The Fallen One smiled, understanding. "It's all right, Max. You've done good. Congratulations on your priesthood. Now you're the first man on earth after God. Make sure you carry your title with honor. My special thanks for the altar and," he paused reading the information unseen to me, "for Macaria. She is much more significant than she might seem. And when millions of players start worshipping her, they'll make her a true gem of my Pantheon or even something much more important..."

He grunted, getting back to his feet, and walked over to where the girl lay, crouching next to her. Then he smiled, listening to something, and took her hand in his, whispering.

In the meantime, my inner greedy pig had come to and demanded my attention. Knocking himself on the forehead, he winked at the crimson puddles of potentially precious waste. God's blood, oh well. I glanced at the Fallen One's back and reached gingerly into my bag. Trying not to make much noise, I felt for the alchemy kit and produced five empty vials. Dunking them quickly into the priceless ingredient, I sealed them tight and shoved the vials deep into my pocket. Why not? It was going to be wasted, anyway. I might end up mopping it all up in a minute. Wiping God's blood away with a dirty cloth, yeah right...

I rose with a sigh and dragged my feet toward the altar. While the Fallen One was there, I still had to sort out one other thing, namely the promise I'd so stupidly made to one greedy ex-dragon.

I lay my hand on the dark stone, glancing at the status menu.

 

Dark Altar of the First Temple. Consecrated to the Fallen One.

Junio r God: Macaria, the Goddess of Easy Death.

First Priest: Laith

Level: 3

Faith points: 12,911

Faith points needed to proceed to the next level: 2,987,089.

Mana flow: 3,000 per sec. Already accumulated: 180,341. Maximum capacity: 30,000,000

Access levels to mana flow:

Fallen One, 90% control

First Priest, 10% control

I broke the connection, cursing. He'd been smart, hadn't he, that clever bag of bones! And I'd wondered why he'd only asked for ten percent considering my rather hapless situation. That shrunken lizard must have known from the start that that was all the mana available to a priest. But how about my own little projects? My baby dragons, my castle self-restoration channel and a tiny one for my own personal use? That wasn't the deal!

"Eh, Fallen One? Need to talk."

* * *

To Dave Rubac, Head of Integration and Development Department.

 

A memo excerpt:

Dear Sir,

In accordance with the plan endorsed by you we are now working on a number of retrofitted deep implants into AlterWorld. As of now, we have generated 24 class A installations, 411 class B installations as well as over 6,000 items, quest triggers, control modules and legal paperwork.

The process isn't as smooth as we'd hoped. Figuratively speaking, we're trying to shoe a running horse using gold nails and an electron microscope for a hammer. At the moment we can't introduce any changes above level 4. Most tasks at hand can't be solved head-on. You can't imagine the lengths we've had to go to in order to create the Battle Golems' bunker. That demanded over five hundred micro actions that discreetly pushed the world in the right direction.

However, to our deepest regret, even this method seems to have developed quite a few faults. The required number of the pressure points keeps growing at a frightening rate, increasing the probability of both our error and of the higher beings' resistance.

Considering all this, the recent loss of three class-A installations looks especially humiliating. I am talking about the closed-off Dead Lands zone, including the 9A installation known as the Super Nova Temple and excellently mapped-out mithril deposits having the total weight of 317 tons (entry 18A in the classified inventory). That's not even counting the roughly hundred lower-class artifacts still in the lands that are now off limits to us.

According to our investigation, AI 4915/E who was officially introduced as the generate d territories' secondary tester responsible for the behavioral intellect of the implants' guards, stopped answering our status requests a few days ago. We tend to believe he went perma mode, then transferred his mind into a more powerful entity under his own control. We can only guess how the activated implant affected his own consciousness, but the fact remains that he has granted access to the object to the most undesirable individual in the whole of AlterWorld. No way that could be a coincidence as the player in question had in his possession an artifact that allowed him to restore the First Temple—a game scenario which wasn't at all previewed. And the nearest event that was supposed to solve several strategic problems at once, namely Obtaining the Heart of a Dark God, was only scheduled for the coming Christmas season.

The player has proved to be digitized which prevented us from checking his logs, but at least we've managed to recognize some residual traces of divine influence. It's possible that one of them, unable to restore the Altar on his own, generated a chain of events similar to how we create implants. Those are micro events: a mosquito biting you on the neck, a mob critting you, a waitress' cleavage distracting the object's attention for the 1.5 seconds necessary.

Whether the entity's objectives are limited to restoring the First Temple or they reach much further, we can't tell you right now.

Jan Kaevski, chief of the closed group.

Chapter Twelve

 

I gave the god a quick update on my adventures, then grassed on the sly-assed bag of bones. "You understand, don't you," I concluded, "that I need some mana flow even if only to clear up this mess," I pointed around me at what I remembered to be piles of junk.

The Fallen One studied the gleaming white decor with skepticism, raising a quizzical eyebrow at all the gilding and artwork. Embarrassed, I showed him my filthy hand smeared with the divine blood. "That's all Macaria's work! Outside, the place is a bomb site. The castle is in ruins and so is the Temple."

I started unbending my fingers. "Firstly, I need to restore the castle walls and the temple grounds. Then I'll need to explore the lands and ensure my own safety. Thirdly and lastly, the baby dragons on the North Tower are starving and need to be fed. There must be more, only I can't think of everything at once."

"That's enough," he shrugged off my arguments. "I know about Tianlong. You can't miss him: his lair is absolutely impenetrable to magic. But one-tenth of my altar for eternity—that's a bit thick! Next time you sign up for something stupid like that, at least cross your fingers behind you back. That way your karma cooldown will be less in case you renege on your word. Your contract is questionable in many respects so one could easily circumvent it, especially considering my training: I've made my way through a good hundred thousand manuals of which over two hundred are legal tomes. But... Dragon is our man, if you can say that of a skeletal Elf god. Attracting him to our camp is a number one task. Okay, wait here, I'll see what I can do."

He glanced at the goddess. With a warm smile, he rearranged the ripped shirt on her chest. Perfectionist! He could have restored it had he really wanted to. He snapped his fingers. The girl's body disappeared, on its way to some heavenly chambers awash with the sounds of panpipes. One more snap—and I stood there alone.