Master of the System

Karta licked her lips and stared at the mastiff in front of her with expectation in her eyes. If she could pull this off, then she was going to be the greatest snack god to ever exist. The mastiff, however, wasn’t staring at Karta in return; he was staring at a small pile of spirit stones resting on the floor. “Alright,” the god of ice cream said. “You have yourself a deal.”

Karta chuckled to herself. It was obvious her plan was going to work. Which snack god wasn’t poor? The people who could be bribed the most easily were the poorest ones! But now, thanks to her exploitation of Vremya, she was no longer one of the bribees; she was the briber. “I’ll send you everything you need to get started.”

The god of ice cream sighed and sat back on his haunches. “Don’t get too happy now,” he said. “I’m not sure how beings in the lower dimension will react to ice cream potato chips. I still think it’d be better if you molded your potato chips into a cone to hold the ice cream in.”

“I’m the god of potato chips, not the god of wafers,” Karta said. After thinking about it, her forehead scrunched up. “Actually…, yeah. Let’s do both. We’ll have ice-cream-flavored chips, and we’ll have potato chip cones.”

“You’re declaring war on the god of wafers?” the mastiff asked, raising an eyebrow. “It must be nice having a primordial god backing you.”

Karta snickered in reply. “It’s an amazing feeling. I’m lucky an old grandpa was sleeping in the land I decided to rent,” she said. “What were the odds, really?” She shook her head. “But I have a feeling he’s not going to stick around forever, so I have to use this time to my advantage.”

“Is he leaving?”

Karta shook her head. “He’s just so pigheaded,” she said. “He doesn’t really know how to adapt, and if he keeps plodding along, someone stronger than him is going to push him over.”

The god of ice cream tilted his head. “Isn’t that when you step in and help him out?”

“I’ve already helped him so much!” Karta said. “Besides, I just look like a dog. I’m not actually like a dog, okay?”

“You can say that when your tail stops wagging,” the mastiff said and snorted. “Get out of here. I don’t want to listen to you brag anymore.”

The scenery around Karta shifted, and the room she was in faded away, leaving her standing outside a doghouse. “Even the god of ice cream gets jealous, huh?” Karta asked scratched behind her ear with her hindleg. She looked around before narrowing her eyes. She whipped out her phone and muttered to herself, “I suppose I should go see Bananov now.”

Karta swiped through her phone and pressed on her banking app. She stared at the long string of numbers before laughing to herself. Then, she went to Kosmos’ portal app and called a portal. Over the past few days, she had been going from snack god to snack god, proposing collaborations with them. With a little help from the social lube she called money, everyone let her in. With the help of money, she’d easily regain the divinity she lost when she had traveled forward in time. She could feel it working already. It was probably Sush Kal who implemented the collaboration first. Potato chips that tasted like dried squid, and dried squid that tasted like potato chips, who wouldn’t pick those snacks up upon seeing them?

After a bit, a portal appeared in front of Karta. She was quite surprised, seeing how the service had been down for a while. Did Kosmos finally give up on Vremya? Maybe she got in and fused with him. Either way, it seemed like Karta had missed out on some drama. Hopefully, Vremya was still alive and himself. It would really suck if he stopped caring about her. Although the grumpy old man called her stinky dog all the time, Karta was sure stinky was just his term of endearment. Even if the old man did die, Karta still had things to do. She walked through the portal and ended up in front of another doghouse. First, she sent a message to Vremya to make sure he was okay—for the sake of her future, not because she cared about him. Then, she went up to the doghouse and barked three times.

The door creaked open, and half of a dachshund’s face appeared. The wiener dog’s right eye roamed up and down, observing Karta. “The god of potato chips?”

“That’s me,” Karta said, puffing her chest out.

The door remained half-closed. “What are you doing here?”

“I heard you and Yabloch have a nice deal going on,” Karta said, narrowing her eyes while her lips contorted into a playful smile. “I’m just wondering if you’d consider breaking your agreement with him and make one with me.”

