Master of the System

Karta leaned her head over, glancing at Vremya’s screen. The two gods were lazing about on the couch as usual. “You stole another user?” the Labrador retriever asked, taking in the view of Vremya’s four users. “Maybe you should spread some of them out. There’s not enough resources in any area for four users to grow.”

“I didn’t expect to get a fourth user here,” Vremya said and shrugged. “Who knew he’d come over and try to kill Smith Jr.? I thought you said Paul was the target.”

“Maybe all your users are the target,” Karta said, smacking her lips. Her eyes shifted towards Vremya’s. “Why do you keep looking at your bellybutton? It’s actually really gross.”

Vremya snorted. “What do you know?” he asked and shook his head. Baby Vremya was growing just fine in there. One day out here was equivalent to one hundred days in there. It wouldn’t be long before he had a godly avatar. “Anyway, this Sword of Justice, clearly it’s the handiwork of the god of justice. How did she find me?”

Karta was too lazy to sit up. Her tail slapped her display a few times, and a search result appeared. “Pravos set up a deal with Rynok. If you buy certain goods, she’ll get alerted.” Karta rubbed her chin with her paw. “I wonder if I can make a deal with Rynok too. If I can find out who’s still buying apple chips, I’ll have a huge advantage over Yabloch.”

Vremya frowned. It seemed like he underestimated the power of connections. Someone with no connections to Rynok could still access the marketplace, but those allied with Rynok obviously would get more benefits. His eyes drifted towards his messenger app where there was a 999+ number in the red dot located on the corner. Should he form connections with people too? He turned his head. “Wasn’t there supposed to be one god talking to me every day. What happened to that?”

Karta blinked hard. “I was pretty sure you wanted to be left alone, no? Why’re you asking?”

Vremya narrowed his eyes. “Stinky dog, what did you do?”

“Hey! Don’t take that accusatory tone with me!” Karta said and rolled over onto her belly. She glared at Vremya, trying to look as fierce as possible. After a moment of silence, she sighed. “Alright, I’m still auctioning off the messaging slots, and I’ve been pretending to be you.”

“What’ve you been saying?” Vremya raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t angry with Karta. In fact, he was quite pleased he didn’t have to make connections himself to make connections with other gods. Although he was a bit irked the stinky dog was using his name to make money but not giving him any of the funds.

“Take a look,” Karta said, slapping her display with her paw. The display tilted for Vremya to see without him having to move. The Labrador retriever opened up the messenger app and pointed at the list of gods she had been talking to. “Most of them are trying to get you to open up a zone of increased time. A lot of people have herbs or things that take a while to grow, but their users need those things immediately.”

“I’ll think about it,” Vremya said, reading out the answer he saw most used on Karta’s screen. He nodded. “I thought about it, and that’s not a bad idea. I can modify a dimension, have its time run faster than ours. Of course, I won’t trade for commonly found things like spirit stones or titan corpses. If they want to use the fast dimension, they’ll have to trade things only they can create.”

“Like free river searches on Poiskle?”

“River searches are already free,” Vremya said. His brow furrowed, and he slapped the dog sitting next to him. Of course, his hand was blocked by an invisible barrier. “We don’t talk about river pictures. Anyway, I mean things like free portal access, free reincarnations, special systems, unique golems.”

“In other words, the specialties of other gods,” Karta said, nodding her head. “But most specialties are up for sale. Kosmos is the only one who can open portals, but she has an app for that. Wouldn’t it be better for you to make an app and collect spirit stones?”

“I can easily get spirit stones from titan corpses,” Vremya said. “There has to be things some gods are withholding from the public. Those are the things I want.”

Karta scratched her head with her hindleg. She took a moment to curve her neck down and sniff her butt. When she was done, she looked back at Vremya. “Alright, I’ll see if I can get you things like that. I think there’ll be a lot of system offers. A lot of gods deviate from the templates and make their own systems suited to their powers. I’m really jealous of Kosmos’ interdimensional mercenary system.”

“You don’t have a potato chip system?”

Karta rolled her eyes. “The only thing I can modify is a cooking system. It doesn’t really mean much when a primordial god can kill one titan and make more spirit stones than I can in my entire lifetime.”

Vremya nodded. Karta had a point. Since he could kill titans, there wasn’t really anything he needed. Growing users slowly was fun and all, but it wouldn’t help him in his quest to dethrone Istoriya. “What about things to kill gods? Are there any of those?”

Karta blinked. “I’m not sure,” she said and licked her lips. “I’ll have to ask around.”

***

Pravos stared at the number in her bank account. She had been ripped off, and the worst part about it was she could only accept being ripped off with a smile. Kosmos was unreasonable. The god of space had obliterated an entire lower dimension for goodness’ sake. When Pravos had attended the gathering of the gods to create the laws, she was pretty much a nonentity. If she were just a little stronger, had a little more say amongst the council, she definitely would’ve implemented some antimonopoly laws. It was a shame she was born only a few eons prior to that meeting. A sigh escaped from Pravos’ lips, and she leaned back. The fee to send her strongest user was too expensive. The losses completely outweighed the gains, but it was worth it. Justice required sacrifices.

Ding!

Pravos turned her head. The group chat was active once more.

Blagora had sent a message. “A new user joined the evil gods’ forum. They’re asking around for ways to kill a god.”

Pravos tilted her head. Were there really people who were that moronic in this day and age? Who went around asking others how to kill a god? Everyone knew the evil gods’ forum had been infiltrated by the righteous gods eons ago. Only newbs would take such a blunt approach, not knowing evil gods communicated through codes and only met in person. Could this newb be related to the one they were going after right now? If they were lucky, that would be the case. If they weren’t, then they’d have to pay another fee to the extortionist to teleport their users to the second god. Well, either way, things had to be taken one step at a time. “Focus on that later.” Pravos typed on her display. “First, we capture back my heart of justice user, then we call in Poisk’s favor, and finally, we go in person to confront the god.”

Pravos’ eyes narrowed. Violence amongst gods was forbidden, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any ways to hurt another god. Throughout the eons of conflict with the evil gods, she and her alliance had picked up a few tricks. The newbie god wouldn’t even know what hit him.