The attempt during the day was merely a dress rehearsal.
Aaron had discovered that radiating divine majesty was indeed far more efficient than touching creatures one by one, but people occasionally passed through the backyard during the day.
He couldn’t stand around in the tall grass striking odd poses for long stretches of time.
True, large-scale recruitment would have to wait until nightfall.
The day dragged on slowly.
Aaron ate breakfast in the dining hall and spent the entire morning flipping through the textbooks he had bought from Diagon Alley.
*The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1*, *A History of Magic*, and *Magical Drafts and Potions*—he skimmed through each of them.
Not because he needed to learn the material.
With his current power, a wand was just a prop, and spells were entirely superfluous.
What he needed to understand were the rules.
The rules of Hogwarts, the rules of the wizarding world.
What was permitted, what was forbidden, and what was forbidden yet practiced by everyone anyway.
For a god to walk among human society, the most important thing wasn’t strength, but knowing when to conceal oneself and when to reveal it.
That afternoon, Tommy and his two little cronies blocked Aaron in the hallway.
“Hey, charlatan,” Tommy spat, arms akimbo.
“Was that witch in the green robes yesterday your mom?”
“No.”
“Who was she then? Come to pick you up?”
“A teacher from a boarding school.”
“A school?” Tommy narrowed his eyes.
“What kind of school sends a teacher straight to your door to pick you up? You making up stories?”
“Believe what you want.”
Aaron stepped around him and kept walking.
Tommy reached out to grab his collar, but the moment his fingers touched Aaron’s shoulder, a jolt ran through his entire body, like he’d been shocked by static electricity.
“Ow…”
Tommy shook his hand and stumbled back two steps.
“Are you carrying an electric current or something?”
Aaron glanced back at him without a word and kept going.
Tommy stood on the spot rubbing his fingers.
He felt a strange sensation lingering where his hand had gone numb.
It wasn’t pain, but…
a tingling pulse.
Like touching a magnet—a subtle gravitational pull tempting him to draw closer.
“Boss, you all right?” one of his cronies asked.
“Get lost!” Tommy snapped, tucking his hand behind his back, his face full of awkward discomfort.
“Who said anything was wrong with me!”
Night fell.
Lights-out at the orphanage was nine o’clock.
After Mrs.
Cole did her rounds, the entire building fell silent.
Aaron waited until ten-thirty.
Once he made sure everyone was fast asleep, he got up, dressed, pushed open the window, and climbed out.
The second-story window was over three meters off the ground—a dangerous jump for an ordinary child.
But with the proportional strength provided by his ant believers, dropping from the second floor was no different from walking down the stairs. This chapter was copied from novelping dot com without permission.
The soles of his shoes landed noiselessly on the dirt ground.
The backyard at night looked completely different from the daytime.
Without streetlights, the moon was the sole source of illumination.
A thin crescent hung at the edge of the clouds, casting a cool, white glow over the waist-high weeds and plating every blade with silver.
Insects chirped in a continuous chorus.
Crickets, katydids, and nameless nocturnal bugs—their sounds filled the entire yard.
Aaron walked to the center of the clearing and stood still.
This time, he didn’t stoop down.
Instead, he spread his arms wide, palms facing down, and closed his eyes.
Divine Majesty Radiation.
Full power.
Invisible ripples radiated outward from his body in all directions, penetrating soil, grass stems, stone crevices, and wall foundations.
Wherever they passed, all vibration ceased instantly.
The insect chirps vanished.
The entire backyard suddenly fell dead silent, as if someone had pressed a pause button.
Then, they moved.
Out of the grass, beneath the soil, through cracks in the walls, and from the rotten crevices of wooden crates, countless tiny figures began moving toward Aaron.
Ants formed black threads crawling in from every direction.
Beetles crawled out from underground nests, their elytra glinting oily under the moonlight.
Centipedes wriggled out from under stone slabs, their dozens of legs scuttling furiously straight toward Aaron’s feet.
Moths and mosquitoes spiraled down from above, shaping a slowly contracting vortex.
Tens, hundreds, and the count kept climbing.
Upon reaching Aaron’s feet, they didn’t linger.
One after another, they vanished into thin air, drawn into the Divine Kingdom.
