Derek dragged his feet as he entered his apartment, throwing his coat on the couch and collapsing on the bed. He wished he could quit his boring job and do something more exciting with his life. He had tried everything and got tired of everything: girlfriend, dream of a small house and children, and growing old with a lovable wife, he simply shook his head. He didn't want any of that. He rather be alone and enjoy what his other friends miss out due to their marriage.
He worked in a small firm with a dozen or so people, most of whom were related to the boss in some way. The place only did enough business to look legitimate, but Derek suspected there was something shady going on behind the scenes. He had asked around a few times, but no one gave him a straight answer.
He shook his head and picked up his laptop. He didn't want to dwell on it too much. It had only been four or five months since he joined the company, and he didn't want to risk getting fired for being too curious. He wasn't some righteous hero who would expose their secrets.
Besides, if he got fired, what would he say to his next employer? That he left because they were doing illegal things? Every company does that to some extent, and no one likes a nosy employee.
No, he decided, he would work for a year or so, build a solid resume, and then look for a better paying, less dubious job. But that seemed like a distant dream in this economy.
He opened his laptop and browsed through his games library. He never liked MMORPGs or story-driven games. They took too much time and made him read too much. He preferred the thrill of blasting enemies with pixelated bullets and dodging colorful explosions on his screen. There were many variations on the market too, like combining elements and creating new spells and weapons. He loved these types of games.
But now, the question was what game to play, he never believed a game must be super high quality which needs super high grade hardware which in turn take enough electricity to rent two deluxe apartments. Just a unique idea can make a normal 2d game thrilling, for example, 'Imposter'. This game simply rocked the world.
Just when Derek decided which game to play, an inconspicuous icon caught his attention.
The icon was at the top-right corner with a pixelated green and blue earth symbol. And below that icon was the name, [Pixel God].
'I don't remember downloading it. Or did I?' Derek wondered. He had done such stupid things like downloading games in bulk before, so he wasn't worried about it being a virus or something.
He clicked on the icon and opened the game.
Slowly, the game loaded, which was surprising since the game file was really light. A cheerful melody filled his ears, reminiscent of old-school RPGs. An option screen popped up on his monitor. The options were typical:
[New Game]
[Continue Game]
[Quit]
Behind the options was a green landscape where cow herders were happily going on with their business and cows were eating the fresh green grass. The weather looked sunny and peaceful.
Derek sighed and smiled, feeling a wave of calm wash over him. 'This game looks soothing,' he thought.
Derek's cursor hovered over the [New Game] button, and he clicked it. A notification appeared on the screen:
[In the darkness of the perilous ever forsaken, you have come as the guiding light, Oh Shining One!]
[The world welcomes the Great God!]
The screen went black, and pixels began to float across it, as if searching for each other.
[Creating World....]
After five seconds, green pixels covered the screen.
[World has been completed. Welcome, Great Lord!]
A map appeared, displaying every type of terrain imaginable: forests, deserts, glaciers, mountains, and more. In the center of the map stood a shrine.
Although Derek had never been religious, he believed there was something higher that held everything together, something he could never describe with words.
A line of text appeared on the screen.
[This is your shrine. Please name it: Shrine of ________]
Derek thought for a moment and typed 'death.' He saw death as the starting point of a new life, and he preferred to embrace it rather than fear it.
[Shrine of Death]
The name of the shrine appeared over the image.
As Derek pondered his next move, two small 8-bit characters appeared on the screen, walking towards the Shrine of Death.
"God's shrine has appeared, God's shrine has appeared!"
"Bow to the Lord, for giving us a chance!"
Derek watched as the characters approached the shrine and bowed.
He was confused by what was happening. Were all games these days so straightforward? Where was the tutorial? And why were the characters bare-chested? Although Derek wasn't interested in 8-bit 18+ art, the details were too small to matter.
"God, God!"
"This must be God's sign! He consecrated his shrine here! We are lucky!"
"Yes, we must let others know about the shrine! God is with us!"
Both the figures had a glee on their faces as they went away as exitedly as they came.
After a moment, Derek saw nine small figures running around the shrine as they worshiped. They had build a temporary make-shift hut and planted some plants, deciding to stay near the temple.
At that moment, another notification appeared.
[You have obtained your follower's faith. The faith is necessary means to perform supernatural acts. User is reminded to collect more faith.]
Next second Derek noticed a white humanoid icon on the upper right corner and right next to it was population in numbers. Below it was a blue shrine icon with 9 right next to it, showing the amount of faith in store.
Derek glanced at it and got to know every believer gives 1 point of faith everytime they worshipped.
When Derek clicked around as there was no tutorial about what to do, he click on population icon and nothing happened, but when he clicked shrine icon, an option appeared.
[Miracles]
Below it was a row of options and each had a corresponding icon next to them. Currently, all the miracles were grayed out, unusable.
Every miracles required faith to perform it, and even the most cheap and least faith consuming miracle needed 10 faith points.
Derek had played these kind of games before, he built houses and more population would come to settle but in this game, he had to take passive side and sit, and wait for more population to come.
The pixelated populace was current farming right now, making the surrounding more habitable.
After playing for an hour Derek felt like he needed to pee, but after he came back he noticed the screen was a bit diffrent from before.
On the screen there was a small housefly icon and below it were two options, [Gift (Yes) / (No)].
Derek felt it was some kind of entrapment system. If you don't want to make any error to the game, keep playing. So, he directly click on (No) but what he didn't expect was the moment he clicked (No), the pixelated housefly directly came out of the screen and flew away.
This event bewildered Derek. He simply couldn't understand how was this possible and thought he must be tired. He took out his eyeballs cleaned them and put them back, but he felt it made no difference. (Not literally)
When Derek selected (No), he back on the main game. The villagers were raising their hands and asking for a divine intervention, for a miracle.
"Oh Great God, please show us your miracle!"
"Oh Great Lord, bless us!"
"The Forest Tribe thinks we worship a demon and wants to destroy your shrine! Oh Great God, pLEAse SHOW us your MIRACLE!"
Obviously, Derek did not have enough Faith Points to do a miracle, not even the most cheap miracles could be used right now.
Seeing this, Derek clicked here and there to find any new options when he found a fimiliar set of options.
There was statue in the middle of the shrine, it was white but its limbs black. It had long hairs and it's was completely empty, no facial features were there, not even nostril holes.
When he clicked on the shrine's statue which situated in the very middle of it, two option popped up on the screen.
On one side of the screen was a big red fonted option [Sacrifice] and on the other side was a blue fonted option [Gift].
Under both options, all slots were empty currently.
He understood what was it all about. If what he thinks is right then, [Sacrifice] area will contain the sacrifices done by the belivers and the sacrificed item will appear here. And if inserted any item in the [Gift] slots, he could gift that item to the believers.
He pondered if this could make shift as a miracle, after all it would a gift from their 'Great God'.
Derek ran towards the kitchen and came back with a tomato. Without wasting time he pushed the tomato into one of the slot and to his confusion, it actually went in.
Just then, a pixelated icon of a tomato appeared in one of the slots. Moving his cursor, Derek clicked on the tomato icon and a line of text appeared on the screen.
[Do you want to gift the Tomato to your believers?]
[Yes / No]
Derek's mind froze and his body trembled in disbelief.