Chapter 180 "Afu Is Enshrined as a God, Roger Makes a Move"
At this moment, we must express our gratitude for the heavyweight support given by the Great Powers.
They provided funding and resources, as well as assisting with recruitment. Such noble internationalism!
Currently, the user base for the virtual space in the Eternal Night World is around five hundred million, and the number of active users is particularly high.
On this particular night, the number of users online simultaneously broke the one hundred million mark.
On Earth, such data would certainly be scrutinized for any inaccuracies. Boosting the numbers of registered and active users online at the same time has different levels of complexity.
However, since virtual space entertainment has no competitors in the Eternal Night World and has irreplaceable stimulation, it has gradually cultivated a growing dependency among its users.
The Dreadnought Space that the Empire is currently using is relatively better. There are daily restrictions on actual online time, and various transaction rules exist internally. Stimuli related to basic needs like food, clothing, and housing must be purchased. As for sexual arousal, there are added age, frequency, and additional conditions, all of which are in place to prevent users from becoming addicted.
At the same time, the Dreadnought Space also fulfills functions of learning and information exchange, requiring users to guarantee enough time spent on study and not just pure entertainment.
This is somewhat akin to mandatory online courses, but with stricter monitoring and no room for slacking off, in addition to testing to verify absorption efficiency.
The entertainment time of each day can only be unlocked if the curriculum standards are met.
The good news is that the Empire has meticulously prepared these courses with only the most outstanding teachers, ensuring the effectiveness of recording and absorption, which is completely different from some lousy teachers on Earth who simply read off slides.
Attendees can also rate the course at the same time. If the negative ratings reach a certain level or test scores remain consistently low, the teacher must be replaced.
The Education Minister of the Empire has pledged to reduce the rate of young illiteracy in the Empire to around 20% within three years, with the fearless space being an important means to achieve this.
Compared to teachers on Earth who hold a secure job and can get away relatively easily with not teaching anything useful in class, while making money through extracurricular activities, teachers in the Empire cannot afford to do so.
Every cultural education and skills improvement course is meticulously prepared and reviewed by the Empress of Eternal Night, in hopes of truly raising the cultural level of the Empire.
Under various restrictions, although the fearless space still possesses revolutionary appeal, its torturous nature also exists, making it less addicting.
However, the same cannot be said for the Blissful Illusion Realm.
It exists solely for the purpose of controlling people by the great powers, with various functions being customized in collaboration with the Terra Kingdom, catering tasteless and excessive sensory stimulation.
During enjoyment, they would be served with nutritious but tasteless meals made from special ingredients through mass production, with costs much lower than regular food - this is also one of Terra Kingdom's major export products.
In such a usage environment, the users on the side of the Column Powers have far greater dependence on the Paradise Illusion than the Empire people. For many, the only hope during hard work is to enter the Paradise Illusion and escape from life.
Heavy production, the forced maintenance of a healthy body, and then the false satisfaction of life stimulation. The people of the Column Powers seem to be diligent labor machines, and production efficiency has greatly increased for a while.
However, in the long run, their creativity and combat effectiveness will greatly decline, and their thinking ability will suffer.
And one more thing, the satisfaction brought by relying on the Paradise Illusion and the faith in the gods is much less.
The beautiful future promised to believers by the teachings of the gods could not be realized, and they devoutly pray while life is still miserable.
But in the Paradise Illusion, they can have delicious food, luxurious houses, beautiful women, and can freely kill super-strong monsters, directly satisfying all their fantasies--
By comparison, what are Gods? Is the Paradise Illusion not fun?
There are churches opposing the widespread use of the Paradise Illusion, but they are met with the collective opposition of nobles.
Many formerly devout believers are also unwilling to give up the use of the Paradise Illusion, leaving the church in an awkward situation.
The rulers are those whom they supported, and now that they have found it simple to control the population that used to cause trouble by means of the ecstatic illusion, all sorts of investments have significantly decreased. How could they possibly give up such an effective tool?
The originally incompatible powers of the monarchy and the divine had internal differences in their visions of paradise. Externally, with the decline of the Green Vines Empire threat, the contradiction between the two became more pronounced, entering a hidden struggle stage.
Cases where fanatics destroyed the transmission nodes of paradise visions and triggered conflicts between the lower classes and the church kept increasing.
For those downtrodden people, life was already very hard. Paradise visions were their last comfort and whoever tries to take it away will face their wrath!
