Mash, Jill, and Luke stepped into the guild. Only Alex didn’t enter and instead stood at the entrance. This was the second time he had entered a place like this. His domain had changed since the last time, and now he could actually feel the god’s domain before entering it. Mash wondered what change had caused that, but too much had happened for him to tell. He didn’t think much of it and stepped into the domain without worry. Almost instantly, he felt it react to his presence. Unlike Luke and Luna who were able to walk in without disturbing the domain, he entered like a rock thrown into a pond. The domain rippled, and the many paladins that were around moved.
The reaction was so sudden, that Mash was only able to track everything because of his own domain. Almost ten paladins had appeared their weapons drawn. Some didn’t use weapons and instead had a faint glow around their fingertips. All of them were looking at Mash. They didn’t attack though. It was almost certainly because his sister was standing right next to him. It took a second for her to recognize what was happening, but Mash and Luke figured it out faster. Mash moved in front of Luna, and Luke did the same behind her.
There were three paladins behind them and seven were blocking the path forward. All three behind them had drawn swords, and Alex was among them. Even of the paladins in front, four were wielding swords and the others had no weapons in their hands. He wondered why there was so little variety to the weapons. Alex had her sword drawn, but it wasn’t held to strike at them. She seemed more hesitant than the others. She was probably more worried about Luna than the others. That was somewhat comforting, although that still left nine paladins to deal with.
Mash wasn’t sure if he could handle all of them in a fight, but he didn’t want to fight them either. Well, he wanted to fight them but not in this situation. Each of the paladins felt close or above his level. He wondered how that was possible considering what it took for the level 100 advancement. Did gods have a way to get past those limits outside of the standard path? He expected that they must. He couldn’t imagine priests or healers clearing dungeons, and he doubted that someone like his sister would kill someone for an advancement.
These paladins didn’t act like they had any reservations though. If his sister wasn’t so close to him, he expected these paladins would’ve seen him dead already. Mash tried to figure out what was happening. What had he done? It had to be a detection skill of some kind, but he didn’t know what had triggered it. As he thought about it, he considered the piece of flesh he had eaten from Jill. Even if he hadn’t noticed any changes at the time, what if it made it seem like he was something similar, he really hoped that wasn’t the case, because he would have had no way to explain the situation.
The tense situation finally seemed to erupt, but not in the way anyone was expecting. His sister started to glow, and her mana filled the hallway. That wasn’t quite right, it wasn’t her mana. He could recognize her mana, and this was not it. Mash turned his head slightly to look at her. His sister’s eyes were shining like small moons, and the air around her was sparkling. No, it was more like twinkling. She opened her mouth and spoke softly. It was not her voice and the way it carried made him get a small idea of what was happening. He knew that one of her skills was communion with God and made the connection.
“Stop, you fools. He is no enemy. He is simply not human. Do not impede them.”
As the last word left his sister’s mouth, the mana vanished. His sister stopped glowing, and she returned. She started falling forward, and Mash caught her easily. The experience was troubling. He wouldn’t mind if his sister had willing used the skill, but she seemed confused. Not to mention the marks of tiredness on her face. Well, he wouldn’t blame the goddess too much this time. She had acted to end the fight and nothing else.
Mash was glad to hear that it wasn’t the piece of Jill’s flesh that caused the problem. It was his race, that was a huge relief. The paladins had dropped to their knees, and every single one of them had their foreheads pressed against the ground. They still hadn’t moved. Almost all of them hadn’t moved. Alex was beside Luna, a golden light moved from her fingers into Luna’s back. It was a healing skill or something to cure fatigue. Within a few seconds, Luna was standing on her own two feet. Her fatigue was gone now too.
Luna acted as if nothing happened and continued forward after thanking both Mash and Alex. He wanted to ask her if she did that often, but it didn’t seem like Luna wanted to talk about it. That plus the many gazes that he could feel on him made him avoid the conversation. He would ask her about it later, at the very least after leaving the temple. Luna led them into the building, along a hallway that seemed to wrap around the whole thing. In fact, the hallway seemed impossibly long, and it was dark. The inside of the building was illuminated by small rocks that looked like stars, and they grew more infrequent as they went deeper into the building. There was something strange about the temple. It was not that big on the outside, yet they had been walking for several minutes now.
