〖 A warning and a test, huh? 〗Negary stood up from where he sat as a large amount of black liquid flowed out from the side of his body.
After this black liquid was expelled from Negary, it quickly writhed and amassed to form a sphere, which slowly rose up.
The black sphere was completely smooth, which soon started glowing with lava flowing on its surface. The way it was emanating heat and light made it resemble a miniature sun.
〖 Previously, Eternal Heat's probability of manifesting was 24%, the closer it gets to God's Offering Day, the higher the chance becomes 〗Negary silently erased this percentage from his mind as he jotted this information down, then stopped thinking about the Righteous God.
At their level, even a random thought regarding them that popped up in someone's mind would draw their attention.
In reality, Negary's strength was still far from being able to achieve this, but thanks to his own wealth of knowledge and ability, he could faintly achieve something of similar nature.
An entity's name was also a part of their 'self', if one was able to switch around and observe the various aspects of the world, one of those aspects would surely be the aspect of everyone's names.
For this reason, the theory that one's name contained power wasn't wrong.
Through a massive amount of modelled statistics, Negary was able to integrate the mutual influence observed data of some world aspects.
If someone were to invoke Negary's name, they would be stimulating Negary from another aspect while doing so. Both Negary were the same entity, only observed from different aspects, so they were indeed connected.
For example, there was a common myth that if you sneezed, someone was bad-mouthing you.
This wasn't terribly accurate, but it was related to the truth. Through his collection of corresponding data, Negary was able to rig his own name with a mystical mechanism to achieve the same result.
Whenever someone mentions Negary's name, Negary would be able to sense it, then find the other party's name in return through the aspect of true names.
For example, just earlier, several dozen people invoked his name at the same time, the true names of 13 individuals among them radiated zealous worship, 16 of them radiated hatred, and 35 of them radiated greed.
If Negary could do such a thing, then someone of Eternal Heat's caliber, even if their true names were not invoked, they should still be able to recognize anyone who thought about their existence, simply due to the essence of their higher existence.
Even if the other party wasn't present in this world.
〖 The appearance of a mere portion of their existence is already difficult for me to resist; it seems like I still have a long path to follow 〗Negary observed the miniature sun hovering in front of himself. Simply by existing, the sphere was constantly emanating heat and light, a few tentacle-like things could be faintly seen from within the lava on the surface.
When only a part of Eternal Heat's existence manifested earlier, the presence of that part had already begun to radiate into the surroundings. Under the other party's heat and light, Negary's viral body was influenced and couldn't help but mutate.
If Negary wasn't able to resist this mutation, his essence itself would have been altered to become a dependant of Eternal Heat.
Furthermore, after Negary expelled the influenced germs from his body, the germs even managed to gather and form a half-living entity.
This sphere apparently had no intentions of leaving and remained inside the clock tower. It didn't state any opinions or move around either, it simply hovered in the air giving off light and heat on its own.
Was Negary an enemy of the Sun Shadow church?
Yes.
Moreover, he was an enemy who could cause great losses and casualties to the Sun Shadow church if they were not careful. From Eternal Heat's perspective, it wouldn't even be strange for Negary to completely destroy the church.
Even now, the only reason the church held back from destroying him was because they knew the importance of an enemy, one that could create the illusion of danger to maintain the vitality of the church.
However, despite being the target of the Sun Shadow church's worship, Eternal Heat and the church mustn't be considered as a single entity. A God was a God, and the church was the church.
As a God whose existence spanned across many worlds, Eternal Heat had too many worshippers to even count. He didn't care whether or not someone worshipped him, so if the Sun Shadow church's destruction could aid his advancement even the slightest, he would not hesitate.
He wasn't a God bound by faith, nor one who existed purely from faith.
〖 For these Gods, the Moon Tree world is merely a place to harvest once every hundred years 〗
The church's original meaning of existence was a settlement for the old soldiers of the seven Righteous Gods and their descendants, which also happened to be able to create some surplus values from the Moon Tree world.
〖 Therefore, in the face of the world's value, the other party forgave my small offense 〗Negary chuckled.
There was also conflict among the seven Righteous Gods. If given a chance, Eternal Heat would not hesitate to chase out the other six to monopolize the Moon Tree world for himself.
And Eternal Heat saw that chance in Negary's existence. Even if he could not completely monopolize it, he would still be able to chase some of the other shareholders away, which was why he allowed Negary to act as he did earlier.
〖 Although this was part of the plan, this sensation really does make one feel unpleasant 〗Negary waved his hand, summoning another book from the shelf into his hand.
Despite how much knowledge Negary commanded, he diligently continued to learn more knowledge with every passing second while completely ignoring the miniature sun.
…
On the other side, the deadly competition for the Gear had also entered a climax.
Chromie swung his sword that was infused with a red aura, forcing back an entity that existed in another aspect.
The Gear that calmly sat in the middle of them all was stimulating everyone's heartstrings.
The Saint Hunters wished to obtain the Gear and study the principles within, if they gained anything from it, they would use it to arm themselves. The Night Watchers who were already using supernatural creatures to arm themselves also did not reject this type of power.
Only the Patrols were insistent on destroying the Gear, from their perspective, the power of God was above all else, and they who had been bestowed that power had no need for this dishonest blasphemy.
Several wilted trees collapsed in their surroundings, each of them carved full of sword marks, not to mention the considerable amount of animal corpses that laid strewn all over.
All of these animal corpses had one thing in common: they were full of lacerated wounds and their bodies had completely rotted away.
At the same time, waves and waves of ordinary animals were still pouring in from every direction, but even a normal house cat would quickly grow into a fully matured tiger that could exert overwhelming strength.
Among the chaotic battlefield where everyone was either getting into one another's way or outright trying to kill the other party, several spirits suddenly appeared out of nowhere. A massive wave of frigid chills spread into the surroundings, followed by a high-pitched shriek that resounded in everyone's mind. As long as they still had a sense of fear, they would not be able to stop themselves from suddenly manifesting it.
Several ghostly hands that appeared out of nowhere, grabbed the Gear, then pulled it into some sort of strange space.
