Chapter 642 - Deceiving a Goddess
Chapter 642 Deceiving a Goddess
Before the Goddess of Magic Mystra became a goddess, she was also a person of great talent.
Otherwise, she wouldn’t have invented numerous powerful spells and become a goddess.
It was an unprecedented accomplishment; she was the first mortal to ascend to godhood.
It was also because it was unprecedented that there was nothing to learn from.
Before truly becoming a goddess, Mystra also did a lot of probing into security and freedom restrictions. She found that becoming a goddess wouldn’t have any security dangers and gladly became a goddess.
However, she never expected that becoming a goddess would completely erase the innovative ability that she was so proud of, though it indeed wasn’t life-threatening in any way.
The power of the natural laws sealed off the insights and creativity that she had accumulated from her mortal days.
IN
It was fairly easy for her to create a new spell, but her ideas were just separated by a fog, unseeable and untouchable.
But that was not the end of it.
If she couldn’t create new spells, then she would just have the believers offer them up.
Everything that a righteous believer knew, the gods they believed in also knew all of it.
In the end, most Mages were influenced by her deeds and were all arrogant enough to believe that their fates were not up to the gods and hoped that they would be the next Mystra. And those who would believe in her offered new spells that were simply not worth looking at.
For example, offering a supposedly new Inferior Fireball spell, which was just a tiny improvement in power… just a teeny tiny bit.
But the magic consumption increased exponentially
It was an utterly negative transformation.
There were a lot of “improved” spells like this. As a Goddess of Magic, how could she possibly appreciate this kind of stuff?
So the Mages who believed in the Goddess of Magic gleefully improved spells and offered them only to hear nothing back from her, and over time, even fewer people were willing to believe in her.
In the end, only a bunch of so-called clerics still kept a handful of churches operating, making it known that there was a Goddess of Magic in this world.
In reality, the Goddess of Magic, despite her extreme combat prowess, had a reputation that was completely unmatched by the Life Goddess and Goddess of Light.
Even the Water Goddess had a much better presence than her.
And so, the Goddess of Magic existed in this world for centuries like an invisible person.
Then suddenly one day, a Mage from another plane offered a very interesting spell.
Blue Fireball!
She liked it as soon as she saw it. It wouldn’t have been hard to create a spell like this before she became a goddess, as many of the ideas in it had similarities to her thoughts from before.
She gave this child from another plane a bit of providence.
But after a while, new spells were offered—the water-making spell and oil-making spell-and it was quite interesting. And both spells were quite similar in concept to the blue fireball, and then it dawned on her that the one who made the second offering was the real inventor of these spells.
The first one was just a thief.
So she took back the providence on the first person and gave it to this other child from another plane.
She also hoped that he would believe in her.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t willing to.
But even then, Mystra wasn’t angry.
All competent Mages had pride, and she too was like that back then!
And now, Roland had offered up a new model of a magic array, which she knew at first glance was only half of the model. As the Goddess of Magic, she had the strongest thirst for new magic, for new knowledge, of all the gods.
At that moment, she couldn’t help but pull Roland to her divine realm with her spiritual power.
Then she saw Roland’s soul, a peculiar one, completely unaffected by the rules of the gods.
Only at the Master level, he had been able to look at her without being hurt.
This man wanted to trade with her.
The more the Goddess of Magic felt this man was interesting, the more she wanted to make him her believer.
Roland wasn’t sure what the Goddess of Magic across from him was thinking, he just wanted to negotiate a deal.
“What’s the deal?”
The Goddess of Magic had a beautiful voicebeautiful women didn’t usually sound bad.
Even if her voice was average, you would find her voice touching with the enhancement of her beauty.
“I’ll offer the full version of the multiple teleportation magic array to you,” Roland said slowly, “but I don’t want your reward directly.”
“Then what do you want?” Although Mystra was eager to know about the other half of the magic array, she held back her anticipation and asked calmly instead, “Do you think my rewards are bad? Why don’t you first listen to what I’m giving as a reward?”
Roland made a gesture of invitation.
He wasn’t in a hurry, and in case the goddess did give something better than what he had in mind, he wouldn’t turn down a different reward.
