Chapter 36: Hundred
The ninety-ninth believer was an accident.
Not a conversion accident — no toddler fell in a lake, no miracle shattered the skepticism of a reluctant observer. The ninety-ninth believer was a Gnoll named Reth, one of Harsk’s inner circle, one of the six who’d chosen the guest-defender path. And his conversion wasn’t dramatic. It was quiet, private, and happened at three in the morning when no one was watching.
Except Zephyr was always watching.
Reth had been on night patrol — the southern gate, the same rotation Harsk had claimed as his. The Gnoll lieutenant was younger than his alpha by a decade, leaner, with a scar across his muzzle that pulled his lip into a permanent half-snarl. He’d fought beside Varekh. He’d survived the fade. He’d come north with Harsk because pack loyalty was the only religion he’d kept after his god died.
At three in the morning, Reth sat down beside the shrine.
Not inside it. Not kneeling. Just sitting — the way a man sits beside a fire he’s not sure he wants to warm himself with. The gold flame cast steady light across his face, and in the amber glow his eyes were the same color as the fire.
He sat for eleven minutes. Zephyr tracked them. The Gnoll didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t pray. He just sat with the flame and let whatever was happening inside him happen without interference.
At minute twelve, Reth bowed his head. Not far — an inch, maybe two. The angle of a concession so small it could have been mistaken for exhaustion.
[FAITH CONVERSION — Individual]
[1 Gnoll believer added (Reth)]
[Starting tier: Provisional]
[Daily FP increase: +1]
Provisional. The lowest tier. The faith of a man who’d opened a door one inch and hadn’t decided whether to walk through it or close it again.
But it counted.
Reth stood up, walked back to the gate, and resumed his patrol. He didn’t tell Harsk. He didn’t tell anyone. The conversion happened in the gap between night shifts, between one breath and the next, between the version of himself that refused to believe and the version that couldn’t hold out anymore.
Zephyr filed the data. Ninety-nine.
***
The hundredth was Aldric.
Not because the builder had a revelation. Not because Krug preached to him. Not because the shrine’s golden flame winked at him during a vulnerable moment or the divine leaked through the cracks in his skepticism.
Aldric converted because the foundation was finished.
He’d spent nine days on it. Nine days of resetting columns, measuring angles, arguing with Skrit about load-bearing tolerances, and cursing the swamp mud that kept shifting under the bedrock layer. Nine days of his hands in the dirt, doing the work he’d done his entire life — laying the bones of a building that other people would use for purposes he didn’t share.
On the morning of the tenth day, he stood at the edge of the completed foundation and looked at what he’d built.
Twenty stone columns. Interlocking. Driven to bedrock. Plumb-true, every one, the masonry so tight that water couldn’t pass between the joints. A rectangle of perfect structural integrity rising two feet above the ground — the skeleton of a building that would outlast the man who laid it.
Krug found him there. The priest was making his morning rounds — the daily circuit of the settlement that had become ritual, checking on projects, speaking to workers, hearing the small concerns that a hundred-person community generated the way a river generated current.
Aldric was looking at the foundation. Not with the critical eye of the craftsman reviewing his work — Krug had seen that look, and this wasn’t it. This was something else. The expression of a man looking at a thing he’d built and realizing that the thing had built something in him.
"It’s good work," Krug said.
"It’s my best work." Aldric said it without pride. Statement of fact. The granaries he’d built in his old life had been functional — adequate walls, adequate roofs, built to hold grain and keep rain out. Adequate. This foundation wasn’t adequate. This foundation was excellent, because he’d built it with stone that responded to his hands differently here than stone had ever responded before, and the soil held its shape more firmly than soil should, and the plumb lines hung straighter, as if the earth itself wanted the building to be true.
"The mud doesn’t shift," Aldric said. "I’ve built in mud my entire life. Mud shifts. It’s what mud does — you lay a foundation and you accept that in two years it’ll move three inches and you’ll have to compensate. This mud doesn’t move."
"The land is blessed," Krug said.
"I know." Two words. Flat. The acknowledgment of a fact that the craftsman had known for nine days and had been processing in silence, the way he processed structural problems — methodically, without rush, testing each conclusion the way he tested each stone.
He looked at the shrine. The gold flame, steady as always, burning without fuel.
"I don’t know if I believe in your god," Aldric said. "I don’t know what belief feels like, precisely. I’ve never been a religious man. Didn’t grow up with it. Didn’t miss it." He paused. "But I know what good soil feels like. I know what honest stone feels like. And this land —" He looked down at his hands. The familiar calluses. The swamp dirt under his nails. "This land wants to be built on. Something in it answers when you work it right. And if that something is your god, then I owe him the respect of saying so."
He walked to the shrine. His gait was the same as always — measured, unhurried, the walk of a man who’d never rushed anything in his life and wasn’t about to start. He stood before the gold flame. The light was warm on his weathered face.
He didn’t kneel. Krug didn’t ask him to.
Aldric put his hand on the altar stone. Pressed his palm flat — the way he pressed stone during a plumb test. Feeling for truth in the material.
"I believe the work matters," he said. "If that’s enough, it’s enough."