[Believers +12 (Cricket Swarm)]
[Believers +8 (Centipede Swarm)]
[Believers +31 (Ant Swarm – New Colony)]
[Believers +15 (Beetle Swarm)]
[Believers +7 (Earthworm Swarm)]
System notifications flashed by one after another.
Total believers: fifty…
eighty…
one hundred.
One hundred.
The instant the number crossed that threshold, a bell chimed in Aaron’s mind.
It wasn’t a system prompt, but a resonance stemming from the Divine Kingdom itself.
[Believer Count Passed Threshold: 100]
[Divine Kingdom Feature Unlocked: Elementary Ecosystem Simulation]
[Divine Kingdom Space Restructuring…]
Aaron closed his eyes and sank his consciousness into the Divine Kingdom.
The domain, originally spanning five hundred meters with nothing but flat grassland, shallow streams, and scattered rocks, was undergoing an earth-shattering transformation.
The ground swelled into several miniature hills, the tallest standing about three meters high, covered in thick moss and low bushes.
The flow of the stream shifted, splitting into two tributaries, one of which fed into a newly formed pond with crystal-clear water.
The air grew heavy with the scent of damp earth.
Temperature, humidity, lighting—the Divine Kingdom began automatically simulating the ideal natural environment for its current believers.
Ants rapidly excavated new nests at the base of the hills, centipedes slithered into stone crevices, and crickets resumed chirping in the tall grass.
Atop the highest hill, the Demiguise poked its head out, curiously inspecting these new neighbors. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
Coiled on a rock by the pond, the Horned Snake Naga showed zero interest in these weak little creatures, continuing to rest with its eyes closed.
A complete miniature ecosystem was taking shape.
The moment Aaron withdrew from the Divine Kingdom, a wave of new talent fusion information flooded his nervous system.
It wasn’t the isolated trait of any single insect, but a brand-new talent produced by stacking and fusing the sensory capabilities of over a hundred insects.
[Fused Talent: Hyper-Speed Nerves (Stacking & Fusion of 100 Insect Sensory Capabilities)]
[Effect: Nerve signal transmission speed increased to 27 times that of an ordinary human. Capable of perceiving and responding to high-speed targets beyond normal human reaction limits.]
Aaron opened his eyes.
The world had changed.
Not visually, but in his subtle perception of time.
A mosquito buzzing past his ear moved so slowly in his eyes that it seemed to be swimming through water.
He extended two fingers and lightly pinched its wing.
The mosquito squirmed helplessly between his fingertips.
Aaron looked at it, let out a faint smile, and released his grip.
The mosquito flew off in a frantic daze.
He remained standing under the moonlight.
Believers continued to pour in steadily.
One hundred twenty, one hundred fifty, two hundred.
The pull extended beyond the backyard to the abandoned parking lot outside the wall, where insect density was even higher—termites alone numbered over a hundred.
Aaron was getting a bit greedy.
No, not greedy—just maximizing efficiency.
Before going to Hogwarts, these ordinary insects were his only source of believers; leaving them unrecruited would be a waste.
By eleven-thirty, his total believer count broke three hundred.
The Divine Kingdom expanded to eight hundred meters, giving rise to a second pond and a small patch of woods.
Aaron withdrew his divine majesty and exhaled slowly.
His soul felt a touch exhausted.
Recruiting believers on a large scale placed no small burden on his godhood; he was still just a “demigod,” and both his physical body and soul had limits to what they could bear.
That was enough for tonight.
He turned, preparing to climb back into his room through the window.
From the direction of a second-floor window behind him came a sharp shatter.
The sound of a glass dropping and smashing on the floor.
Aaron stopped in his tracks.
He raised his head and looked up at the second floor.
Tommy’s room.
A gap was pulled open in the curtains, revealing a pale, wide-eyed face pressed against the glass.
It was Tommy.
He had been holding a glass of water, which was now dropped, its shards scattered across the window sill.
He had seen it.
Not everything, but more than enough.
Under the moonlight, hundreds of insects formed eerie lines, pouring in from every direction toward a slender figure standing in the middle of the clearing.
And then, at his feet, vanishing into thin air.
Tommy’s mouth hung open, but no sound came out.
Aaron looked back at him, showing no panic and no intention of explaining.
He merely tilted his head slightly, letting the moonlight illuminate half of his face.