New York.
As soon as Alex got out of JFK airport and got into a cab, he was blasted with the familiar hip hop music.
Alex vibed with it and Melissa, sitting beside him, was just happy to watch him and didn't involve herself in this.
Listening to groovy upbeat music and looking out of the window, Alex saw a few people in black uniforms flying high above in the skies.
It wasn't a strange sight as Earth now had people who were called Blessed and could do superhuman feats such as flying and whatnot.
Back in Texas, there were almost no Blesseds as it was a cheap place and people having superpowers were usually really rich.
Everyone's preferred choice of residence was usually the metropolitan cities like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, and it was on the very rare occasions that some superhumans lived in the countryside.
The ones that did, they usually wanted some peace and quiet.
If it was before the era of the Blessed, one could see thousands of people in New York walk in business outfits as not only was this place home to many businesses, it also had many millionaires, and of course, the Stock Exchange.
But now, in 2030, things were different.
Suits were replaced by traditional clothes and instead of skyscrapers, there were more shrines in the city.
Atheism was almost over and the world was filled with believers.
Although nobody had seen God, the powers the Blessed possessed were enough of an evidence of their existence.
99.999% people believed in the existence of God, as per the remaining, they were a class of ignorant atheists who refused to see the truth.
This bunch existed only in the highly developed countries where all basic necessities were fulfilled and there was no threat of anything to them.
As per the lesser developed countries, 100% of their population believed in Gods.
Since it was New York, there still weren't a lot of shrines as one would expect. There were a limited few due to the lack of space. Despite that, these places were enough to contain all the New Yorkers who wanted to worship.
There were stages to this worshipping, more correctly, Faith.
The first group that had faith for namesake usually only believed that yes, there was a higher existence called God, and accepted this fact.
The second group were the ones that had more faith than the previous group. They weren't full time worshippers but sometimes prayed at their homes and on really rare occasions went to temples.
The third group, the majority, prayed at homes at most times but once or twice a week, visited the temples. The term devotees was used for this group and above.
The fourth group were highly religious people who could be said to have blind faith in God. Although it was a good thing that they had such strong faith, there were many downsides to it.
This group followed everything blindly, meaning if the holy texts asked them to do something stupid, they would do it in a heartbeat.
This group was vulnerable to getting scammed by others as well the one to get beaten up the most.
They were annoying and the majority hated them as they would never stop preaching things about Gods and involving them in every little thing.
With this, one would think that the levels to faith had come to an end, but wait…
There was one more.
This was the extremist group which believed in Gods so much that they took extreme steps to try proving their faith.
Killing someone out of 'necessity' was totally acceptable to them and were the ones hated and hunted the most by all.
This extremist group were the reason why the dark side of the world existed. They were the forerunners of creating the Dark Churches and the Demonic Shrines.
In any case, this group stayed hidden in the shadows and one would hardly ever encounter them, unless of course, they were in the highly religious or sacred places.
These places weren't present in America as of now and could only be seen in the ancient cities of the world that lay in the Mediterranean region, the Middle East, and the Asian countries.
Jerusalem, Rome, Greece, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, India, China, and Japan were places that contained these ancient cities.
Faith in these places was so high that just by stepping there, one could feel various different energies.
The times have changed and these countries were leading the world.
The United States was barely hanging onto the first spot and almost all the European countries were already out of the top ten spots.
The first five countries in the list now were:
— USA
— China
— India
— Japan
— Italy
The first three were expected but Japan and Italy's comeback to the top was highly unexpected.
Japan was suffering from a population crisis along with recession. After the 90s, their economy had only seen a downward growth. But, however stupid it may sound, the Gods came to their rescue and they were doing good now.
As for Italy, due to Rome and the Vatican that was close, they rose to the top and now saw millions and millions of visitors each year.
They were a spot below Japan because they were fully dependent on devotees and tourism. Their economy was rising because of religion itself.
However, Japan was ahead due to their technological as well as religious aspects.
Alex knew that he wouldn't be staying in the US for long even if he wanted to.
In this new life, he had a goal to achieve immortality and visiting these holy places was a necessity.
But, there was quite some time before he moved out of his country.
Currently, his main focus was to get his degrees and become a certified neurosurgeon.
Alex was looking out of the car's window as he thought all this while they were moving towards his medical college.
Halfway through, Melissa tugged on Alex's sleeves and asked, "Darling, where will we be staying?"
Hearing that, Alex turned to look at her and shook his head with a smile.
It seems that even before getting his degrees, he had much more important matters to tend to.
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