“I can give you a divine clone.”
Hmm?
Roland thought of the Nether God’s Soul Gatherer and was instantly disinterested.
What did he need that tool-like thing for himself? Besides, according to some of the miscellaneous books he’d read, it said that the divine clone of a god was able to transmit the nearby environment and images back to the god’s mind.
In other words, having a divine clone was like having an extra surveillance monitor next to you.
Looking at Roland’s slight frown, the Goddess of Magic waved her hand gently.
The blue glow of magic converged around her.
Roland was immediately interested when he saw the glow. Because it wasn’t just any magical elements, but purer and higher energy.
Divine power?
Roland suddenly realized what it was, and he was secretly thinking that it would be nice if he could steal some of the divine power and go back to study it. Unfortunately, he couldn’t steal it.
His current self couldn’t harness that kind of power yet.
As he was regretting, this blue divine power gathered into a humanoid form, then the head, face, arms, and legs all materialized. Long, light purple hair, a petite body, and a similar white dress.
It was a young lady version of the Goddess of Magic.
This young lady’s eyes were closed, and although she looked lifelike, there wasn’t any sign of life present. And it had no soul.
It was just a model. While it did look a lot better than the Nether God’s Soul Gatherer, or at least much more aesthetically pleasing, the question was what did Roland need an inflatable doll for.
While the inflatable doll was indeed beautiful and realistic and seemed to have body heat, Roland really didn’t need it.
He had a queen and Vivian, and he couldn’t physically stand anymore.
He was about to refuse, when Mystra continued, “This is only half-finished. If you agree, I will put a fragment of my soul into her body and she will have life.”
Oh?
Roland’s eyes widened slightly. Interesting! This sort of counts as creating life. “She will have much of the knowledge I give her and have great intelligence as soon as she opens her eyes, without the need for you to teach or nurture her,” Mystra said with a smile. “She will be your most loyal assistant and friend, and will do everything you tell her to-everything!”
Speaking of this, Mystra gave a darting look, revealing a smile that said as much of an unspoken mutual understanding.
As expected of a goddess, even with a perverted smile, her smile was beautiful and even felt a bit divine.
Seeing such a smile, Roland was even clearer on one thing.
As expected….the so-called gods were still essentially human.
They were just exceptionally strong.
Roland looked at the girly Mystra doll again and was a bit distracted.
It was quite pretty after all.
And that body contained divine power, and when he had it, he could study it thoroughly
Not for anything else—he was sure he just wanted to study the nature of divine power.
Just thinking about what he had come for, he resisted this throbbing temptation. “Sorry, I’ll go with the deal I want.”
“All right.” Mystra wagged her finger as the lifeless figure transformed back into blue divine energy and returned to her body. “So, tell me about the details of your deal.” “I’ll offer this magic array in its entirety to you, and then in your name, with your divine power, place such a teleportation magic array in front of every large- and medium-sized city’s church, and make it available to everyone.”
Mystra was a little puzzled. “But I can’t see that you’ll get anything out of this condition.”
“Each person has to spend ten copper coins for teleportation, which will be collected by the Church of Magic.” Roland looked at the beautiful pink pupils of the goddess’s eyes and said, “And five of those coins are mine, which will be settled once a month, how about that?”
“Half and half?” sighed Mystra. “It’s still just money you want. I thought you had more to offer in the deal. This is obviously less valuable than my clone. Besides, it doesn’t seem to be of much benefit to me. What do I want money for?”
Roland froze for a moment, then he said carefully, “There must be no one among your believers who knows how to think of the long
run.”
He also knew now that the intelligence, knowledge, experience, and vision of the gods depended on the “quality” of the believers.
Mystra was a little embarrassed.
She had less than ten thousand believers!
And most of them were Mages with poor prospects and little talent. Anyone with a bit of promise had joined the Association of Mages of various places; no proper Mage would believe in the Goddess of Magic.
“Sit down,” Mystra said, quickly calming down as she waved her hand and got out two chairs.
Then the two sat facing each other.
She sat in a dignified manner, then she nodded at Roland. “Tell me more in detail. I’m short of talent in that area right now.”
