by A P Gore
An energy undulation appeared from the alter, and suddenly a white and dark orb floated in front of Jon. It had a weird structure, like someone had mixed dark and light energy particles, but they didn’t mix to form gray. It even had an aroma of an unknown entity that emitted huge pressure on Jon’s mind.
“Jon, you’ve completed my Divine Quest, and I bestow my blessings upon you.”
System:
Divine Quest Path of Darkness and Light I Completed.
Reward: 10000 (20000/2), EXP. A discussion with the Lesser God of Darkness and Light.
A white light descended on Jon, marking his ascension to level 10. A cheerful smile emerged on his face, but at the same time his heart cried in pain. If it wasn’t for the stupid Divine Punishment, he would have reached level 12 or 13—sorry, level 15 if he considered the level reduction because of the stupid gods.
Those f-ing gods of light and darkness. He cursed inside his mind but maintained a smile on his face.
Dropping on his knees, he bent in front of the light. Miraha had told him to do this, so why not? His pride didn’t matter. After all, it was a digital god.
“Morpheus, this lowly player offers his devotion to you.”
A black and white light shot from the energy sphere and enveloped Jon and then vanished.
The next moment, Jon found himself in his respawn room.
A man with a long beard and a white suit that looked similar to what Baltazar wore appeared across the table, sitting in a black leather recliner. “This is good.” His deep gray eyes scanned the whole room. “Can you order a MacD burger for me?”
Jon shook his head, unable to comprehend what was happening. “Morpheus?”
The bearded man chuckled. “No, no, I’m not Morpheus but his Grand Priest, Mathial. Call me Mat if you want to, but order a burger for me first.” He nearly pleaded.
Though he understood nothing, Jon still ordered two MacD burgers, pasta in white sauce, and two coffees from Starbugs. “Please, Grand Priest.” He waved at the food on the table.
The man pounced on the burger like he hadn’t eaten in decades. “So nice. Just call me Mat, man. It’s convenient, and thanks for the coffee. Actually, I’d prefer a chai latte. Can you order that?”
Who the heck was this man? Shrugging, Jon ordered a chai latte from Starbugs.
For the next five minutes, Mat continued eating and sipping his tea. He even asked for two more burgers. While Mat ate his fill, Jon sipped on the best coffee in the world. With the aroma and taste of the coffee, his resolve to find the coffee tree in the game world deepened tenfold.
“Okay. Let’s talk.” Mat burped and slapped his hands on the table, shaking it a little. “So, what do you want?”
Jon put down his cup and stared into the gray eyes of the man across him. He sure looked powerful, as he gave off the same undulation as the black and white energy sphere, but he wasn’t the god Morpheus. So, why was he here?
“Grand Priest, I thought I’d be speaking with the god Morpheus.”
Mat shook his head. “He’s been sleeping for the last two thousand years. A mere temple isn’t enough to wake him. You need to find a Seed of God to rouse him from slumber.”
System: Divine quest alert.
Path of Darkness and Light II
Find a Seed of God to awake the God of Darkness and Light Morpheus from his deep slumber.
Class: Divine
Reward: unknown.
“What?” Jon stared at the divine quest alert. “Why don’t I have an option to accept or decline?”
Mat chuckled, his beard moving with his mouth. A few pieces of bread stuck in his long beard, and that irritated Jon. “Divine quests are mandatory, man. You can’t decline or accept them.”
“So, Miraha cheated me?” A surge of hatred and anger ran amok through his veins, bringing tears to his eyes. He hated cheating, and he had killed a person for the same reason.
Memories of Kurush and his disgusting ways came crashing back to him. Even after so many years, he didn’t regret killing that pest. The world had only benefited from his actions.
“No, she didn’t. And I can undo your Death Aura. Isn’t that why you devoted the temple to the god Morpheus?”
“Can you?” Jon asked. This stupid death aura was the thorn in his teeth.
“Of course, I can. But you have to gain one thousand followers for our god.”
