The First Prayer and an Unwanted Gift

The aftermath of the river incident was, for Ren, profoundly awkward. The villagers eventually stood up, but their demeanor towards him had fundamentally changed. They no longer saw him as a kind, eccentric neighbor. They saw him as a divine being. Their conversations were now stilted, filled with respectful 'Sir's and 'Lord's that made him cringe. The daily gift-for-a-tomato exchange now felt less like a neighborly trade and more like a ritual offering at a temple.

Ren's quiet farm on the hill was becoming the de facto holy site for the entire region.

He tried to downplay the event. "The current just had a weird hiccup!" he'd say, or "The river stones here are unusually heavy!" No one believed him. They would just nod with serene, knowing smiles, as if indulging a god's humble disguise.

A few days later, Ren was weeding his 'Sunstone' wheat patch—the glittering stalks were now waist-high—when he felt a strange, new sensation. It wasn't a physical feeling, but a mental one. It was like a faint, warm whisper in the back of his mind, a gentle stream of focused emotion directed at him.

[Incoming Data Stream Detected…]

[Source: Collective consciousness of Oakhaven Village.]

[Data Type: Prayer / Faith Energy.]

[System is attempting to classify this new energy source… Classification Complete: Divine Energy (Minor, Tier 0).]

[System Note: Congratulations! You now have worshippers. Please do not smite them for leaving small, carved wooden frogs on your doorstep. They mean well.]

Ren froze, his hand halfway to pulling a weed. "Prayer? Divine Energy?" he muttered, looking down towards the village. He focused, and he could feel it more clearly now. It was a flow of gratitude, hope, and reverence, all directed at him. It was the combined faith of the people whose lives he had touched.

The energy wasn't overwhelming, but it was… pleasant. It felt like standing in a warm sunbeam on a cool day, a nourishing, ambient energy that settled into his very being.

"What does this… do?" he wondered aloud.

[Divine Energy can be utilized for a variety of purposes, including, but not limited to: performing miracles, empowering divine artifacts, creating divine constructs, and general godly duties. Current intake is insufficient for continental reshaping. Sufficient for ensuring your next batch of bread rises perfectly.]

[Passive Effect: Ambient Divine Energy will slowly enhance the user's conceptual authority and slightly improve the quality of all farm-related activities.]

"So, it makes me a better farmer," Ren concluded. "I can live with that." He decided to mostly ignore this new development, hoping it would go away if he didn't acknowledge it.

Lyra, however, noticed the change immediately. There was a new quality to Ren's presence, a faint, almost imperceptible golden luminescence to his aura that only she could see. He seemed more solid, more real, as if his very existence was being reinforced by the villagers' belief.

"You are changing," she told him that evening as they sat outside the shack. "The faith of the villagers is feeding your power."

"It's just some weird energy," Ren mumbled, trying to wave it off. "It's not a big deal."

"To a god, faith is food, Ren," she said, her expression serious. "And you are now the most well-fed 'god' in this part of the kingdom. This will draw even more attention, and not all of it will be friendly."

She was right, of course. The established churches and temples of the realm did not take kindly to upstart deities, especially ones who performed actual, verifiable miracles.

The first sign of this new kind of trouble arrived a week later. It was not a merchant or a knight, but a procession. A group of a dozen men in pristine white robes, their heads shaved, marched up the path to Ren's farm. They were led by a stern, hawk-nosed man with cold, fanatical eyes. He was High Priest Valerius—no relation to the merchant, though they shared a name and an arrogant disposition. These were clerics from the Temple of the Sun God, the dominant religion in the Kingdom of Eldoria.

They stopped at the edge of the farm, their faces a mixture of disgust at the 'chaotic' life energy and awe at the glowing produce.

"Cease your profane works, false idol!" the High Priest boomed, his voice magically amplified to carry across the clearing.

Ren, who was checking on his King's Melon vine (which had started growing smaller, more manageable melons), looked up with a sigh. "Can I help you?"

