My faith once spread across several worlds; I was the Faceless, the God of Deception, the master of blurring the lines between black and white.
I was a performer in countless stage dramas, a trickster in the gutters, a keeper of secret messages, a persuasive speaker with a silver tongue, and the deity worshipped by those news workers with a deficit of reverence. But all that was in the past.
So, I decided not to engage in the deceptive deeds of the past. This time, I wanted to be a good deity because if I kept up those confusing tricks, sooner or later I'd be killed by the other deities.
Shang Lin descended following "the call," a call not originating from the conventional prayers.
It wasn't a particular believer shouting loudly for a deity to descend; it was a cry from the root.
Just as stand-ins are drawn to each other, a successful deity needs to know how to rush toward their believers and vice versa, or how to nurture their own followers.
Miss Vampire's name was Malt; she sat by the wine table, drinking expired blood bags mixed with alcohol.
She looked at the lamps in the tavern, made of shiny crystal stones unique to this world named "The Gray Land," where over thirty percent of the Grey World's total profit came from mining and synthesis of this mineral.
"The fifteen thousand seven hundred eighty-first day since I came to the Grey World from the Lake-Blue World..."
"Today's revenue is..."
"Today's expenditure is..."
The customers in the tavern drank while engaging in a certain game, one she had innovated: "Checkers" and "Aeroplane Chess."
Whether entertainment was rich or lacking was an important factor in attracting customers. Miss Vampire was an outsider from the Lake-Blue World who came to the Grey World. She found that people in this world lacked even the most common means of entertainment. Even though gods suppressed entertainment activities, the most basic forms of entertainment were still allowed.
Her family was called Nosa, one of the oldest and most noble vampire families in the Lake-Blue World, serving a deity of unknown true identity through generations. But in her generation, after observing her, that deity deemed she lacked the "value of being used."
Because she was a "special mutant" within her clan.
Vampires existed in many worlds, and each world's vampires had different self-proclaimed titles.
There were the "Blood Clan," "Blood Worshipers," "Red Elves," "Azure Nobility," and depending on the self-title, there were physiological differences among vampires of different worlds.
For instance, vampires from the Lake-Blue World could reproduce like humans, unaffected by sunlight. However, their breeding was not a matter of pure physical union, but instead, both parents would guide their own blood onto a third-party's ownerless blood placenta, creating a new Blood Clan offspring through a ritual similar to "blood activation," which naturally contains bloodline factors from both parents.
Malt, as a mutant of the Azure Nobility from the Lake-Blue World, was naturally immune to the power of fresh blood, meaning she couldn't use blood magic and was not affected by any blood magic. Furthermore, she wasn't affected by any changes in external blood itself, nor did external blood affect her own.
She had no thirst for blood, characteristic of vampires—now drinking expired blood bags was purely for fun, hence randomly adding alcohol to them.
This led Malt's parents to contemplate, "How did we give birth to such a strange creature?" They seriously suspected that the blood bag from a third party used during the activation ritual was expired, causing this unpredictable mutation.
This also made the deity worshipped by the Azure Nobility, upon descending and seeing Malt, reveal a "subway old man with phone.JPG" expression, stating that her birth could be a transcendent evolution, or it might really have something to do with the expired blood bags.
Malt felt that staying in her family had no meaning, so she ran away, wanting to realize her self-worth and prove her family deity wrong.
All deities demand value, and value comes in many forms. Since she couldn't find recognition of her self-worth among the Azure Nobility, the vampire clan of the Lake-Blue World, she decided to venture into other worlds.
Life is long, and I am not just here to serve a deity revered by vampires, nor am I the deity's second-hand blood bag!
Humming a curious tune, Miss Malt watched the noisy crowd in the tavern. Clearly, having games for entertainment greatly helped the tavern's business...
"With so many values in the world, why isn't there a deity for creating games..." Miss Malt began her Fantasy Time, thinking that if such a deity existed, the world would surely be much more interesting...
Those ancient games had been passed down for thousands of years across various worlds, perhaps because most of the gods forbade the development of entertainment, which is why there were no deities of game creation. After all, how could the gods continue their steady harvest if the people were happy?
Engrossed in flights of fancy, Miss Malt pondered what new game was needed to drive the tavern's revenue once Checkers and Aeroplane Chess grew tiresome.
[Creator of games, one with special value... I have come in answer to your call...]
[I have the new game you need... Would you like people... to try it out? Now is the Fantasy Time...]
Miss Malt "heard" the voice that arose in her mind.
She was immediately stunned.
