Northern Shore of the Conquest Sea – Major Southern City of Cassatia: Telva
It was late at night in Telva, and the city lay silent in tranquil slumber. Within a luxury suite near the harbor, a faint light glowed. Dressed in pajamas, Dorothy sat on a sofa, calmly reviewing the two pieces of otherworldly knowledge she had just exchanged from the Wolf Blood Society’s mystical text and scattered library miscellanea. She was confirming their origins and practical applications.
There were two batches of knowledge retrieved this time. The first was The Secret Code of Vodou, originating from a world nearly identical to the Earth Dorothy had once inhabited. She had heard of Vodou before.
Vodou was a religion that originated in West Africa—a cultural creation of indigenous peoples resisting the religious invasions brought by European colonizers. During Earth’s age of colonization, powerful colonizers seized native lands, enslaving their people while forcibly spreading their own religion—Christianity.
The colonizers imposed Christianity upon the natives, demanding that they abandon their ancestral faiths. But the natives, unwilling to relinquish their traditions and powerless against overwhelming force, devised a form of feigned conversion. They blended their original deities with Christian saints and figures, worshipping the Christian God as if He were their own. Rituals from their ancestral religions were incorporated into the Christian framework, preserving the core of their beliefs beneath a Christian shell, thus resisting spiritual domination.
Over time, this unique form of belief evolved—melding with other local elements—into Vodou. On Dorothy’s former Earth, Vodou continued to thrive and had even become the state religion in some countries.
Now, in her hands, The Secret Code of Vodou detailed the earliest techniques and strategies used by West African natives to disguise and preserve their beliefs. Given the similarities between Summer Tree’s situation and that of those West African tribes, this document offered invaluable insight for Dorothy’s current mission.
The second document was titled “The Hidden Scroll of the Amakusa-Style Remix Church”, from the “ A Certain Magical Index ” world. Dorothy’s own Earth had similar real-world parallels.
The Amakusa-Style Remix Church was a Japanese Christian underground group—a product of Christianity’s introduction into Japan during the Warring States period. As Japan entered the Edo era, the newly established shogunate suppressed Christianity to consolidate power. Christians, under intense persecution, were forced to go underground.
These underground Christians—like the Amakusa-Style Remix Church—lived under constant pursuit and had to develop subtle methods to hide their faith. Over time, they created an entire culture of covert religious expression, becoming masters of clandestine practice.They blended Christian doctrine with elements of Shinto and Buddhism—reinterpreting saints and the Christian God as local kami or Buddhas. They buried rituals within daily habits, embedding prayers and ceremonies into simple conversations, clothing, strolls, or mealtimes. Faith became indistinguishable from life. Through such camouflage, they continued their beliefs while eluding suppression.
The Hidden Scroll detailed how to simplify, conceal, and embed religious rites into daily life—so thoroughly that one could conduct rituals even in the heart of a bustling marketplace without being noticed.
Though the “Amakusa-Style Remix Church” is a fictional creation of the Toaru (A Certain) universe, similar groups existed in real-world Japan, and the Christianity portrayed closely resembles the real thing.
In essence, Voodoo involved preserving African beliefs by disguising them as Christianity, while The Amakusa-Style Remix Church preserved Christianity by disguising it as local faiths.
Though their methods seemed opposite, both were fundamentally the same: desperate strategies to preserve faith under oppression—cunning, subtle, and born of necessity. The gods they revered differed, but the wisdom of resistance they embodied was identical. These two treatises would be crucial to Dorothy’s plan.
“With these two resources, plus the mystical manuscript from the Wolf Blood Society, I’ve got more than enough reference material. Once I get my hands on the detailed documentation of Summer Tree’s faith, I can draft a proper guide for feigned conversion. With all these examples to follow, this won’t be difficult at all.”
“That way, Vania and the other pilgrims are safe. The people of Summer Tree are saved. The Church expands its influence. And I gain another trove of spirituality. You win, I win, everyone wins… Seems like a perfect ending. Is this what they call a true win-win situation?”
Dorothy leaned on the sofa, lost in thought. Yet, as she carefully pondered Summer Tree’s situation, a different suspicion began to rise.
“Speaking of which… how exactly did a secluded island group like Summer Tree obtain such precise intel about the unguarded state of the pilgrim fleet? They ambushed the convoy with uncanny timing and accuracy.”
“It had to have been a deliberately staged ambush based on solid intelligence. But Church military data isn’t easily accessible—not something you could get from divination either. Even I can’t penetrate their anti-divination defenses, let alone Summer Tree.”
“Which means… someone must’ve passed them this info through special channels. I’ll have to question them about that later.”
Dorothy made a mental note, then shifted her attention back to Summer Tree’s side of things, ready to proceed with the next phase of action.
…
Back on the main island of Summer Tree, night still reigned.
After successfully persuading Anman, Vania had won a commitment from him: the following morning, he would summon the elders from the other islands to discuss the proposal of feigned conversion. Once a consensus was reached, he promised to send a formal message to the Church, and would open Summer Tree’s religious texts and documents to Vania, so she could pass them to her clan’s priestess for assessment and strategy planning.
But Dorothy wasn’t willing to wait that long.
She immediately instructed Vania to tell Anman that if he truly wanted to persuade the other elders, he needed to present them with a concrete plan—something they could actually see and understand. Without it, the meeting risked devolving into endless debate, missing the critical window to declare their intent to “convert.”
