly rely on the power of faith provided by their worshipers to accumulate divine power, strengthen their Divinities, and improve their own Celestial Domain by building divine kingdoms in the mortal world.
The Old Ancient Ones on the other hand, are known as the mythical-based deities, for which most of them already exist even way back to the primordial era aeons ago.
Their power comes from the natural laws bestowed upon the heavens and earth. Thus in turn gives them the ability to obtain divine power from the cosmic void or through some other obscure means.
The Great Ancient Ones do not require faith, nevertheless they can also strengthen themselves through being worshipped.
The World Tree belongs to the latter.
Back when the World Tree was still at its peak, it could directly draw energy from the cosmic void and gain divine power from it easily, or directly convert the vitality of other creatures into its own natural divine power.
However, at this moment, the World Tree is in a dying state and has lost the ability to gain natural divine power from the cosmic void.
In this quasi-death state, the World Tree cannot function on its own and can only indirectly influence the outside world through divine power. This makes it impossible for Evé to actively absorb the life force of the plants in the forest to restore her strength, because she cannot do it herself...
The only method Evé can think of to increase her divine power is through faith. However, the path of religion is not an easy one. According to the information derived from the inheritance, the competition amongst the faith-based gods for believers on Saigües is quite fierce, and the previous World Tree apparently fell because of it.
Thinking of this, Evé looked at her newly created Treant follower and he felt more and more precious within her eyes.
A fanatic! And one that could potentially become a saint!
"Sigh if only I could know more about Berserker's abilities...it would be nice if his status was displayed just like the games back in my old world..."
She couldn't help but exhale ruefully.
How stupid, this is reality and not a game world. How could there be a convenient thing like a Status scr—
Suddenly, Evé felt a slight decrease in her natural divine power, and within her consciousness appeared a Status Interface of the oak tree guardian, just like the one she had wished just now!
[Name: Berserker ]
[Race: Oak Tree Guardian]
[Class: Druid]
[Level: 51 (Silver Mid-Rank)]
[Patron God: Evé Yggdrasill]
[Level of Faith: Fanatic]
[Titles: Mother Nature's Follower, World Tree Guardian]
[Abilities: War Sacrifice, Oak Grasp, Nature Whispering...]
...
Evé opened her nonexistent mouth agape.
This...How did it actually happen?
No, this is the power of an Old Ancient God!
Although still somewhat incredulous, Evé, who had now been fused with the essence of the World Tree, understood that in a sense, she was now a bona-fide God.
A God can manipulate the natural laws of the world, but even more so for an Ancient One like her. It is said that Great Old Ones can even create things out of nothing with just their thoughts alone and nothing else.
Although Evé has not yet completely mastered her power, she can already use her natural divine power to achieve some miracles.
Manifesting the information of the other party in her mind is relatively easy compared to what she could actually do.
But regardless, Evé still feels somewhat pained after feeling the dissipation of her divine powers once more.
She felt like a CEO of a delisted company on the verge of bankruptcy.
After checking Berserker's information, Evé was quite frankly a tad bit disappointed.
"Only Silver mid-rank huh...that's a little low."
Having fused with the World Tree inheritance, Evé had gained a clear understanding of the current world's strength level division. The power ranking within Saigües could be divided into four major levels: occupational level, legendary level, demigod level, and mythical level, each separated by a vast difference.
The lowest level, occupational level, is also known as the Secular Rank and can be further subdivided into three tiers: black, iron, silver, and gold, with each tier having upper, middle, and lower ranks.
Being a silver medium rank, in the occupational level, The Oak Guardian is only considered to have average strength, and was far behind the legendary levels and above.
"I didn't expect that just bestowing a mere silver medium rank follower would cost this much. I feel like I've been ripped off a bit..."
Evé muttered to herself ruefully.
After thinking for a moment, she commanded again in her mind.
"Manifest my own status!"
With a single thought, a similar information box appeared in her consciousness again.
