Chapter 292: Chapter 292: The New Authority Is Pretty Interesting

"How’d it go?"

Seeing that all of Foster Mine’s faith had been absorbed, the Goddess of Magic asked.

"Much better than I imagined."

Ren said with a smile, "I can feel that originally, the Foster Mine god’s faith could only cover this mining area. No, I should say it could only cover areas humans had already mined or were currently mining. But now, the situation has fundamentally changed."

"Oh? Can you cover all mining sites?" The Goddess of Magic was a bit surprised.

There were quite a few mining-type gods, but they were all regional.

Usually one mining area, one god.

These kinds of minor gods were common in the divine realm, but they were all nobodies. They’d often appear out of nowhere and disappear just as mysteriously. They often couldn’t even condense a divine realm and left no trace.

But throughout history, there’d never been a god who could cover all mining sites.

Maybe this was decided by the special nature of mining areas, or maybe it was decided by the origins of miners in this world.

But that wasn’t important. What mattered was—what did Ren obtain?

"Yes and no."

Ren nodded, then shook his head. "The Foster Mine god’s divine office had a special fusion with my technology divine office, forming two authorities. One of them should be appearing in this world for the first time. The other authority was plundered from the God of Hills and Fields."

The God of Hills and Fields was a strange god with half-human, half-goat features and a face full of beard. He was also a member of the Divine Flora and Fauna Research Institute. Not long ago, he’d even developed a decent type of grass and wanted Viscount Roster to promote it.

An old acquaintance, you could say.

Plundering some authority from him felt kind of awkward.

But there was no helping it. This wasn’t something Ren could control himself.

The two authorities he obtained this time weren’t complicated. You could even say they were very simple and straightforward.

[Mining Frenzy]: Within blessed areas, mining machinery updates and iterations accelerate, effects strengthen, and mine stability improves.

[Master of Veins]: Control the layout of all mining veins in the world, can adjust vein directions in small ranges.

Even the descriptions were kind of rough.

Aside from the ’Spirit Realm’ authority, nothing else had been this simple.

But of course, Ren had only devoured a cluster of faith—didn’t even count as devouring a god. Being simple was normal.

Of course, even if the authority was simple, in Ren’s view, the significance for magic-tech industrialization was still huge.

’Mining Frenzy’ was similar to one of Enlightener’s authorities, but even more specialized.

In Ren’s previous life’s terms, it was a vertical track, focused on the mining industry.

The effect it achieved was simple to describe, but if you thought carefully, it was kind of overpowered.

For example, if he directly blessed Roster territory, then Roster territory’s mining machinery development speed would accelerate.

Originally, it might iterate once a year, each iteration improving efficiency by 10%. But now, it might iterate twice a year, each time 15%.

The original 10% per year instantly became 30% per year.

Of course, this was just a simple model. The actual effect might be stronger or weaker. But obviously, that wasn’t important.

So much more improvement in one year—what about the second year? The third year?

As time passed, the gap would grow bigger and bigger. Eventually, the gap between the two would absolutely be like a chasm.

You could say that when one developed from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age, the other had already developed from the Stone Age to alien colonization. Wouldn’t be strange at all.

As long as he blessed an area, it would be like this.

And this was only half of one authority.

The other half targeted mining areas.

It could improve mine stability.

Why were there so many desperate emotions in mining areas? Why did so many people resist becoming miners? Why did only people at their wit’s end become miners?

The reason was the high risk of mines.

Mining underground—if stability was even a bit poor, it would directly bury countless people alive.

But now, as long as he was willing, he could make an area almost never have such accidents. The effect was obvious.

If the two combined, they’d probably produce a chemical reaction.

One was mines being more stable, the other was efficiency being higher. No need to consider stability—could directly max out efficiency...

Definitely 1+1 greater than 2.

As for the second authority, Master of Veins.

For Ren, this should count as a pleasant surprise.

The biggest difference between magic-tech industrialization and his previous life’s industrialization was that in his previous life, they needed to collect various different energy sources—coal mines at first, then oil, then electricity. The core was boiling water, obtaining energy, then driving various machinery to operate. But in this life, they had magic power.

As long as they could absorb magic power, many things could naturally start operating. The energy problem almost didn’t need much consideration.

So what limited magic-tech industrialization?

Nothing more than raw materials and manpower.

Master of Veins would directly solve more than half of the raw materials problem. Where any metal materials could be obtained, how difficult extraction was, how much to extract—if he wanted to know, he could know instantly.

Giving this information to believers, the faith he could exchange for it would already be extraordinary.

What was even scarier was that he could directly adjust vein distribution.

Actually, this was their biggest purpose for coming—if possible, adjust this area’s veins so all the mines would appear before the world as open-pit mines.

Foster Iron Mine, the largest iron mine within human faction territory. But to extract it, lots of people still needed to go underground for exploration, detection, excavation, and other work. This was extremely time-consuming.

If they could turn it into an open-pit mine, then extraction difficulty, extraction speed, and everything would reach unprecedented improvements.

In the early stage of magic-tech industrialization, they’d never lack steel again.

After hearing Ren’s explanation of his two newly obtained authorities, before the Goddess of Magic could speak, Book was already eager to say:

"Oh my god, Lord Ren! These two authorities are simply born for mining. Working together, it won’t take long before mortals have endless steel—no, endless mines. Even if you’re willing, you could instantly let one nation have all the gold and silver mines on the entire continent, control the entire economy. This is just... just too amazing!

Just thinking about it makes me excited, even though I’m not a person.

Our magic-tech industrialization—if what happened before was just pressing the accelerator, now it’s acceleration magic. The entire world will change because of these two authorities of yours..."

Book’s words flowed endlessly. The Goddess of Magic stood to the side with a calm expression, but she also felt Book had a point.

"What are you planning? Directly change the terrain, topography, and mine distribution here? Or have them hold a grand sacrifice, then you bestow the miracle of mine transformation? Or do you have some other idea?"

After quite a while, seeing that Book still wanted to keep talking, the Goddess of Magic decided to interrupt.