If the Church’s rescue team were to forcefully extract some of the hostages—or if a fleet arrived at Summer Tree’s doorstep and only then did they announce their conversion—the sincerity of it all would be greatly diminished. Whether the Church would even accept it would become uncertain.
That’s why time was of the essence. They had to release the hostages and declare conversion before the Church took any concrete action. The entire leadership of Summer Tree needed to reach a consensus quickly. Although Chief Priest Anman held the highest authority on the island, he couldn’t completely disregard the voices of the other elders. If, during the discussion, he couldn’t present at least a few viable implementation plans, it would be difficult to win them over.
Thus, Vania proposed to Anman that she go review the Summer Tree documents immediately. She could have her tribe’s priest work through the night to draft several methods for concealing their rituals. Anman could then use those as talking points to convince the other elders at the meeting the following morning.
“Overnight… You mean, you can reach your priest right now, and she’s even willing to help us immediately? That’s quite dedicated… But with only one night—can you really come up with methods that are suitable for us?”
In the sacred plaza of Summer Tree, Anman furrowed his brows as he asked Vania, who nodded in response.
“Don’t worry. Our priestess is knowledgeable, well-versed in many disciplines, and highly capable. We’ve got a wealth of experience in concealing faith. Though a full plan might take longer, coming up with a few initial methods to help convince your elders won’t be a problem.”
“A capable priestess, is she? Well then… I’ll leave it to you.”
With that, Anman led Vania back to his longhouse. In a hidden room at the back, Vania was shown the Summer Tree archives—rolls of beast-hide manuscripts and a handful of yellowed tomes, all carefully preserved.
Once she had the texts in hand, Dorothy had Vania draw a magic circle on the floor and perform a meaningless ritual. She placed each scroll and book within the circle and appeared to “read” them aloud in a trance, as though transmitting their content to her tribe’s priest.
In truth, Dorothy—”the” Priestess of Abundance—was simply viewing the documents through Vania’s eyes, scanning the entire Summer Tree archive herself.
Through this, Dorothy began gaining a foundational understanding of the Summer Tree Archipelago and its faith in Abundance.
She studied the Summer Tree language, its script, its translation into Ivengardian, and textbooks used to teach Ivengardian to Summer Tree natives. She realized the language wasn’t vastly different from those on the mainland—it was a remote offshoot of the Old Imperial. In the Third Epoch, Summer Tree had likely been part of the Empire. Unlike the New Continent’s Spirit Glyph, Summer Tree speech wasn’t entirely divorced from Imperial linguistic roots.
As someone already fluent in several branches of the Imperial language, Dorothy picked up Summer Tree speech easily—within half an hour, she’d grasped most of it. From there, she could read the documents with little difficulty.
Once she had the language down, Dorothy focused her attention on the Summer Tree texts, most of which weren’t spiritually tainted. One group covered local history—natural disasters, notable events, and the lineage of priests and elders. Another detailed agriculture, fishing techniques, and shipbuilding traditions. But the third group—rituals and customs related to the Goddess of Abundance—was where Dorothy’s focus lay.
These documents contained the most spiritual residue, and through them Dorothy gained a deeper understanding of how the Summer Tree people viewed their faith.
To them, the Goddess of Abundance was a benevolent deity of nature, life, fertility, and harvest—the Mother of All, the Earth Mother, and the Goddess of Abundance. Her temple, nestled in the forest, was an open-air shrine in harmony with nature.
The people prayed to her for fruitful harvests, healthy children, and peaceful lives. She was central to nearly all religious activities on the islands.
In addition to the Goddess, the Summer Tree people also worshiped a sea deity known as the Tidewalker—or Wave Strider. According to legend, this god was a loyal servant of the Goddess, entrusted with dominion over the ocean. For islanders dependent on the sea, the Tidewalker was vital. Before setting sail, they always prayed for calm waters.
In the plaza’s sanctuary, the altar adorned with fish offerings and blooming flowers belonged to the Tidewalker. Summer Tree warriors, all practitioners of the Tide Path, held this deity in particular reverence, believing their power over water stemmed from ancestral teachings passed down by the god himself.
Yes—the warriors of Summer Tree, like those of the Abyssal Church, were Tide Path Beyonders. They practiced a spiritual cultivation method known as the “Tide Immersion.”
Beneath the ocean’s surface, there existed a mystical current known as the Bountiful Flow—a stream of seawater considered to be the ocean’s spiritual essence. It meandered unpredictably, moving in defiance of normal currents, and wherever it passed, the sea became more abundant and teeming with life.
Experienced Summer Tree divers could track the Bountiful Flow by observing subtle shifts in marine life behavior. Once located, they would sail above it, dive into the ocean, and swim alongside it with the sea creatures, absorbing the spirituality that permeated it. Occasionally, rare treasures could even be found within.
This Flow was rare in shallow waters and richer in the deep sea. The deeper one went, the more spirituality could be harvested—but the greater the risk. Deep dives tested physical endurance and came with dangers like predatory sea beasts and strange ancient creatures drawn to the Flow. Many warriors never resurfaced, perishing to pressure, hunger, or the ocean’s monsters. Thus, training in the Tide Immersion Method required immense courage.
This is Summer Tree’s Tide Immersion Method—a highly dangerous form of spiritual accumulation that involves repeated dives in search of the ocean’s gifts. It is an ancient method passed down through generations, a path of spiritual cultivation belonging to warriors.
And Summer Tree itself is a remnant of the once-powerful Abundance faith’s oceanic branch, dating back a thousand years.