The flame flickered. Not dramatically — a pulse, small, the brief brightening that happened when the fire sensed something it recognized. The flame had done this a hundred times before. For every believer who’d crossed the threshold, the fire had pulsed. But this time, watching through the divine sense from a vantage point that encompassed every atom of the territory, Zephyr felt something he hadn’t expected.
Satisfaction.
Not the satisfaction of an optimizer hitting a target — though the threshold was hit, the counter did click. The satisfaction was older than that. Deeper. The feeling of a builder watching another builder find the value in a shared foundation.
[FAITH CONVERSION — Individual]
[1 Human believer added (Aldric)]
[Starting tier: Casual]
Not Provisional. *Casual.* The old man’s faith had skipped the bottom rung entirely — because it wasn’t born from fear, or desperation, or transaction, or trauma. It was born from craft. From the recognition that something in the work he was doing was *more* than the work itself. That kind of faith didn’t start weak. It started steady.
[BELIEVER COUNT: 100]
[THRESHOLD REACHED]
[RANK 2 UPGRADE — REQUIREMENTS UNLOCKING...]
The interface expanded. New data flooded the display — system text cascading across Zephyr’s vision with the density of a server dump. He’d been waiting for this since the counter hit ninety. Planning for it. Projecting. Running scenarios based on his Theos Online experience, extrapolating what a Rank 2 upgrade might demand from a god who’d reached it this quickly.
The requirements appeared.
***
[RANK 2 UPGRADE — DEMIGOD (RANK 1) → DEMIGOD (RANK 2)]
[REQUIREMENTS:]
[1. Faith Point cost: 8,000 FP ⚠ (Current reserve: 7,412 FP — INSUFFICIENT)]
[2. Believer count: 100 ✓]
[3. Defining Act: Establish a formal place of worship (Chapel tier or above) ✗]
**[STATUS: 1 of 3 requirements met. Upgrade locked.]
Zephyr read it twice. Then a third time.
8,000 FP. He had 7,412. The gap was 588 — roughly one day of income at current rates. By tomorrow evening, the reserve would cross the threshold. The FP cost was trivial. Expected. Standard pricing for a rank-up that quadrupled divine sense range and unlocked Tier 2 miracles.
The believer count was met. A hundred souls. Easy.
The Defining Act was the bottleneck.
Establish a formal place of worship. Chapel tier or above.
He stared at the requirement. In Theos Online, Rank 2’s Defining Act had been a military one — "Win a territorial engagement against a hostile force." He’d expected something similar. A test of strength. A demonstration that the god was capable of defending what he’d built.
Instead, the system wanted a building.
Not just any building. A Chapel. Tier 2 worship infrastructure — stone walls, enclosed space, dedicated altar, roof, capacity for organized worship. The shrine they had was Tier 1. It was an altar in the open air, exposed to weather, limited in function. A Chapel was infrastructure. Permanence. The physical expression of a religion that had moved beyond "prayers around a fire" into "structured worship with a building code."
The system was testing something else entirely. Not strength — stability. Could this god build something that lasted? Could the believers construct a house of worship that wasn’t a lean-to or a stack of rocks? The question wasn’t "can you fight?" It was "can you endure?"
Zephyr pulled up the Chapel specifications.
[CHAPEL — Construction Requirements]
[Materials: Stone (cut, fitted), Wood (structural), Metal (fixtures)]
[Minimum dimensions: 600 sq ft enclosed space]
[Required elements: Enclosed altar, seating/standing capacity for 30+, permanent roof, consecrated ground]
[Construction method: Must be built by believers (no divine construction)]
[Estimated build time: 2-4 weeks (variable by labor force)]
Must be built by believers. Of course. The system didn’t allow gods to conjure temples out of divine energy — that was a divine creature’s job, and Zephyr didn’t have that capability yet. The Chapel had to be built by mortal hands. Prayed over. Consecrated. The sweat and labor of the people who’d worship in it was part of the requirement.
He looked at the foundation Aldric had just finished. Twenty stone columns. Plumb-true. Driven to bedrock. The old man’s best work.
The Chapel already had its bones.
Zephyr ran the construction timeline. Aldric’s foundation covered 600 square feet — exactly the minimum requirement. Whether the builder had known the specification or simply built to the proportions that felt right, the result was the same: the skeleton was ready. What remained was walls, roof, altar installation, and consecration.
Materials were available. The stonecutting operation that produced palisade materials could be redirected. Wood was abundant — the swamp provided hardwoods that, under Zephyr’s Genesis Bloom passive, grew denser and stronger than natural timber. Metal fixtures were manageable through the Forge Hearth.
Labor was the constraint. And labor was where the settlement’s multi-race composition became an advantage.
[CONSTRUCTION ANALYSIS — Chapel Build]
[Walls: Stone, cut and fitted.]
[— Primary labor: Aldric (masonry lead) + 4 human builders]
[— Support: Kobold tunnel crew (subterranean drainage)]
𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚
[Roof: Hardwood frame, thatched.]
[— Primary labor: Lizardman construction team (6)]
[— Support: Goblins (structural reinforcement, Nix supervising)]
[Altar: Stonesteel-finished. Forge Hearth production.]
