Chapter 22: Warrior Princess

“O Game of Gods… Please offer thy guidance, how should I go on?”

Leah asked in piety, pressing her sword into the ground and kneeling on one knee.

In return, Xi Wei gently brushed over her head. Her name then appeared immediately, written in white words.

“What is that?” She looked at the words, her head tilted in confusion.

“That is the sign of a ‘Player’, and only my believers would see it,” Xi Wei explained. “Do not feel doubt when you find others having it when you travel, for they are Players and my other believers. On the other hand, any whose head floated with HP Bars are decidedly your enemy.”

“Player…”

Although unsure what a HP Bar was, Leah understood the term ‘Player’: this world has the term players, which denoted those who were playing a game—there was no sign more fitting for believers of the God of Games.

The girl nodded at the thought.

“I have granted you blessing. Murmur the Words of Providence to enliven that blessing.”

“Words of Providence?” Leah closed her eyes confusedly. As she hesitated on whether she should start playing, an inspiration flashed through her mind like crackling lightning, after which a short and simple command was engraved deeply into her head.

She opened her eyes and exclaimed excitedly at Xi Wei, who was withdrawing his tentacles, “My Lord, I get it now!”

Then, almost by instinct, she started to chant it.

“O Master of Games, grant us new life…”

A translucent screen appeared before her at her call.

Ding!

Warrior Princess System activated.

“Alright. Now, head forth to the town outside the Valley of the Tragic Dead. That is where my believers would gather—they would welcome you in open arms,” Xi Wei then said before Leah could look further into her system page.”

“My men…” She turned worriedly toward the guardsman who had yet to recover.

“Their faith in me has yet to take root and hence unable to reach the sacred path and earn my blessing,” Xi Wei replied. “They would awaken once all of you have left this Divine Kingdom.”

“I see…” Leah breathed a sigh in relief although she also felt rather dejected.

“This shall be it. It is my hope that you would grow when I meet again…”

“Please wait, o God of Games!” Leah then asked solemnly at the blurred figure that was Xi Wei. “The world often told me that my grandfather was the king of blind fools… but what do you think?”

Xi Wei stayed silent for some time while the expectant look in Leah’s eyes slowly lost color.

Finally, Xi Wei solemnly spoke, “He is a king worthy of respect even to me.”

There would not be a God of Games if it was not for the Yakaran the Eleventh, nor would Xi Wei transmigrate to this world. That was why Xi Wei definitely had that unlucky king to thank for from a certain perspective.

“Thank you, o Lord of Games!” With Xi Wei’s affirmation, there was no more doubt in Leah’s eyes. She gave him a stately bow.

Xi Wei said nothing. He sent her and her men away with a wave of his tentacle, warping them to the outskirts of another county hundreds of miles away from Lancaster.

In reality, he did not pull them into his Divine Kingdom. Instead, he created an illusive realm and simply got it over with—after all, pulling anything from the mortal realm save for offerings would consume too much divine energy, and Xi Wei had no intention to spend so much on just a few heads.

“Ok. With Leah, the believers’ main quest is basically established.”

Xi Wei was in such a good mood that he had the leisure to turn and check on the cultists in the jungle.

They had split into a few groups to search the forest, seemingly yet to give up. It made sense, however, since they had taken such a long time to set their trap, only to have their target mysteriously vanish just as they almost got it. Not even Xi Wei would take it with grace.

In truth, it was not as if Xi Wei could not get rid of them—it would not take much of an effort to wipe them out even if there were dozens more of them.

However, Xi Wei’s teleporting of Leah’s party to somewhere else was a regular Divine Grace, while appearing directly to kill the cultists was a ‘descent’ which would definitely be noticed by the other gods. More importantly, Xi Wei has decided that though the Rotten Bones the cultists worshipped was indeed an evil god, it was basically an unorthodox branch of the Skull God’s faith, who was a second-tier god serving Lord Hades. Still, though it appeared to be an inferior small fry, it was a rarely encountered small fry.

Be that as it may, unless the small fry god’s cultists rise to the point that they could conquer an entire kingdom, setting their faith as the national religion while expanding without region to increase their follower base, that small fry would have difficulty to become an orthodox lesser deity.

In other words, such noobs could be left to their own devices. If Xi Wei scared it off just by showing his face, he would have trouble looking for another small fry god.

As for the cultists, there may well be those who would think ‘there are so many greater gods in the world—why not follow them instead of some small fry evil god? Are the cultists nuts?’

There was one idiom that fits that particular scenario: big fish in a small pond.

The greater gods had over millions of believers, and it would take monstrous effort for any ordinary person to rise above the crowd in their respective churches. On the other hand, because those small fry evil gods did not have many followers serving them, that was why devout faith in them would gain their notice, securing Divine Grace and blessings under the shortest of periods.

The blessings from evil gods would certainly be much weaker than greater gods and would most definitely cause side effects on their own clerics, but they are powerful beings in comparison to mortals or an ordinary clerics. It would take at least a bishop to counter a cultist leader.

It could even be said that faith in evil gods was the quickest path to power. That was precisely why the evil god factions continue to flourish despite repeated prohibition across the world.

Either way, the appearance of the Rotten Bones had provided Xi Wei a new target with which he could pave the missions for his believers. They might even pull that unknown god into an instance dungeon where the Players could take turns to give it a beatdown.

In comparison, it was Leah’s attempt at reviving a nation that would prove difficult. After all, it involved several powerful neighboring kingdoms that held faith in patron gods who were intermediate or above. Xi Wei had no disposition to pluck the tiger’s whiskers at the moment, and so could only take it slow as a main mission…