— — — — — —
Seeing the smug look on Algol's face, Ryo immediately realized she wasn't talking out of thin air. She had a plan.
'Just how long have you been coveting Queen Halloween's prestige?' he thought.
Still, outwardly, he put on a respectful expression and said, "Understood, Queen Algol."
"No sincerity," Algol muttered the complaint, though the corners of her mouth curled upward.
In a rare good mood, she patted his shoulder. "Once we're back in Little Garden, I'll have your back."
Ryo grinned. "So does that mean I can go provoke a Two-Digit?"
Algol raised an eyelid and rolled her eyes. "If you're looking to die, just say so. Do you really think those people can't kill you just because they aren't allowed to enter the stage?"
In Little Garden, Two-Digit beings were forbidden from stepping onto the main stage.
They couldn't take part in Gift Games, nor could they wield power beyond what the Central System permitted. If they violated those restrictions, punishment would be delivered directly by the full authority of the Central System itself.
Yet even with such a deterrent hanging over their heads, Two-Digits still had ways to circumvent the rules and interfere with Little Garden.
It was like the relationship between humans and computers. A computer could surpass humanity in raw calculation power, but when it came to underhanded tricks, machines still couldn't compete with people.
"So nothing's changed from before, my Queen?" Ryo joked.
Of course, he knew things were very different now.
If Algol truly advanced into the realm of a rule-breaker Three-Digit, Little Garden would gain its second such existence.
And like Queen Halloween, she would be a Star Spirit of the highest order.
Most importantly, Ryo would finally have a clear and unquestionable backer.
"Stop talking nonsense." Algol shot him a glare. "That little trickster organization you made up finally has someone powerful enough to stand behind it. You should be laughing in your sleep."
"You actually planning to run that thing?" Ryo asked, confusion in his voice.
The Tricksters, the organization supposedly opposed to the gods' interference with human history, didn't even have a mission statement. It existed solely as a convenient scapegoat for him to dump blame onto.
And Algol was taking it seriously?
Seeing Algol's expressionless face, he blinked in disbelief. "Wait... you're actually planning to establish the Tricksters for real?"
"You think corrupting the gods of a single world is enough to push me into the rule-breaker rank?" The contempt in Algol's voice was unmistakable.
Ryo fell silent.
The observational effects generated by a single world could certainly elevate someone to Five-Digit status. And if it were a large world with massive influence, it might even push them into the Four-Digit tier.
But only an ordinary Four-Digit.
The real rewards from Ryo's schemes had never come from the worlds themselves. They came from the impact those worlds had on existing human history within Little Garden.
Whether it was indirectly influencing the World War in Demon Slayer, creating new history in Campione, or exploiting the abnormal mythology in Strike the Blood.
All of those actions challenged existing divine systems. They seized influence from domains already occupied by gods and buddhas.
They fought over territory, over influence, over faith… over achievement points—or, as the gods called it, Merit.
As for the amount of merit Algol needed to rise from the upper reaches of Three Digits to a rule-breaker existence...
Ryo didn't know the exact figure. But he knew it had to be astronomical.
Merit didn't appear from nowhere. It only emerged when one's actions affected the world and earned recognition from the world's instincts and the central system itself.
Which led to a startling realization.
Ryo's expression darkened. "Little Garden's System actually approved of what the Tricksters are doing? It even advanced merit to you ahead of time?"
"Your little brain can be surprisingly useful sometimes." Algol's answer confirmed his suspicion.
Ryo stared at her for a long time.
"Why? Is it... dissatisfied with the gods?"
He couldn't hide the shock in his voice.
If the Central System was dissatisfied enough with the gods to support Algol's advancement into the rule-breaker realm, then this was no small matter.
A more troubling possibility immediately surfaced.
"Has it developed consciousness?"
That was his greatest fear. The thing every freeloader feared most was discovering that the person they'd been exploiting suddenly grew a brain and happened to be carrying a gun.
If the Central System truly became self-aware, Ryo would probably be the first target on its kill list.
