The Collapse Of Order

A year and a half had passed since I rescued Karis, meaning three years had gone by since I came to this world.

That incident had thrown the Church into considerable turmoil, but its system remained unchanged. If anything, it only hardened its stance, branding one critic after another as a heretic.

As a result, the population of our base had also increased dramatically, and a town was gradually taking shape as we cleared more of the forest.

It had long since grown beyond the level of a simple refuge, but in my defense, even I had not expected things to turn out this way.

There was no doubt that the cause was one of Karis’s friends, a certain regional lord.

Being a friend of Karis, that lord was tolerant of different customs, and he had secretly sheltered people who had fled into his territory to escape heretic hunts elsewhere.

Apparently, the people of his domain had dispositions much like their lord’s and had welcomed refugees from other lands as well.

Naturally, that was an extremely dangerous thing to do, but until a certain point, the Church had apparently turned a blind eye as long as the lord kept handing over money.

But after a particular incident, the Church hardened its position, branded even the lords who protected heretics as heretics themselves, and went so far as to dispatch the Holy Knights into their territories.

That particular incident was none other than the divine punishment I had staged when rescuing Karis.

The fact that the Church had hardened its stance was proof of just how effective my actions had been, but even so, I could hardly sleep well at night knowing that many people were being executed because of it.

So when I caught wind of what was happening, I intervened before the Holy Knights could launch their attack and relocated the lord’s entire family, the people loyal to him, and all the heretics who had taken refuge there to this base.

Well, if I did something like that, it was only natural for the population of our refuge to explode.

After all, the vast majority of an entire domain had effectively moved here.

I stopped holding back and used magic freely to help expand the residential area.

Still, one or two people would have been one thing, but there was no way I could reveal to this many humans that I was actually a devil.

So after discussing it with Karis, his lord friend, Torii, and the others, we settled on the story that I was the incarnation of a forgotten ancient god, while Bella the Cerberus was one of my divine servants.

Well, it was only a fabricated story, so I did not really mind, but honestly, it was embarrassing to be prayed to and worshiped every time I met one of the townspeople.

Of course, watching the settlement grow larger was enjoyable, and being needed and thanked made me happy.

Incidentally, Isha was apparently the shrine maiden who served the incarnation of that ancient god.

When I laughed because the title seemed so unsuited to her, she kicked me hard in the shin.

Isha had grown up considerably and behaved with perfect ladylike grace in front of the townspeople, but toward me, her attitude had not changed at all since the day she slapped me after I gave her a thorough washing.

Isha was going to become an older sister soon, so I could not help worrying a little about whether it was really all right for her true personality to remain like that.

Yes, Torii was carrying Isha’s younger sister, a new life that would be born in this domain.

And the father was the very first man who had come to this settlement—in other words, Karis.

When people gathered together and depended on one another, well, things like that happened.

Isha had also celebrated her mother finding a new partner and was eagerly looking forward to the birth of her little sister.

But peace like that existed only within this newly formed domain. The outside world was very different.

Discontent and criticism toward the Church continued to overflow, the Church suppressed them, and that suppression in turn created even more resentment and criticism.

That cycle had already taken hold, but it would probably still take some time before the Church’s authority and power collapsed completely, and more people would suffer under its oppression in the meantime.

Because of that, Karis and his lord friend concluded that crushing the Church’s authority all at once would result in fewer unnecessary victims.

I had no objection to that reasoning.

By then, the map of the Church’s entire sphere of influence and the Gate Magic travel network had already been completed.

Everything was ready. I was prepared to deliver the final blow.

That day, several bolts of lightning struck the cathedral in the capital of the Kingdom of Aptol.

The cathedral was half-destroyed, and although miraculously no one was killed, many people were injured.

And amid the scars left behind was a stone tablet polished to a degree no human hand could possibly have achieved, bearing the words:

“Let the hammer fall upon fools who refuse to reflect upon themselves.”

The wording evoked the wrath of a god, throwing the Kingdom of Aptol into an uproar.

But that was far from the only thing that happened that day.

Not long after the lightning struck the Kingdom of Aptol, bolts began striking cathedrals in the capitals of major nations throughout the Church’s sphere of influence—the Republic of Krael, the Duchy of Femun, the Rodalis Empire, and others.

Naturally, identical stone tablets to the one discovered after the strike in Aptol were found in every country.

And finally, the same thing happened in the Walar Holy Nation, the Church’s headquarters—or rather, far more lightning fell there than had struck the cathedrals of the other countries, raining down across the capital.

Though when I said across the capital, every strike still hit a cathedral or church.

As each country fell into confusion over the lightning and stone tablets that seemed to signify divine punishment, a single rumor began spreading everywhere.

Lightning resembling divine punishment had fallen once before, and a stone tablet had also been discovered then.

But that earlier lightning strike had been far smaller in scale, and the words carved into the tablet had sounded more like a warning.

The lightning this time was divine punishment brought down because the Church had ignored that warning, and unless it corrected its ways now, the next wrath of God would fall not only upon the Church, but upon everyone…

Of course, the stone tablets, the lightning, and even the rumors were all my doing, and the slight time lag between the lightning strikes in each country was simply the time it took me to travel between them using Gate Magic.

Naturally, no human could possibly have guessed that… although the Church did desperately announce that the whole incident was the work of a devil, which was actually completely correct. By that point, however, there was no one left who believed anything the Church said.

Instead, that announcement only enraged the people, who feared divine punishment would fall upon them as well unless the Church was corrected, and the nations pushed by that public anger declared war on the Church and the Walar Holy Nation.

The distorted order collapsed, and an age of chaos began.

If Isha, Torii, and the other people of our new domain wished, they would probably be able to return to their former homes amid that chaos.

As for me, I could only believe—or perhaps simply hope—that fewer people would die if the old order collapsed all at once rather than slowly crumbling away.

I would no longer interfere with this world on such a massive scale.