"We are here on behalf of the one true Sun God!" the Priest declared, pointing a righteous finger at Ren. "To put an end to this… this blasphemous nature cult! You have deluded these simple villagers with cheap tricks and hedge magic!"

Lyra stepped forward, her hand on her dagger. "He has deluded no one. And you are trespassing."

"Silence, beastkin!" the High Priest sneered, his gaze dripping with disdain. "Your kind has no place in the presence of the holy." He turned his attention back to Ren. "This land is an affront to the divine order. The Sun God demands purity and control, not this… overgrown chaos. We are here to cleanse this tainted soil."

He raised a golden, sun-shaped medallion. "By the power vested in me, I shall purge this land with holy fire!"

The medallion began to glow with a harsh, brilliant white light. A sphere of searing fire began to form in front of him, growing larger and hotter by the second. The other priests began to chant, adding their own divine energy to the spell. This was no simple firebolt; it was a 'Sun's Wrath,' a powerful exorcism spell designed to incinerate demonic beings and purify tainted ground.

Ren looked at the growing ball of holy fire, then at his beautiful, glittering 'Sunstone' wheat. The intense heat was already starting to make the nearest stalks wilt.

He felt a flash of genuine anger for the first time since coming to this world. These men, in their arrogance and blindness, were going to burn his farm. His home.

He didn't move. He didn't shout. He simply focused on the small, warm trickle of Divine Energy that was flowing into him from the village. It wasn't much, but the System had said it could be used.

He looked at the ball of holy fire and, using the faith of the people he had protected, he issued a simple, conceptual command.

My farm. My sun.

The effect was not explosive. It was absolute. The sphere of 'Sun's Wrath,' a spell fueled by the clerics' faith in their distant, abstract Sun God, suddenly wavered. It was now in the presence of a being who was being actively worshipped as a local deity of life and growth—a being who was, in this small corner of the world, a more immediate and tangible 'god' of the sun's bounty than their own.

The holy fire, recognizing a superior divine authority, simply… switched allegiance.

The ball of fire detached from the High Priest's medallion, hovered in the air for a moment, and then zipped over to hover directly above Ren's head, bathing him in a halo of holy light. It had become his spell.

The priests stopped chanting, their jaws agape. The High Priest stared at his now-inert medallion, then at Ren, who was now crowned with a sphere of their own holy fire, looking for all the world like a true sun deity.

Ren, feeling the immense power of the spell now under his control, looked at the High Priest. "You want to cleanse things with fire?" he asked, his voice dangerously quiet. "Fine."

He flicked his wrist. The sphere of 'Sun's Wrath' didn't shoot at the priests. Instead, it rose high into the sky, shrinking until it looked like a second sun. From this new sun, a dozen gentle, precise beams of pure, white-hot energy lanced down.

They didn't strike the priests. They struck the small, hidden idols and 'holy symbols' the priests had secretly placed around the perimeter of the farm, attempting to create a containment circle. Each idol, each symbol, was instantly incinerated, reduced to a puff of fine, white ash. It was an act of surgical, contemptuous precision.

The cleansing was complete. But it was Ren's farm that had cleansed them.

The High Priest fell to his knees, his fanatical certainty shattered. The power he had worshipped his entire life had just abandoned him for a farmer in a straw hat.

Ren let the second sun in the sky dissipate, the borrowed power fading. "Now," he said, his voice returning to its normal, friendly tone. "Please leave my farm. You're upsetting the plants."

The priests, white-faced and trembling, scrambled to their feet and fled, carrying their kneeling, catatonic leader with them.

Lyra watched them go, then looked at Ren with a new level of awe. "You just stole their god's power."

Ren just shrugged, looking a little tired. "He wasn't using it right. It was a fire hazard." He had no idea of the theological crisis he had just triggered, or that the story of a "New Sun God" who could command the flames of their own deity would soon send shockwaves through the very foundation of the Kingdom's largest religion.

All he knew was that another pest had been dealt with, and he could finally get back to his wheat.