Millennium Witch

Book 3: Chapter 281: Rapid Development

As the Snow Country’s sole religious authority, the Ritual Council had, throughout history, been challenged more than once by outside churches, including the True Gods’ churches and a few flash-in-the-pan minor sects. But none of those groups had ever posed any real threat to the Ritual Council; they all vanished on their own before long. So the Ritual Council had never imagined that one day it would face a genuine challenger—much less that, standing behind that challenger, might well be their own deity—Your Highness, what are You even doing?!Whatever the reason, when the Ritual Council’s witch-priests saw that scene at the Snow Emperor Festival, they all just about passed out on the spot.

And once they finally came back to their senses, of course the witch-priests first tried to comfort themselves, convincing themselves that the deity would never deny them; there had to be some deeper meaning in all this. Immediately afterward, though, they had to start thinking about how to defend their power. After the fact, they naturally consulted the Great Prophet Esvia again. Since Esvia wanted them to compete freely, then… they’d compete.

Yet even though they believed they were now treating the situation with absolute seriousness, the gravity of it still far exceeded what the upper echelons of the four great clans had anticipated.

Because as early as October, thanks to the Snow Priestess and other factors, faith in the Silver Witch had already begun to spread through the large settlements along the border between the Snow Country and Cold Mountain, via the holy icons sent out by the “Snow Priestess.”

Among those believers who obtained a holy icon, quite a few later traveled thousands of miles to Ice Stone Valley, where they met the Silver Witch Church’s only priest stationed in the Snow Country—Sara—and received the Church’s doctrine from her. Since there was only one original handwritten copy, they even had to stay and copy it out by hand themselves. But that did nothing to dampen their enthusiasm or their gratitude toward the Goddess.

For them to have taken the initiative to go this far without any guidance—the faith of these early pilgrims was already extremely devout.

After secretly witnessing this in the spiritual realm, Yvette made a trip to Ice Stone Valley herself, half sightseeing, half inspection, and granted Sara a higher level of authority. First, she promoted Sara from an ordinary priest to a “High Priestess,” a rank just below Apostle. Then she used an active rune package to boost Sara’s combat strength a little, and finally told her to take in all those long-distance early believers, give them a short crash course, then lead them—carrying neatly compiled, localized doctrine booklets—to go preach in other settlements near the main cities of the four clans.

Thus, when the Snow Emperor Festival ended and the upper echelons of the clans swayed back to the main city in those enormous covered wagons pulled by six snowfield camel beasts, then began their investigation into this so-called “Silver Witch Church”—

Let’s just say: they’d never have known if they hadn’t checked, but once they did, it scared them half to death. Those new missionaries who’d received only a simple training from Sara and learned just a few lines of “Praise the Goddess” had already spread all over the settlements around the main city!

At this point, the witch-priests, elders, and even the clan chiefs of the four great clans finally couldn’t sit still anymore. They started emergency strategy discussions.

After all, they were all members of the Snow Country’s upper class, long removed from the lower strata, and far, far removed from the crisis-ridden Cold Mountain. So in their eyes, the Silver Witch Church was indeed some organization that had suddenly popped up, like a ghost crawling out of the frozen ground. Before they’d even had time to react, it had grown this powerful already—how could that not be terrifying?

But here came the problem. After finally grasping just how terrifyingly fast the Silver Witch Church was expanding, what should the Ritual Council do next?

The answer was: nothing.

Yes, nothing—or rather, they simply had no idea what to do.

Lacking any real experience with competition, the Ritual Council had no clue from what angle they should even begin to oppose or adjust to this formidable opponent, the Silver Witch Church. So their conclusion was to continue observing, to watch how things developed and act only after careful deliberation.

And this was a proposal most people agreed with. After all, in the past, hadn’t every foreign church been all thunder and no rain? In the end, didn’t they all fail anyway?

Naturally, they assumed this time would be the same.

But reality soon gave the Ritual Council a resounding slap in the face—the Silver Witch Church not only showed no sign of fizzling out on its own, it was thriving more and more.

First, with the Snow Emperor’s endorsement and its status as an allied church, the Silver Witch Church wasn’t rejected by the populace at all. On the contrary, it was welcomed with open arms.

Second, the holy icon itself was an extremely “cheaty” tool.

What was it, in essence?

