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As I returned to the Grand Temple riding Rudolph, priests from the temple approached to attend to me.

Together with them, I dismounted Rudolph and set foot on the ground.

A light feeling of weakness.

It was the backlash from using the Celestial Ladder.

Considering that martial arts were originally meant to make body movements comfortable and fast, this level of martial arts had an efficiency that was less than a speck of dust.

Originally, even in the history of the Central Plains, there were fewer than 100 records of its use, making it a martial art mainly for flaunting, like saying, ‘I can do this too.’

While knowledge and enlightenment were necessary, the Celestial Ladder was fundamentally inefficient, with a terrible consumption of Internal energy.

‘It was cool for show, though.’

During the martial arts competition, the moment that garnered the most attention was when I used the Celestial Ladder to congratulate the winners upon my appearance.

‘Well…it’s not like I felt completely bad…’

The feeling of having tens of thousands of eyes fixed on oneself…

“Ahem!”

Suddenly feeling embarrassed, I cleared my throat, and the priestesses who were fussing over me, tidying my hair and clothes, were startled and wondered if they had done something wrong, their eyes darting around.

“Ah, I’m sorry.”

In addition to the winners of the martial arts competition, as Pohelnia’s sphere of influence expanded, the power of the Two-God Religion (二主神敎) also increased, and the martial arts I displayed before the humans, which seemed like miracles, led to an increase in the number of people seeking to convert to the religion.

After all, aren’t martial artists a group more skilled at destruction than production?

The guys I took as disciples were originally selected through the martial arts competition for being good at fighting, so they were of no help to the management of this magnificent Grand Temple.

Since the Grand Temple was not yet completed, construction workers came regularly, and it was problematic if there were only petty thieves among them.

Therefore, among those thoroughly vetted by Aliya, I selected priests who did various tasks, like the priestess in front of me, even though they didn’t learn martial arts.

‘Sigh…’

I sighed inwardly.

Although it was intentional, my current situation was like that of a leader of a pseudo-religion, and fundamentally, it wasn’t that far off.

I was essentially using the martial arts I had painstakingly trained to deceive the common people.

No different from a street peddler selling medicine or a quack doctor selling water with burnt amulets.

Nearly eight years had passed since I left the forest with a sense of mission and great expectations, and now I had become the leader of the largest religion in the human kingdom.

‘Heroic wanderings my foot…’

Two years after the promise with Frigos seven years ago, the construction of the massive Grand Temple began in the heart of Poheln.

Except for the annual religious propaganda, I hardly ever left this magnificent structure, which was still far from completion.

Once my appearance was tidied up, I led the practicing priests towards the depths of the Grand Temple.

Because the clothes were too large for my body, the excess fabric trailed behind me, and the priestesses followed closely, lifting the fabric to prevent it from dragging on the ground.

And then we arrived at a vast space.

Many parts of the Grand Temple were still unfinished, but this space alone was different.

At the end of the space was a large date palm tree and a throne beneath it.

Only two places in Pohelnia were allowed to have a throne.

The royal court of Frigos’ palace.

And this throne in the Grand Temple’s so-called ‘World Room.’

I sat on the throne and leaned back casually.

Sitting on the throne, I looked around.

Below the throne was a space that could accommodate over a thousand people, where the residents of the Grand Temple could regularly hold mass.

And on the walls and ceiling were various carvings.

Carvings symbolizing the Two-God Religion’s religious and cosmological views.

The giant World Tree, the god of the sky.

And the 65 demons that the god employed.

Soon, 7 more demons would be added, making it 72 demons in total.

The existence of these demons was the 72 Loa that Frigos and I had hunted with Aliya’s help over the past seven years, and even before that.

The carvings of the 7 Loa who fell to Frigos during this expedition were to be added here.

Moreover, there was a fact known only to a small number of people besides Frigos, myself, Aliya, and the succubi.

This Grand Temple was a great barrier protecting Poheln.

The date palm tree behind my throne was a symbol of the Two-God Religion, and it was also a manifestation of El-Prigion, the mother World Tree from the forest where the Elves, now called the Elven Lords, lived, with one of her roots extended and created by her power.

And the sky god carved on the ceiling directly above it.

The last remaining body of Ul-Kanadiel, the god of night and death in the Eastern Continent, was dwelling within that statue.

Even the higher beings of this world had something like the relics of high monks or the inner core of spiritual creatures.

And Aliya had processed the corpses of the Loa into stones, like the last remaining stone of Ul-Kanadiel, and each of the statues depicted as demons of the foreign religion had a small jewel-like object embedded in its forehead.

The Loa who ruled the human villages near Poheln were demons of a foreign religion, but ‘conquered by King Frigos, the earthly representative of the Two Gods, they came to be employed by the hands of the righteous gods,’ becoming one of the histories of mankind.

Although incomplete, the great barrier was created with the power of two Elder Loa and 72 Loa.

This great barrier, devised by myself and Aliya, was still an unfinished barrier that could barely be controlled even with the help of the mother World Tree.

But if it were completed, at least the humans of Poheln would be able to withstand even attacks from Elder Loa-level beings.

‘The control is held by me and Aliya, but with the mother in the manifestation within the barrier, there’s no chance of the barrier turning hostile to the Elves.’

As I entered Poheln, I smiled bitterly, recalling the barrier I had destroyed.

‘It’s only been seven years, but so much has really changed.’

As I watched the priests and disciples who had begun to pray, looking at me sitting on the throne, I remembered the oath I had made with Frigos in the secret chamber seven years ago.

There were three things I wanted from Frigos and the humans.

The first was that humans would not antagonize the Elves.

In the Eastern Continent, humans were ultimately destroyed by the vassal races of the Elder Loa.

But in my case, I knew the history of the Central Plains.

