Gestation by John Gold (love books to read .txt) 📗

was so strong that even the gods didn’t know what his level was. He proved that it was possible to kill a god, too. It had been Bernard himself who challenged him to a battle. Gods love their facts. None of his kind had been willing to risk death in order to see if the wanderer was telling the truth.

Witnesses of the battle thought that Idzumi commanded more than four thousand streams of consciousness. Even with replenishment from the main altar and Bernard’s enormous strength reserve, the battle lasted almost all day, and even that was just because the wanderer had decided to show the difference in strength. Bernard tried to break through Idzumi’s shields, used astral attacks on his mental body, lit the air on fire, and tried to turn the wanderer to ash. Idzumi ignored everything; he just breathed magic, literally. He didn’t care, spending a whole hour under water and just taking everything Bernard threw at him without reacting in the least.

The other gods decided to punish the rude wanderer. Their combined strike created a desert, left craters several kilometers deep, and reached such a level of strength with their fire and magic background that the fire elementals disintegrated almost as soon as they were born.

Then, Idzumi killed Bernard’s avatar with one strike. It was crazy. He put paid to the strength restrictions, killing all things living in a ten-kilometer circle around him. The magic background boiled under his power. Then, he pulled an enormous, 130-meter spike out of the astral and hurled it at Bernard. The latter died instantly, both mentally and physically. Even now, thousands of years later, that spike creates an aura that does enough mental damage that even the gods are afraid to touch it.

When Bernard regenerated, he couldn’t remember everything. He’d been a god; he became human. When he showed up at one of his old temples, he found out that many years had passed. His adepts had all gone over to other gods.

Idzumi, just as he’d promised, was waiting for him to regenerate.

“When the time is right, I will come to the world and take my chosen ones. For now, they are your wanderers. I came as humans were beginning to show promise, though Akashi refused to leave alone. As soon as his group is ready, we will leave your world. You, the old gods, can leave it, too. From now on, you, Bernard, will be a wanderer like one of them. Your first rebirth will take one year. Afterward, you will have the same skills the wanderers have, and you will also be able to give quests and share experience.

But now, Bernard was nervous that Sagie would come back from where there was no return. Wanderers had raided Hell, but even they were forced to change their body when they died. Being sent to Hell was considered the ultimate punishment. But what if someone figured out a way to come back?

Bernard worried that the boy might be able to send him to Hell, a scary thought, indeed. None of the gods had seen the boy, so he was still there.

The god wasn’t able to leave the world he was tied to, and that was why he’d be reborn as a wanderer. One of Idzumi’s conditions had been that the death of the gods would be the result of a new wave of wanderers coming from other worlds. They would die in battle, and not as the result of giving themselves up.

“There is no place for the weak.”

He wasn’t joking.

And there was the new wave of wanderers. They came from the same time and world as the first wave, and everything was going according to plan—the new gods had appeared. They represented the hope of old gods to be reborn and leave.

∞ ∞ ∞

Merlen Ruzh was the treasurer for a clan called the Golden Clan. That day, the clan had the opportunity to level-up and add a new floor to their castle. Preparations for the upcoming war were a problem - they cost too much money. Even their divine patron wasn’t nearly as happy as he used to be. Everything was getting harder. In eight months, the clan had pulled in 20 million of the 38 million players in Project Chrysalis. Two military alliances had been formed; warriors were being trained relentlessly. There were trade unions, too, for training craftsmen and developing regional economies, and Imir had even acquired its own stationary portal.

“What’s on your mind this time? Relax, take a trip around the country with your daughter. She has to work, but you can relax!” Leon was in his human avatar body.

“You know very well, and she can work on her saintliness by herself. Hey, have you got the group together?”

“Yep. Soon, they’ll all be taking the word of truth out together. We’re still far from our goal, though this will help. Reaching Level 1000 isn’t easy! It’s a long journey that takes many months.”

After a glass of good wine, they got back to work. It was a new and wondrous world of hard work and discovery. Leon wanted to become more than a god, and he’d set that as the goal for the entire clan. Happily, only the consecrated knew about it.

∞ ∞ ∞

This forced vacation is an odd beast. I’m not itching to get back into the game, seeing as how I have time to work on my actual future now. My experience using eleven streams of consciousness is paying off in real life: I’m making decisions faster, thinking faster. If I used to be like a normal fish, now I’m more an octopus. My brain has lots of arms, and my perception of the world is a conglomeration of lots of little fragments.

What can I do for two months? For one thing, I can read the law on child rights that was drawn up and approved by the UN. The maximum duration for a punishment is thirty days, though I decide not to bring that up with Vaalsie. That’s a