In a normal church, you had to send priests, missionaries, witch-priests and the like to take up long-term posts in towns and villages, building chapels or even great cathedrals in major cities in order to win hearts and minds. That wasn’t just to organize believers; it was also to carry out the church’s own functions—healing, exorcisms, conducting blessing rituals, and so on.

And that, in turn, brought up the issue of training clergy. Only with a well-developed training system could a church produce outstanding clergy capable of winning people’s faith. Otherwise, they’d end up like the current Ritual Council: with clergy who’d all turned into overbearing tyrants whom everyone loathed.

But the existence of the holy icon allowed the Silver Witch Church to skip this entire step.

What was its true nature?

It was basically a fully automatic religious machine that responded to believers. As long as a devout believer prayed to it—whether it was for healing, exorcism, or even emergency protection— the holy icon could easily take care of it all within a few breaths. Its efficiency was incredibly high, and it handled all the work clergy were supposed to do.

At that point, all the missionaries had to do was put on a performance: guide the prayers and worship rituals, and if nothing was happening, pick up the thin doctrine booklet Sara had compiled and read a few lines. There was no need for powerful mages or Magic Swordsmen—any ordinary person could do the job, easy and relaxed.

Such a simple and efficient method naturally fueled the Silver Witch Church’s terrifying pace of expansion and completely shattered the witch-priests’ old assumptions.

Even more frightening was that the Silver Witch Church’s operating costs were almost nonexistent.

In normal churches or religious institutions like the Ritual Council, money had to be collected to sustain operations, and only a small portion of that ever reached the local clergy. This, in turn, had led to witch-priests in their various postings racking their brains for new ways to collect “red envelopes” on the side.

But in the Silver Witch Church, one hundred percent of the offerings at each posting belonged to the local missionary. The holy icon’s healing and protection of believers incurred almost no loss either. As a result, local missionaries could easily earn a handsome income, all while drastically reducing the economic burden on the region.

In short, this was already a full-on technological steamroll—a dimensionality-reduction strike of artificial intelligence versus manual labor.

Still, even with all these overwhelming advantages, given the Snow Country’s vast land and sparse population, the inertia of relying on the Ritual Council, and the low efficiency of information spread, the Silver Witch Church would still need half a year to a year to get “seventy to eighty percent” of the faith in settlements outside the four main cities. During that time, there was still ample room for the Ritual Council to adjust its strategy and form healthy competition.

In the end, though—whether you called it a catalyst or the last straw that broke the camel’s back—a sudden crisis from the depths of the Snowfields caught the four great clans and the Ritual Council completely off guard.

“This is the crisis you prepared for the script?” One afternoon, in an open yard of a factory in Ish Island’s industrial district, Yvette stared at the huge mechanical monster Ice Rain had made in front of her. The more she looked, the stranger she felt about it.

It wasn’t the sort of monster that radiated overwhelming menace, but a gigantic, five-story-tall metal sphere covered in long, thin metal tendrils. Those tendrils were sheathed in a layer of semi-transparent organic gel, making the whole thing look very much like some super-sized tentacle monster.

She couldn’t help but seriously suspect that Ice Rain had copied this design out of some adult game.

“Yup, that’s right, Miss Good Samaritan. Look at all these tentacles, all packed together like that—don’t they feel like they could wrap someone up and slowly drag them down into the abyss? Super oppressive, right?” Ice Rain asked. Wearing a white lab coat that gave her a real researcher vibe, she stood in the monster’s shadow, looking up with her head tilted back, proudly saying, “This is all the advanced technique I’ve been painstakingly studying lately, you know!”

Tentacle oppression, huh… so, something Cthulhu-esque? Yvette felt a tiny pang of shame at herself for immediately thinking of eroge.

She pursed her cherry-colored lips, thought for a moment, and said, “The style of Snow Country monsters is a bit different from this.”

“Don’t worry about it.” As she spoke, Ice Rain input some sort of mimicry command. Light and shadow flickered, and soon enough, a pink, chubby tentacle monster appeared before the two of them. Its tendrils were covered in squirming, vein-like patterns, with viscous, slippery fluid dripping from their tips, presenting a disturbingly soft, fleshy texture.

Puffing out her flat chest proudly, she said, “I already thought of that! Over there in that world, the monsters can’t look mechanical, or it’d feel really off. Now look—once I change it to pure biological texture, doesn’t it feel much more natural?”

Why does it feel even more like a monster out of an adult game… Yvette fell silent for a moment, then asked, “What special abilities does it have?”

