Gawain lifted his teacup, but did not bring it to his lips for a long while. As he pondered, he gradually pieced together the long, unknown history of the Silver Empire after the fall of the Nature God—the elves lived far too long, so the hidden truths in their history were far more mysterious and ancient than humans could imagine. A span of over three thousand years exceeded even the limits of accurate historical records from the once-mighty Gondor Empire.
And for certain secret Druid sects, such a long history was enough to create several "gods."
Of course, judging by Bercetia's description, what those secret Druid sects had created was still far from qualifying as gods. They could not be compared with the deliberately created "False God's Body" of The End of All Things, nor with the "Upper Narrator" accidentally born in Sandbox One. At most, they were Psychological Projections produced by collective ideological currents, still some distance away from entering the real world.
At that thought, Gawain could not help feeling a little emotional—when it came to courting disaster, humans really did surpass everyone else. The combined results of those elven Druids' three thousand years of tinkering could not match the mess those two cults had made...
But that was hardly an achievement worth boasting about.
"You have fallen into deep thought again," the Silver Empress said. She seemed to have been closely watching every change in Gawain's expression, and her voice jolted him from his thoughts. "Though that is only natural. What I just told you would give anyone much to think about."
"...I was merely considering how much you have managed to learn from those secret sects' attempts over the years," Gawain said as he set down his teacup, still thinking as he spoke. "You mentioned earlier