Cthulhu Gonfalon

The decision of the Goddess of Wealth surprised the whole world.

Although the divine position of the Goddess of Wealth determined that she could monitor the flow of all wealth, there was a clear difference between monitoring and controlling.

The present Goddess of Wealth wasn’t the first one to occupy this divine position. Before her, there had been another God of Wealth, who had been more powerful than her and had even stepped into the realm of Great Divine Power. But in order to achieve the goal of controlling the flow of all wealth, he’d had conflicts with many Gods, which had eventually led to him falling under siege from the other Gods.

Because of this, when she first became a Goddess, Manissy promised to never pursue the control of the flow of wealth with her own divine position. She was only a guardian of wealth, but would never become a ruler of it.

Of course, this promise was not one-way. On the contrary, the Gods who had experienced fierce conflicts with the former God of Wealth promised that they wouldn’t launch a siege against the Goddess of Wealth unless she took the initiative to start a war. Even if there would be irreconcilable consequences in the future, they would have to fight alone, rather than laying siege.

This promise was important for both sides. If Manissy didn’t make a promise, the other Gods would surely take the risk of getting seriously hurt to besiege her again, and if the others didn’t make a promise, Manissy would absolutely pull her allies together in the future and kill them one by one.

That was to say, thanks to this promise, the Goddess of Wealth and the Gods who had been against taking control of wealth could coexist peacefully. For many years, although there had been friction, there had been no fights.

They all knew that this situation wouldn’t last forever, but nobody had expected that the changes would come so fast.

How many years had it been since the introduction of technical schools and the accounting system, which were results of working with Void Mask?

In fact, it had been five to six years in total, quite a while, but to the immortal Gods, time was usually calculated in terms of centuries, or decades in a pinch. There was no big difference for them between five to six years and last night.

But how, in such a short time, had the Goddess of Wealth successfully made such a big move?

The launching of technical schools and the accounting system had improved the Goddess of Wealth’s divine position before. This time, if she could clearly manage the world’s savings and successfully make large amount transactions a possibility, her divine position would surely be upgraded again, or even, perhaps, she would step into the level of Great Divine Power.

Once the Goddess of Wealth was on the level of Great Divine Power, there were more things that could be done. At the very least, as one of the Great Divine Powers, if she wanted to set up a divine system, there would be many Gods who followed her, including those of Weak Divine Powers and Weaker Divine Powers. Also, because of her oath of alliance with Void Mask, she had become an ally of the God of Justice, who was one of the most powerful gods among the Great Divine Powers. The society of this God system was strong enough to compare with those of the senior powerful gods.

And… nobody was a fool. At first they hadn’t realized it, but now that the Goddess of Wealth had started, they would naturally speculate what her next move was.

Taking advantage of the monitoring of wealth to realize the transfer of wealth around the world and promote account transactions to replace physical currency… In that case, how strong would the Goddess of Wealth become? She might even be able to go beyond the level of Great Divine Power…

For a while, the Gods who’d had conflicts with her were all concerned. They didn’t know how many times they had discussed it with each other secretly, but they couldn’t figure out a good plan.

Truly, the two sides had been hostile for thousands of years. They knew what the other side would do even before they started. Now that Manissy had decided to make such a big move, how could she not have made precautions first?

In fact, she really hoped several of those enemies would come and stir up trouble!

She had been forced to make a promise because she had been alone while fighting at that time. Now, the situation was different. Through her oath of alliance with Void Mask Auscar, she now had several powerful teammates, and she was moving towards the top level of the Middle Divine Power. As for her enemies, they hadn’t made much progress in thousands of years. They were still a group of weak, stupid people.

A single fight or a group battle, whichever!

In the end, these Gods didn’t act irrationally, which disappointed Manissy very much, for she had made several plans to kill those who had caused trouble with her without saying a word.

“What a pity!” Privately, she complained to Sui Xiong, “I’ve given them enough time to prepare and come to start something with me. I thought that even if not three, there were at least one or two of them who would come to me. However, there wasn’t even one…”

When she said this, she was touching her special magic weapon, the Hammer of Wealth, with one hand, and her face was full of regret.

