Wade considered everything he knew.

  First, the invader he'd beat up had been Nathir. Or at least not a human. The weird name the System reported as being eliminated was very much not human.

  But that wasn't what tipped Wade off.

  Not knowing memes was plausible, THE GAME had yanked people from all walks of life, there's certainly plenty of normies running around without any internet knowledge.

  And just speaking Nathir, well that was odd but some boon or gained item could be the reason for it.

  It's the sword skills that told Wade something was wrong.

  The skill in using a blade wasn't something that came with Leon's boon description, from what Wade remembered. Only that he dealt more damage, had more agility and a few other goodies.

  No instinctive understanding of how to use a blade in the optimal method when facing someone with enchanted armor. That was training, and technique. Which nobody on Earth could have learned, because enchanted armor didn't exist back home.

  Wade looked over the storefront option again. Invasion.

  So the enemy was a Player, had probably used this very game mode to invade Wade's current location, knew how to fight against magic users to a highly proficient degree, and only spoke Nathir.

  Of which, he spoke not just any Nathir. The Nathir that a slavemaster would have overheard from their slaves.

  And now Wade was reading that there was an enemy system, and an enemy team.

  Which begged a few questions, such as; "Who the hell is on my team, who the hell is the enemy, why are there two Systems, and if one is an enemy to me, does that mean my System is on my side?"

  It had been utterly impartial. Mostly. Wade thought back.

  Perhaps not quite so impartial.

  It had allowed a lot of absolute bullshit and some creative rule stretching.

  The question now, was why.

  "I got no idea, Michael." Play said, looking deeply over the interface. "But I do think we can take some guesses at who the ultimate enemy is."

  Wade hadn't seen a single other person in THE GAME not be a human from Earth. So for one to be a straight Nathir on 'the other team'

  Then that meant the other team were the Nathir. Or at least suggested that. "So they're not extinct, but still alive somewhere. They did evacuate the city, we just don't know where or why. Are we fighting their entire civilization or just randoms?"

  "We won't know till we have more info." She shrugged as if it didn't matter. "I always wondered what happened to them, history on Azdrial just implies they were hunted down to extinction and killed with vengeance."

  "I remember something about every ancient civilization pausing their wars to murder their race out of existence?"

  "They weren't fun at parties and nobody appreciates having their sun blown up." Play laughed, turning to the TV again, idly flipping channels without truly focusing on any.

  "And now we need to figure out why they're at all involved in all this." Wade sighed, thinking it through. It would need to start with the root of everything. "I need to know what I'm getting into. No bullshit. Tell me everything you really know about the System. Zin implied you knew what the System was. And that you had conned it into all this. So how, and why?"

  Play continued thumbing through the channels. "Hmmmm~ that sure sounds like I know something you want. What do you have that I want on the other hand?"

  Wade knew exactly what Play wanted and he went straight for the throat: "I'll spend this next round hyper focused on getting purely levels. No humanitarian efforts, no side quests to help people out besides the minimal, nothing but pure power leveling. Find a farm location, grind out quests everywhere I can find them."

  He had her. Wade could tell because she was drooling slightly, eyes glazed over as he spoke the best words a goddess of games could possibly hear.

  New Fleeting Quest: Deal with the Devil II - Gain at least two levels over the course of the next round. Rewards: Randomized Starter Shop bundle option. Negligible Leveling Experience.

  "Why does it keep calling me a devil?!" She immediately hissed, swiping a hand through where the notification had popped up ahead of Wade.

  Wade let Play start ranting about how unfair the world was, while he focused on this latest addition to his to-do list. If the System decided to hand a quest for this, it was probably trying to tell him something was important in all this.

  The rewards sure weren't, but that's to be expected from an almost self-generated quest like this.

  Negligible leveling experience was still about ten percent at his level right now. And that percentage would drop five percent each level, which meant when he completed this quest, it would only give 1% experience. Basically useless right now, unless he managed to find something to increase the quest experience cap he was under.

  The other option was even more niche. Wade hadn't used the starter shop option since the very first round, where he'd bought the mage bundle for the mana potions and mithril anchors that came with it, and the healer bundle specifically for the healing ring.

