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Chapter 534: Starry Night

Now that things were settling down, it seemed like it was time for Tubrock to start investigating the bases that the invaders had set up. I didn’t know if he’d be able to reproduce their creation method, or if it was something that had been given to the invaders by their own specific system. If it was the former, that would open up quite a lot of potential possibilities, while the latter would simply leave them as vacant spoils of war.

I asked him to keep me up to date on his progress, to see if there was anything that we could gain from the bases. In the meantime, I allowed the world to begin fast forwarding once more. Scarlet needed time to rebuild her kingdom, and the worlds themselves needed time to adapt to the new ‘major’ goddess that had appeared. Though, of course, I did so slowly so as not to overwhelm Leowynn.

Sitting at a desk within a marble room, two elderly elves looked at one another, each of them wearing a deep blue robe. These were two cardinals of the church of Ryone, among the highest ranking worshippers of the goddess from all of the people in every world.

“How should we handle this, Sera?” The man spoke in concern, his brows furrowed.

The woman, Sera, shook her head. “We could ask the Goddess for guidance, if this is not a problem that we can resolve on our own.”

The man gave a somewhat bitter smile. “I did that already, actually. I used my annual request last night in order to request the Goddess to show us what she wanted us to do in this matter.”

The woman blinked in surprise, her eyes going wide. Every cardinal of the church was given only a single quota every year that they could use to speak with the Goddess about any matter, but most reserved such a thing for emergencies. It was better to save it for a time of true need, rather than to bother the Goddess about their personal issues.

“Then, what did she tell you?” Sera asked, genuinely curious at this point.

“In her words… ‘I believe that you will come to the right answer on your own’.” The man answered with a reluctant sigh. “It would appear that she wishes for us to reach our own conclusion here, and trusts that the conclusion we arrive at will be the same as her own desires.”

Sera closed her eyes faintly, nodding her head. “Such is the will of the Goddess. Then, we are back to our initial dilemma. Do we reach out to the forming Church of the Starry Night, or leave our organizations as separate entities? And if we do reach out to them, in what capacity should we seek to establish a relationship?”

The man shook his head, a troubled look on his face. “If this were simply a subordinate god of the Goddess, I would suggest we take the Starry Night under our wing, and incorporate them into the teachings of the Glittering Tome. The problem here is that her daughter is not a subordinate goddess, but on equal standing to the Goddess herself.”

Sera sighed in reluctant agreement. “Still, their relationship as mother and daughter cannot be denied. I believe that it is in everyone’s interest for the two churches to, at the very least, establish a unified branch organization.”

Seeing the man sinking deep into thought at that, Sera verbally prodded him. “Rodcor, what are you thinking?”

The man, Rodcor, shook his head quickly as he focused on the conversation once more. “Apologies, I was just trying to imagine what sort of organization we could create with the combined power of the two churches.”

“As you are aware, Leowynn’s aspects pertain particularly towards the vast void of space. That being what it is, it would not be fitting of us to create an organization that operated on any one planet. Rather, it would have to be a mobile operation that reached beyond the borders of our own world.”

Sera thought over the proposition for a moment. “This is true. Yet, with the development of portal technology on so many new worlds, where will we find traffic between these planets?”

Rodcor didn’t seem to have considered that detail, and reluctantly lowered his head. “Right. Few ships actually travel between planets anymore, unless we are talking about those golems of the March. But limiting ourselves to their territory doesn’t seem to be quite right either. So, a trade company would offer little use.”

“I think you were on the right track, though.” Sera spoke up suddenly. “It does need to be an organization that travels through space in some manner. But we must also take advantage of the strengths of our own Goddess. I have… two thoughts which I would like you to consider, though one would require the aid of our Goddess in order to properly establish.”

“By all means, enlighten me.” Rodcor smiled at the offer for aid.

“First of all, we could form a rescue organization in conjunction with the Starry Night church. The Goddess’s monetary aspects will be neglected, but her specialty in magic can be showcased as we rescue lost travelers. The only problem is…”

Rodcor let out a sigh. “As we said before, traffic between worlds through space is almost nonexistent. If there were travelers in need of rescue, they would be deep within the vastness of space, with little that we could do to aid them. After all, if we could simply patrol those unexplored territories, they would not be unexplored in the first place.”

“Right… and creating a fleet of ships to fly about randomly in the hopes of finding those in need of aid seems… fairly inefficient.” Sera agreed, shaking her head. “This brings me to my second idea. This one, I feel is more possible, though it would require the direct assistance of the Goddess herself, and perhaps even that of Leowynn.”

Receiving Rodcor’s gesture to continue, Sera explained her plan. “This is similar to your idea of a merchant company. However, rather than traveling between planets to ferry goods, we place members of this organization on those traveling vessels. Using coins which contain the powers of the goddesses, we should be able to create a trade platform that transcends the boundaries of space.”

