Ch 03: Exposure galore

"At the very beginning, long before your universe was created, there was only what we call the primordial chaos. From this, three beings were eventually born, the Primordial Gods. They named themselves Erebus, Chronos, and Nyx. Together, they gave birth to the concepts of space, time, and the cycle of life and death. To distract themselves, they started creating universes and creatures to populate them. They also gave some mortals a way to reach divinity and become lesser Gods and Goddesses, like me."

"But unlike the Primordial Gods, our way of reaching divinity involve specialization around a specific concept, and mine is Lust, Conquest and Domination. Conquest and Domination of people's hearts, not lands. By now, there are thousands of lesser deities, and the way to reach divinity, which involves a finite resource, has been exhausted. Unless the Primordial Gods decide to create more Divinity Shards, there won't be any more of us Lesser Gods. However, we do have the possibility to ascend mortals to a demi-god status, to act as our stewards and representatives. With me so far?"

Noah nodded.

"Yes, my Lady. And I guess becoming a demi-god would make me immortal. But being your representative would involve responsibilities, right?"

"Yes. One reason your own world is so rife with corruption is that the God who created it is a lazy bum and essentially abandoned your world. He did make a half-hearted attempt and sent a representative two thousand of your years ago to try to fix things, but that champion was ill prepared and died early. That God then decided humanity on your world deserved its fate and washed his hands off you all."

"And as a result, human civilization on your world has turned into a mess. You extract resources from your environment and pollute it with little regard for long term consequences, and your world is controlled by a relative handful of billionaires, while famine, racism and abject poverty are still rampant long after you people developed the resources to deal with it. It’s a tragic waste. If interfering with another God's creation wasn't a severe taboo among Gods, I or some other deities would have taken over already."

Noah could only nod at that scathing evaluation. He wasn't proud of humanity's current state either.

"I already created many worlds, and will keep doing so. But even when I don't oversee them directly, I have ascended many people to demi-God status and assigned them to manage those worlds. To the mortal living there, they are the Gods and Goddesses teaching them the virtues of tolerance and benevolence, as well as those who punish the most corrupt merchants, kill the tyrants and hardened criminals, and make sure the local rulers know to keep the wellbeing of their people in mind. But I digress."

"Back to the creation of worlds, the three Primordial Gods have tasked us lesser Gods with continuing their work, and we use most of our divine power to keep creating new worlds. But most Gods, and I include myself in this, tend to fall into patterns. We may have become more than mortals, but our imagination isn't particularly improved compared to what we were before, and after a while, things became a little… stale, predictable. Until one of us, Loki, got the idea of delegating the design part to mortals, by using their fictions as templates. And he proposed to make a game out of it, where the Gods willing to participate can choose champions to represent them send them into those newly created worlds. We call this the Great Game, and it is quite popular. Most Gods like to watch and use some of their accumulated divine power to make bets."

"I am starting to understand. You wish to send me into some fictional worlds, at least currently fictional, and if I do well, you will promote me to a Demi-God?"

Lilith nodded.

"Yes. The next Great Game will start in a few of your local years, but that's no issue, as I would simply put you in stasis until then. The rules of the game might be different between each round. Sometimes you will be the only champion sent in the new world, sometimes not. You might be required to cooperate with other champions for a time, or you might be required to fight them. And you will be able to recruit your own subordinates. On that note, and because I did read your memories and understand the kind of person you are, I do not care how you recruit them. Quite the contrary."

"At the end of the second round, and each round afterward, you will have the option to retire. If you do, you will be in charge of the worlds you visited when you were the only champion on site, and will co-manage with the other surviving champions the worlds where you weren't alone. You will not be allowed to fight those champions after the Great Game's conclusion, however. On the matter of governance, assuming you succeed, I won't demand the impossible from you, as we both know humanity will never be perfect, and issues will keep popping up, but as long as your influence makes things significantly better for humanity, not worse, I will be satisfied."

"How would those fictional worlds be chosen? Do I know any of those?" Asked Noah.

