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Aside from relocating the people, we had been helping them regain their health and spirit.
The spirit wasn’t hard. As I mentioned earlier, they have a strong faith in the death goddess now, which I am her apostle.
They had grown closer to the Goddess of Death religion than I imagined, and they were even building small altars made of wood and ice for her while decorating them with the bones of the monsters we hunted.
This new religion had come out of nowhere, though, and according to Emeraldine, Catarina, and the Fire Ghost duo, the goddess of death is nowhere prayed upon nor considered a figure of religion. She’s often seen as an antagonistic figure by most of the humans in the Midgard Continent.
This is because she represents the end of all things and the eventual death of all things. In contrast, the god of light represents life, and while the death goddess brings all souls to the desolate and cold Helheim, those that fight bravely and have strong-willed hearts and faith are offered the Valhalla after death instead.
Yeah, all religions are forged around what happens after death pretty much, although in this world, gods’ existences are pretty much confirmed. They’re not some sort of belief, and that’s it. They’re confirmed, there is magic, and there are Undead, who are often called the “servants of Hel” who have come to invade the world to bring more souls down to Helheim or something, so this is why Undead are seen so badly too.
All of this is pretty stupid when you think about it. Most religions that had death gods on Earth actually prayed to them as figures of transcendental position, death and life are a cycle, and it shouldn’t be feared upon. The death gods of these various religions were all there to bring you to the afterlife. Still, they didn’t necessarily represent something bad or evil, so it is pretty stupid that they’re remotely considered evil here with Hel.
Hel is a nice woman. Actually, she spoke to me a week ago and was pretty chill. She was even motherly, worried about me and all… there’s nothing wrong with her!
However, I can understand that people might hate her. After all, the God of Light seems to be a sick bastard that brainwashed the humans into hating her for some reason. He really is an idiot, especially because she’s supposed to be his granddaughter…
Ah, did I mention that not only do the continents have the names of Norse Realms, but also the Gods have the names of the Norse Gods? The God of Light is actually named Odin. His second hand is the God of Thunder, Thor. Then there is the God of Chaos Loki, his daughter, the Goddess of Death Hel, and so on…
There is even Freyr and Freyja as the God of Nature and the Goddess of Love and Motherhood or something, respectively…
Then there is the Goddess of snow and ice, Skadi… And what else? Well, there are many other gods, but I forgot about those that didn’t matter that much to me.
Anyways, I think they adapted the Goddess of Death religion as a “requirement” made by themselves when they realized I was a ghost, so they thought they must pray to her, as I am an Undead that goes against the God of Light religion. They are already betraying him from the beginning, so they might as well pray to the literal Satan figure of this continent, Hel.
Anyways, because of this, and also the normalization of Undead by all my other allies that are undead, and the daily life zombies and other Undead they see wandering around town doing work for us, such as the zombie spiders troops carrying items and more, they had been made into normal citizens, and therefore they all move their faith to the goddess of death who accepts undead and see them as her children, so if they get friendly with them, they also get favor points from her or something…
I am still getting the knack of how to lead people, but those with a talent for it, such as the Goblin Elder and the Goblin Chief, are helping a lot in handling them, so I am relatively happy with how things are turning out.
Also, not everyone is a former slave. A large chunk is former citizens from the goblin village. There were former slaves there, but they recovered over time with the help of the goblins and are more competent than the slaves we rescued.
These people really help at helping the former slaves that we got in our latest journey to recover. I cannot be there to cheer them up all the time, so there are other people taking care of that. Thankfully, I’ve also seen Emeraldine working in there a lot. Her ability and magic help her see the emotions of people and help guide them into a brighter state of mind.
Thanks to her help, things are getting better too. The rest? Well, they all suck at cheering people up. They’re all weirdos. Even Partner can’t do anything other than fight or kill. She’s still practicing anything that she could do aside from that, but the best thing is cooking as of now, so she’s doing a lot of cooking with the other chefs. We got to make common food for the entire town for now.
We don’t have enough resources to let everyone make their own food, and I am not going to let them starve while telling them, “go hunt your own food, now you got a home, move!” or something. I am not so heartless! So we still make big stews every day for everyone, distributing bread and warm tea and coffee.
We can still get meat by hunting and using this meat to make stew, we are using less and fewer potatoes, carrots, and the rest so it can last longer, but we’ll ultimately be left without them.
So we have to think of better ways to get vegetables…
And Emeraldine came up with a grand idea.
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