Chapter 492 - Why are you like this?

Sun grabbed a handful of black dust and clenched her fist, then she lightly threw the contents of her hand in the air, revealing a bunch of tiny transparent rocks, which Sun kept airborn on tiny cushions of mana. Tadaaaa!

These turned out pretty well, you will need to polish them if you want good-looking gemstones.

Erredis nodded from the side, “You can make larger ones by going slower but that’s a bit more effort. I do have quite a few back home, they’re not too useful.”

I used them a lot when I was messing around with electricity, beyond that it’s mostly good for decoration.

“Could a big diamond not make for a decent catalyst?” Astelia asked.

Erredis’ bunny ears stood up at the idea, “We can try that right now! Sun, can you?”

Make your hair blonde and I’ll do it.

“Why do you have to make it sound weird?” Erredis answered, rolling her eyes. Her white hair gradually changed to a light yellow. “Happy?”

Very much so, Sun confirmed with a big smile. Why the rabbit beastman disguise, by the way? You used to always just be a weird horned human, if I recall correctly.

“Since when did you care what I look like? It was a Hero’s suggestion, apparently moon rabbits are a thing in their world, something like that. I just kind of got used to it.”

It’s cute!

“I’m starting to get that you actually want me to bite you,” Erredis deadpanned.

Not in front of the kids! Sun answered, blushing and acting shy.

What am I even watching?

Her little act done, Sun held up her part of the deal and placed a hand over the cube full of carbon dust, and a flash of white light blinded everyone present.

Done! The goddess said a second later as she healed everyone’s eyesight. She had transformed the entirety of the cube’s contents into one big diamond chunk occupying about half the volume of the cube. That ought to be enough, what do you want to make of it?

“No idea! Why don’t you all keep visiting, I will be here, might take me half an hour.”

Astelia and Everelle ended up staying behind to watch Erredis work, while the others kept following Sofia.

You’re not a very good gardener, are you? Sun teased, She just needs a good dose of sunlight.

Sofia raised an eyebrow at Sun’s remark, “Really? I thought plants absorbed light through the leaves, and she doesn’t have any.”

Sun shrugged in response.

“This matter reminds me,” Ihuarah, who had been mostly silent, said, “have you summoned the fae yet?”

“We haven’t!” Bookie answered for Sofia.

Ooh, fairy? I’ve not seen one venture out of their kingdom in a while.

Sofia and Bookie quickly explained the story of that page of his, which Sun found very intriguing.

So Richie boy and Alkorm went ahead and sealed the fae’s soul in an ingot? It must have been right on the verge of dissipating completely. Well, what are we waiting for? It’s going to share my blessing like all of little book’s summons, I should at least make sure it’s well behaved.

Sofia wanted to say yes, but Erredis was probably about done with the spell catalyst by now, and she wanted to make sure she got both Erredis and Sun together to ask some questions. “Can we do this just a bit later? Now that we’re done with the tour, I have a few important things I need to get out of the way, if you don’t mind.”

You would ask for some alone time with me? Oh my. Sun answered with a wink.

The others did not mind, and the group separated, some following Bookie, some others exploring the castle on their own, leaving only Sofia, Sun and Pareth together.

So? What is it gonna be? Sun asked with a smirk, sitting on a random shelf.

“Well, there’s a few things. I’ll start with the more trivial matters. I need a signature from you, if you do not mind…”

Ohoh, well, maybe if you accept another quest…

“No.”

So cold! Sun giggled, and just handed Sofia a small golden plaque with a doodle on it, vaguely reminiscing of Sun’s divine rune. Just give him this and he’ll be happy. She explained.

“Thank you… Uh, now for another rather trivial matter…”

Yes? Sun innocently asked, staring at Sofia dead in the eyes.

“N- nevermind.” I can’t!

Oh! That’s a pity, I thought you wanted to know if it held up to the real thing. Sun teased, pulling on her clothes to reveal some cleavage.

Past the initial shock, Sofia quickly tried to change the subject, “Aherm… I- I wanted to ask about divine essence.”

So you’re just going to ignore it? Well well. I thought you more adventurous. What do you want to know?

“Everyone seems shocked that you gave me five essences, so I wanted to ask, how much is it really? How many essences does a God have? What is EV? And does me holding those not make you weaker?”

Oof, so many questions. I’ll be nice and answer since you got those things off my back on the station, but only if you agree to go to the next trial with my Saintess.

“So we have some kind of group trial next time? Thank you for the tip, and of course, I don’t mind going with Mornn. Haven’t heard of her in a while.”

Great!

Sun pulled out a pair of glasses out of nowhere and her clothes changed to a tight black suit.

Welcome to the expedited classes of professor Sun. Please listen carefully.

To begin with, EV means essence value, it’s how we measure the ‘worth’ of a divine essence. The more powerful the EV, the stronger the God, It goes from zero to five, zero being ‘not a god’, and five being the strongest a divinity can ever get. All the essences share the same EV, and any extra past five gets offloaded as the God’s concept leaking out into reality. Not an issue for me but you can imagine what this means for Death.

Sofia nodded, knowing full well about Death’s issues thanks to Leverle.

Without going into the hows and whys, a God has about five times as many essences as their EV is worth, so I have twenty five. Discounting the ones I gave away to you and the others, as well as my two relics, I have fifteen left.

“Wait! I have a fifth of your entire power? How is that not an issue?!”

That’s not really how it works for me, since I have a lot of surplus. As long as you stay relatively close-by, I barely lose anything in terms of passive strength. It’s only if I want to do something big in one go that it becomes an issue to not have my essences directly with me. In your case, you are holding about ten percent of Scripture’s actual power, but it’s unlikely he can exert that much into the physical realm directly so it’s more like you have twenty percent.

“I see… That does help me understand things a lot better now. What about Looming?” Sofia asked, sharing her [Divinity status] system window.

Not an actual Divinity, yet. To explain what must be going on here, you simply are one of five holders of Looming’s nascent essence.

“Is that bad?”

It just means that you embody the concept of Looming well enough that it started to form within you instead of somewhere else. Quite the feat, actually. A Divinity’s essence always forms from the feelings of people, it’s only natural that it would coalesce there too. When the essence is sufficiently strong, if ever, it will leave your body to reunite with the four others and form an actual Divine being. Probably a Recessed, in this case, though it is too early to tell.

“I can hardly imagine ‘Looming’ being a positively viewed concept,” Sofia agreed.

One never knows, people are weird. Conflict, for example, is a very unstable concept, it has switched sides several times, making its gods regrettably short-lived.

“I can imagine that… And what about the Lords’ essence? Any commentary?”

I better not say anything.

“Well. I tried.”

That was the moment Erredis chose to enter through the window.

“Do you need help, Sofia?” she asked, giving a suspicious glance at Sun and her new outfit.

She’s perfectly fine, cutie, but you do look like you need some help; your skin is so pale! Come get a new tan with teacher Sun.

“Tskk. And I thought I was bad,” the Dragon complained, starting to leave through the same window.

“Wait, wait, Erredis! It’s great that you’re here. I would have liked for Richard and Moon to be here too but I feel like you two are probably enough… It’s about the person behind the attack on the system…”