Sui Xiong couldn’t help but swallow as he watched the fierce weapon, which had long nails on the round hammer and was almost as tall as her.

If any God had come, she absolutely would have thrown the hammer and smashed the God down. No matter how powerful a God was, a hit like this would cause them severe inner organ damage, as well as hurt the whole body. Perhaps they wouldn’t need a rescue…

Unfortunately, not even one God had come. Though the hammer was powerful, it didn’t get the chance to show its power.

It took her about two months to check the accounts, mainly because the records of those deposits were kept in the holy kingdom. To ensure that these records were solid and reliable, they had been turned into mountains. Now, to unravel these mountains one by one, to erase those that had were outdated, and to associate them under the same depositors, she had to make drastic changes to the whole God’s Kingdom.

That cost a lot of Divine Power from the Goddess of Wealth. Fortunately, Manissy had made preparations beforehand. Otherwise, the daily operations of the God’s Kingdom might have gone wrong.

Sui Xiong was also surprised at that. He hadn’t expected that maintaining an orthodox holy kingdom would cost so much Divine Power—all the God’s Kingdoms he knew, whether it was the chat room of Desolation Gods or his sanctuary, had little consumption. Every bit of Divine Power could be saved, like a money jar for frugal people. This time, he knew of the high cost of Divine Power in the River of Gold, then realized that his impression about maintaining a God’s Kingdom had been entirely wrong.

If one wanted to make a God’s Kingdom powerful and useful, an astonishing investment was required.

There was no such thing as a horse that could run without eating grass. It was impossible, so he quickly seized the opportunity to learn how to construct and manage a God’s Kingdom.

His former friends were either bachelors, like Yorgaardman, the God of Justice, who hadn’t established a God’s Kingdom at all, or Semi-Orc fighters, the God of Forging, Morani, the God of Celebration and Enjoyment, Wall, who was at a pathetic level of constructing a God’s Kingdom just by building houses in the God’s Kingdom that had been established already. The only professional one was the Goddess of Ocean, Ariel, who was busy integrating the power of the distant sea and guiding the demigods to step into the realm of the real Gods, one by one. Her God’s Kingdom had been a precedent, with enough to place the souls of believers, and that was all… There were so many failed examples that his understanding of constructing a God’s Kingdom went in the wrong direction.

Fortunately, this time, he finally found the right example to follow.

Manissy wasn’t a God from the battle system, but she was from the top of the management system. Her technology of building a God’s Kingdom was outstanding among the gods, and she was even qualified to compete with the top few.

She was also a good teacher. Since Sui Xiong wanted to learn, she took the opportunity to teach him hand in hand as she was making adjustments in her God’s Kingdom.

“What is a God’s Kingdom?” Miss Manissy put forward this question at the very beginning, “This is the most fundamental problem. A God’s Kingdom is the cohesion of Divine Power, the home where believers live after death, and the base where a God creates angels and resurrects after death. But these are only the most basic functions of a God’s Kingdom. The deeper question is: what do you build a God’s Kingdom for? What do you want it to do for you?”

“I want to build a shelter to protect all good people from evil,” Sui Xiong replied.

“That’s why you have built a strange God’s Kingdom, with only a shell that is solid beyond imagination, but empty inside.” Manissy laughed. “First of all, I’d like to admit that you have a good idea and a reasonable approach, because the purer the thing, the stronger it is. Your God’s Kingdom has been pure enough with its shell, so its defensive force is, of course, the strongest.

“But your idea is too one-sided. For your great ideal, your personal strength is too weak. To build an indestructible sanctuary on your own, it will be hard. Nobody will appreciate it but you.

“So you need companions. For this reason, you should leave enough access to your God’s Kingdom to allow other Gods to connect their God’s Kingdoms to yours, to let theirs and yours become one and form a common system. There will be both division and cooperation, and you guys will develop together.”