The intake of fortified meals has greatly improved their physical condition and increased their combat abilities.
Paradise visions were originally a poisoned chalice prepared by the Green Vines Empire for dominating other nations. Roger has always been cautious of its effects on mental stimuli, and has always limited the Empire citizens' access to and consumption of the internet.
However, other nations had not experienced similar situations. They only saw a massive decrease in the cost of governance and increase in productivity after assigning their labor force to the virtual space, just like a life-saving straw that they eagerly grasped.
Therefore, even with resistance from the church, during the late hours of the night, all nations still had a rapidly increasing number of active users engaging in paradise visions. If the effectiveness of enhancing slave work enthusiasm declines, their immediate response is to hope that the Terra Kingdom can intensify its research and development on a new generation of totemic wristbands for more realistic sensory stimulation.
Thus, despite the resistance from the church, the number of active paradise visions users in all nations during the late hours of the night was still rapidly increasing.
In this case, with the launch of a specific timed event for redeemable rewards, Roger achieved his target of one hundred million active users.
The Chapter of Imbalance, a relatively small laboratory, the database of the wizard camp maintenance team, suddenly disappeared, and the entire website lost connection.
Soon they confirmed the reason: Afu was in an extremely unstable state and the energy reaction in his body sharply increased.
They sounded the alarm and Frankenstein, the Queen of Eternal Night, Roger, and the others rushed to the scene.
No one had found a solution yet, but Afu didn't seem to be in mortal danger, which brought some peace of mind.
When the Queen of Eternal Night saw Roger's pensive expression, she understood immediately.
"Lord Roger, please explain. This should be your plan, right?" The Queen of Eternal Night pinched his arm softly.
She didn't understand when this guy became so mysterious, stealing away her attention with his incomprehensible actions.
Roger chuckled lightly. "Everyone, don't worry. Afu's performance should be the Ceremony of Bestowing Divinity, triggered by the virtual space's online users exceeding one hundred million."
"Bestowing divinity?" Everyone looked at Xiao Jinse with different expressions.
The road to bestowing divinity was originally a universal secret, but since the rise of the Seven Gods, they sealed away the information related to it. Only scraps of information could be found in ancient classics, but it had been many years since anyone successfully obtained a bestowed divinity.
Before this, they thought Afu was absorbing the emotions of the magic camp, like a primitive belief, but it was at most the level of totem worship, still far away from bestowing divinity.
Roger chuckled and said, "I don't know the specifics, but Afu has access to someone who understands how to harness the power of belief in the Seven Gods. With his intelligence, it shouldn't be difficult for him to reverse-engineer the most basic ritual of god sealing."
"Shana..." The Eternal Night Queen immediately reacted.
Roger sent Afu to Shana's side, not just to keep them together but to play the next move in a larger game.
Although they only obtained the most primitive god-sealing ritual, which meant it was a raw and dangerous method with no optimization, it also wasted a lot of belief power.
Therefore, Roger prepared one hundred million online users for him, just to ensure Afu's success and safety with enough power of belief.
With all the necessary conditions in place, Afu's god sealing suddenly triggered and ended smoothly.
Afu had awakened, and his appearance had not changed at all; only his plump little hand was raised, with a small silver cross engraved on the back.
Divine Attribute: Freedom.
Many experienced wizards naturally interpreted this information.
"Is this area selected for him by Lord Charles? It seems rather obscure, what is the significance of it?"
Frankenstein asked curiously.
In theory, Eris Worm is the true creator of virtual space. As the strongest Eris Worm, Afu can become powerful at the fastest rate if he is worshipped with "entertainment" and "enjoyment" as the basis.
God is composed of three aspects: divinity, godhead, and the divine realm.
Divinity is the foundation of becoming a god, and the essence that sets gods apart from mere mortals. Divine power is produced from divinity.
Godhead is the container of divinity, which also serves as a supercomputer. It facilitates the management of the relationship between the gods and their followers.
The divine realm is the power domain that a god presides over, which varies from one another and is incompatible. Gods in the same or adjacent domains will compete with each other until only one ruler remains.
Therefore, the domains governed by the seven gods are different from one another, and they don't want new gods to emerge, which can make them stronger.
A divine realm that is compatible with oneself and one's followers and has a sufficient number of followers can greatly accelerate the god's rise to power.
