The tree father has become the only viable option for faith because of it and unlike the other gods, he is actually effective in protecting his believers. Demons fear the tree father and don't step a foot into his territory. It just goes to show how great the tree father is. He is alive and well while the other gods have died.
The only god that can compare to the tree father is the god of faith but he doesn't answer prayers or assist his believers. Believers in the god of fate are scarce because of that. A lot of them also died in this last war because of their belief that whatever will happen will happen. They didn't escape quickly enough to the kingdom of life and died to demons. All in all, the demons did good work.
"The point system will be based on the rules we agreed on. Killing any normal priest up to a bishop is 1 point. Destroying a church is worth 10 points and killing a cardinal is 100 points. Destroying the capital church of a religion is worth 1000 points and killing the pope is worth 10,000 points. Special clergymen like saints and secret vessels are worth 100,000 to 1,000,000,000 points depending on the rank of gods that they belong to. We will disregard the points for gods since none of you killed any."
The demon dukes laughed at that. They didn't kill any gods because there are no gods after they were done wiping out the churches. The plan had been to wage war on the gods after they destroy their foundation in the mortal realm. They would have done that if the gods had not chosen to combine their might into the liberation army, making it easy for Aeternus to wipe them out at once.
The system of points is based on difficulty and importance. Normal priests and bishops are mana entities and are not as important or difficult to kill as Cardinals. Cardinals are transcendents and are more difficult to kill. It will take a lot of effort to kill a Cardinal than to destroy a building but the capital church of a religion is worth more than any transcendents. It is the physical foundation of a religion within the mortal realm.
The pope is the spiritual foundation but they do not worth as much as a vessel because they are not as difficult to kill compared to vessels. Vessels are transcendents too but they are more difficult to kill than other transcendents and so worth more.
Vessels are the main power of a god in the mortal realm. Gods need them to show their might and enforce their rules so they are worth more than destroying the capital of the religion. A building can be rebuilt easily as long as there is power and faith so cutting off power and faith is more important.
The system that Aeternus is using is not completely fair. It doesn't take into account intelligence and efforts directed toward acquiring it. In fact, it doesn't take into account any effort that didn't go into causing outright destruction and murder. A demon duke won't get anything for wounding a cardinal but didn't finish the job because the cardinal was able to escape. It is the demon that acquired the kill on that cardinal and only that demon will be credited for it.
Fair or not, it doesn't matter. He only cares about the results, not the work that he's into acquiring them. Anyway, only success should be celebrated. They are not children to be coddled. They are demons.
"Now I'll call your names out based on the number of points you have starting from the lowest to the highest. Note that your contribution to the mission will determine how much divinity you get so the higher your points are, the better. The stronger you are, the more likely you will succeed in the next mission."
He began calling out their names according to the damage that they have wrought to the Zargoth plane. He knows all their exact contributions because he is aware of all their actions through their connection as lord and subordinate.
"...Number 5 The_DUNGEATER with 4,213,073, number 4 LAZYCANT, number 3 DOUBLELINE, number 2 Baal with 110,759,662, and Number 1 Xander with 2,642,900,000."
Everyone was surprised by the outcome. Xander beat them out by an outrageous amount. Her score is far ahead of the second place. They wanted to know how she did it. That question is in every one of their minds most especially Baal. Xander's performance seems incredulous since she doesn't have a legion that anyone knows about. So how did she beat them by such a large margin?
"Xander outperformed all of you seeing as she has the highest contribution. I'll just reward her with 3 of the available 12 Godhood of grand gods. I will also offer her the chance to be exempted from the next mission."
He began distributing the godhoods he has based on their scores. A duke with max stats needs the Godhood of a grand god or 360 divinity to upgrade all their stats to the half-divine rank. Then they will need 360 to upgrade each stat to the peak of the half-divine rank, from 55-63. That means a duke needs 11 Godhood of grand gods to have stats that match those of the demon lord. Unfortunately, he doesn't have enough to outfit all his dukes, hence the competition to determine who should get most of it.
There are only 12 grand god cores in total which he gave to only the first 10. He gave 3 to Xander for her spectacular performance. He distributed the remaining 9 Godhood amongst the next top 9. Unfortunately, he couldn't get more wealth from the gods because the divine kingdoms of the gods broke apart after their death. They were sure to have a lot of divinity that they have saved over several generations.