As Aliya had also sensed with her keen insight, humans would gain remarkable civilization and power if given the opportunity, luck, and time.

There would be those who would break it someday, but if it existed as statutory law, there would also be those who would avoid it.

Naturally, Frigos also agreed with this.

Having seen my power before his eyes, the existence of the Elves must have been something he could not yet resist.

The second was the creation of the religion that exists now.

Seeing the fragments of martial arts that humans were beginning to grasp, I wanted to restrict the potential of humans by twisting the ideology in advance and forcibly completing it at an early stage.

Perhaps if that happened, there would be no major problems for the next thousand years or so.

Even if humans lived short lives, they would live thinking that the level of a first-rate expert, as they say in the Central Plains, was the limit of human ability.

In comparison, Elves were a race that lived for hundreds of years, as seen in the cases of the vassal races of the Eastern Continent.

If Elves who had cultivated their bodies for hundreds of years with late-blooming martial arts like the Tendon-Changing Classic of Shaolin began to appear under my teachings, it wouldn’t be a big problem no matter how many humans gathered, whose limit was only first-rate.

Even if they tried to cross the forest and invade, humans in the forest could never beat the Elves.

However, just as great masters could emerge from even the primitive ancient martial arts, like Bodhidharma and Zhang Sanfeng, the future was difficult to predict.

That’s why I thought of religion.

The faith that sprouted in people’s hearts was not easily cut off, even if a noble emperor ordered it.

I said that I would link the mother World Tree to the faith of humans.

If the World Tree became an object of faith, and if that religion spread widely, when humans one day forgot their morality and attacked the Elves, surely the faithful would rebel from within the humans.

Frigos hesitated.

He must have thought that the World Tree would become a second Anaktus.

Above all, Frigos wanted to live in the future with the power of humans themselves, not the power of transcendent beings.

It was Aliya’s wisdom that solved this problem.

Ul-Kanadiel, who was already dead, was also included in the religious view, and the Two-God Theory (二主神論) was created.

Ul-Kanadiel, who was dead, had no power, and at the same time, it was a way to reduce the influence of the World Tree in the religious view.

Ul-Kanadiel, who was originally the god of the night, also had the attributes of the sky, so the harmony of earth and sky, mother god and father god, was also well-matched.

From my point of view, it was reluctant to arbitrarily marry my well-being mother and then make her a widow. When I later sent a letter to the Elven forest to inquire, Demis replied that the mother World Tree had laughed greatly and allowed it.

Giving my mother a new partner might be seen as filial piety…but the object was already a deceased being.

Was this unfilial?

Thanks to Aliya, in terms of religious views, Aliya became my step-sibling, and I got a stepfather…and then he disappeared again.

And the biggest reason Frigos accepted the creation of the religion was one thing.

He needed something to unite the humans through the conquest war.

The existence of a king was, after all, close to a legend in the Eastern Continent, and the existence of such a leader was not a concept that humans could easily grasp, as there had been no such leader before.

In comparison, faith was easy to understand.

Animism, which regards the sky, sun, moon, etc., as gods.

Tribal faith, which regards the land god Loa as a god.

Aliya’s idea was to weave all the humans in the Pohelnia sphere of influence in the Western Continent into that worldview with the created religion.

The statues of the Loa in this Grand Temple were also the result of incorporating the villages and cities under the Loa into the worldview in order to become a single community.

Frigos, understanding the usefulness of religion from Aliya’s explanation, also accepted this second condition.

However, I was going to make one of my sisters the leader of the religion, but both Frigos and Demis refused, so I took on the role.

Thanks to that, I ended up playing the clown with the martial arts I had built up at every martial arts competition.

But thanks to that, the Two-God Religion was expanding its influence at a very rapid pace, considering it had been less than five years since its rise.

It was true that there was still a long way to go, as they still didn’t even know the names and were just calling them sky god and earth god.

The third was to keep the martial arts I taught as a secret.

In order to show a friendly attitude to Frigos, I wanted to teach proper martial arts to the forces directly under Frigos.

Especially in the case of soldiers, martial arts necessary for soldiers, not as general martial artists.

For example, the Eighteen Arms of War (十八般武藝), which was developed in a format specialized for melee and large-scale battles.

The problem was that there were still not enough recording media and learning was scarce, so even if it was written in an easy-to-understand way, it was a concept of martial arts that was far too early for the current humans.

Therefore, I wanted Frigos to keep the ‘real martial arts’ that I was giving him as a secret.

Aliya also agreed with this.

The monopoly and control of power was not only to increase Frigos’ legitimacy, but also because she feared that an uncontrollable situation like in the Eastern Continent would arise.

With these three oaths, Frigos and the Elves marked their first history as being in a friendly relationship, for the time being.

Of course, only a very small number of people knew this truth, and I was very satisfied, except for the fact that I was being well-used as a religious leader, being a High Elf.

And I thought that the wise Aliya had noticed, but there was one more reason why I was trying to empower the humans.

It was the existence of the Eastern Continent.

The creatures of the Eastern Continent in her description were akin to locust swarms.

Locust swarms that gnaw away at all the land they pass through, leaving it desolate.

They were beings that directly opposed the Elves’ prime directive.

Generally speaking, it would be common sense that consuming everything in nature like that would lead to the collapse of nature and starvation through famine…

‘Those things are familiars of the Elder Loa, you say.’

It’s just that the Elves are excessively cost-effective; even looking at the giants, familiars can’t just not eat to survive.

If nothing special happens, they would live and disappear as if rushing towards destruction, but what if the Eastern Continent discovers the Western Continent and gains the ability to invade before it collapses?

The land of prosperous humans would become a buffer in the war.

‘Being so calculating about everything, a life of chivalry is impossible for me, huh.’

As I was inwardly lamenting, the priestesses walked into the World Room.