Awakened Earth!!

Next, Captain America’s shield flew over to me. I began inscribing runes into it and said, "Try calling your shield now."

It flew into his hand, and he caught it effortlessly. "Your shield can now be controlled remotely, though it might take some practice to get used to. Like Sophie’s bow, the enchantments use stamina instead of mana since you don’t have magic. Additionally, the shield can stockpile damage. Every time you block an attack, the damage will be stored. You can release it on anyone within 10 meters of the shield or by making direct physical contact with it, either through yourself or something else."

I then took out two magic steel knives and began enchanting them, smiling at Black Widow. "Try calling them."

She summoned the knives into her hands. "These knives are designed for close combat, but they can also shoot lasers. Be cautious, though—the stamina consumption is pretty nasty if you dial the lasers to full power."

Meanwhile, Sophie was crafting armor for the Hulk. My eyebrows rose as I noticed she’d created a skull necklace for him.

"This armor is enchanted," Sophie explained. "The necklace is essentially a key to a pocket dimension where the armor is stored. You can summon it with a verbal or mental command. It will equip to you quickly."

The necklace floated over and attached itself to Hulk. Sophie smiled. "All you have to do is say your signature catchphrase: 'Hulk smash.'"

Hulk loudly exclaimed, "Hulk smash!" Instantly, he was equipped with green battle armor.

Sophie grinned. "Now you have a superhero costume like everyone else. The armor is self-repairing and has a space-suit function. It creates a barrier to prevent air from escaping and summons low-level wind spirits to create breathable air inside the barrier. To take it off, just think about it or say 'unequip' with the intent of removing it. The necklace itself can self-repair as well. I designed the enchantments to convert your stamina into magical energy for the spirit-summoning function."

She added, "The conversion of stamina into mana is extremely inefficient. If I placed an enchantment like this on your items, you'd probably die from exhaustion. Hulk’s limitless stamina lets him handle it."

I snapped my fingers, materializing a chunk of Adamantite. "This is Adamantite. It's the last of it. The best gift for a crafter is something new to play with, though you might need to ask Thor to take you to the dwarves since I doubt anyone on Earth can process this metal," I said. "In terms of durability, it’s nearly unbreakable, but its conductivity for magic is terrible. Enchanting it is considered an achievement."

I then turned to Thor. "Don’t think I forgot about you." With a gesture, a massive barrel appeared in his hands. "This is a barrel of Tempest wine. It’s quite good."

Thor simply nodded in approval. Naturally, Tony Stark couldn’t resist a snarky comment. He said, "What makes you think I'll make those androids you want?"

I smiled and replied, "I could always ask Justin Hammer. I mean, he is the reason Stark Industries stopped making weapons, right? I believe he said his weapons were so good that your company couldn’t compete and had to expand into other areas out of fear of going bankrupt."

Naturally, Tony took the bait. "Hammer? Please, he's running a new ad campaign claiming all of that—though the wording is a bit different."

"Yeah, I saw the ad when I was using clairvoyance," I said with a chuckle. "Anyway, when you're done with the androids, come find me. Someone as skilled as you should have no trouble doing that, right?"

I then disappeared. Back in Sophie’s realm, I teleported the book given to me by the Ancient One. It seems Alex and Sophie had their own books as well. As I read through mine, it thoroughly explained how to use religion to become a goddess. Essentially, I needed to attract believers and get them to genuinely believe in me. Only genuine believers would generate faith energy.

The book also explained how absorbing that faith energy directly was a foolish idea, often done by morons. The Ancient One even included stories of those who had tried it in the past, only to fail later. It mentioned that the Christian God seemed to have existed at one time but remained mysterious, as not many people had met him. He was originally human and ascended to godhood, reaching a power level high enough to go toe-to-toe with Odin. However, he eventually fell.

The detailed description revealed that faith-based gods' power is entirely dependent on their believers. Once they no longer have any believers, they lose their status as gods. In the past, this was a popular method to achieve godhood since it was easy and fast. However, the Ancient One discussed those who were clever—they didn’t absorb faith energy directly but refined it into divinity and then slowly absorbed it. Absorbing too much divinity too quickly would damage the soul, potentially destroying it.

The book advised absorbing the divinity slowly and included detailed instructions on how to refine that faith energy. Sophie’s path, however, was different. She was tasked with finding an artifact currently in the hands of Mephisto, meaning she would have to attack Hell.

Alex's process was straightforward: she needed to absorb a cosmic storm and refine that energy into divinity. She had to be careful not to absorb it too quickly, but that was her entire process. She would either absorb the energy from the cosmic storm or the storm itself, depending on how you looked at it.

In my case, my path involved refining faith into divinity and then absorbing it. Alex would absorb the cosmic storm, refine its energy, and turn it into divinity, merging it into her being. Sophie just had to acquire an artifact from Mephisto.

Of course, as someone who had watched a large number of anime and read many light novels in her previous life, she knew about the faith-based method of becoming a god and that you could refine faith energy into divinity. After all, there was actually a series about high schoolers competing with each other to become gods and goddesses, and the main character used the method of gathering faith energy and then refining it into divinity. Since the weakness of faith-based gods is always their believers, the problem was that many stories left out the specific details on how to actually do the refining.

While it’s easy to say that faith-based energy is obtained by getting people to believe you're a god and worship you, the absorption process is far more complicated. Simply gathering believers to accumulate faith energy isn't enough. It turns out you need to reach a certain level of strength before you're even able to start absorbing faith energy. If you're too weak and try to absorb it, you'll naturally die.