The entirety of Jade City was in an incredibly festive mood. Food, drinks, songs, hookers... A sort of festival was being held all through the city, and at it's centermost were the temples.

Priests paraded around, holding the flags of their still not named country. Many called it the Sacred Nation, some called it the Light Country, and even others called it Human Paradise. However, no name had been made official by the goddess yet.

Today would be the day the divine realm of humanity's Lord opened. From thereon, any who died would simply go back to their master to live in happiness for the rest of eternity. Or so the priests said. 

Observing the festivities from the roof of the temple, Helen stood there with her arms crossed, a small smile on her face. She could see her mother, now an old woman approaching her 50's, having the time of her life with her friends. No longer was she the dirty and poorly dressed skeleton that she was in the past.

Thanks to Helen's efforts, her mother now lived in a comfortable home in the middle of her city. She was probably one of the richest people under the Sacred Lord's influence, and Helen couldn't be happier about it.

She herself was now a 22-year-old woman, no longer the scared and weak little girl she had been when her Lord first singled her out from amongst the hundreds of other nobodies. No, now she was Helen Judas, champion of her Lord, and the one many thought she will be the first to complete both the Priest and Holy Warrior paths.

As she observed the festivities, not taking part in them herself due to her distaste of crowds, light steps echoed from behind her, and she lazily glanced backward.

A young boy no older than 12 years walked towards her. His ears were slightly longer than that of normal humans, and despite being a boy, he could be considered beautiful rather than handsome. Not that Helen particularly cared for this little detail, as she was no pedophile.

"Good afternoon, Ms. Helen. I see you're enjoying yourself up here in all your loneliness?" The boy joked, no real venom in his words.

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say, brat." Helen dismissed, returning her eyes onto the crowd, allowing them to linger for a moment too long on the half-naked men brawling on the streets.

Sitting down next to her, the boy kept his silence as he too observed the proceedings. Although it was fuzzy for most priests, those who held particularly strong faith in their Lord could faintly sense her mood. Being one of her champions, a title that hadn't even been given by the Goddess, but by the people, he could tell that their lord was incredibly happy right now.

"So, little Mark, what's got your tongue tied? You're usually much more talkative than this." Helen said after a couple of minutes, shifting her eyes away from the deliciously muscled man carefully playing with children, who were clinging to him and begging to be lifted up.

Mark sighed. "Aaah. It's nothing. I'm just thinking about the past, y' know."

Helen's eyes turned softer. She actually really favored the kid, and it wasn't even because he was her Lord's student. She genuinely liked the brat.

He'd had a hard life, even if he didn't talk about it. Despite Helen being one of the most passionate non-human haters due to her traumatizing experiences with them, she still considered halflings as worthy of the same status as normal humans. However, there were people under the Lord's guidance who thought differently, and it was hard to rid them of this hate.

Still, the boy had risen up despite that, even managing to catch the Lord's attention with his talent, diligence, and intelligence. Based on what she knew of her Lord, she could see that Mark was very much like herself, in that he was a rough gem that just needed some polishing to shine, and their Lord wished exactly to groom him into a capable aid.

If she could be considered the current right-hand woman of the Lord, the boy would most likely become the left-hand when he grew up and gained more experience.

She reached out with one hand and forcefully dragged Mark over to her, keeping her hand wrapped around his shoulder. Ignoring his surprised yelp, she laughed. "Brat, we're supposed to be celebrating, not moping and being all depressed. You've got the rest of your life to do that."

Smiling awkwardly, Mark snaked out of Helen's grasp, only to have Helen catch him once again and pull him in for a painful noogie. They were both laughing by the end of it.

Meanwhile, in the divine realm, Sacred Light observed everything happening within her city and more.

With a proud smile, she turned to look at her majestic divine realm that she had personally crafted. It resembled an endless sky where the clouds were actually solid, and below the clouds was an endless sea. She even personally created an incredibly powerful and shining sun for this realm that, while not in any way comparable to the real deal, was still incredibly bright and hot.

The realm was a grand total of 5000km squared, and it was still in its birth phase. Hence, it held endless potential for expansion and upgrades, as it was still only the bare bones of a true divine realm.

She had still put a lot of thought and effort into it. The clouds were crafted using only the Soul domain, meaning that they could allow souls to rest comfortably within. The sea below was a gigantic storage for faith energy, and it held a mechanism that would now automatically connect to her believers and collect their faith, taking a huge burden off her shoulders. As for the sun, it was crafted using solely the Light domain, therefore symbolizing her entire understanding of the domain.

Finally, the entire realm held a hidden aura of magnificence, power, and dignity. It was her realm, and anybody who dared to barge it into would be absolutely annihilated. This was the power of the Ruler domain. Within it, Sacred's power could rise up to 1000 times the power she otherwise held within the mortal world.

Even Sacred hadn't expected such grand results. She'd expected a lot, but this was still out of her expectations. Now that she had personally created her realm, she understood a lot more about godhood itself.

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Truth be told, she wasn't a full goddess yet. Before, without a divine realm, she could only be considered as a very powerful demigod. Usually, a true god would need to grasp a complete domain, and then, using that domain and the aid of the world energy that descended the moment one grasped a full domain, they would build their own divine realm.

However, Sacred was outside the norm. She was much more powerful than even peak demigods, and yet hadn't grasped a full domain, and now also held a divine realm. Even she herself wasn't really sure how all of this happened, but it had given rise to a lot of delicious options and plans.

Now that her realm was complete, she could connect it to the mortal world's temples, allowing for her followers to access her realm. Naturally, it would be a bad idea to allow just anyone to come and go as they please, thus, only the elites of the elites would be able to enter.