The dachshund blinked. “Is this your intention or is it the intention of the god of time?”

Karta smirked and puffed her chest out even further. “The god of time loves me. He thinks I’m the best companion ever, and he’ll do anything to spoil me,” she said, lying through her teeth—at least, she was pretty sure she was lying. If the old man really thought of her that way, she might’ve been a little weirded out. “I mean, look.” She gestured towards the phone floating by her head with her nose. She tapped on it, and her bank account information appeared once more.

The wiener dog’s eye bulged, and the door shot open all the way. It was as if the god of banana chips couldn’t believe what he was seeing that he had to confirm with both of his eyes. “My spirit stone number doesn’t even go that high, and all of that is in heaven-grade spirit stones!? What have I been doing with my life!?”

Karta put away her phone and looked at Bananov with a smug expression. “Do you want to know what a heaven-grade spirit stone looks like? Don’t you want to lick it and give it a taste?”

The dachshund raised his head, staring at Karta with a frenzied expression. “I do! Do you know how sick I am of eating banana chips every day? They taste like abominations of nature!”

Karta nodded. It wasn’t a wonder why the god of banana chips was so poor. If even the god of banana chips hated the chips’ flavor, why would anyone in the lower dimension like them? Karta took out a heaven-grade spirit stone and held it with her front paw. “Sever your alliance with Yabloch,” she said and waved the spirit stone back and forth as if she were trying to hypnotize the dachshund. “There’s no need to feel any guilt. The rest of the fruit and vegetable chips are going to turn on him too.”

“Potato chips are king of the chips! Who does the god of apple chips think he is?” Bananov grabbed the heaven-grade spirit stone with his mouth. He spoke with it in his cheek, making his words sound garbled. “I’m on board.”

“The contract was written on the heaven-grade spirit stone in very tiny letters,” Karta said. “You read all of it, right?”

Bananov rolled his eyes. “You think I’m a newb? Of course, I read it.”

Karta’s tail wagged, and her face lit up. “Perfect.” With the help of money, she was going to replace the god of ice cream as the king of snacks. And from there, she was going to dominate the breakfast foods, the lunch foods, and the dinner foods! Soon, everything in the lower dimension would be eating potato chips and only potato chips. Soon, everything in the lower dimension would be made up of only potatoes! A dog had to dream big. If it didn’t, then it was just a dog. Karta narrowed her eyes. In the first place, she wasn’t a dog. She was a god! Although the chance was extremely miniscule to the point of impossible, there was still a chance. One day, the titans would be made out of potato chips too.

***

“A new world?” Vremya furrowed his brow. Floating around him in the void of space, there were thousands of frozen titans. There wasn’t supposed to be any source of light, not with the gigantic bodies blocking the way, yet in front of Vremya, there was a golden glowing seed that looked much like a tiny sun. Vremya leaned forward and sniffed it. For some reason, it smelled like the stinky dog. He had seen worlds form plenty of times. Whenever enough titans died to clear away the darkness, the seed of a world would form. It was safe to say the lower dimension wouldn’t exist as it currently did if it weren’t for him and Kosmos killing as many titans as they did. However, even though Vremya had seen all kinds of worlds, he had never encountered one that made him feel as if he had a connection with it. Perhaps it would be something useful. He grabbed the seed and stuffed it into his bellybutton, causing it to disappear from view. The fanny pack he had obtained from Pozhar was large in terms of interspacial capacity, but it wasn’t large enough to nurture a world. His bellybutton, however, had been blessed by Kosmos eons ago. He could nurture a whole galaxy in there. …In fact, he had stuffed one inside before he went to sleep. It had been a long, long time since he checked on it; it reminded him too much of Kosmos, and he didn’t want to think about her right after waking up.

Vremya shook his head. He’d examine his bellybutton later; first, he had to slay more titans and make more money.