Chapter 7 Fictional Church

A deity of God-level status exploited its own authority loopholes and took away the "game character's" death value from the game.

A huge, materialized question mark appeared above Shang Lin's head.

Was this game character's death value calculated based on the player's completion time, or the levels they cleared, or even the number of enemies they killed?

What an unexpected angle for development!

"If you say that characters within the game can also create death value for the God of Death, then he wants to harvest a new batch of leeks from me."

The more people that played the game, the more times the game characters died.

This could actually generate value from the void, with intangible death and unlimited restarts—wouldn't this lead to value inflation?

Is it because it also touches on the conceptual root of "death"?

At this moment, Shang Lin began to preliminarily sense the extraordinary nature of the Enlightenment Runes. It even plunged him into a long-lasting shock.

Characters capable of creating value don't exist in the virtual world; they are often real information entities, living beings from the real world that can create information and value through the actions of living.

However, if the world created by the Enlightenment Runes isn't just a playable world of false information but one where the characters within, in some sense, truly exist, then...

When the total amount of this information is vast enough to expand through the entire universe, could it create countless real entities?

Shang Lin fell into deeper contemplation.

His development and learning of the Enlightenment Runes were still at an early stage; what he needed to do next was to deeply research the higher-level "script" of this rune.

But these matters needed to be put on hold for now, as the pressing issue was to follow the original plan of deploying the arcade machines and establishing a new church.

His own end was fast approaching, and he needed to rebuild the church as soon as possible.

So, Shang Lin immediately bestowed a divine oracle upon the Vampire girl.

Soon after, in the tavern, Miss Malt raised her voice again, drawing everyone's attention to her, as she had an announcement to make.

"You might not believe it, but that machine actually comes from a deity... A few days ago, I received a divine oracle from a deity."

"Now I am a God's Favored."

She spoke to the patrons of the tavern, with her hands crossed and resting on her chin, elbows on the table, and her lake-blue hair cascading down like a waterfall.

She informed everyone about the origin of the machine. Since the dawn rose that day, the arcade machine had simply vanished, and the gamer who was happily playing was left wide-eyed.

Where's my arcade machine?!

My huge arcade machine?!

I swapped one silver coin for twenty Game Coins, and I haven't used them all yet—most importantly, I was about to beat the next level.

And now it's gone!

Many people immediately realized that this must be a token left by some deity, albeit they had never seen such a peculiar token. And the gamers who caught on, their complexions instantly turned ashen.

Having used a token from a deity, a price must be paid, a value must be created, but all these people did was play with that metal box—they didn't create any value!

If one had to say... they did exchange quite a few Game Coins, does that count as value?

These people spent the next several days anxious, fearing that some unknown deity would come to demand value from them, and with a frown, they might just halve their lifespans. However, such unlucky events did not happen.

Instead, they received good news!

"Malt, are you telling the truth? That thing called an arcade machine, was it really deliberately placed here by a deity for our entertainment?"

The patrons found it unbelievable.

Where in this world could there be a deity who served everyone wholeheartedly without asking for anything in return?

All gods thought about how to scrounge all kinds of "value" from the living; how could there be a god who dedicated itself to bringing joy to the world?

The gods of this era seemed unable to resonate with the value of "happiness," and so, almost no god of entirely positive emotions was born, only those of negative and neutral emotions existed.

If explained using the morality grid, it meant the [Lawful Good], [Neutral Good], [Lawful Neutral] categories were gone.

"No, the God of Fiction is also taking value! It's just that the act of you playing games is how you create value for him! He, too, draws the value he wants from your 'emotions.' His method of value absorption is different from other gods, so he doesn't need you to pay any additional price," said the vampiric beauty named Malt, once again confirming the demands of this new deity.

The demands were only threefold.

Take better care of yourself, forget the unfortunate events, play more games.

Take better care of yourself, forget the depressing events, play more games.

Take better care of yourself, forget the frustrating events, play more games.

"He says he's a very straightforward god and doesn't plan on holding any dull lectures. However, if you find these games fun, then he will hold a press conference before the new games are released."

"As for what a press conference is, I don't quite grasp it either. Anyway, that's what he said during the Divine Enlightenment, as his official declaration of entering this world!"

"Then, our tavern will officially become a church!"

The vampiric girl announced another bombshell. Her tavern was now officially recognized as the landing place for this deity, and with the emergence of a god, it had become a church!

However, as Miss Malt was boasting about becoming the first vampiric church leader, a group of devotees wearing red monk robes arrived at the entrance to the tavern. They were Sacrifice Church devotees, distributing flyers everywhere.

Due to several unreasonable demands from the gods, factory shifts were naturally rotational. Combined with certain races preferring the day and others the night—despite the Grey World's skies always being wrapped in heavy smog—the biological clocks of the people continued to stubbornly operate.

And so, the number of patrons in the tavern had gradually increased without notice.

The Sacrifice Church devotees had seized this particular time to distribute their flyers.

Like many gods leaning towards the aspect of death, their propaganda targeted the middle and lower classes rather than the upper echelons; after all, those well-off People of Higher Status wouldn't make wishes without good reason. Although they could also be lured by the schemes of Evil Gods, the numbers certainly did not compare to the vast majority of the less fortunate.

Since ancient times, it had always been the lower classes, whose minds were filled with wishes that remained unfulfilled, who struggled between hope and despair, trapped by life.

"A Sacrifice Church lecture?"

"This coming Sunday?"

As the patrons received the flyers, Miss Malt furrowed her brows, looking at the surrounding patrons whispering among themselves. She ran to the largest table, threw her vampiric cloak flamboyantly, raised her hands, and made an exaggerated gesture:

"All eyes on me, I have an announcement to make!"

"This Sunday, our church will be launching a range of arcade games!"

"We will draw one hundred players to receive a free keg of the best beer from our church! At the same time, the cost of playing the arcade games will be on me!"

The gods had chosen her to lead a church, and the good news hadn't even lasted a few minutes before the Sacrifice Church came distributing their flyers, announcing a god's offline lecture this Sunday?

And they dared to promote it within my church, an outrageous provocation!

Those few Sacrifice Devotees that were distributing flyers appeared utterly bewildered.

Uh, what church?

Isn't this a tavern?