“A thousand?” Was he mad?
“Yes.”
System: Quest alert.
Banish the Death Aura
Class: Unique
Find and convert 1000 people to follow God Morpheus.
Reward: Banish the Death Aura. EXP: 25000.
Jon brushed his fingers against the now cold coffee cup. The reward, 25k EXP. That was huge. “But this will take me a long time. I’m pressed with this weight right now. Can’t you banish this aura first, and then I’ll help you?”
Mat scratched his beard. “That... let’s do this. I’ll offer you a blessing that will enhance your reduced stats by 25%, and once you complete the quest, I’ll lift the death aura. How does that sound?”
Jon nodded. Something was better than nothing.
“And I can see you haven’t received your Sentient skills yet. How much magic power did you devote to the game when you signed the contract?”
Jon’s brows drew together. “Sentient skills? Magic power?” What was this man talking about?
Chapter 20
Jon sipped the divine brown liquid of Starbugs as Mat explained Sentient skills to him. Seeing the bearded grand priest behaving like this, Jon had a premonition about this man.
“A Sentient skill is a special divine skill every player has access to,” Mat said, sipping his third chai latte. “It’s a skill above the all other skills.”
“But what does it have to do with magic power?” In the real world, every person had an innate magic power, and they could use it to cast spells. Jon was himself a level 5 fire mage.
“When you join the game, a portion of your magic power is used by the game for its own purposes. The more power you allow the game to use, the more benefit you gain in terms of Sentient skills.” Mat tapped on the rim of his paper cup. The cup had retained everything from the real world, like the design, slightly rough texture, and color palette. “All Sentient skills are different, but each has a maximum cast rate of once in a day. The skills you got would be written in your contract.”
Jon stroked his chin, trying to remember his contract. Suddenly a bunch of papers appeared on the table. They were his contract.
“Let me see.” Mat picked up the papers and scanned through them. “Oh, you’re Baltazar’s bitch.”
Jon’s brows arched into a question.
“I mean, the worker for his division. That’s why you didn’t get a Sentient skill.” Suddenly his eyes gaze jumped to Jon. “But... how did you get a class?”
That clenched it. Mat wasn’t an NPC. His behavior was too absurd for an NPC.
“Do you also work for Laxania?”
“No. I don’t work for that shady organization. I work for Taxen.”
“Taxen.” Jon gasped. “You mean the weapon creation organization that annihilated planet S23?”
Mat nodded. Strangely, he had no expression on his face.
Taxen was a huge organization that spread across a slew of human planets. They were overlords of many planetary systems as they held the most destructive magi-tech weapons. But them coming to the game? It made little sense.
“I know your question, but let’s not talk about it. The gist of it is, most of the grand priests are humans, and gods...” His face darkened like he was holding a huge secret inside. “Never mind.”
“What?”
“You can rest assured. No player can reach the god level or grand priest level just because he is from some company. Even Laxania people have to grind levels to get small numbers of slots in the Realm of Gods. It’s difficult, man. I’m grinding for 5...” He bit his tongue and a d
ead silence spread across the room.
“What’s your level, then?”
A strange smile covered Mat’s face. “Classified information. Only level 150+ players have access to that.” He sipped more of his tea. “Anyway, let’s come back to the subject at hand. Per your contract, you dedicated seventy-five percent of your magic power to the game, so you get two Sentient skills. Earlier, you had no class, so you didn’t have access to the Sentient skills, but now you do.”
A list of skills appeared in front of Jon. There were dozens of them, but Jon took his time and narrowed them down to two skills.
Path of Growth
Class: Sentient
Call upon the Sentient power to grow one plant to 60% of their maximum growth potential.
Cooldown: 15 days
Cause of Soul
Required: Level 20
Class: Sentient
Call upon the Sentient power to double your soul gain/soul heal for 12 hours.
Cooldown: 1 day
After pondering for nearly fifteen minutes, Jon chose these two. It was a difficult choice as he had to choose between passion and power/utility.
