Chapter 134: Xi Wei: I Choose To Ask The Audience

“By the way, Aslan…” Xi Wei raised the skull on his two tiny tentacles and asked curiously. “Didn’t you mention that members of the Invisible Pantheon always had each other’s backs? I think now’s the time!”

He then held the skull in front of himself with the attitude of ‘I-have-no-idea-what’s-happening-but-I’ll-just-put-this-comment-here’. “Come, help me financially if you can or with divine power if you’re poor.”

“…”

The Great Lion looked upon Xi Wei with great disdain. “Have you no shame as a god?”

He then realized that saying that had no effect on Xi Wei even as he quietly watched the ball of light continue flickering.

The ball really had no shame…

“Are you not contributing your power, lion? Could it be that you’re afraid of the Ocean God and afraid to help me?”

Xi Wei complained unhappily, whipping the skull with his tentacles.

“Me, the great God of Justice, afraid of that mad hag?! Yeah, right.” Aslan said arrogantly with a seemingly unconfident tone.

But perhaps believing that he wasn’t being convincing either, he quickly added, “She didn’t come personally and only assigned the Three Trials for you this time, but if bystanders like us get involved she might really come and have a word with you.”

After that, the Great Lion even made a gesture of crushing an egg (or any spherical objects) at Xi Wei, hinting that he would have been a dead ball…

And Xi Wei thought that it was true as well.

At the moment, Ocean God had no intention to directly descend upon his divine kingdom and merely dumped so-called Trials at him made it clear that she only wanted to test him. With that being the case, their relationship would not sour for the time being before the Trial had an outcome.

On the other hand, should Xi Wei really drag others into it and cheekily cheat right before the Ocean God’s face, from what he knew of her track record she might really leave her dispute with the Earthweaver for the time being, and run here to slap Xi Wei to death…

Nonetheless, just as Xi Wei was quietly mumbling about ‘what is this suffering’, the Great Lion suddenly spoke enigmatically.

“Although we can’t aid you directly, indirect help is possible.”

“Indirect help? How?” Xi Wei asked in return, bemused. “Helping my believers with resources? Forgive my frankness, but they don’t lack anything.”

Although the Players were not exactly rich, the stores of food in the little town were plentiful and enough to aid the Temple of Justice instead. Moreover, as long as the God of Harvest never noticed Xi Wei had stolen its authority, the Players would not need to worry about food for quite some time.

“That’s not it… I can see that your Believers all wield weapons, and most of those weapons are developed from metals which your divine power molded. The quality is good, but you have not used your divine power on more than a handful of those weapons that none of your power lingered over the weapons.”

The Great Lion paused for a moment, and continued when he saw that Xi Wei was listening attentively. “Stoff, the God of Craftsmanship and Fine Wine is one of the members of the Invisible Pantheon. He is quite interested in the ‘Coca-Cola’ potion you have made for your believers as well, and if you are willing to supply him a batch from time to time, he would agree to convey an oracle and have some dwarven craftmasters head to the Grey Fjord and strengthen your believers’ weapons.”

“May I ask which aspect of a weapon is strengthened?”

Being a god who was extremely spirited when it came to scheming, Xi Wei almost agreed immediately, although his curiosity got the better of him and he just had to ask.

“Every aspect, of course.” The Great Lion simply replied. “Any dwarf that has earned the title of craftmasters have received Stoff’s Divine Grace: their skills would improve every attribute of a weapon, from the sharpness of its blade, the sturdiness, and durability of the metals and making it easier to wield and so forth…”

“Is that actually possible?” Although there had been many online games with item strengthening systems, Xi Wei’s authority in crafting was actually weak and creating basic items for the Players was basically his limit.

It also could be that Xi Wei had been cheated one too many times by the shady merchants of the Divine Realm before he transmigrated, leading to him earnestly believing that item strengthening was too random a system.

Still, Xi Wei could not help being caught in disbelief after learning that the craftsmen of this world could strengthen weapons through mundane forging. “It feels like changing the very materials of the weapons…”

“Doing something of that level is basic for gods that hold authority in that respect. It’s like how the Earthweaver could directly adjust reality almost at the same level as the Divine Fathers.”

The Great Lion appeared used to it. “I’ve heard that gnomes had such advanced technology that they built a flying warship they named the ‘Void Star’. It was alleged to be capable of killing gods, but when they were about to take it out and attack some gods, the Earthweaver only had to slightly change the quality of several metals used for building the vessel to have that godslaying weapon blow itself up.”

Xi Wei had wanted to gasp and yell ‘scary’, but he decided that it was nothing surprising after thinking about it carefully.

If a weakling god like himself could adjust less important rules, it wouldn’t be surprising for the Earthweaver who was at the level of Divine Fathers to affect reality and directly change variables of physical matter.

“After that, the gnomes were cursed and abandoned by the former gods until most were reduced to mindless goblins, and what left of them now remain underground, mingling with spawns of darkness… but I digress. Anyway, are you going to accept Stoff’s deal?”

Watching as Xi Wei pondered (don’t ask me how a lion could tell that a ball is pondering), the Great Lion realized that he seemed to have said too much, and quickly changed conversation back to the main point.

“Why not?” Xi Wei quickly agreed the moment he emerged from his pondering. “Incidentally, I believe it is time for the Players to experience the terror of being ruled by item strengthening.”