When it came to creating believers, the logic of the scripted scenario was simple: create a crisis, induce panic, have the deity descend to resolve the crisis, and win the hearts of the people. Basically the same as Ultraman fighting kaiju—simple and easy to follow, with no need for pre-established plot.

But the core rule was that no innocent people could actually die. Otherwise Yvette would feel a moral stain in her heart. So the main focus in designing the monster was to create a sense of oppression; its abilities should focus on psychological intimidation first, and physical destruction second.

Ice Rain nodded and said solemnly, “Its ability is to spray acid, with extremely powerful corrosive properties—it can even corrode the rock-hard ice and stone of the frozen Snowfields, super strong! But don’t worry, Miss Good Samaritan. So as not to hurt ordinary people, I made adjustments to the rune package level. This acid will only burn off clothes and such; it won’t actually damage anyone’s skin—how’s that, isn’t it a perfect design?”

Yvette decided to retract her earlier shame. She was now certain: this was a monster from an adult game; it had nothing to do with the yellow junk stuck in her head.

As for why Ice Rain would design such a malicious creature—Yvette suspected the girl had been misled by certain unscrupulous authors and their wrong content, giving her a distorted idea that the dirtier the style, the greater the sense of oppression—which was obviously wrong.

She’d have to correct her on that later.

Two days later, on a moonless night, cutting cold wind swept fine snow across the frozen belt deep in the Snowfields. Yvette dropped the gigantic tentacle monster into a rarely visited glacial ravine. Its massive bulk cast twisted shadows along the ice walls as it slowly oozed its way toward the Snow Country.

Sure enough, within just three short days, it became the hot topic of discussion in every tavern, market, and clan council hall across the Snow Country—a mysterious giant monster of unknown origin, whose secretions corroded even the steel-hard frozen ground of the Snowfields. Who wouldn’t worry about what kind of threat such a creature might pose to the Snow Country?

During this time, self-styled expert adventurers and clan warriors kept forming parties, full of ambition, heading out to challenge it, hoping to become the heroes who slew this mysterious monstrosity and left their names in the Snow Country’s ballads of history. Then—every last one of them was driven back in panic by a single wave of the tentacle monster’s clothes-melting slime, fleeing half-naked and utterly humiliated.

As a result, all factions kept raising their assessment of the monster’s danger level. By the fifth day, the Adventurers’ Guild had already raised its threat rating to “gold-tier,” meaning they’d need at least one Archmage to lead a team if they wanted any chance at handling it.

Faced with such a major threat, of course the Ritual Council couldn’t just look the other way. They mobilized themselves, preparing to assemble all their witch-priests to intercept the mysterious monster, and hopefully seize the chance to salvage their reputation and restore the Ritual Council’s rapidly crumbling image.

However—

On the very next day after that decision was made, new information came from the border between the Snow Country and Cold Mountain, leaving the four great clans—and especially the Ritual Council’s witch-priests—momentarily stunned.

Because according to the latest reports, the Throne of the Silver Witch Church had personally taken action, burning that monster to ashes and saving the common folk of the Snow Country.

How to put it… It sounded like good news. In fact, it was good news.

But from the Ritual Council’s point of view, it looked very different.

If the Ritual Council wanted to resist the Silver Witch Church’s encroachment, one crucial factor was that, even with the Snow Emperor Temple’s endorsement, the Silver Witch’s approval rating was definitely far, far below that of the Snow Emperor.

After all, over the past few centuries, the Snow Emperor had saved the Snow Country’s people more times than anyone could count, while the Silver Witch had been completely absent until now. That disparity was something nobody could ignore.

But now, things were different. The Throne of the Silver Witch Church was herself the embodiment of divine will. She had stepped in to save the Snow Country. Didn’t that mean the Ritual Council’s already limited advantages in faith had shrunk even further?

And this should have been their achievement, their great chance to win the people’s hearts—only for it to be snatched away by their opponent!

With that in mind, the top brass of the four great clans and the witch-priests of the Ritual Council all found themselves saddled with yet another layer of anxiety.

Amid this life that might have seemed full of undercurrents but, in fact, hadn’t produced any real conspiracies at all, time quietly slipped into February.

At Snowmist Lodge, the snow had buried half the stone steps in the courtyard, and frost had traced intricate ice-patterns across the windowpanes. As Yvette cycled lazily between researching the divine realm, soaking in hot springs, sleeping, and slacking off, she finally received word from Shuanghua that Tertia was about to arrive.