“Oh, I like you. Seras, was it?” Ryone’s voice spoke up from within her room as she lay on her stomach, legs kicking lightly behind her. “Let’s see… how could I set that up?” She muttered to herself, focusing.

“I could anchor the trade platform itself in a separate space, and use the tokens to create entrances to this space… But then I’d need a suitable isolated space to use for the trading area. Maybe I could get Ashley’s help later and install a small system patch to allow members of this organization to have something like an auction house system?”

“Still, even if I take care of the logistics aspect of the trade platform itself, I need some way to automate the coin production. Should I create a new ritual to sacrifice currency to convert it? No, that wouldn’t be good. I don’t want to take any coinage out of circulation.”

Ryone’s brows furrowed as she considered this problem. “If I don’t set up some way to automate the process for me, I’ll have to be manually assigning coins all the time, and that will quickly get out of hand.”

“Could I come up with a power to give my priests that allows them to enchant a coin with the ability to open this trade window? But, if I do that, the coins will be able to be passed around, and the uniqueness of the organization will be lost sooner or later.”

“Perhaps the coins could be automatically generated if I combined powers with Leowynn and set the trigger as exploring new territory. Then maybe special phenomena could be registered that are worth more coins? Binary star clusters and things like that.”

“But wait, that would require us to judge the value of these phenomena to award the extra currency. And if the coins can only be earned through travel, then where will the goods come from that appear on the trade platform? Planetary organizations won’t have any means of generating these coins, so they won’t be able to open the platform to sell their wares.”

Ryone held her head in frustration, unsure what she should do to solve this problem. Finally, she got up from her bed and stormed out of the room, making her way towards Ashley’s bedroom. “Ash, dear? Are you and Leowynn in there?” She asked, knocking against the wooden door.

“Ryone?” Ashley opened the door a moment later, confused by the elf’s sudden appearance. However, her features softened a moment later. “Wanting to check up on her?”

“No, well yes, but that’s not what this is about. How’s she doing?” Despite her words, Ryone naturally wanted to know her daughter’s state.

“She’s fine.” Ashley smiled gently, nodding her head. “She was secretly practicing Dale’s thread technique while he was doing so, so she has some ability to split her mind already. It’s making it easier for her to adjust. We’re just working on setting up her religious rites.”

“Oh, good.” Ryone let out a sigh of relief. “I actually wanted to consult the two of you about something related to that.”

“What is it, mom?” Leowynn’s voice could be heard coming from the room, so Ashley opened the door further to allow Ryone in.

Ashley’s room was rather dark, unsurprising given that she was the patron of a nocturnal race. Her bed was a dark red, her carpet black. Leowynn sat on the bed, her silver hair appearing as the sole star in the darkness of the room.

“One of my cardinals came up with a suggestion for how we could use our powers together.” Ryone explained, before grumbling in frustration. “I’m just having trouble getting the exact details worked out. It should be some kind of trade platform that can operate even in the deepest regions of space, as long as a member from the combined organization is there.”

“They said that they wanted it to be based on a coin containing our powers, which sounded like a good idea, I’m just not sure how to make it work.” After saying that, she walked over, falling face first onto Ashley’s bed and letting out a long groan.

“And since you want it to be a proper trading system, you want me involved.” Ashley said with a small grin, receiving a thumbs up from Ryone, who refused to unbury her face from the bed.

Leowynn blinked, thinking it over. “Maybe… maybe we could have the coin as the item that opens the trading system, but it is our combined divine energies that allows it to function?” She suggested, looking towards her mother. “So only a priest that follows both of us can activate the coin?”

Ryone lifted her head up to look at her daughter. “Leowynn, you’re brilliant. Never let anyone tell you differently.” She spoke in a firm tone, one that was betrayed by how she was grasping for her daughter, pulling her in to cuddle against her. “We just need a ritual to create the coins then, right? And Ash’s assistance to set up the platform itself.”

“Oh, and the priest should only ever be able to have one coin, tied to their own divine signature.” She added after that. “That way, they can’t just be freely traded around. If the coins get around to everyone, and they find a way to mimic our signatures to activate them… I’m probably just worrying too much, aren’t I?”

Ashley chuckled from the foot of the bed. “A little bit. Though, I don’t disagree. There wouldn’t be a need for a priest to have more than just the one coin, if that was all it took to open the trade window. The coin itself could even be a manifestation of divine energy, like a knight’s signature weapon.”

“Yes, that.” Ryone pointed towards Ashley. “We can do that… we just need to make a ritual together so that our divine energies create that coin, and then you connect the coin to a trade platform!”

“I’ll try.” Ashley nodded her head. “I haven’t tried making any kind of system yet to ‘install’ in the main world, so I don’t know how much it’ll take out of me. Thankfully, this is something pretty small, so it would make for a good test run.”