Nearly another week had passed.
Almost seven days of travel through rolling countryside, small villages, and endless dirt roads that wound through territories Finn had never seen before. They’d covered what he estimated to be at least two hundred miles, possibly closer to three hundred.
What should have been a mind-numbing journey, similar to the tedious waiting he’d endured at Castor’s estate, turned out to be anything but boring.
The book Lucine had given him kept Finn occupied the entire time.
It was a small volume, easily held in one hand, with no more than perhaps eighty pages. But the contents within sent him into deep contemplation that made digesting the information take far longer than the actual reading.
He analyzed how to proceed with the knowledge he’d gained. Came up with ideas and discarded them. Compared and contrasted possible approaches. Played out scenarios in his mind, testing them against what the book had taught him about the nature of divinity and faith.
Now, after nearly seven days of constant study and reflection, Finn had a solid understanding of what was happening, where Silvana was likely leading them, and how he should proceed when they arrived at their destination.
All of it centered on one concept: Lore.
He’d finally grasped the significance of lore in full detail, and it was far more complex than he’d initially assumed.
In essence, his original deduction hadn’t been entirely wrong. Lore was backstory, depth, the image that needed to exist in people’s minds before divinity could even be considered. But that was just the surface.
The book revealed deeper truths.
First, not everyone could build lore. Only a very select few possessed that potential, and most of those who did still ended up as nothing more than legends among mortals. Heroes. Enigmas. Great personalities scattered throughout history who never crossed the threshold into divinity.
The filter for stepping beyond being simply a hero or great figure and into actual Godhood was extraordinarily stringent. Of the infinitesimally small number who could build lore, an even smaller percentage passed that filter and broke through to become divine.
The book had provided examples. Luna described heroes from centuries past whose stories were still told. Warriors who’d defeated entire armies, healers who’d ended plagues, leaders who’d united fractured kingdoms. All remarkable figures. All remembered and celebrated.
But none had become Gods.
They’d lacked something. The book couldn’t quite articulate what that missing element was, which frustrated Finn to no end. But Luna’s analysis suggested it had to do with the quality of belief they inspired.
Heroes could inspire admiration, respect, even worship in a casual sense. But true divinity required something much deeper. A fundamental conviction that the figure represented something transcendent, something that touched the eternal rather than merely the exceptional.
But regardless, the first step was still building lore.
According to the book, Finn needed to decide what kind of figure he wanted to be. What kind of lore he wanted to cultivate. For most who became Gods, building lore had been something unintentional — a natural result of their actions and choices throughout their mortal lives. Practically none had become Gods by being purposeful about it from the very beginning.
It wasn’t until they’d already reached the level of heroes and stood at that great filter separating legend from divinity that they became conscious of what they were building.
Essentially, there were no present Gods — at least none known to Lucine or the Goddess Luna who’d inspired this book’s contents — that had engineered their ascension from the ground up with full awareness from the start.
That was why the Shadow God’s Incarnate had been so dismissive when he learned Finn was attempting this alone, without any foundation to build from. Without divine authorities to claim, without an established following, without a pre-existing narrative to shape.
It was vastly harder, practically impossible even, to engineer one’s lore all the way to divinity through conscious effort.
The book Lucine had given him was essentially a retrospective analysis, detailing how the journey from human to God had unfolded for those who’d made it, written after the fact, not as a guide for someone making that journey consciously.
Everything about how Finn should proceed were suggestions based on the experiences of Gods who’d reflected on their ascension after becoming divine, not instructions from anyone who’d deliberately planned every step before reaching the great filter that separated heroes from Gods.
But it wasn’t like Finn was entirely hopeless.
He already had a fragment of divinity within him — the stolen essence from Garuda that he had made his. Despite the fact that what remained was extremely minuscule in quantity, it would still aid his journey significantly. Besides, he was also a Transcendent who could wield mana in this world. He wasn’t some bare mortal starting from nothing.
Though after reading the book thoroughly, he’d started to question whether that was actually a benefit or a liability.
There were two suggested paths for building lore, according to Luna’s analysis.
At their core, both required complete immersion into the world of mortals. Becoming someone notable. Someone who accomplished many feats, becoming a living legend whose stories would be told and retold. Building that narrative foundation that could eventually support faith.
Where they differed was in the method of getting there.
The first path requires him to seal away access to Transcendent mana and divine essence entirely and immerse himself wholly into the role he was about to play, living as a true mortal bound by mortal limitations. He would build lore through purely human achievement, constrained by purely human capabilities.
The second path on the other hand, allowed him to use his Transcendent powers and divine essence from the start, leveraging abilities that exceeded mortal limits to jumpstart his attempt, accomplishing things others simply couldn’t do through supernatural means.
The second method had never been done before, as far as Luna knew. The first was the path literally every God had naturally followed because they’d been mortal when they started, possessing no supernatural abilities until divinity touched them at that critical threshold.
Initially, Finn had no problem with the second option. It seemed more efficient, more practical. Why handicap himself unnecessarily?
But the book had issued a stark warning about that approach.
Using powers beyond mortal limits would create a fundamental chasm between Finn and the people he needed to build faith from. The people who would eventually become his faithful if he ever crossed that great filter into true divinity.
And according to Luna’s analysis, that chasm would make crossing the filter practically impossible.
The reason came down to a core principle: immersion. It was critically essential to building genuine faith and belief among mortals.
In fact, "immersion" was the wrong term for what other Gods had experienced. For them, it had simply been "reality." They were mortal, living within mortal constraints, achieving extraordinary things despite those limitations. It was only because Finn had prior knowledge and supernatural abilities that the book framed it as "immersion" for his case.
Using powers that transcended mortal limits from the start, no matter how impressive the results, would create alienation. People needed to be able to relate first. To see a legend born from the same shackles they bore, subject to the same limitations, then witness that legend transcend beyond those limits through recognizably human qualities: determination, cunning, courage, sacrifice.
That was the forge of nascence. The crucible where divinity was born from humanity.