[Name: Evé Yggdrasill ]
[Race: World Tree (Ancient God)]
[Level: 150 (Mythical Rank)]
[Condition: Weak Divine Power Debuff (On the verge of deep sleep)]
[Divinity: Nature, Life, Elf]
[Titles: Nature's Mother Tree, Goddess of Life, Patron God of the Elves]
[Divine Power Value: 10/500]
[Number of Followers: 3 (Saints 0, Fanatics 1, Devout Believers 1, Shallow Believers 1)]
[Abilities: Communication, Bestowal, Enlightenment, Healing, Summoning, Divine Descent...]
A Mother of what now?!
Ah right...The world tree is originally the mother tree of life, so naturally a moniker would be made in relation to that.
Anyway, she played a lot of virtual reality games in her past life so naturally she could easily understand all these gaming terminologies like levels, debuffs and similar stuffs.
Oh wait... she still has a few followers?
Seeing the number of followers, Evé was somewhat perplexed, but thinking back to the faint prayers she had heard before fusing with the World Tree, she also felt somewhat relieved.
If she guessed it correctly, those voices may probably came from her few remaining religious worshippers.
Only 10 points of divine power, how pitiful.
Just now, when she revived Berserker, she used up a whopping 05 points of divine power you know!
And gaining the ability to observe the target's state also consumed 01 point of her divine power...you know.
"Goddanggit I must make myself stronger...my divine power is just not enough as it is."
Evé urgently wants to increase her divine power even if it's just for the ability to move freely.
As a World Tree in a quasi-death state, she's nothing more than a immovable lunk of wood, except for being conscious, she's no different from a vegetable, truly the most miserable god in existence.
When she first arrived here, she was really excited, but if she was forced to stand like a background prop like these from now on then Evé felt that she would go insane sooner or later...
No, this won't do!
She must accumulate enough divine power to at very least recover from the dying state she's stuck in now and when things gets a bit better then she'll finally create a divine avatar for herself!
Once she has an incarnation, then Evé can finally move freely within a certain range and do whatever she wants!
However, if she wants to use the divine avatar creation in her abilities, Evé checked and found out that it requires a grand total of 100 points of divine power in order to manifest it!
At present, this is just too high of a price for her...
Sigh...
I'm just too poor...
Fortunately, the faith power provided by the few believers she still have can be converted into divine power. However, looking at the very slow pace of faith accumulation in her Status Screen, Evé felt even more and more helpless.
T-Three believers, one of which was just created moments ago. Aren't there any Gods in the world who is more pitiful than her?
Although the World Tree, being an ancient god for which belongs to the category of Great Old Ones and does not rely on religion like faith-based gods do, at present, it seems that the only way for Evé to replenish divine power is through worship...
By the way, where are these other believers?
Suddenly, a hint of interest rose in Evé's heart.
Since she was able to contact the Oak Guardian, could she also contact the others?
She thought about it and sank back into her own sea of consciousness.
In the depths of her mind, Evé entered that mysterious green space yet again.
But now, she already knew what this space was.
It was the divine essence of the World Tree and also the compressed core of her Celestial Domain.
At this moment, the Domain is still shrouded in a hazy light and is very much chaotic.
In the depths of her consciousness, Evé had a sense of being the Sovereign here. She could manipulate and change everything in this space, but she didn't try to do so because her current divine power was still too weak to withstand the turmoil.
In addition, Evé also discovered three clusters of green floating orbs in this space, like flickering stars. This apparently was the connection link between her and those three believers.
Besides these, to her surprise, Evé also found the familiar blue sphere of light that she had seen before her reincarnation.
Not only that, but the sense of familiarity from the blue light has became more pronounced and stronger at this moment!
After hesitating for a moment, Evé temporarily abandoned the idea of directly contacting the other three believers, and cautiously probed her consciousness into the sphere of blue light.
As Evé touched it, a massive amount of information consisting of one's and zeroes and symbols suddenly flooded over her mind akin to a tidal wave!
"Will the VR tech really create a new wave of technological revolution?"
"Awesome! My country is expected to achieve full coverage of virtual networks by the end of this year!"
"Report indicates that a Professional gamer died suddenly after staying up for a week in game capsules..."
"..."
After enduring for a few seconds, Evé quickly cut off the information link.
She stared blankly at the tiny blue light in front of her, and her heart surged with overwhelming waves of euphoria-
—She just can't believe it!
This blue sphere was actually connected to the internet from her previous world planet Earth!