Cthulhu Gonfalon

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

As the saying went, tears always came with laughter. It was true among gods. When kind gods were inspired to strengthen the governing of the church and the people's support through the pension system, evil gods would be inferior. Who would bother believing in evil gods when they were living a good life?

To take the Goddess of Bumper Harvest and the God of Starvation as examples, a bumper harvest and a poor harvest were quite normal scenarios. It was the same as the Madrid Derby Game; when Real Madrid scored, that meant that Atletico Madrid lost and not even a compliment curse could save them. However, something could still be done to improve the situation. If proper measures were taken to ensure local welfare, starvation might not happen during poor harvest years, or at least people would not panic and still believe in the Goddess of Bumper Harvest. There would be no chance at all for the God of Starvation.

That was why fine-tuning was important.

Such examples were not hard to find. Kind gods and evil gods were always in conflicts as an advantage for one meant a disadvantage for the other.

Like now, kind gods had all released oracles to instruct the church to follow the Void Mask Land. Naturally, the evil gods were unhappy, and it was hard to say how many of them had been rather pissed off by that damn green jellyfish.

But not much could be done, so they could only release oracles and ask their followers to prevent the implementation of the pension system at all kind gods' churches. They also tried to make a mess in the Void Mask Land such as bombing houses, spreading poison and killing people, etc. In a word, they did everything they could to disgrace that damn Jellyfish God!

But as everyone knew, it was not easy to turn an idea into a plan and further put it into practice.

There was a joke on earth: how does one put an elephant inside a fridge? The answer was to get an elephant first, then to have a fridge, open the fridge and put the elephant in it. It was that easy.

But this was not completely the case!

Nearly ten evil organizations wished to mess up the Void Mask Land, and they had designed nearly a hundred plans these years to do so. How many of them actually succeeded?

Zero, none!

The Void Mask Land was guarded by the real god of Sui Xiong, and this emerging city was his holy city. For the whole day and the whole year, he had been monitoring all the portals here in case anyone with bad intentions or extremely dangerous objects arrived.

Like putting an elephant into a fridge, it was impossible for him to mess up here.

But if someone more powerful came here with "a fridge larger than an elephant," they might be able to do something. For instance, Ymirjar Le-Peyroux, the God of Spellcaster who had come to trick the first Fighter Championship, was truly capable of making a mess.

But he was not a subordinate of any evil gods; he didn't care about them at all.

The evil gods were not that weak. Say Wuther Rang, the master god of humans, started as the God of Revenge who was a genuinely evil god. Still, he was too proud to play small tricks. Or Lefon, gods of the orcs, for example, was an evil god as well yet he was not into playing little tricks.

Powerful ones were usually not keen on small tricks, maybe out of their personalities or this world's moral standards. Or maybe they just happened to be the same on this issue. But anyway, now the several high-level evil gods didn't cross the line, and the enthusiastic ones were mostly weak.

This was the way it happened, and all the evil gods were concerned and whispering while not being able to come up with a good solution.

Putting aside the Pantheon temple, the retirement ceremony was still on in the Void Mask Land.

After the hosts' introduction, the several workers who were about to retire this year were led to the stage and granted their retirement certificate and their first months' pension by Madame Teague, the supervisor of the Land.

These old workers had been informed of the procedure already, and they had even rehearsed for this ceremony, but they were still feeling nervous at this moment—after all, they were well-behaved people and had never been a part of such a grand occasion. Also, there was no audience at their rehearsal.

Fortunately, the rehearsal helped. They all remembered their own speeches. After coming to the stage, making a bow, and receiving their certificates and pension, each of them made some remarks; it was all prepared and recited again and again. Though many of them had their legs shaking, they managed to speak fluently. It was as if their upper and lower body were separate, and that amused the audience.

Nevertheless, the guests were respectful.

The people on the stage dressed and behaved like ordinary workers. Yet from now on, they were not just ordinary people anymore—their names would be written in history.

Though they played a small role in history and were only known to historians, their names were still a part of the history of the whole Main Plane!

How many of the present audience members or guests would have such a great honor?

How many of the nobles, adventurers, rich or powerful people on the Main Plane would have such an opportunity?

"Lucky guys…" murmured a guest sitting in the back.

He was a prominent businessman from Double Headed Stork City, the most northern region in the Federation of Gold Coins. He made many business exchanges with the Void Mask Land, and he had also been invited here. Born in a noble family, his life dream was to make a big fortune and the second dream was fame, ideally becoming famous in history. He wanted to be renowned as a legendary businessman; that would be a great achievement for him.

But the reality was that he was nearly 50 years old and had not achieved anything great while these humble workers had managed to put their names in history.

This was so frustrating!

He was not the only one thinking this. Many people among the guests and the audience were whispering to each other.

Having smelt the unfriendliness, these retired workers became more nervous.

Witnessing this scene, Madame Teague frowned and secretly sighed.

She could see that the guests and the audience members were jealous of these common workers being granted such a great honor. It had long been the tradition in this world that honors only belonged to powerful or noble people while average people could only contribute to neglectable numbers recorded in history.

However, this was exactly what was to be changed by the Grace of the Void Mask Land!

She recalled the Grace's words, "Labor is the most glorious."

Perhaps… this really can push this world forward…

Thinking of this, she smiled and gave a sign to the hosts.

The hosts quickly saw her signal. They stepped back and gave her the floor.

Madame Teague stepped forward and looked around the venue. She smiled and gently said, "Now let's welcome the Grace of the Void Mask Land to give some remarks and deliver his wishes to these retired workers."