After the last line was written, the chronicle vanished.
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Divine flame has been ignited. Your divine flame gives you access to divinity-based abilities.
Hint: You can access the divine flame menu now.
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You now have access to your divine territory and will teleport there shortly.
Hint: The divine territory can connect and become a mode of your virtual lobby. We wish you a happy time playing Holy Wars.
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Before teleportation, Elijah checked the changes in his status.
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Name
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Nyarlathotep
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Titles
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None
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Level
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1 (120/ 132)
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Myth Tier
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0
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Race
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Nascent Evil God
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Divinities
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Nightmare
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DP(Divine Power)
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2
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DA(Divine Authority)
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5
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DT(Divine Territory)
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Tier 1 (1/10)
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The divine flame menu was like a skill tree. It would seem that divinity-based skills were there. It showed a dark purple flame, probably because of his divinity. However, there was a reason nothing appeared in his skill menu. There were something like divine runes. His rune list now contained only level 1 nightmare runes. He could mix these runes to form incantations. These incantations then would join his skill menu. It was so complicated since there was little description of what the runes were for. However, despite knowing he would analyze a new symbolic language, he had little doubt that there was another strategy most gamers would use. There was no limit on the number of incantations. So you were free to try. Every combination would not result in something but it was a simple arrangement game. It was not like he would take much less time to analyze this. Despite he liked this idea very much. It would mean that players even if having similar skills varied at least subtly in effect.
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Welcome to your divine territory. You now have access to the divine territory menu. You now have access to explore the divine realm and the mortal realm.
You have unlocked the skill, Avatar.
You have unlocked the skill, Incarnation.
Hint: The game tutorial has ended. Explore the secrets of the game. This is Eve’s final farewell and official wish for a pleasant time in Holy Wars.
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Divine territory for now seemed to be a lonely throne room. Having the same dark purplish vibes. He found depictions of his actions in the village. It was two actually and none of them were praiseworthy. One of them had a giant hand, terrified villagers and Ka and Elisa below it. The other was of a beholder ruining the village while he was like a ghost in the sky smirking. Despite the divine territory menu offering nothing but subtle aesthetic customizations, he did not change them. The menu did not even change the theme, most of the decor he had access to belonged to the same theme, nightmares.
Avatar skill seemed to manifest in the mortal realm like his time as the over-glorified divine ghost. It had no levels, but there was a transformation aspect to it. For a limited time, you could transform into something and manifest physically. Your physical power would mostly, be based on DP. If there was a Zeus role player in this game, the disappointing news was that you could not turn to rain and birds to make others pregnant. The incarnation skill was different. Essentially you would become a normal player. In any other game, this would be character creation, since you would choose one of the five divine realms suggested to you. Not having a specific destination, he had selected the Abyss city. All choices were evil sounding, disappointing really. It was beginning to sound like the old battle of good and bad.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Abyss City was made of obsidian; A black stone suitable for the city''s name, said to be a precious material for harnessing dark powers. As Elijah explored the city, he discovered most of the buildings were locked to him. Most buildings had a myth tier as a requirement to be accessed. A few existed needing DT to be accessed, and almost none had level requirements. It was pretty desolate. It was clear in the few days the game had been launched, there were a few evil players. A few he guessed, he met no one but the city was pretty big. He liked this, it may not have been a bad thing to become an evil god. He was not sure he could handle a bustling player-filled city. Although he guessed he had to find some way to make it seem better to the psychologist or depression would turn into something much worse. He was way past Dr. Carl’s suggestion of finding friends in the game.
He tried to play with the incantations and for now, the results were less than satisfactory. His major accomplishment was Nightmare Bolt. It was a projectile purple bullet but with limited speed and range, making it more useless than the most basic mana bolt of any other RPG. Fortunately, it was supposed to inflict some status effect. He had found others, like nightmare breath, nightmare touch, and fear mark. However, they sucked, not only being limited in effect but also they did not fit his playing style. He usually played mages but that was not the problem. He had 5 DA and just 2 DP and though, not all close combat incantations required DP, it was a disadvantage. Despite the limited incantations he had made, he was sure of that. Furthermore, it was a fact generally acknowledged by those playing VR games, that physical fitness would somehow carry over to the game as an advantage. It could simply be reaction time or better use of skill, if not an outright scan of the body required for some games.