Another idea that had cropped up in her head was to use her realm as a medium for transportation between mortal temples. Meaning, if they entered a temple, then entered her realm, then exited towards another temple which wasn't the original one, it would allow for her armies to be able to defend any location with a temple and for supplies and logistics to be so, so much easier to handle.

Naturally, she'd have to handle it so her followers wouldn't be able to see her divine realm. As long as it remained something mysterious and only spoken and praised by her priests, in the hearts of their followers, it would be the 'place after death'. If they entered it while alive, it would break the illusion.

But, all of that was stuff to do 'soon'. Not now. And no, she was not procrastinating god damn it, she'd do it! ...Eventually!

Shaking her head to get rid of her silly thoughts, Sacred looked back at the seemingly endless realm that wasn't really all that endless. With a frown, she saw the sheer... emptiness. It bothered her.

With a wave of her hand, around three thousand souls were released out of her body. These were all the souls of her followers, and they were all exclusively human souls since all the elven and beastman souls she'd captured so far had been used for... other things. 

The souls immediately took to the realm like fish in the water. Although these weak souls held no real intelligence or memories, they still had some instincts, and thus immediately went to where they felt more attracted to. 

Some dived down onto the Faith Sea, while others took refuge within the Soul Clouds. There were even a couple particularly brave souls who went all the way up to the fake sun and entered it or circled around it, looking like specks of dust in front of a giant. 

Sacred naturally would never harm her people's souls, and thus, had made it so the sun's rays wouldn't hurt them. In fact, if these souls slowly cultivated within the sun, sea or clouds for long enough, they'd be able to slowly absorb the realm's divine energy and eventually regain their intelligence and memories, effectively being able to return to life.

Should such a thing happen, Sacred would naturally give them the option to reincarnate with their memories or to serve her. Souls strong enough to hold intelligence were extremely precious, after all.

Sacred frowned. Even with all the fish-like souls swimming and flying about, the realm still looked empty. 

"Ah." She muttered, eyes gleaming with enlightenment. Raising both hands to the sky, she cried out, "Rise, Sacred Palace!"

' Fucking damn it' she cursed immediately afterward. Her imagination for names was worst than her imagination for all things non-godly, which basically amounted to a nice little zero. All she knew was to add 'holy', 'sacred', 'light', or some other obvious prefix before it. She wanted to cry, but she had a palace to make still.

A temple not unlike the one she inhabited beforehand rose up from the ground. She'd actually grown quite fond of the place, and thus, wanted to make something very similar to it.

However, unlike the previous palace, this one was at least 100 times larger, and it contained a much more symmetrical and antique feel to it. Two gigantic winged snake statues rose and coiled around a huge tower that was the center of the temple, with four separate but connected buildings connecting to the main body of the temple.

Like before, the main room was the gigantic entrance and hallway that led directly to her throne. Her throne was pretty much the same, as she found she quite liked its design, and comfort wasn't really an issue. However, unlike before, there now were several tables and chairs at every angle of the room, so as to allow those who come to attend meetings would have somewhere to sit that's not the ground.

She even added a couple of toilets hidden behind some of the statues lining the passageway. She smiled secretly, not having missed the looks the priests got a couple of times when they came to meet with her and had to stay for hours upon hours.

With a proud nod, she sat her butt down on her throne with a happy smile on her face. Ah, her vanity felt like it would burst by how proud she was of herself at having remembered to include an automatic function that would allow her wings to pass through without requiring her to turn them immaterial. Bless her eidetic memory, because she'd never have remembered otherwise.

Done with playing her little kingdom-building-game-that's-not-actually-a-game, she waved a screen back into existence, allowing for her to have a much clearer picture of what was going on in Jade City.

The festivities had just about reached their end, and everyone was now waiting for her to show the results of her effort. With a smile, a giant rune appeared underneath her palace. Immediately, it glowed bright gold.

Back in the mortal realm, everyone watched in awe as all the Sacred Churches began to glow bright gold. Large rings of golden light rose up from their roofs and gathered in the sky right above Jade City.

Connecting together, the various golden rings formed something akin to a giant mirror in the sky. However, instead of reflecting what was below it, it showed the image of a giant Sacred Flag. 

Then, a voice reverberated inside the heads of every single believer of the Sacred Goddess. "The divine kingdom has been established. As a commemoration for this glorious day, I shall bestow upon this day the name of the Realm Day, and bestow upon this nation born from my blessing the name of the Golden Republic."

Cheers rose up like tidal waves amongst the masses and elites alike, as they watched as golden domes shot out from the churches, enveloping large areas of land. For those within these domes, they immediately felt themselves become stronger, faster, healthier and more connected with their Goddess.

As the masses celebrated, Sacred sent down a divine order to her church elites. "With the divine realm established, everything is ready. When next spring comes, the Reclamation shall come, and we will annihilate the inhuman scum. Train well."

Satisfied, Sacred retreated back to her realm, ready to begin something she had waited for far too long to do, and yet had never been happier not to have done: Absorb the massive amounts of faith she'd collected.

As she sat on her glorious throne, Sacred closed her eyes. The next instant, the great Faith Sea of her realm rumbled, as giant streams of invisible energy shot up from it and into Sacred's body, bypassing through any and all barriers and directly entering her soul.

Sacred gasped and moaned in pleasure. A giant smile appeared on her smile as she immediately focused all of her attention on learning the Laws of the world and also strengthening her body and soul.

With a booming laugh, she exclaimed "Totally worth it! This is awesome!"

Like a baby having been given an entire country worth of candy, she threw herself fully into the feeling of absorbing faith, instantly skyrocketing in strength.

Somewhere far away, a large tree shivered as it felt something weird. It 'blinked', and the feeling was gone. It shrugged it's metaphorical shoulders and went back to sleep, having lived for far too long unchallanged and uncontested, it didn't even think that anything could ever threaten it.