[— Primary labor: The Potter]
[— Note: Stonesteel altar is cosmetic, not required. Standard stone acceptable. Stonesteel selected for durability and symbolic value.]
**[Consecration: Handler must consecrate the completed structure.]
**[— Requires: Krug + assembled believers + 200 FP offering]
**[Estimated completion: 21 days]
Three weeks. Twenty-one days of construction, then a consecration ceremony, then the Rank 2 upgrade could initiate. Processing time: 48 hours after initiation. Total timeline to Rank 2: approximately 23 days from now.
Twenty-three days.
In Theos Online, the average god took three to six months to go from Rank 1 to Rank 2. The fastest recorded time was forty-two days — held by a Korean guild leader named Park who’d inherited a pre-built temple from a conquered rival and converted the existing population wholesale.
Zephyr would do it in under a month. With a multi-race workforce building a Chapel from scratch in a swamp. Using a foundation laid by a mason who hadn’t believed in gods until ten minutes ago.
The fastest climb in Theos history was forty-two days. I’m going to beat it with lizardmen, Kobolds, Gnolls, Goblins, and a sixty-year-old bricklayer who doesn’t kneel.
He pulled up the construction interface, tagged Krug through the bond — a sustained pulse, the impression of urgency wrapped in structural diagrams — and set the project in motion.
***
Krug received the vision at the altar.
Not the sharp, jolting imagery of the early communications — the system had refined itself as the bond matured, and now the Voice’s transmissions arrived as layered impressions rather than raw data. He saw the Chapel. Not a blueprint — a *feeling*. The weight of stone walls. The quality of enclosed light. The sense of permanence that came from a roof overhead and a flame burning inside four walls instead of open air.
And behind the feeling, the quiet urgency. *Build this. Build it now. The next step requires it.*
Krug opened his eyes. The morning light fell across the completed foundation — Aldric’s columns catching the sun, the stone warm, the joints tight. Around the site, the settlement was in motion. The forge rang. Hatchlings chased each other between tents. A Gnoll adolescent was teaching a Kobold juvenile to howl, with limited success and significant comedy.
"Skrit," Krug called.
The Kobold chief emerged from a tunnel entrance fourteen meters away. He moved fast for someone his size — the natural Kobold quickness augmented by familiarity with a terrain he’d been reshaping for months. His amber eyes were alert, ears forward, the posture of an engineer anticipating a project.
"We’re building the Chapel," Krug said. "Starting today."
Skrit looked at the foundation. Measured it with his eyes — the instinctive dimensional assessment that Kobolds did the way other species breathed.
"Foundation ready," Skrit said. "Aldric built good. Walls next?"
"Walls, roof, altar. Everything. Three weeks."
The Kobold’s ears twitched. Not surprise — calculation. Skrit didn’t do surprise; he did timelines. "Stone cutting needs doubling. Roof beams — need hardwood, thick, the ones from the deep grove. Drainage on the north wall or the spring rains will pool against the foundation."
"Make it happen."
Skrit nodded once and vanished into the tunnel. Within the hour, Krug knew, the Kobold would have a crew assembled, a material list compiled, and a schedule drafted on a strip of cured leather that would be more detailed and better organized than anything Krug could have produced in three days. Skrit’s gift wasn’t just digging — it was *logistics*. The Kobold understood supply chains the way Vark understood combat: instinctively, structurally, with the bone-deep clarity of someone doing the thing they were made for.
Krug walked to Aldric.
The old man was sitting on his foundation, eating a strip of dried fish. His hands were still dirty from the morning’s work. He looked up at Krug with the expression of someone who knew what was coming.
"We’re building," Krug said.
"I know." Aldric bit the fish. Chewed. Swallowed. "I’ll need four more pairs of hands. People who can cut stone and lay it true. Not just stack — *lay*. The joints need to be tight enough that wind doesn’t get through. A Chapel that whistles in the winter isn’t a Chapel. It’s a barn."
"The human builders —"
"The Erikssen boy knows his angles. The other three are adequate." The word again. The old man’s minimum standard, below which he would not go. "I’ll train them as we build. They’ll be better by the time the roof goes on."
"Three weeks," Krug said.
Aldric looked at the foundation. His foundation. The best work of his life, which was now the best work of a believer’s life, and the distinction between those two things was a door he’d walked through twenty minutes ago without fully understanding that the ground on the other side was different.
"Three weeks," he said. "If the stone cooperates and the Kobolds handle the drainage and nobody drops a roof beam on my head."
He stood. Picked up his tools. Walked to the stone-cutting station with the measured stride of a man who’d decided something and was now doing it.
The Chapel was in motion.
Zephyr watched from above — every hammer strike, every stone cut, every measurement called between a sixty-year-old human mason and a three-foot-tall Kobold engineer who’d never seen a building above ground before arriving in this swamp. The strangest construction crew in the history of civilization, building the strangest Chapel in the history of religion.
Twenty-three days to Rank 2.
The counter clicked. The timer started. And on the ground, a hundred believers — and six defenders who would never be believers — began building the house that would change everything.