  That said, everything he got his hands on was one more option he had available to use. Future Wade might figure something out.

  He turned to Play. "Right, start talking."

  She jumped up on the couch, looking down on him imperiously from her position. "It might surprise you, but on Azdrial, the mortals there didn't give me quite the respect and admiration I'm due."

  "They didn't? You don't say." Wade deadpanned. "Wonder why."

  She lifted a barefoot up and stomped him on the shoulder a few times, none of it actually hurting him whatsoever. "Har, har, har, I'm Michael Wade and I'm the kind of mortal that wakes up sleeping bears with sharp sticks to check if they're friendly."

  "Hold on a second, you do take showers, right?" He asked, wiping his shoulder where she'd been stomping. "I'm fine with a bit of blood and grime on this shirt, but I don't know where you feet have been. I don't want NEET stains all over this, thanks."

  She gave him a smile that went a little too far past where it should. "You're cute, but you're not that cute. I wouldn't test that luck stat for much longer mortal~"

  Wade felt automatically compelled to open his mouth and test his questionable survival instincts but instead found nothing came out. He closed, tried again, and once more no words at all.

  "Well, well, look at that." Play took a slight jump up into the air and floated behind him, like an eel swimming through water. "You can be quiet when it's important."

  He clicked his jaw and glared at her.

  "You made a deal with me mortal, are you saying you don't want my end of it done?"

  He shook his head at that. No, he still wanted to hear what the hell was going on with the System. He just wanted to also piss her off. That was more on principle of the thing.

  She waved a hand in front of her, and smoke appeared, slowly circling into shapes ahead of him. A tiny girl running through a forest, barefeet.

  "Divinities without worshippers don't survive for too long in Azdrial." Play said, and Wade felt her voice grow serious. "We get hunted for body parts. And in a world where few people had the time or energy to invent fun things in the first place, well… I didn't quite like that game."

  Shapes began to chase after her, dog-like hunters, with masters following behind. Wade couldn't tell any features, but the hunters following those dogs were humanoids with longer ears.

  "And so once upon a time, my story starts powerless, homeless, and starving. My last follower had died in ways that I don't want to speak of, even now. Divinities have a personal connection with their worshippers, you know? And I watched her die, felt it happen. I was tired of everything after that."

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  The smoke image of Play raced into a tree hollow, and then held her hands out. Smoke billowed out again and covered the hollow until it all merged with the tree.

  The hunters raced right past.

  "I was ready to go at that point." She said, "But I wasn't going to end it somewhere mortals of any kind could rob my body. I did tell you I was a petty divinity before, didn't I? I'd rather burn a temple down then let the squatters get even an inch of benefit from it."

  The smoke curled and flattened out. A small figure of Play emerged, climbing up a mountain, sneaking into a cave, and within finding an older figure.

  Wade recognized the silhouette.

  New Fleeting Quest: Rediscover the Source - Track down Market, the god of fortune and trade. Rewards: Storefront progression. Negligible Leveling Experience.

  Play grinned, floating through her smoke, things vanishing around them. "Good. The System doesn't give quests you can't actually accomplish~ That means he's still alive out there, on Earth."

  Wade nodded, looking it over. Odd that it would offer a full storefront progression option as a reward. That usually meant some difficulty.

  No actual coin from this quest though, just more options to add to his Storefront. So it wasn't that difficult. "What happened after you met him? Or how did you even find him?"

  He could use some tips in finding rogue gods now.

  Play landed on the couch with a small bounce next to him, then folded her legs together and rocked left and right slowly, "Nothing that'll help you in this quest, unfortunately. We have domains that overlap. You can think of us as cousins. He doesn't care for stories, and I don't care for trade or wealth, but on gambling? That is a game with rules, and it is deeply steeped in fortune, so we have that in common. I could sense faintly where he'd be. Anyhow, I told him I was looking for a way out, one where none of the mortals would benefit from.

  He told me I could come with him instead. You see, he'd been saving up his power for a few decades, and once it was strong enough, zap!" Play popped her hands up at the same time, as if trying to mime a big explosion. "Portal right into Earth. It didn't last for very long, a few seconds at most, but he dove right in and I followed. That kind of dimensional portal would generally lead nowhere, into oblivion. Billion to one odds that it would lead where you want it to."

