Elijah was searching. It had felt great that his plans were progressing but it was also surprising why he had not met a player in the city. A lot had changed to the simple websites and forums of the game, now they were exploding with new content. He looked at the info available. Players were not all-powerful. Every blessed especially saints and apostles had divine protection. This was discovered by gamers who tried PvP. The divine cities were safe zones, the players had tried the mortal realm and had found out you can not hurt each other as an avatar. You could only do it when the person had manifested. Finally, they had found the answer outside the cities in the divine realm, which was complete freedom. The divine incarnation was different you had no restrictions. There were monsters and exploration grounds outside the city. It seemed the game became the typical RPG game there.
Elijah already knew that much. The reason he did not choose to explore that much outside the city was because there were a lot of monsters and he was alone. He had no incantations purely suited for combat and he knew despite being reluctant in these hunting grounds having a team was much better. Plus though he hated the developers, the condition to be an evil god seemed like abusing NPCs, not player killers. This meant that maybe the city would not be that bad.
These protections may not look much but Elijah could already see this would turn the mortal realm into a strategy game. You could not do much unless through decent he guessed which would mean apostles and saints would be the most valuable pieces you had. Furthermore, a player on the forum had died before having an apostle or saint and had canceled his avatar skill, he had appeared in another mortal city. This meant that these valuable pieces also functioned as an anchor point and if you killed another player’s great blessed, you could somehow kick them out of the mortal city you were in. Now he had the full picture.
This info also had a hidden implication. An implication that brought a grin to his face. The players in his city were probably not pros. He could not be sure but if beauty and wealth were used as combat rather than fast acquisition of believers in the mortal realm, this meant a huge strategic mistake.
There were already famous players showing special types of power that seemed impossible to achieve with level 1 runes. A player named Eris could create a vortex, and one named Odin could make trees sentient. He knew he had to level up fast, even if not to a pro-player level, he was probably low-level. He had spent a lot of time in the tutorial and then this scheme. He was also an evil god so he had to be creative on how to get influence. He was sure a player like the god of wealth, Midas, or Perfume, the god of beauty, despite spending most of the time hunting in the divine realm had earned more influence in the mortal realm alone. Let alone the drops of divine beasts that sometimes gave stats and levels. He had to get serious.
He spent some time seeing if he could decipher runes. He was quite successful. He thought he had grasped the trick even though the AI program had yet to produce the results. He logged in. He finally had found the key runes. He had found essential runes that made the structure and some that were more defined and finally, he had a good vision about nightmare divinity. He divided the incantations he could find into three different varieties. Crowd control incantations worked mostly by fear rune, and attacks containing status effects worked mostly by nightmare rune and conjuration incantations. Conjuration was the most important in some way because he thought it had the potential for direct combat. Conjuring gave a similar ability to a mage/summoner hybrid.
The game allowed for the creation of an incantation list in that you just put the successful results of the incantations you had made.
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Nightmare Bolt(efficient)
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An efficient bolt of nightmare energy. It deals damage based on DA and has a chance to trap the target in a nightmare for a few seconds. It has a medium range and consumes little divinity.
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Nightmare Flame
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Make flames out of nightmare energy and set the target aflame. It deals damage major DA, and minor DP. It inflicts burn status effect.
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Fear Domination
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Dominate a creature through fear and control it for a period of time. There is no particular limit on the number of creatures.
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Paralyze
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Paralyze the target using the green lightning born out of fear.
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Conjure Lesser Veil
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Make a nightmarish veil cover what is underneath. The veil can be anything you imagine but beware it will always appear fearsome.
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Beholder Arms
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An incantation that conjures the tentacles of a beholder. They can be controlled by your mind.
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A Thousand Eye
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Conjure eyes that shoot projectilesThe story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
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Divine Orb(Nightmare)
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A basic incantation of divine energy itself. Use the divine energy to fire an orb to an enemy. Using nightmare divinity this type of divine orb has less damage in return for randomly inflicting a status effect and a reduction of cost.
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Divine Shield
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A basic incantation of divine energy. Create a shield of it.
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The last two were incantations that allowed him to unlock a new skill as well.
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Congratulations Nyarlathotep, Your mastery of divine energy has grown. You have unlocked the skill Divine Sense.
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It was a skill that allowed you to see divine energy. For now, the only usage he knew of the skill was to identify if someone was blessed. The mortal realm with this skill took a new look. Activating the skill your world would become black and white. In this monotonous world, you would see colors on some people. Specifically, he saw three colors in Misthaven. He saw Timothy glowing dark purple, a few merchants dim golden and a few others dim pink. He guessed it was because of the divinity and the blessing extent. It was a useful skill since he now could theoretically find the saints of Midas and Perfume.
This skill had revealed a piece of terrible news. His hidden cult strategy was not going to work well unless he had some way to conceal the believers. This meant the best way for him till he found a foolproof way, was to generate fear using mobility as an advantage. He could use Timothy to cause a calamity here and then tell him to go somewhere else. Like a pilgrim journey but everywhere causing chaos.