Sui Xiong thought for a moment and asked, “The God’s Kingdom of the Desolation God System is now in my sanctuary and has been there for several years, so why hasn’t it worked well?”

“That’s the problem!” Manissy was busy turning a mountain into a pillar full of words, but upon hearing that, she began to laugh. “Your God’s Kingdom is an empty shell. It’s not ready for access to other God’s Kingdoms at all. Not to mention that in just a few years, even mere decades and centuries, the situation won’t be different!”

Under her guidance, Sui Xiong took time to make some small adjustments to his God’s Kingdom. He didn’t modify the function of the God’s Kingdom itself, but used the Divine Power he accumulated during this time to travel around the God’s Kingdom, pulling a number of lines vertically and horizontally.

These rough flat lines looked funny, but when they helped in connecting with the God’s Kingdom of the Desolation God System, they actually made the two different and independent God’s Kingdoms into one harmonious entirety.

In this way, there was no need to provide protection for the outer layer of the God’s Kingdom of the Desolation God System, so Morani withdrew these powers and built several training grounds, as was suggested by Manissy. Then they built divine temples for the Gods of Desolation, Sui Xiong and Wall.

Later, Sui Xiong and Wall moved the souls of their dead followers to these divine temples in large numbers. The followers of the Desolation God System also started training. Their strength improved greatly.

With insufficient investments, although they hadn’t trained anyone to become their Oracle yet, it was obvious that as long as they kept up this good momentum of development, the future of this God’s Kingdom would surely be more prosperous and glorious.

Manissy was really an expert in the construction of a God’s Kingdom. While directing the construction of Sui Xiong’s God’s Kingdom, she didn’t delay the reconstruction of her own. With her ingenious design, the original River of Gold, which had been full of mountains, had become a vast wilderness. The great River of Gold still flowed in the wilderness, while the colorful pillars were scattered in everywhere.

These pillars were used to record deposits. Different locations symbolized different places where deposits were accepted. Different colors symbolized a different amount that could be deposited. As for the words on the pillars, they were naturally the details of deposits—time, place, and amount.

Originally, Sui Xiong had also suggested that Manissy collect customer’s detailed information to launch a variety of services based on their deposits; it would be easier to cooperate with a financial product. But after careful consideration, Manissy rejected his proposal.

“Your suggestion is very good. It’s a far-sighted and long term plan.” Manissy said, “But it’s too advanced. Now, what I’ve done has been too conspicuous. If I do more, not only will the Gods fear me, but even mortals will doubt whether I have ulterior motives.”

As a God, being feared by other Gods was nothing, but if a God was suspected by mortals, it would be a serious problem.

The Goddess of Wealth wasn’t like the God of Plague, who was hated by Gods and mortals so as to gain belief from people’s negative emotions. She was a neutral and kind god. Although she could do bad things, in the end, she still needed to be disciplined to be recognized and trusted by people.

If she overdid it and was suspected by mortals, it would bring great danger to her.

Of course, if she could complete everything in one step, it could also bring her huge benefits, but she had monopolized the divine position of wealth. There was no need to worry that other Gods would have the ability to monitor the flow of wealth. Even if she didn’t have everything completed temporarily, it would be okay to finish it hundreds or thousands of years later.

By that time, this world would be familiar with deposits and transfers. It would be logical to introduce services such as personal accounts, financial services, and so on.

Sui Xiong kept nodding at her words.

This was because of his lack of financial knowledge. In fact, Manissy had skipped two stages, remote deposits and checks, which could be called a great leap forward. If he had been a bank expert, he would have suggested Manissy slow down and go step by step, but how would Sui Xiong know that? He put forward suggestions in full accordance with his memory before his space-travel. He wished that this world would be constructed one step at a time. It would be more convenient to have online shopping and door-to-door delivery.

If that could come true, he would open an online shop specializing in selling all kinds of aquatic products, and win himself the title of the aquatic giant. He would employ a few girls with particularly soft voices to do customer service. If a customer called in, the first sentence of their greeting would be, “Dear customer, we provide free delivery…”