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"You're just leaving like that?"
Merlin's steps suddenly stopped. He wanted to ignore the voice in his ears, but found that he could not, no matter what he did.
He even felt a little inclined to hear what the voice had to say.
"Didn't you hear Alger?" Merlin replied. "He said the Fool would probably save these believers. Besides, the influence came from the Sea of Collective Subconscious. Being hypnotized wasn't something they could choose. I don't intend to hold them accountable."
Holding mortals accountable for a god's actions was useless.
What's more, the Sea God's believers were either impoverished, low-status natives of the colonies, or maritime merchants and pirates who believed mostly for the sake of joining in, with the former making up the majority... perhaps going over to God Almighty would be a good ending for them, too.
"You're going to let the people here off?" The voice in his ears sounded somewhat incredulous. "They betrayed you, and not only are you refusing to punish them or hold them accountable, you even want to let them freely go over to your opponent. What exactly are you thinking?"
From these words alone, Merlin could not determine the Lord of the Mysteries' stance, so he said nothing and waited for more. Sure enough, a few seconds later, the Lord of the Mysteries spoke again:
"Look at them. They were all your anchors."
Merlin fell silent for a while. He still remembered how delighted and surprised he had been when he first obtained the Sea God Scepter. This Sequence 3 Sealed Artifact had given him, then only a Sequence 6, his first contact with the world of higher levels. It had let him learn about a god's duties ahead of time and take on the duties of the Sea God,