  "But it was done by Market." Wade finished after her words. "After he'd been waiting those decades. So you knew it wasn't a billion to one."

  Play just grinned at him. "Market's stronger than what everyone thinks. He's very old, Michael. Most gods can't grant a blessing. That's something more in the domain of the old pantheon, or their direct descendants. Everyone thinks he's a senile dying deity, and yet he's lived longer than I have. Quite lucky of him. And speaking of luck, look where we ended up."

  She bolted off the couch, running up to her gaming PC, tapping all the neon colors and the pink and white design, showing them all off. Then she outright hugged it. And was likely thinking of licking it too at this rate. "Do know how many games and stories are here on Earth?"

  Lots. Too many. And as Wade realized, there were more being made each day. Every hour even. All over the globe.

  Wade thought back at the graveyard outside Play's domain here. How it had all lovingly cradled something different then games. But rather the people who created those games.

  He realized it then. What Play's domain actually was.

  "Play, do you get power everytime a game or story is invented?"

  She nodded like a happy golden retriever would. "Yeh. Tiny bit added into me each time." She floated up off the desk, orbiting over the gaming PC until her head was upside down directly above it. "Would be way more if they knew I existed and dedicated the game or story as a tribute to me. But just the act of creation itself is an echo of power in my domain."

  Wade considered for a moment the implications of this.

  At how many stories and games were being made each day on all the earth. "…How long have you been here for?"

  The smile on her face turned predatory. "Long enough. Go on, see for yourself."

  Wade did exactly what she'd thought he'd do. "Identify."

  Level 302 Primordial Divine Essence - 100%

  She was higher level. He stared, rereading. "There's no way all of earth created that many new things in three days."

  Play vanished into mist, and when Wade heard her next, she was on the other side of the couch seat, jumping up and down like a kid given irresponsible amounts of caffeine.

  "Earth's the best! The bestest! Theater plays are great, written books are great, board games are great." She floated on the last bounce and spun like she'd been bolted onto the wheel of fortune, hands and legs sprayed out. "But video games? Those are stories that constantly change, becoming a new story unique to each person that plays it! Their own journey, their own adventure, their own creation."

  Wade stared. "You're… getting power each time someone plays a video game. Because it's a personal story to them that they made with their choices…"

  And what did Play do with all that new power?

  Wade remembered another memory. Of a text. One that felt like he'd read it a lifetime ago.

  "The ant asking for a sugar cube." Wade breathed out. "You're the ant. Because… you got powerful enough to signal it? To bring the System here?"

  She stopped spinning and gave an upside down shrug as if it could be anyone's guess, but the sheer smugness that radiated out of her face told Wade otherwise.

  "Oh, I probably didn't speak to the entity itself, maybe a facet of it instead? It would be like... a bacteria trying to speak to the scientist." She vanished into smoke, which flew like it was caught in an air current, condensing back next to Wade, where she reappeared in her seat, legs crossed, the TV remote floating through the air until it landed on her outstretched hand. "I could only be seen by the microscope, which isn't the scientist. And only something microscopic could interact with me, which also couldn't be the scientist. But both of those could be controlled by the scientist. You get what I'm saying?"

  Something that was an instrument to the entity. A medium that could communicate with him here.

  Wade opened his stats, then his character sheet, and then the storefront. "The System. This entire video game is how it talked to you?"

  "Michael," She rolled her eyes. "This thing didn't even understand what life was. Do you think something like that had even the slightest understanding of what a video game was?"

  "Then who di..." He stopped, and narrowed his eyes down at her.

  "Of course it was me." She smiled. "I talked it into all this."

  And with the attention of an truly God-like entity that could change fundamental rules of reality… Play had taught it video games.

  He watched her channel surf on the TV, unsure whether to strangle her for wasting what amounted to an actual DnD Wish moment, or simply accept that this outcome was basically inevitable.

  It was Play.

  She was the goddess of games and stories.

