Vile Evil Hides Under The Veil

1716 Consciously Manufactured Emotions

Eren was ready to change the way he behaved with everyone around him if it could help grow his divinity significantly.

He remembered how Demonmir was used to behaving with his friends and foes from Anfang. At that time, he thought that Demonmir was just trying to put on an act to make himself feel better and more elite than the rest.

Only now did he understand why Demonmir behaved the way he did. It was so that the Demon Prince of Wrath within him could grow his faith and influence.

Eren didn't think it was shameful to follow Demonmir in his footsteps. In a way, he too was trying to cheat the system by evoking emotions within people in a superficial way. He wanted to see if he could generate Origin Force Points through such means.

"You are stupid, Reen." Eren reiterated while staring at his Spectral Screen from one corner of his eye.

"What's wrong with you, Erni?" Reen looked as if she was angry and confused at the same time. She didn't understand what happened to him after she left him to his devices for only a few minutes.

'Damn it. She's not angry,' Eren thought to himself. He decided to make Reen understand what he wanted to do to see if it could make a difference.

"Reen, feel some form of anger towards me, will you? Don't ask me questions. Just do it." Eren said as he encouraged Reen to double down on the irritation in her heart.

Reen did not clearly understand what Eren wanted to achieve. But she was not as stupid as Eren called her to be. She could instinctively understand that it was related to intent-based magic and Eren's divinity.

She looked at him angrily and replayed the word 'stupid' in her head as a way to feel genuine anger. A bloodthirsty aura was released around her as she looked at Eren as if she would launch a lethal attack on him at any time.

'Still nothing. Either this synthetic way of generating emotions doesn't work. Or Reen is just incapable of feeling angry at me,' Eren said to himself while scratching his jaw.

'Or… or maybe it's both in this case,' sighing, he concluded. He couldn't say that he was surprised by the results.

Even with this little and supposedly failed experiment, Eren realized that he couldn't grow his faith by second-guessing what people would think of his actions. Even if he could manufacture certain emotions through his actions like what Demonmir did in Anfang, the results he would get would be subpar at best.

The butcher realized that it was more in his favor for him to act neutrally. Let people's intentions towards him develop on their own. Of course, he would take certain conscious steps to grow his faith but would not worry about the results he could get from them.

'Maybe I don't need to take Demonmir's approach. He was restricted by the emotions of wrath because Samael's divinity was limited by it. My divinity covers all the seven sins. I can be as free as I want to be in my actions.

Acting as I want to act for the most part would serve in my best interest in the long run. I just can't stay under a veil anymore if I have to grow my divinity. But that doesn't mean I have to limit my actions or control the way I behave.

It would actually benefit me and my followers if I embrace the full extent of my divinity instead of segregating it into multiple layers and then selectively base my actions on a particular one.'

It didn't take long for Eren to figure out that he had leverage, unlike other gods and demons, thanks to his abominated divinity. His faith wasn't as restricted and isolated as the rest were.

For example, the God of Solitude Ishgaar could only benefit from his followers cultivating the emotions of solitude within their hearts. They could take various approaches to achieve that goal. But in the end, their goal had to be the same for them to qualify as Ishgaar's true followers– his true devotees.

However, Eren's divinity could allow his potential followers to cultivate a range of emotions within their hearts. They could be split according to the emotions they cultivated proficiently and yet they would all be worshiping the same deity.

The multifaceted divinity would be something unique to Eren that even the Demon Princes didn't have the privilege to have. Or rather, he was the only demi-god and potential deity who had such an abominated divinity.

'The demons. They are the key for me to progress further in my divine path. The more I rob the Faustian Rune Fragments from them, the better I would be able to wield my divinity.

It's like the Creation itself is telling me to balance things out before I can claim my divine throne for real. The so-called balance be damned. I'll fucking kill every single one of them that I can kill here in Labh Salem if that's what I'll have to do to succeed,' Eren felt as if his vision for the future had been unblurred as he thought of these things.

***

"Haah. Forget it Reen dear. You can't do it."

Eren said while waving off his hand as if he was swatting down a fly. He had been waiting for Reen to cultivate a sense of anger directed at him in her mind. But so far he got a big fat zero on his spectral screen.

He stopped his experiments and slowly walked over to his bed and lay down, looking at the ceiling with blank expression.

"Hey! Don't write me off like that, Erni. I CAN get angry at you, you know. I… I just need some time," Reen said in protest. But by the time she decided to try seriously for the second time, Eren had already closed his eyes.

"Aaah. Wait for me," Reen said. In the next moment, she disappeared from her position and appeared right over Eren's chest in her slime-like form. Reen couldn't sleep like the rest of the living beings.

However, she decided to follow the ritual nonetheless- the ritual Eren and she had between them when she was nothing but a slime-type demon beast.