A pro player could and would, choose to try the skills effect and use them even if they seemed useless. However, he had no intention to do so. His understanding of runes progressed well. The game did not make it simple, it was as if encouraging players to try randomly or find a book in the game. When you hear the word rune, you would think they would mean one word. You would assume to have a fire bolt incantation you need a rune for fire and one for bolt, making a fire bolt. However, Holy Wars runes had sometimes multiple meanings, useless meanings and their position in incantation would matter. He had decided he would not focus on this. He would memorize runes and play with them as a puzzle game and see what he could make. Each time he logs out he would feed modeling AIs, the data in hopes of cracking this language. He knew he was treading on thin ground. It was not just the runes. Attempting to crack something like a game-invented language could sometimes have legal repercussions. Usually, bigger companies, would not care at all, especially a former AI company like Philemon which would have AIs specialized for creating languages. Then there was the fact that he had only access to level 1 nightmare runes, not only he would not be able to decode the whole rune language, but even if he had decoded it, he could not use it.
Eventually, the pleasant walk in the desolate city and rune puzzle games were not enough to justify staying in Abyss City. He decided to use the dreaded avatar spell. He ended up in a town named Misthaven.
The game was truly good. Misthaven was a dynamic town. To a gamer, it would appear that quests would generate and end, all the time. Just by wandering the town for a bit, there were lots of things he could think of for gaining influence. However, none of them seemed to interest him enough. There was nothing he could see that could bring him followers or believers.
He had learned in the tutorial while fear could generate influence, Ka and Elisa not only brought him influence and followed his commands but by their worship, the divinity bar regenerated faster. This meant that the best start would have to be the followers. Followers and not believers because he guessed it would be harder for him as an evil god to gain believers. “If you do not want to have nightmares, believe in Nyarlathotep” was not the slogan having a high potential for the faith path. Followers also had the advantage of fast progression. Even if it was disturbing, it was easy for him to turn them into oath-bound followers.
He wandered a bit more around the town. He found out a disturbing fact. There were already players in town. It was easy. Given the divine war and fall of gods, the gods people talked about were players. The merchant guild believed in the god of wealth. There was also the goddess of beauty, the major talk of the town. He could not be sure there were no other players. He thought subtle divinities seemed to have an advantage in gaining believers. Unfortunately, it was not likely, he could replicate such a thing. He did not know the exact effect but he was sure the game somehow had something in store for the evil part of his race.
He was passing the town’s tavern when he heard loud cheers. Despite having zero interest in the adult content of the game, curiosity got the better of him. There it was, the center of the commotion, a young man. He was not an expert by any means but his clothing did not fit. The cheer of the crowd for his first drink confirmed it. He wanted to go out, but this was not the place fit for Elijah. A thought stopped him “Could it be a fit for Nyarlathotep?, Isn’t this place quite suitable for some chaos”. It may not get him believers but there was no harm. Even if this place was real, people who are that drunk, would not remember anything. He did not remember it word by word but he was sure there was a story about an old man driven mad in a tavern to stop a young man from drinking in H.P. Lovecraft''s works. Unfortunately for him, the server was not by any means old, reducing any role-playing tendency that exited him. Still, the strong middle-aged uncle madness may have a better effect.
It was slowly coming back to him. In the story, the reason the old man helped the young man was He was the son of the old flame at the time of his glory. When he was not rotting in a bar, he was a famous talented scholar who had the beauty. After the old man went insane, made a commotion in the bar, and died right there, the boy took his mother’s picture of the corpse.
He was in deep thought about how to replicate the story that he nearly missed the next thing. The boy named Timothy had come from a long scholarly family but wanted to be a knight. He animatedly described the riches he would gain by slaying dragons. Timothy was quite skinny so Elijah thought he may have some supernatural strength. To test that he abandoned his precious role-play and caused a commotion in the bar. It was a simple job even with his original skills but he decided to try Nightmare Bolt. As pathetic as it was, it worked greatly. He was looking forward to it but it was the most disappointing display he had ever seen.
He had never expected Timothy was just bedazzled by the heroic myth. He was sure if the AI had been given data on psychology, he could have been saved from his hero complex. With a few whispers around Timothy escaped safely from the tavern. Elijah stayed behind. The useless skill fear mark turned out to be useful. Fear mark was a skill that marked a target, if he felt fear in the time limit, you would gain influence even if you did not cause it. Marking Timothy made Elijah able to find him later on.
Elijah had been bullied once. He knew perfectly it was a game. That is why Timothy, an intellectual wanting to play cool, and being bullied for it was too real for this. This story needed a dark touch. It was time to play the evil god, Eve believed him to be.