....
The Grey World.
In most of the city-states of this world, factories and dark smoke fill the air; the sky is gray and black, and the rain brings down ash and smog.
The worlds of the gods are the stars of the great cosmos. Each world is crafted by the gods, their structure, the societal models, the value systems of the living beings within—these are all meticulously designed by the gods who continue to use them as their harvest, ensuring a constant provision of what the deities require.
Morningwind City Cluster.
The factories with their black roofs and towering chimneys belched thick, rolling smoke, and the filthy wind, together with the dim sunlight, roused the workers each day.
Rats scurried through the dark and damp alleys. Some pedestrians, suffering from pneumonia, walked along the streets in their overcoats, coughing softly. In front of the fashion stores stood Dark Elves with their dresses fully unbuttoned, and inside the bookstores were octopus-headed shopkeepers – bizarre creatures – even; you could spot Minotaur thieves and other ghastly entities lurking in the shadows like walls, ready to snatch a passerby and carve out their kidneys.
The pollution of the body was on the rise, and the contamination of the mind was growing stronger by the day.
The main theme of this city, and indeed the general tone of this world, revolved around three key issues: "advanced basic industries," "increasingly severe environmental pollution," and "the growing diseases of the mind and body."
Hence, in this place, there were four main deities worshipped.
As for the minor deities – those whose cults were not mainstream in a certain world – of course, what was non-mainstream in this world might be mainstream in another, as gods could not possibly invest with the same intensity in several worlds. If they were to do so, the circles of worship would overlap to a great extent. This was like claiming ownership of the same wheat stalk by two different individuals, which would inevitably lead to a war.
"Minor deities, the Sacrificed."
Shang Lin had seen the deity who destroyed the Church of the Faceless; that was his church, located in some region of this world, quite sizable, but his worship in this world was still only a secondary faith. It was because he emphasized the value of sacrifice, the polar opposite to gods like the capitalists of suffering and impurity, who required the constant shearing of their sheep.
Of course, his idea of sacrifice was not about giving up life for some lofty ideal, but sacrifice in its most literal sense.
The act of killing other beings to offer to the deities was called sacrifice.
And in this process, one party, for some purpose, would pay a price, give up, forsake, harm the interests of another to achieve their goal. The target of such sacrifice was the "sacrificial offering".
Yet his ambition was still great; among the third-tier deities, it was his lectures that were the most frequent.
"Now is not the time for revenge."
The faith of the Sacrificed spread across more than a dozen worlds, and his followers possessed tremendous power and remarkably high organizational mobilization capabilities.
His thoughts returned to the present.
In this Grey World, the dense atmosphere of decadence made Shang Lin feel as if he had come home.
The coordinates of the tavern were located in the third district of the Morningwind City Cluster in the Grey World, in the southeastern area.
Shang Lin calibrated the coordinates of the tavern and placed one of his own "Deity Artifacts" there.
This was the first trial placement.
The people of this world had summoned it passively, as both their bodies and spirits were being squeezed dry, devoid of any mental relaxation.
After modifying his own authority with Enlightenment Runes, naturally, he could no longer use the original Deity Artifacts.
The Deity Artifacts were the bridge and medium for communication between deities and their followers. Moreover, to facilitate their followers, many Deity Artifacts were transformed into "objects needed for daily life or work" so that they could be used extensively in the productive life of various worlds.
Although these mass-produced artifacts were quite cheap, they still possessed the power of a deity. Using such power naturally came at a corresponding minor cost, but the benefits were immediate.
If the power granted couldn't take effect immediately, then who would believe in the Evil God?
The sky was always overcast, the sun's rays struggling to pierce this world.
Therefore, the night here seemed even darker.
Outside a certain tavern, at some point, a grey iron box had appeared.
It used glass as a "face," and what looked like gears, pushers were placed on the front of the iron box, extending like a drawer.
It appeared out of nowhere, and while people didn't find it abnormal, they were immediately drawn to it.
After all, this was a world with deity worship and supernatural powers.
The factory owners and their employees were not only mere humans but also Pan-Humans, which meant they bore some human characteristics along with those of other beings.
With the machine activated, the screen lit up, and a cheerful tune suddenly started playing.
It was a melody unknown to this world, and without anyone touching the iron box, it seemed to actively attract customers, playing those tunes, drawing weary individuals to its presence.
For the passersby in front of the iron box, as the music began, they started feeling parched and their blood boiling. In their ears continually whispered the seductive murmurs of the Evil God:
"Wanna add Game Coins?"