CH417 Divine Heist III

***

"You… you… you scheming tree!"

Alex burst into laughter.

The Bonsai Tree needed a vast amount of Providence to recover. Yet Alex himself had very limited avenues through which he could gain Providence.

If earning Providence were easy, the higher-ranked Professionals of Pangea wouldn't have long turned the act of 'seeking opportunities' into a full-time obsession—scheming endlessly for even a sliver of Providence.

Alex merely seemed to have an advantage because his past life gave him a mindset and perspective fundamentally unfamiliar to the natives of this world. That uniqueness brought him recognition from the world itself, and thus, occasional Providence.

But that didn't mean acquiring Providence was like stealing candy from a baby.

Nearly all the methods available to him either required long-term buildup, painstaking groundwork, or the sort of miraculous, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities that no one could reliably plan for.

Left on his own, it might take years for Alex to accumulate enough Providence to heal the Heartwood Tree.

Enter the Navi… and their faith energy.

On Verdantis, the Navi used faith energy to siphon the Providence of the plane—and of the mortals who worshipped them.

Faith energy was essentially an all-access pass to a person's fortune and, to a certain extent, their fate trajectory –which was essentially an indirect pass to that individual's share of the world's Providence.

Highly refined faith energy—what most clergy referred to as divine energy—was faith that had been purified by a Navi to remove all contaminants and safeguards. It was, in essence, Providence distilled into a clean, direct consumable form.

The energy packed inside the conduit statue the Heartwood tree had just looted was exactly such refined divine energy, gathered and purified over a long period.

Low-grade, unrefined faith energy, however, was not so convenient. It came with contaminants and safeguards

The contaminants contained the believer's mental projection of what their 'god' should be. If a Navi consumed unrefined faith recklessly, that projection would start rewriting the Navi, shaping them into the image their believers imagined.

For instance, a water-attuned entity who ascended into a Fire Deity would—if careless—be slowly transformed into a fire-attuned being because that was what the believers expected their god to be. If the Navi accessed the Providence within unrefined faith, the contaminants would gradually alter their nature unless they continuously, actively resist or somehow manage to purify the faith energy.

High-ranked Navi didn't struggle with this problem because faith energy, like mana, had its own set of training and tempering methods. Using these methods, a Navi could strip away the contaminants and safeguards within faith, leaving behind pure divine energy—and purified Providence—free of the believer's influence.

It was this purified, ownerless faith energy –which had its Providence exposed— that the Heartwood Tree had just devoured.

Essentially, faith energy functioned like bank notes—currency that Navi, or faith-aligned individuals, could use to withdraw Providence from a plane's 'Providence bank'.

Low-grade faith energy was like a banknote that only paid out if the claimant matched the expectations of the believer who generated it—sort of a built-in Providence bank security measure.

Highly refined faith energy, however, was a universal promissory note; anyone capable of manipulating faith energy could redeem it for Providence, regardless of alignment or belief.

Naturally, drawing Providence from refined faith energy was far easier than earning Providence through the world's recognition, as Alex would need to do.

After all… plunder was always faster than honest labour.

But stealing from the pantheon was easier said than done.

The Navi and their clergy were many things—parasitic, manipulative, self-righteous—but they were not stupid. They would never place their faith conduits—most of which also doubled as purification arrays—in convenient or accessible locations.

The statue Alex had found was almost certainly one of the least-valued or least-guarded conduits. More important conduits would have buried it beneath layers of divine protections or hidden it in a sanctified vault far beyond reach.

Since refined divine energy could be used by any Navi—or any creature capable of tapping faith energy—they would never carelessly expose their savings for thieves to plunder.

No honour amongst thieves and such.

Besides, even if Alex succeeded in helping Lord Bonsai siphon additional conduits, the Navi would retaliate swiftly. They might not be omniscient, but they had plenty of methods to locate the thief draining their accumulated wealth.

If Juror issued a divine 'revelation' ordering every believer in the region to hunt Alex and his expedition party down, then neither he nor his expedition party would have an easy way of resisting.

Allowing that outcome would defeat the very purpose of the Heartwood Tree sacrificing itself to save them. Thus, the Bonsai would never send Alex out to plunder conduits without a countermeasure.

Enter the Nest Queen.

'If the Nest Queen develops a taste for faith energy,' Alex mused, 'then with her naturally mutative essence, there's a very real chance she'll evolve a method to detect and absorb it.'

His eyes glinted.

'And if that ability can be passed to a drone… then we could create a single-use faith-plunder drone. It would absorb a conduit's refined faith energy, convert it into an energy sac for the Nest Queen, then die on the spot, leaving nothing behind for the Navi to track.'

Alex exhaled slowly.

'And since the Nest Queen belongs to me, she is—strictly speaking—an extension of myself in the grand scheme of things. So, when she devours the faith energy, the Bonsai Tree should gain access to the Providence associated with the stolen energy.'

Alex's gaze locked onto the faintly glowing Bonsai Tree.

'With this alone, between the Nest Queen and myself, one or both of us will naturally seek out faith energy… and you, Lord Bonsai, simply have to sit back and wait for the Providence to roll in.'

A self-sustaining Providence farm.

A plan so elegant and low-risk—relatively speaking—that the crippled metaphysical tree could not pass off.

Alex chuckled softly.

"You don't need to worry, 'Lord Bonsai'. Even without this plan, I would've scoured heaven and earth to find the Providence, and faith energy, for your recovery—risks be damned."

One thin branch twitched.

Just barely… but Alex saw it.

He couldn't help imagining the tree bonking him on the head for volunteering himself for danger after it nearly died saving him.

A dry laugh escaped him at the mental picture.

He waited a little longer but sensed no immediate change. The Nest Queen's cocoon still pulsed faintly as it digested the potent divine energy. If anything, it would take even more time before hatching.

After confirming no additional surprises awaited him, Alex stepped out of the Sanctuary Subspace.

He reappeared inside the conduit chamber. Finding nothing else of value, he left the temple.

By the time he stepped outside, his party members had excavated a sizable portion of the collapsed structure. Several Fury soldiers were hauling crates and sacks from the rubble—strange red-glowing stones spilling out in varying sizes from finger-length pebbles to palm-sized stones.

Alex walked toward them.

"What are those?" he asked.

The closest knight saluted.

"Sir! We're told they are Berserk Stones, sir. We believe they are this plane's equivalent of Mana Stones. The temple treasury stored several chests of them."

"I see…" Alex nodded, filing the information away. Useful, but not urgent.

Just then, Kavakan's voice crackled through comms.

"Boss, are you done? We've got a situation at the castle."

Alex exhaled calmly.

"Alright. I'm coming."

He waved for the Fury soldiers to continue their work and began walking toward the fortress castle.

Whatever awaited him there… it sounded important.

***

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