  "Of course you would." He cradled his head with his hands, feeling odd conflicting emotions. "I can't believe all this started with you like this of all things. Just teaching Cthulhu about video games as first contact."

  "Well, I can't take all the credit for this." She stopped the channel on a victorian era drama, and started it up. "The reason it found me wasn't just my new power. It was actively searching for us. Life in general I mean, or maybe searching for something similar?" She shrugged, "Dunno. Anyhow, point was that it went looking through the same plane of existence I existed in. But until I put a spotlight in the dark for it to notice, it had passed over us plenty of times before."

  "Why was it searching for life? Or what was it actually searching for?"

  "Like I said, dunno." She gave a few bounces, then pointed the TV remote to Wade's storefront screen. "But finding out there's an enemy system and team, it makes a lot more sense. I misunderstood it from the start."

  "You are going to explain this incredibly vague statement, right?" Wade stared at her. "We made a deal. Next round, all in on the leveling and power scaling. You owe me this."

  "Don't get all antsy on me, I'm getting to it!" She paused the TV, clearly too scatterbrained to keep up with any one thing, and instead jumped off the couch and walked over to her gaming seat again, sat down into it... and began to spin around in it. "It first talked only in single word things, and early on three of those words were repeated all over: Conflict. Subjugation. Assimilation. Scary stuff, huh?"

  "It was attacking us?"

  "Yeh. I was pretty sure that it was here to beat us down and then eat us. I mean life in general. I asked it what defeat would mean, and it answered back with 'Extinction. Eradication. Ending.' so that was pretty clear cut." She stopped spinning for a moment and looked serious. "I tried to point it back to Azdrial, told it to go eat that instead, but it told me the source of conflict was from there, and that it was coming here. I thought it meant it had come from my universe, and been planning to eat this one."

  "But it's not alone." The enemy System, Wade had read. "There's two of them."

  "Yep. And I think the one I talked to is from your universe, and the one it's afraid of, is from my old universe - and it's poking its tendrils here. Looking to eat your universe. So your universe is fighting back."

  "You didn't know that back then." Because Play had been surprised same as Wade when she'd read over his shoulder that last storefront option.

  "Nope. Completely misunderstood. I did learn a few more things, just... not the right things."

  "What did you learn?"

  "That engaging in conflict would be detrimental to all sides. I thought that meant Earth might bite back, or that it was telling me directly Market and I would be a pain to deal with. But you know how powerful this thing was Michael? I was almost certain there's nothing we could do ourselves to fight it. Nothing I could do with all my new power. I can't even pinch it. So I tried to give us a fighting chance. Give Earth something we could actively do against it, something more in our control, you know? I asked it if there was any alternative to conflict and it told me it didn't know there were other paths besides conflict. Or its version of conflict."

  "You told it other ways to resolve conflict."

  She gave him a few happy nods. "I told it about games, and offered it one. Play a game. Winner takes all."

  THE GAME. As in, the only game that mattered in this universe now. Except Wade couldn't quite understand one part: "Why involve us into a game between the two of them? We're on a completely different plane of existence, we can't do anything."

  "Oh but we can. I think we're important to it. We're capable of doing something it, or they both, can't."

  "... we're here to settle a fight by proxy between two entities?"

  "I dunno. Maybe!" Play shrugged, eyes closed. "Maybe it's free will that we have. And by default neither side can control us, so we make for fair dice they can both agree on using. Or maybe, we're dangerous to them."

  "Find that one a little bit of a stretch." Wade said, "We're on a completely different plane of existence to them, we're their playthings."

  "And you're on a completely different plane of existence to anything microscopic Michael. You can't punch or even touch something that small. But what has killed more of humanity than anything else in all of history?"

  Wade knew the answer to that. "Sickness."

  "Yep! What if that's what we are to them? The tiny genetically modifiable agent that could be trained and programmed to cull a plague or fix something it can't because of its scale? I don't know. And I can't ask it questions anymore." She slowly came to a stop on her chair. "But you can. Because you have before."

  A notification popped up.

  New Fleeting Quest: ##ERROR_??ll_p??ntér_?x??pt?0x3F3F3F - Earn another Player Selection Reward of any rank. Rewards: ???