Red reached for the pulsing question mark. The obsidian slab shuddered. A crack appeared down the center of the screen, not damaging the device, but opening a seal.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZATION: SEVENTEENTH CONTINENT][NEW DEITY DETECTED.]
A message chiseled itself into the digital surface.
Congratulations. You have inherited a grave. To survive, you must evolve. To evolve, you must roll.
"Roll?" Red muttered.
The screen shifted. A wheel of runes appeared, spinning with a violence that blurred the symbols into a ring of white fire. It was a lottery. A divine gacha system to determine the starting loadout of a god.
[SELECTING INNATE DIVINITY TRAIT...]
Red watched the options fly past. He caught glimpses of terrifying potential: ...Abyssal Gaze......Plague Bringer......Oceanic Wrath...
He tried to focus, but the speed was nauseating. The wheel clicked, slowing down. The ticking sound echoed like a hammer hitting an anvil. It dragged past minor telekinesis, skipped over botany, and slammed to a halt on a glyph that burned with a blinding gold light.
The text expanded, filling the entire slab.
[TRAIT ACQUIRED: SSS-RANK][EXPONENTIAL DIVINITY (100x GROWTH)]
→ Description: Your vessel is empty, but your hunger is infinite. All gains in Faith, Mana, and Experience are multiplied by a factor of 100.
→ Note: The universe is unfair. Now, it is unfair in your favor.
Red stared at the text. For a man who had lived his entire life under the heel of bad luck, this felt like a trap. Or maybe it was the universe finally balancing the ledger.
The screen wiped clean. The main dashboard returned, but now new metrics were visible in the sidebar. The "Help" section expanded into a list of rules that felt less like religious dogma and more like physics equations.
[ DIVINITY SYSTEM: THE LADDER ]
Current Rank: 0 (Spectral Parasite).
Next Rank: 1 (Poltergeist).
Threshold: 1,000 DP. (100 Faith = 1 DP)
Note: Rank is fluid. Maintain DP above threshold to retain status.
[MECHANICS OF DIVINE]
→ Faith: The currency. Generated when a mortal acknowledges your existence with fear, gratitude, or awe.
- Consumed by followers to sustain life and power abilities.
→ Divinity: The structural integrity of your soul. The currency of the God. Generated by Converting Faith. Consumed by You to evolve units and intervene.
Rank 0-4: You are a ghost. You can observe. Direct interference (Whispers, Miracles) burns DP.
Rank 5-9: The Architect State. You gain access to the "Sub-Layer." You can inspect stats, view detailed maps, and automate Faith collection. You remain intangible.
Rank 10 (Threshold of Flesh):The Avatar State. You may descend into the body of a devoted follower.
WARNING: Descending requires a vessel with high compatibility. Entering a low-level vessel will cause the host body to explode after minutes of use. Dying while in descent burns your divinity level.
"I need a body," Red whispered. He looked at his smoke-hands. "And I need DP to get there."
A red light blinked on the map.
[ALERT: MORTAL IN DISTRESS][SECTOR 4: THE TWISTED GROVE]
The live feed zoomed in. The camera—if it was a camera—panned down through the canopy of purple leaves.
A girl was running. She couldn't have been more than ten years old, dressed in rags that were little more than stitched-together animal pelts. She scrambled over knotted roots, her breath coming in panicked gasps.
Behind her, something chattered. A creature the size of a wolf, but with the carapace of a crab and too many legs, skittered across the tree trunks. It was closing the distance.
Red felt a spike of adrenaline, a phantom sensation from a body he no longer had. He tapped the screen.
"Do something," he commanded.
[ ACTION MENU ]
→ Smite: LOCKED (Insufficient DP)
→ Earthquake: LOCKED (Insufficient DP)
→ Whisper: Cost: 5 DP (AVAILABLE: Tutorial Override - Free)
Red didn't hesitate. He selected Whisper.
He didn't know what to say. He didn't know the language of this continent. He simply focused his will on the girl, projecting a single, sharp intent: Duck.
On the screen, the girl froze. She didn't hear a voice; she felt a cold pressure against the back of her neck. Instinct took over. She dropped flat against the mud.
The crab-wolf lunged. It sailed over her head, its claws snapping at the air where her neck had been a second before. The creature hit a tree trunk with a wet crunch, stunned.
The girl scrambled up and dove into a hollow log, vanishing from the predator's sight.
She lay there, shivering, clutching a crude wooden totem hanging from her neck. She looked up at the canopy, at the invisible sky.
"Thank you," she mouthed. It was a prayer. It was acknowledgement.
The obsidian slab vibrated.
[EVENT: FIRST PRAYER RECEIVED][BASE REWARD: +1 FAITH]
Then, the gold text of his SSS-Trait flared.
[TRAIT ACTIVATED: 100x GROWTH][CALCULATING...][TOTAL GAIN: +100 FAITH]
He needed power. He hit [ CONVERT TO DP ].
The standard rate was abysmal: 100 Faith for 1 DP. But then, the gold text of his SSS-Trait flared.
[ TRAIT ACTIVATED: 100x GROWTH ] [ CONVERSION CRITICAL SUCCESS ] [ TOTAL GAIN: +100 DP ]
The number on his dashboard didn't just tick up; it rocketed. The bar for Rank 0 filled instantly, spilling over. Red felt a rush of heat, like whiskey hitting an empty stomach. His spectral hands flickered, the gray smoke darkening, becoming denser, more defined.
He wasn't just a ghost anymore. He was a shareholder.
Red watched his DP counter hit 100. For a moment, he felt a surge of triumph, the same dopamine hit as seeing a perfect test score. He looked at the [ RANK STATUS ] bar on the obsidian slab, waiting for it to shift.
The bar remained grey.
