[Vol. 8] Chapter 107: The Call of the Great Will
“Hmm…”
It seemed she didn’t have a good impression of the name. The Pope thought for a moment and then nodded.
“How should I put it… The group I know as the [World Sustainers] is... a cult. A strange and newly-emerged cult.”
“Right now, they are mainly active in the eastern part of our Holy Empire, near the border, in the Theo Province. No one knows who their members are, how they are organized, or who their leaders are. The only thing we do know is that they call themselves the [World Sustainers] and follow that belief.”
“I first learned about this cult because Sister Yuna initially sensed strange energy and said that Theo Province needed monitoring. Then they attacked several villages and towns in the Theo Province. The Holy Knights were called in to help and fought with them a few times. That’s how we found out their name, and the local temple reported the details to us.”
“According to the reports, these cult members act very strangely. Although they attacked the villages, they didn’t hurt or kill anyone, and they didn’t steal anything. Instead, they gathered all the people together and preached their beliefs to them.”
“Wow, sounds like they were stealing your church’s followers right in front of you~”
Violet raised an eyebrow and seemed to find it a little funny.
“And their way of spreading their message really is quite... unique. So, what exactly were they preaching?”
Edwina shook her head with a helpless look.
“It wasn’t really preaching. It was more like spreading lies or brainwashing people, and in the worst way...”
“According to what the Holy Knights learned later, these so-called [World Sustainers] told the villagers that the world itself had already been corrupted and twisted by some evil force, and that its destruction was unavoidable. They even said that the ‘Primordial Light’, which is the core of our church’s faith, is actually the source of all disasters. They claimed that only by worshiping their [World Sustainers] could people be saved from the end of the world.”
“Hoh…?”
Seeing the black-haired girl frown slightly and let out a strange little hum without saying anything else, Edwina thought the clearly blasphemous words had made her upset. She quickly waved her hands and added.
“W-Wait! I know those are terrible lies that can’t be forgiven. As soon as we heard the news, we ordered the local temples to investigate it fully. We’ve officially labeled them a highly dangerous cult and have already started cracking down on them. Please don’t worry, the Church will do everything we can to wipe them out as quickly as possible…”
“Hmm?”
Pulled out of her thoughts by that last part, Violet smiled and shook her head.
“It’s fine. After all, I’m not really a goddess, am I? If they insult the Primordial Light, what’s that got to do with me? All cults say shocking things to try and steal believers from the Goddess Church. If they didn’t, how else would they get attention? Go on, tell me everything else you know about them.”
“Ah… alright.”
Reassured by Violet’s calm reaction, Edwina quietly relaxed. She peeked again at the black-haired girl’s face to make sure she really wasn’t angry, then whispered something like “as expected of the goddess…” under her breath before continuing.
“As I said before, the group is still new, so the Church doesn’t know much about the [World Sustainers] yet. But it’s already clear that most of them have some kind of mental issue.”
“How should I explain it… They don’t feel like a normal cult. They’re more like a group that has been affected by a powerful will and given a very extreme belief. Even though the temples fought them several times and captured some of them, deeper investigation showed that many of those cult members were just regular townsfolk or villagers with clean records. Some of them even used to be believers of the Goddess Church.”
“Most of the cult members, after being captured and cleansed by the Holy Light, woke up without remembering anything that had happened before. Only a few followers who had stronger faith in the Goddess could recall parts of what happened. It seems they were also ‘preached to’ in a similar way, and afterward, they felt a kind of... call from a great will.”
Edwina chose her words carefully as she tried to explain.
“According to what the victims said, there was a strange, whisper-like voice constantly echoing in their ears. It seemed to carry a special kind of power that slowly made them believe everything it said was the truth, until they blindly accepted it. That’s why they gave up their original beliefs and began to spread those blasphemous ideas instead.”
She paused for a moment. Seeing that the black-haired priestess was listening quietly without saying anything, Edwina decided to explain everything clearly in one go.
“In short, according to the temple’s early research, this brainwashing-like state spreads like a disease. It seems that close, repeated contact, especially through speech, can pass it on to other people.”
“Also, when many people who have been affected by this ‘call’ gather together, the brainwashing becomes stronger and spreads faster. It creates a kind of ‘assimilation’ effect. That’s probably the main reason why this group keeps attacking villages and towns, to grow their number of followers.”
“So far, the temple has been working hard to stop them and arrest their members. For now, this group calling themselves the [World Sustainers] has gone quiet again. But if they are truly behind the chain of assassinations and the rebellion of the Lombard family, then their true power is likely much greater than what we’ve seen so far…”
“Even though we’ve done some research, our scholars still haven’t figured out what this mental corruption really is. Personally, I think their actions in the Theo Province were just tests or early experiments.”
“Miss Violet, that’s everything I know.”
“Hmm… the Theo Province… I guess that name wasn’t a coincidence after all.”
The priestess nodded thoughtfully.
What Edwina described, a power that crosses space and affects the mind in a way that seems to go beyond cause and effect, was not unfamiliar to Violet. In fact, she had similar abilities herself.
When using high-level magic, eighth-tier or even god-level spells, it naturally caused a kind of “information pollution” to those nearby. Strong-willed or powerful people could resist it, but ordinary people were easily affected. At best, they would see strange illusions. At worst, even their thinking could be twisted without them realizing. It was a troublesome effect.
The two vampire maids, Mia and Selna, who now followed the priestess, were the clearest examples of what happened when this kind of power went out of control. Even the birth of the [Light Worshipper Church], which gave Violet constant headaches, was closely tied to this kind of mental contamination.
At first, the priestess thought this was just a side effect of using high-level power in the real world. But the more gods and divine beings she came into contact with, the more she realized that might not be the case.
This “information pollution” wasn’t something all gods shared. For example, the former Goddess of Earth, Sethlin, who had lived for tens of thousands of years, if she had known about this kind of thing earlier, she would never have been tricked by certain people. Those people used dirty data hidden inside the technology of the Aibus World to corrupt her mind, which led to her being betrayed and abandoned in the end.
In fact, most of the gods Violet had met didn’t mind showing their power in front of mortals. Their divine power usually didn’t cause weird mental effects just from being seen, unless their power naturally had that effect. Violet had already tested this idea back when she was in Sainz, using her two maids for different experiments.