Therefore, Afu chooses "freedom" as his core domain, which seems irrelevant.
Afu felt a bit uncomfortable under the gaze of so many wizards who seemed to want to dismantle him, and subconsciously hid behind Roger.
The empire has never captured a living deity before, let alone an intact newborn, so the sorcerers naturally want to research its existence seriously.
We solemnly promise not to slice it.
Roger patted Afu's head and looked at the Eternal Night Empress. "I need only members with level one authorization in this room."
Within the Secret Magic Society, level of authorization serves as the fundamental division, where the Eternal Night Empress is the only level zero, and the advisors are level one.
According to the Empress' previous order, Roger has been promoted to level one, alongside some research contributors with extra merits.
The Eternal Night Empress agreed with Roger's request, and soon, most of the sorcerers left, leaving less than ten people in the room.
It was only then that Roger began to explain, "This is for the next layout. Freedom is the true essence of the pursuit in virtual space. Many characteristics brought by this domain can secretly spread Afu's faith in the multidimensional universe."
"Do you want to start a war of faith with the gods directly? That would kill Afu." The Eternal Night Empress shook her head, disagreeing with Roger's plan.
If the war for faith begins, they can hide behind, but Afu will be the first to face the pressure of the gods.
Roger smiled, "No, I'm not seizing faith. I'm just using the means given by faith to plant the seed of rebellion in the multidimensional universe."
Faced with the perplexed stares, he earnestly stated, "We can search for young talents with potential in the multiverse, not to directly make them believe in Afu, but to let them log into a special virtual space, accept missions, gain rewards, quickly become stronger, and establish their own influences."
"I suggest calling this special virtual space - the System."
As he spoke, everyone pondered over and understood the intention behind his layout.
Cultivate strong fighters to confront the gods in more worlds, then guide them to establish their own influences and fight to protect their worlds.
The Eternal Night World will provide further support according to the situation or join the war directly.
This is also a proxy war, except that the scope is not the surrounding areas, but distant planes that exceed normal support measures.
It is made simpler through the mystery of the gods.
Spreading the word of the dangers a certain belief god poses through normal channels is not only ineffective but also counterproductive.
Such worlds are already passively waiting for the judgment of the gods, and even if their own world is punished, they have no power to resist.
This is corruption that begins from the upper echelons. Worlds like the Eternal Night World, where power is in chaos, and rulers like the Eternal Night Queen are extremely rare.
The true strong have surpassed the constraints of the planes, and the determination to fight to the death for a world remains unknown.
Then how can we be certain that the group of people at the top of the pyramid have not been targeted by the Seven Gods and bought off?
As the saying goes, "one knows others by their appearance, but not their heart". The reserves of the Seven Gods are too frightful. It is nearly impossible to confirm their involvement with other planes through their previous contact.
The ruling class has given up. In order to establish resistance against the Seven Gods in those worlds, the only hopeful method is to start with the grassroots level, cultivate completely innocent souls from the beginning, and let them detest the existence of the gods.
However, the normal way of cultivating and growing takes an incredibly long time. Only by using cheat codes can these chosen fighters catch up to the battle.
This is why Roger had become a divine being, and then play the role of the system's source of inspiration.
Isn't the system just another form of cheat codes?
Face to face with the gods, they are like sewer rats. Opportunity only comes to those who secretly develop and grow.
There was a group of sons of fortune secretly cultivated for planes that may be targeted by the Seven Gods. As long as one of them grows up and establishes a new force, it can create trouble for the Seven Gods' camp in the Eternal night world.
The longer it takes for the final showdown to arrive, the more time the empire has to develop.
This is the plan he had previously forgotten, which he can now name as the Son of the System.
Of course, it can also be called the overturned fish plan, which aims to lay as many eggs as possible, and even grow up a few in the end...
As long as enough time is obtained, Roger has another arrangement for the Eternal Night world's local scene:
The Wanderer Plan!
Through the Son of the System program, he can strive to gain time and acquire intelligence about the Seven Gods.
If it is confirmed that the enemy is truely invincible, then during this period, the Empire should be able to fully master the entire world through various means.
Then they can immediately reinforce the world, activate the escape program, enter the star realm, and make it impossible for the Seven Gods to find them.
After expressing all his thoughts, Roger looked towards the Queen of Eternal Night.
His previous arrangements could be considered as experimental projects, but their execution cannot continue without the Queen's decision whether to invest resources.
