Since ancient times, people have prayed to the wind.
The power of faith from countless ancestors coalesced, giving birth to a Wind Spirit named Janna.
Janna's power was once immense. However, as the years passed and history shifted, people gradually abandoned their faith in the Wind Spirit.
They would still cry out, "By Janna," but it was no different from modern people casually saying "God bless"—merely a colloquialism rooted in folklore. Very few truly believed in Janna's existence anymore.
Faith without believers is like a tree without roots, and so Janna gradually lost her power.
She could barely maintain her divine form for long periods, forced to descend upon the world in the guise of a bluebird.
And just a few hours ago—
Janna, in her bluebird form, had been resting on a tree outside this apartment building when she happened to spot Levi's corpse through the window.
Having returned from an all-night shift, he had suddenly dropped dead in his rented room.
Janna was just about to pray for the poor Zaunite.
Yet not long after, she watched as the dead young man suddenly sat up, bursting with life!
Only, this resurrected Levi was clearly not the original Levi.
If that were all, Janna wouldn't have been too surprised.
As a nearly omniscient goddess with thousands of years of experience, Janna naturally knew that there were many wicked spells in this world capable of possessing a corpse.
Possession and rebirth might sound bizarre to mortals, but to her, it was nothing new.
The problem was that the abilities Levi displayed went far beyond merely seizing a dead body.
The very instant Levi was reborn through possession, Janna found herself uncontrollably dragged across space, teleporting right in front of him!
In her shock and anger, she overdrew all her remaining power in an attempt to resist, but the result—
The mighty divine power she unleashed upon Levi vanished into the void without a trace, disappearing bizarrely into thin air without causing even the slightest ripple.
Thus, not only did Janna fail to break free from that enslavement curse, but she also overdrew her final surge of divine power, draining her last ounce of strength and reducing herself to a useless bird that could barely fly.
Then, to her absolute horror, she realized she had unknowingly lost her freedom, completely reduced to the slave of this terrifying entity!
She had to do whatever Levi commanded; even escaping was a pipe dream.
Janna was extremely wary of this mysterious man who could so easily enslave even a god.
After several fruitless struggles, she had no choice but to helplessly accept her fate of being controlled, carefully probing him.
"Who exactly are you?"
"A wandering god from the cosmos, an emperor resurrected from the underworld, or an Aspect descended from the celestial realm?"
In Janna's eyes, Levi had to be at least a demigod-level powerhouse.
However, Levi's answer was:
"I'm none of those things. I'm just a LOL player."
"I was just minding my own business playing a game at home, but because I picked you during champion select, I inexplicably transmigrated here—"
"Transmigrated into your [Summoner]."
He sighed as he spoke. "Man, if I had known this would happen, I would have picked Aurelion Sol..."
Janna, of course, could not understand this bizarre nonsense.
But Levi's casual tone—treating her, a goddess, and even the great Aurelion Sol as mere chess pieces to be mentioned in passing—still secretly alarmed her.
Janna grew even more wary of him.
So she secretly observed Levi's every move, wanting to figure out the true purpose behind this terrifying entity's descent into this world.
However, Levi's actions only left her more confused.
First, he had a serious chat with her. Upon learning that her faith had collapsed, her divine power was completely gone, and she was now nothing more than a useless bird that lost its strength after flying just a few meters—
Levi's expression turned rather grim.
He stopped talking to Janna and simply stood quietly in the cramped rented room, lost in thought for a very, very long time.
Just as Janna was speculating whether this evil god was plotting some terrifying conspiracy, Levi's gaze suddenly darkened, as if he had solidified his resolve.
Then, he dug out an old copy of "A Brief History of Piltover and Zaun" from the book box belonging to the original owner's sister—who was now his sister.
After that, Levi quietly began to read, studying history.
Not only did he study on his own, but he also ordered Janna, a thousands-of-years-old living history textbook, to stay by his side the entire time for one-on-one tutoring and Q&A.
He studied for several hours straight, going all the way from ancient times to the modern era, asking about countless details along the way. He was honestly more diligent than a history major at the University of Piltover.
This left Janna even more baffled.
Unable to hold back, she asked,
"Mr. Summoner." Since Levi called himself a Summoner, Janna decided to address him as such. "What exactly are you trying to do?"
"Did you possess a dead man and enslave a goddess just to learn history from me?"
"Of course not," Levi explained. "Janna, I'm trying to figure out a way to help you recover your power. Only when you get stronger can I get stronger."
This explanation only confused Janna further.
What did studying history have to do with helping her recover her divine power?
She was a god shaped by the power of faith.
There was only one way to help her recover her divine power, and that was to spread her faith, gather believers, and get more devout followers to believe in Janna once again, providing her with an endless stream of faith.
But could believers and divine power really be found by reading history books?
"This just shows you don't understand what a 'god' is, Janna."
'?' Janna's mind was filled with question marks. She was a god; how could she not understand what a god was?
"Janna, let me ask you. What do you think you are to your believers?"
"I am their god, of course."
"Wrong!" Levi's answer was unexpected. "To your believers, you are actually just a story. A story told to them by others."
"It's because they are willing to believe this story that you, the goddess, exist."
Janna fell silent upon hearing this, but ultimately nodded in agreement.
Because her origins truly were a story—
An ancient navigator got drunk and boasted to others, claiming he saw a gust of wind transform into a bluebird at sea. The bluebird used its cries to warn them, helping them avoid a terrifying storm.
