Divine Power's Limits

When Pete finally left the interrogation room and saw the long-missed blue sky, he was still completely bewildered.

After asking for Pete's information again, the fat officer impatiently threw him out.

No matter how Pete questioned him during that time, the fat officer insisted that he had never heard of anyone named Bahamut. There was no such person in the station. The gentleman who had just left the room was clearly his superior, Chief Trun.

If Pete had not still vaguely felt the lingering discomfort left by [Spell Countermeasure], he might truly have thought he had been struck by some illusion spell and imagined a man named Bahamut out of thin air.

Yet his earlier memories were so clear. They did not feel like illusion magic at all, where one could clearly sense the disconnect from reality after the spell's effects ended.

Unwilling to give up, Pete tried praying to Noven again.

"Great God of Knowledge Noven, I offer you my devout faith. Please tell me how I can find Bahamut Conkduntes Glazcharden!"

This time, Pete did not use the enhancement of [True Name Knowledge] to speak that impossibly awkward surname aloud. He merely tried reciting it silently in his mind.

The divine revelation he received not only failed to solve Pete's problem, but left him even more confused:

[Quest: Head to Frostfire Plateau, Progress 0/1]

"Why does the God of Knowledge guide me to somewhere as far away as Frostfire Plateau when I'm trying to find someone I met in Greenport?"

Pete was utterly dumbfounded.

He had at least heard of Frostfire Plateau.

In Caron Academy's general geography class, he had learned that the Prantis Continent was roughly spindle-shaped, stretching from north to south. Greenport was a small cape jutting out at the southernmost end. Its unique geography had formed it into an excellent natural harbor;

North of Greenport lay Pete's homeland, the Rayak Kingdom. As the most powerful nation on the Prantis Continent, the Rayak Kingdom possessed vast territory. It bordered Greenport to the south, the dwarves' Hammerforge Town to the north, the Mist Sea to the west, and the Dark Forest to the east, occupying over a third of the continent;

As for Frostfire Plateau, it lay even farther north than the dwarves' lands. It was covered in snow year-round, yet scorching lava erupted from unknown places, creating the strange sight of ice and fire intertwined.

Forget going there. To someone like Pete, who had grown up in the Rayak Kingdom, Frostfire Plateau was the sort of place that existed only in legends and stories.

What Pete did not know was that Noven, far away in the Divine Kingdom, was equally surprised.

Noven had already suspected that Bahamut might have disguised his identity when he saw the [True Name Knowledge] spell, so that part did not particularly surprise him.

What truly astonished him was that, when Pete prayed to him this time, Noven "felt" the limits of his current divine authority for the first time since arriving in this world.

The feedback Noven received this time contained only one instruction: "Head to Frostfire Plateau."

Such a vague objective was clearly not enough to resolve Pete's request. Noven was certain that the information he had obtained was incomplete.

To put it another way, the full information likely involved several steps, while all Noven could receive at the moment was the objective of the first step.

The reason he had failed to obtain all the information was that, when responding to Pete's request this time, Noven could clearly feel his divine power being consumed.

Noven realized that using his divine authority also required divine power to obtain the corresponding information.

It was just that during the previous few times he had used his divine authority to respond to his follower, the consumption had been extremely minor.

Compared with directly bestowing power or delivering divine revelations, the expenditure was so slight that Noven would have found it difficult to notice unless he deliberately sensed it.

Yet the information tied to Pete's prayer this time had caused Noven's already limited divine power to plummet rapidly just from obtaining the first objective. He would have been drained dry and died before receiving all the relevant information, frightening Noven into decisively stopping.

As for why using the same divine authority could result in such a vast difference in divine power consumption, Noven had yet to find the exact reason.

"The sample size is too small. It's hard to identify any pattern."

"With only one follower, my source of divine power is far too limited. Even if I consume less than other gods, the income is too low for the accumulation rate to be worth mentioning."

"So at this stage, my top priority is still finding a way to spread the faith and recruit as many followers as possible."

There were two ways to spread the faith. Either mortals could voluntarily invoke Noven's divine name in the proper format while praying, allowing him to receive it and establish a direct connection with them;

Or followers of his faith could introduce and recommend him to others.

For Noven, the first method could not exactly be called promising. It was more accurate to say it had basically no chance at all.

The reason was simple.

Noven had not forgotten that his current identity as the so-called "God of Knowledge" was nothing but a disguise—a fake identity!

If nonbelievers wanted to establish contact by invoking his divine name, they should be using the titles those black-robed people in the cave had mentioned: "Father of Omniscience," "Lord of Enlightenment," and the like!

Casual remarks from mortals such as, "I don't care who it is, just send a god to help me," carried no specific direction. Let alone Noven, no god could establish a connection through words like that.

With that path blocked, Noven had only one route left:

Have those who already believed in him preach to others.

In simpler terms, recruit people into the group!

Pett Chinar pondered for a long while but still could not figure out what finding Bahamut had to do with going to Frostfire Plateau, nor did any new divine revelation descend.

"Forget it, I'm not thinking about it anymore!" Pete shook his head hard, deciding to cast these incomprehensible matters aside for now.

When you owed too much, one more debt did not matter. When you had too many lice, one more bite did not itch.

As long as he did not think about it, he could pretend it did not exist!

He had encountered enough ridiculous things over the past two days. One more did not make a difference!

First, he had trusted the black-robed people because he had been tempted by their so-called "quick path to becoming a third-tier spellcaster," only to be dragged into an unknown ritual site. Then something went wrong during the process, and he had nearly lost his life there. Fortunately, fate had spared him. At the crucial moment, an Outer God who claimed to have just awakened from slumber had helped him, and through a strange twist of fate, he had truly mastered third-tier magic.

As for being taken into the station after waking up and interrogated as an accomplice of the black-robed people, that had exhausted Pete both physically and mentally. Now that the matter had finally settled down, all he wanted was to hurry back to the dormitory he rented at Caron Academy, rest for a few days, and properly soothe his wounded heart!

He had only taken a few steps out of the station when Pete suddenly heard a burst of crisp, hurried footsteps behind him. Immediately afterward, a lively and pleasant voice called out:

"Sir! Sir! Please wait!"