Many skills had immense offensive power, like Latent Fireball which had a hundred times the power of a level 1 fireball. It could be his one-kill skill. A few others would have helped in the growth of his village, like Path of Building which could improve building construction time by 50% for 12 hours. Both had their merits and a use in his future development.
However, in the end, he went with his passion and chose Path of Growth. Even in real life, he’d invested heavily in studying hybrid plants and their life cycle, but he was restricted because of the maturity cycle of such plants. Many would take months, or even years, to mature, and if the experiment failed, he would have to start from scratch. However, in the game that wouldn’t be an issue with this skill.
As for the other skill, Cause of Soul, he chose it because of his mutated vines. After seeing the power of Vine of Darkness, he became immensely interested in the power of these vines and their soul devouring abilities. With this skill, he could experiment on them.
System:
You have learned Path of Growth, Cause of Soul (Disabled) and Intrinsic Vision Sentient skills.
“You got three?” Mat’s gaze changed into an envious one. “Your class. Interesting choice of the first class. I never knew it would work on Sentient skills as well. And I like your choices too. Intrinsic Vision, that’s a godly skill, and the Cause of Soul too.” He looked Jon up and down. “Now, are you interested in casting the forbidden spell again?”
Jon was distracted by the third skill when he picked up on the word forbidden spell and godly skill.
Intrinsic Vision
Class: Sentient
Use your vision to see through everything that’s unknown to you. Success chance: 50%
Cooldown: 1 day
At face value, it looked useless, but upon hearing Mat’s words he raised his neck. “Forbidden spell... is there a way to avoid Divine Punishment?”
“Yes, there is. Actually, if you keep using your nasty darkness spell, you won’t receive any more punishment as you already have the death aura. Use it freely until I lift your curse.”
“And after that?” Jon’s eyes shone with a strange light. That one spell, Vine of Darkness, was enough to spread fear among the beast tide. That would be his trump card in any battle. That way, he wouldn’t need to focus on useless offensive spells anymore.
Pressing his palms on the table, Mat rose from his recliner. “Let’s keep something for the future. I bid you goodbye, Jon.” Light shot from his palm and covered Jon for a moment.
System: Mathial has blessed you with Bliss of Morpheus.
Bliss of Morpheus: All stats are increased by 25%. Works on overall stats.
The next moment, Jon found himself in the temple, awe in his eyes. The temple had drastically changed.
Chapter 21
White and dark intertwined throughout the temple, forming an illustration of sea. White represented the skies, and black represented the land. A black and white sun hung on the ceiling, spreading a strange gray light over the whole temple.
Taking a deep breath, Jon glanced at the altar. A handsome man with a small goatee sat on the altar. Jon would have taken him for a real person if not for his black body and white clothes.
On closer inspection, the man did have a handsome face, but not as handsome as Jon’s own face.
“God Morpheus.” Jon bowed in front of the statue. Then, turning away, he walked out of the temple and found all his villagers gathered outside.
Grinning at them, he waved them all in to check the temple out from inside. With whispers, one by one, everyone entered it.
It was time to allocate his stat points for level 10. This time he brought his Intelligence to 10 and put the remaining point in Wisdom. With the Bliss of Morpheus, his stats looked a little better. Next time, he would get his Charisma to 9 points. He had no control over the Chance attribute. Only game could improve it.
Name: Jon (Level 10)
Class: Arch Druid
Second Class: Formationist
Stats:
Strength 23
Dexterity 10
Constitution 27
Intelligence 10
Wisdom 52
Chance 2
Charisma 4
Health 558/745 (187 reserved)
Stamina 326/435 (12.29/s) (109 reserved)
Mana 75/100 (6/s) (25 reserved)
Spirit 390/520 (32.4/s) (130 reserved)
Stat points available: 0
Skill points available: 14
Experience: 56500/64000
Skills:
Sentient Skills:
Path of Growth
Cause of Soul (Disabled)
Intrinsic Vision
After the stat point allocation, Jon walked back to his hut and pulled a green apple from his Bag of Holding. While walking through the first field of the God’s Garden, he had found one strange looking apple tree and had plucked this fruit from it. The fruit smelled like a top-level delicacy from the real world. If it wasn’t for his perception not working on the fruit, he would have checked and eaten it long ago.