[ ERROR: INSUFFICIENT DP ] [ RANK 1 THRESHOLD: 1,000 DP ]
"One thousand?" Red stared at the number. The system had given him a 100x multiplier, and he was still 90% short of the first rung on the ladder. It was a joke. A cosmic carrot on a stick.
On the screen, the reprieve ended.
The crab-wolf that had hit the tree shook its head, chattering a high-pitched signal. From the fog, three more shapes emerged. They didn't run; they flowed over the roots, a coordinated hunting unit.
The girl in the hollow log pressed her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide and wet. She clutched the wooden totem so hard her knuckles turned white.
"Run," Red commanded again. He tapped the [ WHISPER ] icon.
He had 100 DP. He could afford the cost. He tapped it.
[ COST: 5 DP ] [ WARNING: COOLDOWN ACTIVE. TARGET MIND TOO FRAGILE FOR CONSECUTIVE CONTACT. ]
The wolves descended.
It wasn't a battle. It was a harvest. One wolf ripped the rotting bark off the log. The others lunged. The girl didn't even have time to scream. The feed didn't cut away—the "Game" didn't have censorship filters. Red watched in high definition as his only worshiper, the source of his first miracle, was torn apart.
The red dot on the map flickered and vanished.
[ FOLLOWER DECEASED ] [ FAITH GENERATION HALTED ]
Red stood in the void, staring at the bloody mess on the screen. The rage flared again, hot and useless. He had power—an SSS-rank trait—but he was impotent. He couldn't stop a wolf. He couldn't save a child. He was a spectator with a fancy calculator.
"Fine," Red whispered. The cold logic he used to survive poverty took over. Don't mourn the loss. Salvage the assets. "Humans are too soft. Too expensive to maintain and use. Since the faith and cost are proportional to each other, I should start with small ones. If I want to survive, I need something that doesn't break when you touch it."
He zoomed the camera in.
The wolves had eaten their fill and left. The girl's remains lay scattered in the mud. But the movement hadn't stopped.
From the soil beneath the blood, thousands of tiny, black shapes emerged. They were ants, but clearly of this twisted continent. Their mandibles were serrated saws of iron-grey chitin. They didn't swarm randomly; they moved in rigid, military lines, dismantling the remaining bone and gristle with terrifying efficiency.
Red tapped the screen, highlighting a single ant.
[ SPECIES DETECTED: CORPSE-MANDIBLE ANTS ]
→ Intelligence: Hive Mind (Low).
→ Lifespan: 3 Weeks.
→ Diet: Scavenger.
→ Faith Potential: Negligible (Individually).
→ Quantity: 12,400 (Colony nearby).
"Quantity," Red muttered. "I don't need quality. I need numbers."
He looked at his [ SKILL SHOP ]. He had 95 DP left.
He scrolled down to the bottom, to the "trash" skills usually ignored by players wanting to be sun gods or war deities.
[ MINOR DIVINITY: HIVE LINK ]
→ Cost: 50 DP.
→ Effect: Establish a telepathic connection with a eusocial insect Queen. Allows issuance of basic pheromone commands (Attack, Gather, Defend).
Red selected it.
[ DP CONSUMED. REMAINING: 45 DP. ]
A thin, silver thread shot out from Red's chest, piercing the screen. It dove down through the canopy, through the mud, deep into the earth below the girl's corpse. It wound through dark tunnels until it found the chamber where a bloated, pulsating Queen laid eggs in the dark.
Red's mind slammed into the insect's consciousness. It wasn't a conversation. It was static—a buzzing, hungry noise.
FEED. GROW. BUILD.
The connection stabilized. The Queen twitched. She didn't understand "God," but she understood "Alpha." She understood "Command."
[ NEW FOLLOWER ACQUIRED: HIVE QUEEN (ALPHA) ] [ COLONY CONTROL: ESTABLISHED ]
Red looked at the console. The Ants were gathering the girl's bones. They were taking them underground.
"Civilization isn't marble halls," Red said, watching the ants strip the skull clean. "It's efficiency. And you little bastards are efficient."
He tapped the [ AUTHORITY ] tab. Now that he had a linked species, a new scaling menu opened up.
[ DIVINITY: THE HIVE PATH ]
→ Level 0: Pest Control.
→ Level 1 (Current): The Voice in the Pheromones.
→ Next Milestone: Genetic Tampering. (Requires: 1,000 Biomass).
[ HIVEMIND STATUS ]
→ Faith Generation: +0.01 per unit fed.
→ Current Action: Harvesting Biomass.
"Eat," Red commanded the Queen through the link. "Eat everything."
The ants on the screen sped up. They didn't just take the meat; they took the blood-soaked mud. They took the leather of her clothes. They cleaned the scene until nothing remained but the memory of a failure.
And as they deposited the biomass into the Queen's chamber, a tiny number ticked up on Red's screen.
As the biomass hit the Queen's chamber, her satisfaction rippled through the link. It wasn't prayer; it was pure biological gratitude.
The Faith Counter on Red's screen began to tick.
[ FAITH GENERATED: +10 ] [ FAITH GENERATED: +25 ] [ FAITH GENERATED: +65 ]
The massive influx of food for a starving colony generated a spike of "Awe." The counter hit 100 Faith.
Red didn't hesitate. He hit the button.
[ CONVERT TO DP ]
The standard rate was 100 Faith to 1 DP. But Red wasn't standard.
[ TRAIT ACTIVATED: 100x GROWTH ] [ CONVERSION CRITICAL ] [ TOTAL GAIN: +100 DP ]
One ant was nothing. But there were twelve thousand of them. And they were always hungry.
Red watched his DP balance rise back to 145. He didn't need humans. He would build his kingdom from the dirt up.