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Mash felt Luna stop, and she rested a hand on Mash’s shoulder. All of a sudden, the darkness seemed to vanish, and the hallway seemed to shrink. He could feel it shrink in his domain, and that confused him even more. The very space was shifting. It was kind of like Jill’s skills but a hundred times more complex. It bothered him a lot as he knew that there was nothing, he could do to stop the shifting space. When everything stopped, he was left standing in a very normal hallway. A single large door sat just a couple of feet from his face. It was made of dark brown wood and had a white silver moon painted in the center. It had no knobs or handles, but it swung open slowly.
There was a tension created by the creaking as it opened. The whole scene was far too dramatic, and he couldn’t help but wonder if that was an intended design. Mash’s opinion of the god was slowly falling further, though he was never really devoted. He never got the pull of it. Joining a temple was a limit, and once he had no intention of gaining. Plus, it would make it so that he was always beneath another person.
At least that was what he thought five seconds ago. The door had swung fully open, and Mash saw the god. The god was not just another person, that much was obvious. Mash knew that people had the opportunity to meet their gods occasionally, but he was surprised at how little was shared. The goddess of the moon was not human. In fact, he didn’t even know if calling them a goddess was accurate. Mash realized quickly that his eyes and his domain were giving him two very different representations of the god.
His eyes saw what looked like an elf, but only in that, the person before them had pointed ears. That was where the similarities ended. The being had a genderless body, but one that was ostensibly large. To call them fat would be inaccurate, but neither were they skinny. Instead, they almost looked like they were wearing armor. But it wasn’t armor. It was just their body. Their skin or maybe exoskeleton would be the more appropriate description here looked to be carved from stone.
That was a much more accurate way of viewing the strange creature’s body. Grey almost white stone seemed to be layered over their entire body and made the god into little more than an amateur’s clay sculpture. Although Mash would be able to tell if it was something external. Well, he thought that he could see it with his domain. When he tried that he realized that there was nothing inside the stone thing, not anything resembling a living being. It was almost like it was just a puppet and nothing else. That made more sense than believing that this thing was a god. Even if the stone looked to have been plucked from the moon itself, he wouldn’t believe that it was the goddess.
The goddess was famous for her peerless beauty. While the stone was pretty, he bet that wasn’t what people meant. As he stepped into the room fully, his domain revealed the truth. That stone thing was the god’s body, though it was not her. Mash had seen mana around the statue but had just assumed that it was just a part of the puppet. The weird thing was shining, reflecting light just like a miniature moon, and so he knew that there would be mana around. It wasn’t just the mana that caught his attention.
He could trace the mana of the stone to another source. It was directly behind the statue, and Mash knew that it was the source of the light. He realized then what exactly the goddess of the moon was. It was a spirit. One that blended in perfectly with the mana of the room. Those fish things from the snowfields were already hard to discern, but this spirit was intentionally trying to hide from his vision now. It only entered his range when he stepped forward. It probably could’ve been hidden from his old domain, but his new one was able to notice the subtle touches of life coming from the ephemeral being.
He saw the strange creature with his domain. At first, he didn’t think it was very strong, but the mana it emitted was something else. The quality of the mana was what made it unique. The ambient mana he felt at night was more impure than what this creature was producing. He could feel it flowing into the stone being in front of him. His attention had already left that thing though, and he was focused on the small whitish women.
Her whole body was faint, and her skin was white and translucent. Everything about her was like that, including the dress that seemed to be a little too big. It was a simple dress that reminded him of something his mother would wear. The dress just seemed like a really long shirt on the small creature. She was beautiful in a way that wasn’t unnatural. Unlike with simply high charisma, her appearance kind of fit with her visage. Long perfectly straight hair fell past even the dress. The god, it turned out, was not human.
Then the god turned slightly. The real god, not the piece of stone that was visible to his eyes. It started looking around for a second but stopped when it realized that Mash was the one that could see it. The god moved forward, through the stone puppet and appeared in front of the creature. Her dress rippled as she moved, and Mash realized that the god was invisible to his eyes. He was only able to see it because of his domain. The two senses conflicted with each other. It felt like he was hallucinating.
“You can see me. Your domain is not quite what I expected.”
The voice seemed to come from nothing, and Mash could tell that the others were confused by them. Rather, they weren’t sure how to react to what was being said. However, the fact that the god was addressing Mash was clear. Well, this day was going to be filled with awkward conversations. That much was certain.