73 – Regret
=== God of Fear (Zane Dreadmourne) POV ===
Ever since I lost the battle against the God of the Internet, or rather Adrian Innovashine, since I was sure he was the God of the Internet who had invaded my kingdom, I had kept quiet in Eldoria, just observing the changes he would bring to my kingdom.
I wanted to see what he had to offer to get mortals to worship him so firmly, or if I could win some mortals back to pray for me by creating a small group in the kingdom that would still provide me with a few Divine Power Points every week without much cost.
But the more the days went by, the more shocked I became.
Adrian was going crazy while developing this 'Internet'.
Not only was he making free knowledge available to mortals, he was giving them extremely useful tools, such as instant long-distance chat, news journals where mortals could find out what was happening in all the realms under the Internet God at no cost, even creatures like the iMonsters, which were used to defend the cities of Arcantor against Eldoria's army when I foolishly ordered them to attack.
The only thing mortals had to do was pray once and they would receive the use of these things for a whole hour, which they could renew at any time by praying again, creating a vicious cycle of people praying to him several times a day.
Considering that he had already taken on four realms, from what I knew from the mortal conversations I overheard, the amount of Divine Power he was now receiving was staggering, to the point that I believe that even school teachers who were already Unique Gods didn't receive as much Divine Power as he did.
Perhaps even some of the older True Gods, with fewer believers, didn't receive as much Divine Power as Adrian was getting just from mastering these four realms of his!
Unlike Adrian who could get almost the entire population of a realm to voluntarily pray to him four times a day, other gods like me and the school teachers only received an average of one prayer a week from each believer, which meant that Adrian received 28x more Divine Power than we did.
So with a population of only 1.6 million believers, Adrian had the same income as a powerful God with 44 million believers!
That was shocking!
Even my father, a 200-year-old Unique God, didn't have 10% of Adrian's income.
After all, most Gods fought against other Gods to conquer neighboring kingdoms in a fair way, even if a God managed to win a battle against a neighboring God, it took a few weeks of rest and recovery of Divine Power, plus even more time to conquer the believers of that dominated kingdom in a healthy way.
Considering that all the Gods were receiving the same amount of Divine Power per believer, which was only 1 Divine Power Point per week, battling a neighboring God was extremely risky, and if it wasn't for a test like the one we were in now, few Gods would have the courage to do it.
From what my father told me, as the Unique God, conquering a kingdom alone was glorious in itself.
Many Gods only had the right to open a church in a large kingdom dominated by a more powerful God, and could divide the believers of that kingdom among themselves, vying with other Gods for dominance of that kingdom.
When Gods became more powerful, they were able to invade other kingdoms more easily, even at the cost of losing more Divine Power by using the Divine Power they had gained in other worlds to be able to dominate kingdoms on their own.
That's why doing well in this test was extremely important, as only the best students would be able to continue with access to this world, while the other students would never be able to return.
This would mean that the students who stayed would have access to at least two realms exclusively for them, much better than the vast majority of other gods who didn't want to join the army, or who joined the army only as soldiers.
But even these advantages that the best students would receive were nothing compared to what Adrian was doing.
With the way he developed and spread the internet, it was becoming a monster that in a matter of years would encompass all the kingdoms on this planet...
Only Sovereign Gods, those above the True Gods, had enough power to dominate entire planets! And that only after several centuries, or rather a few millennia of accumulating Divine Power and constant battles.
Adrian? I believe that in less than 10 years he would have conquered this entire planet for himself, maybe even less time!
What was a young God dominating an entire planet on his own?! That would send him soaring through the army ranks that he would soon become a Sovereign God all by himself!
Just thinking about these possibilities made any thoughts I had of trying to penetrate Eldoria through Adrian's carelessness disappear.
The most powerful God in my family was my grandfather, a Rank 4 True God who had to accumulate Divine Power for more than a thousand years before reaching that Rank, getting the grudge of a Sovereign God would be ruin for everyone I know.
So I just stayed put in Eldoria and observed the way Adrian was using to develop his kingdom and his believers, trying to learn from his approach a way for me to improve.
To my surprise, I was surprised a few times.
The main thing that surprised me in the early days was the way Adrian treated mortals, with the care that a father would have for his children, to the point that Adrian would even bless mortals to help them learn to read and write, or even to encourage them to do chores for him.
That way, mortals felt motivated to improve and work for Adrian!
With that, I began to analyze my time on the test and realized that I had acted in the complete opposite way to how Adrian had done, making me shake my head in disappointment at myself.
But a bigger surprise than how Adrian acted towards mortals, was the way Adrian acted towards Novera!
Unlike Eldoria, where he invaded by destroying the kingdom's power center, killing my most important believers and fighting an indirect battle with me, in Novera the way Adrian acted was the complete opposite!
The God of Novera opened the door to Adrian, allowing his believers to pray to the God of the Internet directly and accepted that Adrian would receive Divine Power from his believers in that kingdom.
And from what I've seen on the internet from some mortals in [Carrier Pigeon] about that God, that God must be Lucy Wavecrest, the Top 2 girl with the most potential in our class!
Even Lucy realized Adrian's potential and submitted to him!
Soon after Lucy submitted to Adrian, rumors began to surface that a new App would appear on the internet, an App for mortals to listen to music!
None of this was directly confirmed, but according to a Magician from Arcantor, she had contacted Athenos, the emissary of the God of the Internet and at his request, she was developing various songs for Internet users to listen to at any time, even receiving a blessing from the God of the Internet to be able to produce even better songs!
As much as I didn't see any direct links between this and Lucy, it wasn't hard to imagine that it might have something to do with her as Adrian had even removed the time limit for the daily use of the App [School] for believers, which showed that he had advanced in the use of the internet, perhaps with a friendly exchange with Lucy.
Thinking that I could have done the same thing and won his friendship as she did made me feel regretful.
After a few days Adrian apparently even battled Zack and won, causing Zack to lose control over Valoria and adding another kingdom under Adrian.
Now I knew that the time for Adrian and Zack to battle was very close.
At least I wouldn't be the only god dumb enough to attack Adrian and lose my kingdom completely.
Feeling my measly 36k available Divine Power Points rising by only a few hundred every week from a few believers who still believed in me despite the Internet God's invasion of Eldoria, I could only sigh.
But to my shock, I suddenly felt a very loud negative energy falling from the sky.
Turning in that direction, I saw a capsule-like object falling somewhere in Eldoria.
Thinking it was best to let Adrian take care of it, since this was his territory now, I just flew up high, trying to see him from afar dealing with this problem, but curiously, even after 30 minutes Adrian didn't show up.
Seeing that there were people turning into demons and dying non-stop, after getting closer to the mortals to see them using the internet, and seeing how well Adrian treated them, a bad feeling rose in my chest at seeing mortals dying and suffering like that.
Knowing that I could help, I wondered how I should act, until I finally gave in and decided to help.
Even if Adrian discovered me and sent me back to the divine world now, I would just accept it proud of what I had done.
At least it would help me atone a little for the deaths of the soldiers I had caused through my arrogance...
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