How-not to be an Olympian God!

Chapter 55 - The Alexian Church

"You've really done it, Alexei-boy..." Hermes seemed astonished at the speed at which Alex turned from an unknown god to a prominent minor god of Central Greece and the regions surrounding Mount Olympus.

After he solved the Thessaly-Epirus conflict a month ago, his name suddenly skyrocketed in influence.

Also, by using the powers from Aphrodite's Essence, he could bless couples to have a long and happy love life. Aphrodite herself was stingy with her blessings, so people started to favor him over her.

One day, a couple who couldn't have children visited him for help in Olep.

The two deeply bowed and begged fervently, "Lord, we have attempted and wished to have children for years and years, but we have never been successful."

The two were sobbing, and Alex felt a tug at his own heartstrings.

At first, he didn't know what to do, but he brought up his interface and focused on one line in particular

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-Attunement to beauty, aestheticism, love, and fertility.

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The fertility part was always a bit puzzling to him, but perhaps he could try to cast a blessing on the couple and see the results.

Well, he did exactly that, and he recently got the news that the man's wife got pregnant.

He also discovered that through Hermes' powers, he could awaken people from a comatose state.

In this era, scientific advancement hadn't yet shown that there were medical reasons for comas and people thought they were due to curses and witchcraft.

That didn't matter to Alex, as he easily woke the 'patients' up and increased his domain of influence.

He also stopped more unnecessary conflicts in the region, both through his diplomacy and the influence he's come to have on mortals.

Once, a strange event happened while he was on one of these campaigns.

Soldiers from both sides suddenly lost their minds and started murdering everyone. Alex couldn't put them to sleep so he had to injure them enough that they fainted, but not enough to kill them.

The more he thought about it, the more it reminded him of someone.

Back when he visited Aphrodite's place to get his reward, he noticed that her male servants had this mindless expression to them, and the mad soldiers from the other day were similar.

'She started her counterattack..?' Alex wasn't going to let her ruin his plans.

He put that aside and concentrated on his other campaigns. Theoserfos had spread the news of Alex granting slaves in the region full freedom and they formed a small city near the coast called Dmotsos.

The city was growing very fast, and all of the residents in the city dedicated themselves to the worship of Alex.

Also, Theoserfos informed him that he founded an organization to further spread the name of Alex.

It was called 'The Alexian Clerical Institute' or 'The Alexian Church' in short.

'That name's a bit...unimaginative...' Alex cringed whenever he heard the name.

The church spread copies of his book and Theoserfos would host a mass every week to teach illiterate residents the contents of his book and unexpectedly, teach the Koine Greek language to the lower-class kids of the city using educational documents he produced with the typewriter.

The literacy program was surprising to Alex, but it was a good thing.

To reward him for all his feats, Alex made the scholar into the Papas, or the leader, of the church and crafted 3 other typewriters that he granted to him.

His plan was going extremely well, and his long-term rise to prominence was practically guaranteed.

He still wasn't at the level of Athena or Hermes, who had extreme levels of following among their targeted audiences, which were mostly scholars and merchants, respectively, but his mass appeal made up for it.

In the process, he gained many titles.

His full list of titles was the following: "Alex, God of literacy, literature, written knowledge and reason, war pacifism, protector of human life, marriage, love, fertility, wakefulness and sleep, the harbinger of prosperity and freedom."

One of his followers once said, "Lord Alex follows a human at every step of their life."

That saying caught on and his titles were shortened to: "Alex, God of Humanity."

Alex thought it was quite a fitting title, and Athena and Hermes also agreed, considering that he was coincidentally, also a human in the past.

Throughout the process, he noticed that there were new additions to his system interface.

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- Mastery of Link and Empathy.

- Incarnation.

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They were pretty vague, and only after testing them with Hermes did he understand their functioning.

Link could allow him to have telepathic long-distance communication with a consenting individual and no matter how far he was from the person, they could communicate.

It only worked on one person, however.

Empathy similarly only worked on one consenting person. With it, he could instantly feel the emotions a person was currently going through.

As for Incarnation, he didn't find the time to test it yet.

The two abilities were both useful on their own, but Alex found an even better use for Link. He blessed two pieces of paper using Link, and then, whenever he wrote anything on one of them, the text would appear on the other.

He gave the second piece of paper to Theoserfos, who had resigned from his position at the consul's estate to focus on his duties in the church full-time.

When he saw how this worked, Theoserfos proposed a brilliant plan.

He had an idea that if large quantities of this paper could be produced, he could give it to all of his followers and Theoserfos would regularly send them information about recent events and doctrine, and they could do the same through a hierarchical system.

Alex found it ingenious, and it was sort of like an exclusive newspaper.

They would start working on it after some time, as it would require a lot of effort and blessings weren't exactly cheap for Alex.

When the growth had stabilized and everything calmed down, Alex received a pleasant piece of news.

Crista would be coming to visit in a week.

'I missed her so much...' Alex wondered how she changed in these three months.

There was still one month left until his departure with Hermes to the land of the Qin Dynasty, so he still had some time left.

Alex was excited about the future.

More than ever, he was happy that he got to come here.

He hoped his family back on Earth was doing well, at least he fulfilled his promise from the dream he had when he was returning from Abdera.

Mother made him promise that he would take care of himself, and he held up his end of the promise.

Hopefully, she and Alexander did too.