This story spread further and further, growing increasingly fantastical. As it spread, more people claimed to have seen the bluebird. Some sailors even claimed to have seen the bluebird transform into a breathtakingly beautiful girl with pointed ears, wielding a staff that could command the storms, casting magic to disperse the wind and waves for them.
Storm's Fury, Janna, was thus born from a story.
"But later on, why did they stop believing this story?" Levi asked.
Janna had actually summarized quite a few reasons herself.
First, during the ancient Shuriman rule, the Shuriman rulers who worshipped the celestial Aspects did not allow commoners to revere her as a false idol. This led to her statues, temples, and orders in the mortal realm being almost entirely wiped out, severing the lineage of her faith.
Second, during the great canal explosion over two hundred years ago, she had nearly exhausted all her power to shield the victims from the massive earthquakes and tsunamis triggered by the blast.
Since then, Janna rarely had the spare energy to manifest before people and continue helping her believers.
With fewer manifestations, people became even more skeptical of Janna's actual existence.
And as more and more people stopped believing in Janna, she naturally had even less divine power to manifest before them.
Under this vicious cycle, the legacy of Janna's faith completely marched toward extinction.
"Those are actually all secondary reasons. The main reason is—times have changed!"
"Miss Janna, your doctrine is long outdated!"
'Doctrine?' Janna thought thoughtfully.
Her doctrine...
She didn't even have a doctrine!
In fact, including herself, whether it was the Aspects of ancient Shurima or the demigods of the Freljord, none of them really had any doctrines.
Because the gods in this world were all real.
True gods couldn't be bothered to spin stories for their believers.
They didn't have any grand philosophies to teach, either. They just said what was on their minds—believe it or don't.
"That approach is too primitive, too crude."
"You didn't grasp the users' pain points, you didn't form a closed loop in your business logic, and you didn't build a stable user ecosystem, let alone maintain the product's life cycle. No wonder a genuinely existing deity like you ended up being phased out by the market."
'???' Janna's mind was filled with question marks.
Meanwhile, Levi continued spouting his bizarre, half-comprehensible nonsense.
"Miss Janna, your story is simply too basic."
"Nature worship—worshipping fire, worshipping the moon, worshipping the wind—that's stuff from the Neolithic Age. At the end of the day, it's nothing more than ancient humanity's primitive reverence for natural elements."
"Now Piltover and Zaun have gone through the Industrial Revolution, even reaching a cyberpunk era. They can even build robots, and every single one of them is better at math and physics than I am—"
"If you ask them to pray to the wind now, they'd instantly churn out a thesis on 'Fluid Dynamics Calculation Methods of Wind Action' right to your face."
"Even if gods do exist in this world, to the people of the twin cities who are accustomed to understanding the world through science, a god is nothing more than a 'powerful magical creature.'"
"Tell me, can your story still fool anyone?"
Janna had nothing to say.
Being lectured so thoroughly by Levi, she realized that she, a goddess, actually didn't know how to be a god as well as Levi did.
"So, what do you plan to do?"
"Simple. Since the doctrine is completely outdated, we'll tear it down and start over. We'll invent a new set of faith theories that better suit the times."
"You?!" Janna felt the urge to scold Levi for blasphemy again.
Faith theories—were those something you could just make up on the fly?
Wouldn't that make her, a goddess, complicit in a lie?
However, anger aside, Janna quickly understood Levi's series of actions. "I see..."
"You learned the history of Piltover and Zaun from me so earnestly just to grasp the historical background here, making it easier for you to spin a story?"
"You could say that."
"Then what kind of story do you plan to tell for me?" Janna was quite worried that Levi would recklessly tamper with her doctrine, turning her into an evil god like Vilemaw.
Faced with her question, Levi merely muttered to himself.
"What kind of story to tell?"
"That is indeed the question..."
Zaun and Piltover had already entered the era of the Industrial Revolution, even carrying a bit of a 2077 vibe.
Based on what Levi had seen and heard, there were roughly two types of faiths that possessed vigorous vitality in this era.
The first, of course, was to delve deeper down the path of mysticism.
Abandon primitive nature worship, depict hell and promise heaven to believers, depict reincarnation and promise an afterlife.
In short, give the suffering a ray of hope. Even if that hope was after death, in the next life.
As for the second type...
"Janna," Levi did not answer directly, but instead asked meaningfully, "Suppose a person is sick, very sick. And I have two kinds of medicine in my hands."
"One is an anesthetic, which allows a person to die without pain."
"The other is a strong medicine that can cure the illness, but the curing process will be extremely painful, even more painful than the illness itself. Many people would die from the pain before they are cured."
"Janna, which medicine do you think is better?"
"I choose the second one," Janna said without a hint of hesitation. "If it cannot save people, what use is medicine?"
"Well said, Janna."
Levi had actually made his decision long ago.
If it were before his transmigration, he might have chosen the first option. Because if the first path succeeded, it could bring him endless wealth and endless luxury.
But after transmigrating, he had inherited all the memories of this body.
He had experienced firsthand what the life of a Zaunite was like.
That young man who died suddenly on this narrow bed... what he wanted was definitely not an anesthetic.
"I choose the second one too."
Levi picked up a pen and paper, writing a line of dedication at the beginning of his newly woven "story":
"For you, Mr. Levi."