The reason was obvious. Just looking at everything his Forum had done was enough.
He had exploited the Central System mercilessly, squeezing every possible benefit from it without the slightest restraint.
If it had a memory, there was no way it wouldn't hold a grudge.
"Impossible." Algol shook her head. "The seventeen have been watching it constantly, aside from Shiroyasha. Under those circumstances, developing consciousness is impossible."
Ryo immediately let out a breath of relief.
He couldn't help it. Facing the victim of your own exploitation tended to make a person nervous.
"If it doesn't have consciousness, then it's acting on instinct." A grin slowly spread across his face. "So the gods finally pushed things too far?"
The gods drew their power from human history itself. Strong beings occupied faith, influenced larger populations, and thereby generated merit through their impact on the world.
That was why people mistakenly believed stronger faith produced stronger gods.
In reality, faith wasn't the source of power. It was merely one of the methods used to collect it. The true source was always the believers themselves.
If one had to describe it simply, believers were like mining machines. Fully automated mining machines.
Every day they produced tiny amounts of merit. Once they developed faith in a particular deity, that merit was harvested by the gods through the mechanism known as faith.
To put it bluntly, believers were crops, gods were farmers, and faith was the sickle used for harvesting.
Meanwhile, human history, the foundation of the Central System's power, was the land where those crops grew. The soil itself.
The reason Ryo found the situation amusing was because he had figured something out.
The farmers had harvested so aggressively that the land itself had become dissatisfied.
After all, when crops died, their nutrients returned to the earth.
From the very beginning, the gods had been competing with Little Garden for the same resources.
"Those people rejected every future they didn't like and compressed all possibilities into a single unified human history." Algol understood the gods' methods all too well. "The problem is that the endpoint of that history is humanity's extinction. If that doesn't trigger backlash, what would?"
The entire system resembled a forest of faith. Every god was a farmer. But the field contained only so many crops.
If one farmer harvested more, he became stronger and could seize crops from the others.
That made every farmer afraid that someone else would gain an advantage. So everyone harvested as much as possible.
And since everyone was harvesting excessively, nobody wanted unusual worlds to appear outside the established rules.
The result was that human history slowly marched toward destruction.
And what happens when soil loses all its nutrients? Desertification. Nothing else.
"So the Central System activated some kind of emergency response mechanism..." Ryo murmured.
There were only two ways to restore fertility to exhausted land.
The first was adding new nutrients.
That was what Ryo did whenever he observed and incorporated new universes.
The second was... reducing the number of gods.
The special authority possessed by the Last Embryos made that fairly obvious.
Originally, they had been granted the power to permanently erase gods. Yet through the gods' own manipulations, the targets of the Last Embryos had gradually become humanity itself.
Which made no sense.
Shouldn't something called a Last Embryo (Final Trial) be aimed at everything equally?
Those entities possessed a unique ability capable of permanently killing gods. Yet they were called Human Final Trials rather than Divine Final Trials.
The implications were difficult to ignore.
Manipulation. Marketing. Propaganda. Control of public opinion.
A flood of words flashed through Ryo's mind.
In essence, both Algol's strengthening and the Tricksters themselves represented a combination of those two solutions.
They created possibilities that threatened the gods before unexplored frontiers had even been reached.
Through the process of observation, they both opened new sources of merit and restricted the gods' consumption of existing ones.
Given that, it was only natural that the Central System would favor them.
"When I left Little Garden and publicly declared myself a Trickster, I noticed it immediately."
Algol shook her head with a faint smile. "The opportunity for advancement became clearer. Merit started accumulating."
"My Spirit Rank began growing stronger. Even here, in a world outside Little Garden's jurisdiction, tiny amounts of power continue to emerge within my origin."
She laughed softly. "That brainless Central System really isn't afraid I'll take the advance payment and quit."
Ryo remained silent for a long time.
Finally, he sighed. "So that means the Tricksters have to become a real organization."
A fictional group created as a convenient cover story was now on the verge of becoming reality. The irony of that development left him speechless.
.
.
.