67 – Potential
"He really became an elemental god in only 18 days of trial..." A shocked voice came from one of the teachers in the meeting room.
Today wasn't even supposed to be the day they met to discuss the students and the results of the test, but Adrian Innovashine caused an emergency meeting to be called as soon as he rose in rank.
When the teachers heard that there was an emergency meeting, they dropped whatever they were doing and rushed to the meeting room.
Most of them could feel Adrian's divine power leaking out as he ascended in rank, but the teachers who weren't there at the time didn't feel anything and were shocked to hear the news.
Including the principals!
Unlike Aubrie, who believed in Adrian's potential even though he hadn't shown anything extraordinary in his classes, Abraham, the other principal of the school, didn't have as much faith in the boy.
When Aubrie invited Adrian to the school, Abraham also had hopes for him, but as time went by, Adrian's low scores, the problems of his weak personality, as well as his huge handicap of needing 10x more Divine Power than other gods, Abraham slowly changed his impression of Adrian from a possible prodigy to a big disappointment.
But the results of this test proved just how wrong Abraham had been about Adrian.
"In just 18 days, the boy managed to overcome his disabilities, conquer the most difficult realm in this small world as a believer, convince mortals to pray several times a day, conquer three other realms, and obtain an extremely large source of divine power!" Abraham said in a deep, shocked voice.
"Not only did he conquer four kingdoms in total, but he sent emissaries to quietly invade other neighboring kingdoms and gain more followers from under the noses of other gods..." Aubrie commented in a low voice next to Abraham.
"Exactly..." Abraham replied thoughtfully.
After a few minutes of thinking, Abraham's eyes widened slightly and he thought of a possibility he hadn't considered.
"Captain Aubrie, I think you've also realized that young Innovashine has great potential to join this squad..." Abraham said with a slightly surprised voice.
Hearing Abraham's comment, Aubrie was surprised and for a few seconds, the icy, stoic expression she always wore on her face changed.
"Captain Abraham, are you sure?" She asked, looking for confirmation.
Nodding his head, Abraham explained. "You see, although young Adrian only has just over a million followers, he has already demonstrated a great ability to obtain Divine Power through his followers, showing that he can be very useful even without the use of Divine Power from the outside world.
In small worlds, for a god to use divine power, if the divine power didn't come from that world, the cost was usually higher, several times higher than the original cost if the divine power came from that world.
Because of this, battles in small worlds were usually fought mostly with the divine power obtained in those small worlds, which was much more economical, and only in cases of extreme necessity would the god use divine power from other worlds to fight in those worlds.
In this way, when a god went to a small world, the first and most difficult thing was to get enough believers so that the god would have a constant source of divine power in that small world.
Of course, the god's rank was not ignored, so even if two gods had 100,000 points of Divine Power available, an embryonic god could use those 100,000 points of Divine Power with the lowest possible efficiency, while an elemental god could use it many times more efficiently, which was an advantage that gods from other worlds could bring.
With this limitation, there were small worlds that were too problematic for ordinary gods to deal with, and the coordinates for those worlds were stored by the army and reserved for a particular squad to deal with.
"Even with this ability, wouldn't it be a waste to recommend the young Innovashine to this squad?" Aubrie asked with a frown.
But Abraham just smiled at the question. "Maybe... this could be a way to bury a promising talent, but it could also be a way to make him shine even brighter in the future. Considering that he has very strong penetration power in the small worlds, as well as very high combat potential with the Pantheon he's developing, going to that squad might be more of an opportunity than a risk for him."
Aubrie listened attentively to this explanation and began to think seriously.
This squad didn't have the best reputation in the army, but despite any controversies its members might have, it was undeniable that they all fell into the elite category, and with the young Innovashine's development, he was getting very close to that title.
"Let's wait for the end of the test, then we can decide what to do with him." Abraham said as he turned his attention to one of the floating screens in the room, a screen that showed the happy, carefree lives of Arcantor's mortals, who had no idea how chaotic their world was now in other realms.
"Yes, there's no need to rush." Aubrie nodded in agreement.
With 12 days left until the end of the test, she thought that these almost two weeks would be enough for them to decide Adrian's fate.
What they did not know was that those almost two weeks, which seemed so long to make a decision, could become very short with what was about to happen.
While Aubrie and Abraham were arguing about Adrian, the other teachers were also having a heated discussion about the young god.
The subject of the discussion wasn't whether Adrian could finish first in the test, because in their opinion that position was practically guaranteed for Adrian if the other students didn't get together to deal with him as quickly as possible.
But they knew how difficult that would be, and the focus of the discussion became something much more important.
"I have a total of 10 million believers in all the small worlds I have a stake in; if I joined young Innovashine's pantheon, with the split he made with young Wavecrest, I would receive 6 million Divine Power points per day! That's more than four times what I get, how could it not be beneficial?" A teacher said angrily.
"That might even seem advantageous to you now, since you would receive the same weekly Divine Power as someone with 40 million followers, but what if one day young Innovashine decided to stop paying you? What could you do?" One teacher asked a question that made the teacher sit still.
Not only she, but also other teachers who were thinking of trying to cooperate with Adrian by giving access to their believers in order to get a commission from Adrian, realized that this idea was extremely dangerous.
As gods hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of years old, they were used to slow but steady growth.
Even though some teachers didn't even have 10 million believers, they still managed to rise to the rank of Unique God, others even to True God, just by maintaining a constant flow of believers every week.
In the beginning, they received very little divine power every week, but over the years they gained access to other small worlds as army rewards or other means, and they managed to carve out spaces in the small worlds to get more believers.
The thought that all this work over so many years could be thrown away if the young man, who wasn't even 20 years old, saw no use for them at some point in the future, made these gods lose their motivation to bring this proposal to Adrian.
This simple question discouraged 95% of the Teachers from trying to make deals with Adrian, at least deals that would give them access to all the realms they controlled.
But there were still 5% who were not disillusioned and thought they could get an easy way up without doing anything, and this attitude of theirs was not hidden from the eyes of Aubrie and Abraham, the two highest-ranked gods in the room.
Looking at each other, the two realized that this could be a problem, especially with the development they had planned for Adrian, both power and psychological development, having teachers wanting to hand over so many believers to Adrian just to get a little bit of free Divine Power was something they couldn't accept.
Such interactions could lead to huge problems for the army in the future, and that kind of attitude had to be nipped in the bud.
Because of this, Aubrie left the room for a few minutes to contact the superiors to find out the best way to deal with this, while the greedy teachers were almost drooling over the Divine Power that Adrian could provide for them without them doing anything, unaware that not very good news was coming to them through Aubrie...
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