GREED: ALL FOR WHAT?



The person they were waiting for came soon after. The two of them winked out of the world fragments and appeared somewhere in the void outside the realm tree of high heaven. An elf with green skin, blond hair, and golden eyes was waiting for them.

"I came as soon as I got your message." The elf said to them.

The sage said, "That was less than a minute ago. So you left the realm tree and transversed millions of kilometers in seconds. I am impressed."

"It is nothing. I am used to it by now. I have been running about a lot recently."

The sage nodded in understanding. He asked with feigned concern, "Does this have anything to do with the continents that have been disappearing recently? I hear that a lot of people are looking for the culprit and there are some people who believe that you did it."

The realm lord became livid. He scowled as he said with utter conviction, "They are all lying the bunch of them. They are trying and failing to besmirch my good name. Who will believe such absurd tales of an origin god stealing continents? They are not even trying to come up with something more realistic and convincing." He won't change his tune even when there is damning evidence of his responsibility in the thefts.

The two world gods looked at the realm lord lying with a straight face. They know he did it. A certain sparkon showed a video of him using authority to shrink a continent before stealing it. But he denied it with vigorous and righteous anger as if he has been slighted by the accusation. They would have marveled at his skill if they too couldn't lie as well. Even so, they have to appreciate a fellow artist and his work.

The sage moved on, "Anyway, the performance of the relocation pillars was too notch. They were able to transport about 10 million entities between the level of transcendence and king of law across millions of kilometers in an instant. They were able to do it without congestion and at great efficiency. There was not a single case of error throughout the 10 million attempts at translocation. The relocation pillars maintained their structural integrity and data fidelity across several operations of transmission. I have the report made out."

The elf was surprised. "10 million? That's a large sample size. How did you manage that?

The first sage gave the elf a black crystal containing all the data they have collected from the performance of the pillars they used to move the participants from the planes to the arenas.

The elf went through the data quickly. Then he nodded in appreciation. "Wonderful. I knew I could count on you two to test my project successfully. I see that you made it into a competition to increase the sample size. That's a great way to get a lot of testers and they did it free of charge."

The realm lord has been very busy with his very important project. He is in a hurry to finish preparing it so he outsourced some of the testing to others. His project is grand with a lot of new features being put in place. Some of those features need testing to determine their feasibility and examine them in operation for faults. 

The testing of the transmission pillars was given to the sage and the serpentine world god. The two of them expressed interest in helping him and they would be paid for it. It was the two of them that decided to turn the testing into a competition between their two planes. That way, they would be able to get a lot of volunteers from their plane to participate in the testing without being paid for their services.

"I hope there was no problem." The elf asked them.

The mention of the competition made the serpentine world god frown. He has been quiet so the realm lord thought he was being moody but now he knows that something is wrong. So he asked them.

The sage replied cheerfully, "We made a bet."

"Ah. I see." The elf said to the frowning world god, "So you lost and you probably lost a lot. I can imagine your loss. It must have been very large to get you so down. Didn't I say that you should be careful of the sage? You should have known that something is off when he asked for a bet."

The sage smiled and cleared the realm lord's misunderstanding. "He was the one that asked for us to bet not me. And what do you mean that he should be careful of me? Am I such a bad person? He is the gambler that suggested betting. How is this my fault?"

The serpentine world had had enough. "Let's stop wasting time and move on. You said you were busy. I am very busy too and would like this to be done with as soon as possible."

The realm lord agreed. "That's true. I am busy. But I would like to hear how this happened. I am sure it will be interesting and worth me wasting some of my time. I need something fun to cheer me up."

The first sage offered graciously with a smile, "Don't worry about it. I saved the entire process and the story within this. You can enjoy it at your leisure."

Then he handed the realm lord another world fragment. The serpentine world god groaned. He is sure that the story of his epic loss and how it happened will become a staple among world gods and origin gods by the next origin cycle meeting at the latest. The story of the embarrassing loss of a world god will make for a very good party entertainment at the meeting that the realm lord holds every origin cycle. He would have to convince the realm lord not to embarrass him any further by sharing that story.