Lilith smiled.

"As it turns out, you coming to this place might indeed be the working of fate, because your Earth has been chosen as the source material for the next Game, due to its chaotic nature and lack of any God's influence, and the chosen region is Asia. Your people's works, from Chinese Xianxia and video games to Japanese novels and mangas, has been a bountiful source of inspiration, and many of us Gods are looking forward to creating something so different from the usual."

"…Lady Lilith, I can think of a number of fictions that have several planets. Like Star Wars, with its million inhabited worlds. Does this mean you will create a million worlds, just like that?"

"No. There is still a limit to the amount of power we're willing to invest in a single… theme, let’s say. To take your Star Wars example, most gods would create maybe a dozen worlds or so. Certainly not the million that the galaxy is supposed to have."

"Where are those worlds located?"

"Some of them are in the Milky Way, or other galaxies, but they have deliberately been placed far away from each other, to avoid any kind of interference. Most worlds are in other dimensions."

"Every champion will have a system of sorts, since we find the concept quite interesting. In previous Games, we allowed our champions to call forth the occasional summoned entity or perform miracles, but this time, you will have a system as a base, setting you significantly above the average human, but that alone won’t be anywhere near enough, and will have to work hard to add powers from the worlds you will visit."

Noah finished his tea, wondering if he might be able to obtain the recipe and ingredients for it, if he ever became a demi-God.

"…I don't suppose we champions would have any say on which worlds are chosen?"

"No. The first world will be some sort of tutorial for you. You will be the only champion there, and the difficulty level will be low. After that, the choosing will be made by myself, or by a consensus among the Gods involved in the Game, in the case of shared worlds. The difficulty will largely depend on the efforts you made to improve yourself in the tutorial world. But if you perform particularly well, I might take your own preferences into account for a world or two. I assume you are accepting?"

Noah grinned. There was no way he was going to miss a shot at immortality, and a harem of beauties, danger or not.

"Where do I sign?"

Lilith smiled, and snapped her fingers again. Noah instantly lost consciousness.

The Goddess looked at her servants.

“Take him to the basement and place him inside one of the stasis arrays.”

“At once, Mistress.” The head butler bowed deeply as the others moved to take Noah’s limp body out of his chair and carry him away.

“May I ask, Mistress, are you not going to make him your slave?”

“…No. He is somewhat of a kindred spirit. He reminds me of myself, when I was a mortal. I do not need to make him my slave to make him do my bidding.”

“As you wish, Mistress.”

Lilith rose to her feet and retired to her bedroom. The large room was just as opulently decorated as the rest of her palace, but there was one particular piece of furniture that really stood out. Her Throne. A throne made not of stone, metal or wood, but of black leather… and human flesh. Two of her disobedient slaves, and four of her underlings who had mismanaged their worlds, two men and four women, had been bound and strapped together to form a living chair.

Their heads were covered by skintight leather hoods, rendering them blind, mute, and dehumanizing them. The hoods were magic items forcibly maintaining their wearer’s sanity. Their privates were kept inside leather chastity belts that kept them constantly aroused, but unable to orgasm. One of the women, the most skillful with her tongue, was positioned to be able to worship the person sitting on the throne, as she had been doing before her mistress suddenly left earlier. She was the only one whose mouth wasn’t filled with a gag, but she knew better than to speak without permission.

Lilith discarded her clothes and sat in her throne, and the slave eagerly resumed her worship. Lilith looked forward to the upcoming Great Games. She would have to find a few more candidates by then, but the one she got today had potential. A latent, benevolent tyrant. His mindset was an interesting mix of the concept of Noblesse Oblige, empathy, utter ruthlessness, and desire for sexual domination. Those traits were almost completely opposite, and it was rare to find a mortal mind where they coexisted so well.

And if he turned out to be a disappointment after all… Most of the “parts” of her Throne were only punished for a relatively short time, then allowed to return to their duties. This man would replace one of them. Or maybe she could add a footrest.