In the past, Mystra was just a magical research freak and didn’t dabble in knowledge concerning economic rules or the long-term layout of power.
And now, her believers were all nothing more than look-alikes and much less likely to know about the theory of how forces and organizations operated.
“First of all, money is an important thing. Maybe you don’t need it, Goddess, but your churches, your devotees do.”
“But teleporting costs only ten coins a time, that doesn’t seem to make much money,” Mystra said without thinking much about it.
“Goddess, do you know how many large and small cities there are in total?”
“If you count just the human world, it’s about one hundred ten thousand or so.”
Roland smiled. “So, how much would it be per city even if only a hundred people teleported per day?”
Mystra froze for a moment, then her expression immediately turned serious. “Over a hundred million copper coins! And that’s the minimum amount. With such a low teleportation fee, anyone who isn’t too poor can afford it, and the average number of people teleporting in each city can’t possibly be less than a thousand per day! Sheesh!”
Since she was a goddess who had lived for centuries, she was also shocked by the numbers.
She couldn’t help gasp in astonishment. “You’re so ambitious!”
“You flatter me.” Roland smiled. At this time, Mystra was a little upset. She was a goddess, and now she was emotionally moved in front of a mortal, so she wanted to take back control. “But no matter the amount of money, this will not do anything for me. I still cannot see what benefit I can get. On the contrary, you… Will most likely become the richest person in the world. In a decade or so, the Dragon King Bahamut will not be as rich as you.”
Roland shook his head. “So, Goddess, you still lack people who can help you in the long term. As far as I know, right now, there are only a few hundred of your churches. So like I just said, the matter of spreading teleportation arrays all over the world is simply impossible.”
Mystra blushed a little, but she wasn’t angry, just embarrassed.
“But with money, can’t you build more churches more easily? And with money, you can also give your orthodox devotees higher monthly payments to give them more incentive to preach, can’t you?”
Mystra nodded. “That’s true. Are there any other benefits?”
“The other one is faith!” Roland spread his hand as if he was embracing the whole world and said, “When the magic teleportation array spreads all over the world in all the big and small cities, when all the humans or intelligent beings are used to using the teleportation array to travel, visit their relatives, and do business… Every time they teleport, they will think that this magic array is a gift from the goddess Mystra, and they will remember your goodness from their childhood, their offspring, and their ancestors. So how good do you think it will be for the spreading of your faith?”
Mystra’s eyes lit up brightly.
She had no knowledge in this area, nor did she have a believer who knew about it, so she couldn’t think of it at the moment.
But that didn’t mean she was stupid.
After all, being the Goddess of Magic, her intelligence was extremely high, and if someone put relevant knowledge in front of her, she would quickly understand it.
Her hands shook slightly, but she still resisted the urge to bounce around girlishly and instead said seriously, “I understand what you’re saying about the benefits, but you’re asking for too much. A fifty-fifty split isn’t good. I’m giving too much and you’re giving too little.”
“But I paid for the spell model and I told you about the plans for the Church of Magic as well,” Roland said.
“Still too much.” The Goddess of Magic shook her head. “You’re too greedy. If that’s the number, I’d rather not know about this magic array.”
The Goddess of Magic’s expression was serious and certain.
Roland sighed. “So how much do you want then?”
“Nine to one!”
Roland revealed an exaggerated, if not somewhat angry, expression. “Goddess, that’s very disingenuous of you. In that case, I’m leaving.”
With that said, Roland was about to stand up.
“Eight to two!” The goddess stared at Roland. “No higher. Young man, don’t be too greedy.”
Roland thought long and hard and nodded. “Okay, let’s make it eight to two.”
“Then let’s make a contract.” The goddess used her divine power to create a divine document between the two. “Press your palm on it.”
Roland casually looked at it, saw no problem with it, and put his hand on it.
The cyan divine contract disappeared, and both sides felt a strange force binding them.
Then Roland laughed and laughed quite happily.
Mystra stared at Roland for a moment and suddenly said somewhat angrily, “Little one, you actually tricked me. That’s not your bottom line. What exactly is your bottom line?”