Today it would act as a test subject for him.
First, he wanted to try his Intrinsic Vision. Mat’s words gave him the feeling that it was a useful spell for such things. He also wanted to use his Path of Growth on its seeds. Though the cooldown was 15 days, he wanted to test the effects on something. What else would be better than a fruit from a god’s garden?
Cutting the fist-sized apple in half, Jon plucked few seeds out of it.
Intrinsic Vision.
A divine light surrounded the apple seeds and then some text appeared in Jon’s vision. It differed from the normal perception prompt which only offered basic information.
Apple Seed of Kataja
Class: Unique
Seed of a tree raised from the blood of Kataja the forest god. The tree requires utmost care as a seedling and only grows in places where Mana density is high. The tree nourishes the land it grows on and has a chance to produce a Wisdom Apple at full growth. Only two Wisdom Apples will bloom on this tree in its whole lifetime. The normal apples grown from the tree are immensely useful for beings learning the art of mana.
Unique Property: Perception doesn’t work on the tree nor the apples produced by it, as Kataja has forbidden anyone using the skill of perception or higher tier perception skills in his domain.
System: Congratulations, you have used your innate Sentient skill on a divine item. You have gathered the innate knowledge of a tree produced by a god.
Herbalism +4
Perception +4
Wow! This was awesome. A unique tree? The god had raised a unique tree in his garden. The gods were truly majestic personalities. With that thought, his greed to unlock other fields in the God’s Garden increased tenfold. What other surprises did those fields hold? Specially the crop p
lanted in the field 1. Next day, he would go over that crop and use his Intrinsic Vision on it.
Now where should he plant this? If the God’s Garden didn’t have a similar tree, he would have planted it there, but it already had one. The second option was farm #45, his own farm, but it was quite close to the walls of the village. Though the tree prevented perception cast, what if someone ate the fruit and discovered its properties?
No, that wouldn’t work.
It had to be a place in the village’s heart.
Near the temple. Farm #1.
He sent a quick message to Dave, the owner of the farm #1, asking him to meet at the temple. As a village lord, he could communicate with any villager through the system, otherwise he had to add them to his friends list, and that too only worked for a certain distance.
When he got back to the temple, Dave was already there.
“Lord, what can I do for you?” Dave had a smile on his face.
Jon eyed the happy man. “What made you so happy?”
The man beamed with joy. “You, of course. With your spells, my crops have grown to Good quality, and after our visit to the strange land, earth elementals are not wreaking havoc in my field anymore. And then Grimish just told me that my extra crop sold for one gold. Can you believe it, one gold?” He was grinning like he had won the lottery.
“It’s just one gold, friend. What’s there to be happy about?”
Dave’s smile widened. “Lord, you know I’ll go back to the real world in one year. By that time, I’ll have forty-eight gold, and once I convert the gold to real money, I’ll be almost rich on my planet.”
“True.” Jon nodded. He had almost forgotten about this. The gold in game sold for much better value in real world currency—chips. For poor people, that would be a lot of money.
Jon patted the old man’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, friend. You’ll produce at least ten times that money in the next year. Consider this my farewell present to you?” Jon had many plans for his farmers. Weed was just a junk crop. He had plans for better crops. Even the herb market fell in his purview.
“Really?” Dave nearly teared up. For convicts like him, money was always an issue, and if the person belonged to a poor family, it turned into a huge factor affecting their families. If it wasn’t for Jon’s contract with Baltazar, Kiara would have spent the next twenty to thirty years doing odd jobs to earn money, and the Mage Academy would have remained a distant dream.