He sighed. He was being hasty. This was the beginning of the game. There was no guarantee that the two players who were in the same city had the skill. They did not even care so much right now. They were focused on hunting divine beasts and that gave him an opportunity. He was going to grow the cult fast, uncaring of anyone noticing. He was going to take the city whatever it took even using methods deemed evil then kill their saints. Even if he could not hold the territory for long, he would have leveled up. Maybe upped his myth tier and accessed shops and things that made being hidden a possibility or offered another playing style. Abyss City was for evil gods he could not believe there was no way for them to play this game.
Plus strategic use of the city could prove useful. If he allowed himself to dream, he could make Misthaven openly a stronghold worshiping the evil god Nyarlathotep. He hated being part of a group but there were sometimes there could be advantages. If he had a group now that could even take cities close to each other then he would not fear the reaction of the kingdom.
Suddenly two people called him. They were his brother and sister, he was going to decline but there was nothing evil going on so maybe there would not be a better time. That was when he checked their in-game characters. They were calling him in the game. Their game characters were surprising, to say the least. They both had played evil, one was called Raven the evil goddess of darkness and the other he guessed was Mark played Hastur the evil god of plagues. He sensed something strange. Mark''s name was from the Cthulhu mythos. He could not delay the call any further.
“Hello Mark, Hello Delilah”
“Hello Elijah or better Nyarlathotep the evil god of nightmares, when were you going to tell me you were playing evil?” said Mark giving him a headache. He, for a second, had forgotten that they had seen his character too.
“Don’t worry it was not such a surprise we watched your game play” said Deli helpfully.
“My gameplay but why would you? How did you even get the idea?”
“Hey I am not stupid I knew you were lying. You? Happy?! Could it be any more obvious?” said Deli
“So Nyarlathotep what city are you in?” said Mike using a character name.
“Misthaven but why do you ask?”
“Simple we want to play with you. I want us to be an evil pantheon.”
“An evil pantheon where is this coming from? Is it even possible?”
“Of course. This game has a guild system too but it is for gods so Pantheon. I should probably tell you before you figure this out yourself. Mother wants to start a pro team. When I saw you I decided how much fun you were having playing evil. I thought it would not be a bad idea to make a mostly friends and family guild ourselves. I would convince Mother that an evil pantheon has its selling potential”
"I don''t understand you mean she was going to use us as a power move to keep the gaming team she is building ours? Why would she do that? And more than that why would you go out of your way like that Mike? You could have easily played into her fantasies a little while and used your studies to ditch her”
“I could not help it you seemed to enjoy something. I never see you enjoying things and Can you not make this sound like a political company situation? The idea had just come to Mother. She has yet to create the team. She just wants us to have a good future. You may think you are an outsider but you are not, you are family.”
"A total coincidence I am sure. Mike, did Mother tell you before I took the term off?"
"No. Before you ask Yes I understand how that sounds and I know I had suggested this idea and got rejected but it is because of Holy Wars not what you think"
Despite not for a second thinking his mother was doing this out of the love in her heart, Elijah was touched by MIke''s effort.
"What made you decide to use a Lovecraftian name though?"
"I saw you already chose Nyarlathotep as your theme. I wanted to have something close"
“He is lying, I saw how much he was mesmerized by evil you. I was too. Your special playstyle would make you a celebrity in no time. We had agreed to go with your theme but he was supposed to roleplay the one with mist powers” said Deli
He could see on Mike''s character''s face he enjoyed this.
"You mean Magnum Innominandum, the nameless mist."
"That no matter how much I wanted I could not convince myself to name my character nameless," said Mike
"If he was supposed to be the nameless mist, Oh, Now I understand, So that is why you are the goddess of darkness?"
"Yes darkness suits me right," said Deli
"Yes it does, it truly does" Elijah was not lying. Delilah always restricted so much of herself. It was not like darkness suited her per se, more that she seemed more free.
“How do you want to come to Misthaven”
“The first time you just use the avatar skill. You choose by imagining the town,” said Mike
“Oh what divine city are you in,” said Deli
“Abyss City” replied Elijah
Elijah had a smile on his face. He had expected he had to deal with a hardcore strategy game but now this meant not only he could hunt in Abyss City he also could make a grand strategy. He was feeling pathetic planning to overtake a city. He had the feeling of destroying a village in the tutorial and a city in the game was too much of a linear progression.
“Wait don’t come to Misthaven”
“Why? You don’t want us there? Lone wolf till the end” said Deli in surprise.
“No I know that look what kind of scheme you are making,” said Mike
“Nothing I just think I should not have a problem taking this city if Raven can take over white valley city and you can take Scarlet City we could have the west of the kingdom to ourselves”
“How do you want to take over a city alone? Even if we are gods in this game we are low-leveled and there are other players how do you want to do that ” said Mike.
So Elijah explained step by step his plans to take over Misthaven. He was so engrossed in details that he did not notice the faces his brother and sister were making.