Chapter 5: 005
Surprisingly, Tzekel-Kan wasn't upset to not be given the opportunity to leave behind everything he knew and all the authority and power he had as the highest level of religious figure in El Dorado short of any gods themselves to go exploring the unknown infinities. Or rather, when put in that light, perhaps it wasn't so surprising at all.
More impressively, he seemed entirely delighted to be preparing Chel for Jaguar's needs, approaching the problem of quickly and effectively training her up into a skilled priestess and religious figure in her own right with a fervor and zeal that said concerning things about what would be going on if the man was actually a woman. He did seem incredibly interested in the precise nature of Jaguar's body, once he had had the time to think about it, if the seed it produced was viable, and what could result from any potential offspring.
Jaguar didn't doubt that the prospect of demigods to form the backbone of a budding empire were an intriguing long-term prospect for the man... but it was just that. Long term. With the current situation, there simply wouldn't be time for any such theoretical children to be born and take part in even the most optimistic of scenarios. In any case, as a god was an immortal being in most circumstances, unless they were killed... Jaguar felt no immediate urgency to explore the idea of having children.
With that sorted, a more relaxed and even tempered Miguel and Tulio directed to fill the natives in on what to expect, and a promise to return as quickly as was feasible, Jaguar's body dissolved into the appearance of floating stars as he returned to his demi-plane home.
He barely restrained the impulse to scream for joy until he had arrived in the private realm.
The power of 'Jaguar Man' had settled into his very bones. He could now feel the difference between being an ordinary mostly-human being acting the role very well and an actual form of divinity.
Admittedly, lesser divinity. Weak, comparatively. He was still the rough equivalent of what he had been before, with only a slightly increased edge. But the benefits of a divine nature by far made up for it, even if he was lacking in raw power. He was now truly untouched by time, and would not age and grow infirm. Immune to all human diseases. And if he died in most normal way, by violence or otherwise, he would return here to recover.
Attaching his face and personality to the identity of the Jaguar god had prompted a flow of faith in his existence from El Dorado. Not much, though to be frank there wasn't much he could do with it even if he had more. If someone demanded miracles of him... he might be able to comply, to some degree. But not more than once, at most, and doing so would leave him terribly vulnerable.
This demi-plane, his sanctum, automatically accumulated and condensed the faith directed towards him, after all. Without it, the simple fact that people believed he was a god would not have made it so. The process of ascending, of growing in divine strength, it was a little more complicated than that. If it wasn't, then just how many cult leaders and con artists such as those two Spaniards would have stumbled into divinity through history? It needed to be processed and worked into a usable form, like milling wheat into flower and then baking it into bread.
At this point, essentially, he had a free reincarnation. Sort of the welcome-to-divinity gift basket.
... Just the one. If he was killed somewhere, and had to return here to recover his strength...? Well, entirely aside of being out of commission for some time, that would use up all of the accumulated divine energy and send him into a state of 'debt' where the trickling flow of Faith would go first to paying off the incurred cost of revivification as he personally recovered, before it started to fill those reserves once more.
Even after he was mobile again, he would be in a very precarious situation. Possibly for centuries afterward, if things were going poorly for him. If he went too far into debt, after all, using divine energy that he simply didn't have available... then he would die for real. He would most likely cease to exist. It was the worst possible outcome, and it would take a long time after recovery before it would be theoretically safe for him to be killed again, at the slow trickling and dribbling rate at which new Faith was coming in.
Ideally, of course, he should never die. But it was good to have the back-up option for if things went wrong.
That being said, it was fortunate that he would be looking for ways to prop up El Dorado as a budding nation that didn't rely on his divine power to operate... or at least which greatly minimized how much he would have to use. As his reserves of divine power grew, not only would he become stronger but he would also recover more quickly. Potentially, he would in time be able to 'shrug off' injuries that would kill him now by burning the divine power to recover on the spot rather than having to withdraw to his sanctum to lick his wounds and pretend that he had tactically retreated on his own rather than being struck down and waking up at home. Or use it as fuel for... less costly methods.
Given time, the most threatening thing to him would be either wastefulness... or another divinity. A god that could aim directly for his reserves of divine energy, dispersing them to be lost or ripping them away to add to their own stores of power. Or any other kind of non-divine being that could do the same, he supposed, but other gods were the most common potential threat with that ability so far as he was aware. In many ways that was far more dangerous than attacks that just aimed at his body. He could always learn combat techniques to turn blades aside, or magical spells to defend against fireballs and blasts of lightning, in either case potentially infused with the barest trace of divine energy to amplify the effect.
Battles with other gods, however? Those could be dangerous. If he wasn't careful then before he knew it all of his divine energy could be bled out or greedily stolen and devoured, before an opponent bothered to strike at his physical form to dispose of him after they had no more use for his existence. On the other hand, however, they also represented an opportunity. Dangerous as it was to risk having his divine energy targeted, it was possible that he could steal or seize it from an enemy for his own as well.
At the moment, though? The idea of actually fighting another god was laughable. In a situation where that was on the table, the only viable option for him was to run with all his might. In terms of divinity he was like a newborn gecko in the face of mighty and ancient dragons, after all. Loosely of the same kind... but very different beasts indeed.
Despite being known as 'Jaguar', the faith directed to him came only from the one tribe that knew of him, after all. The word had to spread, and the worship as it was forming in El Dorado had to expand, for that power to begin coming in more rapidly.
Which meant several things. He had to ensure El Dorado's position was secure... if they fell, then his own position was ruined, after all. So he needed ways for the Jaguar Warriors that he was building up to fight on equal footing with Spanish Conquistadors.... Not the easiest thing in the world when one would normally be wearing animal skins and tanned hides into a combat fought with stone spears and swords of wood with obsidian lodged in them, while the other... had steel plate mail and muskets.
It was a little bit of a mismatch, and while it was possible for truly exceptional tactics born of inside information to even the scale... firing burning arrows to impact powder barrels, for example, and hoping they would go up quickly... it would be better for him to get something a little more showy than that, which would let his chosen warriors fight on at least equal footing.
There was also the issue of disease. As El Dorado spread across the land from its hidden golden city, there would be a bigger problem than direct combat engagements. The settlers, explorers, and conquistadors were not always healthy men... and they brought diseases to the 'New World' that the natives had never encountered and had no resistance against. More people had died historically to those diseases than had fallen to bloodshed, after all. If he wanted the new empire that was going to worship him to stand strong and secure then he was going to have to make sure all the people offering faith to him did not die of plague.
But that was a distant secondary concern compared to the immediate issue of the band of gold-hungry self-righteous looters shod in steel plate that needed to be dealt with. He could work out how to deal with potential spreading epidemics after that had been sorted out.
And he needed to be able to find a solution for that relatively quickly.
And he needed to focus his attention on a world that was relatively safe for him to go to, where it was unlikely that he would personally get dragged into a battle to the death with anyone or anything because he didn't yet have the time to learn how to defend himself in combat or to use spells for the same purpose. If he was killed then he would die, after all... and if he couldn't return to El Dorado with the aid he had promised then they would lose faith in him, and he would most likely die for real.
It was quite the conundrum. No pressure, right?
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone