Red watched over the sector, his consciousness projected through the obsidian interface. The live feed rendered Sector 6 in varying shades of grey and rotting green. The Black-Mud Kobolds lived on a cluster of wooden platforms raised on stilts above the brackish water. The wood was slick with moss, groaning under the weight of the huts.
They were dying.
Red zoomed in on the central platform. Twenty Kobolds, seemingly the remnants of a tribe were huddled in a circle. Their scales were dull and flaking. Their ribs pressed against their leathery skin. They were shivering, not from cold, but from the caloric deficit of slow starvation.
Fifty meters out in the water, a ripple disturbed the scum. A Mire-Stalker, a beast of muscle and camouflage, circled the stilts. It was waiting for one of them to fall. It knew they were weak.
"Pathetic," Red murmured, though his tone lacked the contempt he held for the ants. This was a different kind of weakness.
The Kobold Chieftain, a scarred creature with a broken tail, stepped forward. He held an object in his trembling claws: a dried, shriveled swamp rat. It was likely the only protein the village had caught in days.
He didn't eat it. Nor did he give it to the whelps crying in the huts.
He placed it gently on a pile of mud and skulls in the center of the platform. A Totem. A silent, inanimate heap of garbage that they prayed to because they had nothing else.
"Oh, Great Spirit of the Mud," the Chieftain croaked, his voice a series of wet clicks and hisses translated by the System. "We give to you. Please. The water rises. The belly is empty. Send the fish."
The Totem did not answer. The wind blew a scrap of moss across the deck. The Mire-Stalker bumped against a support beam, testing its strength.
Red watched the offering. They were starving, yet they sacrificed their last meal to a lie.
"Discipline," Red analyzed. "Ants have programming. These things have faith. They just need a place to put it."
He checked his stats.
[ RANK 3: LESSER SPIRIT ]
[ ABILITY: DIVINE PRESENCE (FEAR AURA) ]
[ DP: 150,000 ]
"Target that pile of bones. Possess." Red commanded.
The flame in the center of the village turned blue with the shade of violet.
It happened in a heartbeat. The wind died instantly. The sounds of the swamp, the buzzing flies, were silenced as if a heavy blanket had been thrown over the world.
The Chieftain froze. The hair on his snout stood up.
The Totem of mud and skulls shuddered. A skull at the top, the bleached cranium of some large reptile, rattled violently. Then, the eye sockets ignited with twin points of violet fire.
A shadow erupted from the Totem. It didn't cast on the ground, but stretched upwards, blocking out the grey sunlight, forming a silhouette of jagged smoke and malice.
[ SKILL ACTIVATED: DIVINE PRESENCE (FEAR) ]
[ COST: 1,000 DP / SEC ]
The Mire-Stalker in the water shrieked and thrashed away, diving deep into the mud to escape the predator that had just arrived.
The Kobolds didn't run. They couldn't. The aura pressed them into the wood. They flattened themselves, tails tucked, whining in high-pitched notes of submission.
The Chieftain pressed his forehead against the slime of the deck.
'LOOK AT ME.'
The voice vibrated in their chests. It wasn't spoken, it was imposed directly upon their minds.
The Chieftain slowly raised his head, terror warring with awe in his yellow eyes.
'YOUR MUD GOD IS DEAD,' Red projected, his spectral form looming over the village. 'I AM THE ROT THAT FEEDS THE ROOT. I AM THE HUNGER.'
Although Red felt awkward speaking like this, he had the impression of god acting like that. Red focused his attention on the pathetic offering. The shriveled rat lay on the altar, insulting in its smallness.
'YOU OFFER ME SCRAPS?'
"It... it is all we have," the Chieftain whimpered, holding his claws up in supplication. "The swamp... is empty."
"The swamp is full," Red retorted. "You are just too weak to take it."
Red hovered his hand over the rat. He needed to prove he wasn't just a monster. He needed to prove he was a Provider. He needed a Miracle.
He accessed the System and navigated through the list of miracles.
[ MIRACLE: REPLICATE MATTER ]
→ Target: Organic Matter (Small).
→ Cost: 5,000 DP. (Note: Base cost multiplied by biological density and worth of the offering or the sacrifice.)
Red dumped power into the spell.
[ DP CONSUMED ]
[ TRAIT ACTIVATED: 100x GROWTH ]
[ EFFECT MULTIPLIER APPLIED ]
Red snapped his spectral fingers.
The dead shriveled rat on the altar convulsed. It didn't just double. The flesh swelled, cracked, and exploded outward.
It wasn't a biological growth. One rat became two. Two became ten. Ten became a hundred.
Meat rained down on the platform. Fresh, bloody, raw meat piled up, burying the Totem, spilling over the altar, rolling across the deck to the feet of the starving Kobolds.
The pile grew until it strained the wooden beams beneath the platform. A literal mountain of flesh where a single dried morsel had been a second ago.
Silence reigned on the platform. The Kobolds stared at the feast. The smell of fresh blood hit them, dilating their pupils, driving them mad with instinct.
But they didn't eat. They looked at the meat, then they looked up at the terrifying shadow looming over them.
The Chieftain scrambled forward. He didn't grab the food. He grabbed the hem of the shadow, where the shadow touched the wood, and kissed the floor.
"God," the Chieftain wept. "Real God."
[ FAITH GAINED: +1 ]
[ TRAIT ACTIVATED: 100x GROWTH ]
[ TOTAL GAIN: +100 FAITH ]
The notifications began to scroll rapidly as every Kobold on the platform dropped to their knees, their hunger forgotten in the face of the divine.
Red watched them bow. He felt the connection snap into place.
'EAT,' Red ordered. 'GET STRONG. WE HAVE WORK TO DO.'