Master of the System

“I don’t understand,” Vremya said. “Why isn’t anyone accepting my system? The guide said users were easy to find.”

Karta rolled her eyes. “Isn’t it obvious? The name of your system is trash.” She patted her own personal computer, causing a display to pop up. “Look at my system names.”

“Ultimate Cooking System. Ultimate Entrepreneur System. Ultimate Leveling System.” Vremya rubbed his chin and narrowed his eyes. He snorted. “Such plain system names, there’s no way your system users are any good!”

“They’re not the best, but they’re certainly better than that Smith guy you tried to recruit,” Karta said with her nose pointing towards the sky. She glanced at Vremya through the corner of her eyes. “At least I have three users … unlike someone.”

Vremya snorted again. “What’s wrong with Smith?”

Karta lowered her head and raised an eyebrow. “Is that a serious question?”

“I’m always serious.”

Karta stared at the naked old man with a red fanny pack blocking his crotch. For some reason, she doubted his words. “Well, did you take a look at Smith’s attributes before selecting him?”

“What good are attributes?” Vremya asked. “It’s all about attitude. I watched him for quite some time before selecting him, and I found he behaves quite similarly to me; he’s capable of daydreaming whilst staring at the sky for hours at a time. Someone who’s appreciates life in the same way as me, will he not be successful?”

“Old man,” Karta said, “if you weren’t a god, you’d be a nobody in life.”

“Hmm?” Vremya’s eyes narrowed, and his knuckles cracked. “Do you want to try saying that again?”

“What’s up with the threatening posture?” Karta sat on her haunches and yawned. “You know you can’t hurt me.” She flopped onto her belly, stretching her front paws out before resting her chin on them. She glanced up at Vremya by rolling her eyes. “If you think I’m wrong, how about you send down a mortal avatar of yourself to a lower dimension? If you’re capable of reaching the peak, I’ll apologize and wholeheartedly serve you until you’re bored of me.”

Vremya crossed his arms. “That sounds easy enough.”

Karta sneered. “However, if you lose, you’ll address me as Master from now on.”

“It’s a deal,” Vremya said. “I was planning on descending to understand the lower dimensions better anyway. While I’m there, I might as well reach the peak.”

“Livestream it,” Karta said, pointing at an app on the display. “The two of us will watch your avatar down below. Of course, you won’t be able to communicate with your avatar.”

Vremya snorted and opened the app. There was an option to link an avatar’s senses with the personal computer, allowing the viewers to witness everything the avatar did. “That’s awfully convenient. All I have to do is create an avatar and it’ll automatically link?”

“Yep,” Karta said. “Lots of gods livestream their experiences in the lower dimension for some extra money on the side. The whole livestreaming app is pretty fleshed out since it’s been used and improved for the past three hundred eons. This stream is personal, so only the two of us will witness your failure.”

Vremya snorted again. “How hard can it possibly be to reach the peak as a lower lifeform?” He closed his eyes, and an image appeared on the display. It was of a river, and within the river, a humanoid shape was taking form. “A river-spirit avatar, good enough for you?”

Karta blinked, and Vremya swore he saw pity within her eyes. “Did you do any research before you sent that avatar down there?” the Labrador Retriever asked.

Vremya frowned. “No. Why?”

“That’s why,” Karta said, jabbing at the screen with her paw.

Three peasants were standing by the river bed, fishing, and one of them saw Vremya’s avatar climb out of the water. “River demon!” the oldest one shouted. He tossed his fishing pole aside and scrambled away. The other two peasants reacted in similar manners, ditching their equipment to escape.

“That was quite an overreaction,” Vremya said and furrowed his brows. “Humans are scared of river spirits?”

Karta half-snorted, half-chuckled. “Humans don’t like things that aren’t human. Heck, some of them don’t even like other humans.”

The avatar frowned and picked up the tools the peasants had left behind, examining them in detail. After a while, the avatar shivered and frowned.

“If you don’t wear clothes, you’ll get cold,” Karta said.

Vremya rolled his eyes. “You think I don’t know that?”

The avatar looked around before heading in the opposite direction the humans had ran. Although it could’ve obtained clothes, food, and shelter if it followed the peasants, it was obvious they wouldn’t treat him kindly. While the avatar walked, it took deep breaths in a rhythmic pattern, and its shivering stopped.

“At least you’re not a complete moron,” Karta said. “Is that the god of fire’s cultivation technique?”

“It is,” Vremya said, nodding his head. His furrowed brows relaxed. He couldn’t communicate with his avatar, and his avatar couldn’t communicate with him, but it was doing everything he would do. It even had all his knowledge as well. If he couldn’t reach the peak of humans, well, peak of river spirits, how embarrassing would that be?

The avatar continued with its breathing technique. It hadn’t even walked a mile before a fluctuation of energy surged out of its body, signaling its entry into the supernatural. Vremya smiled and nudged Karta. “It hasn’t even been a few minutes, and the first step has already been taken. Are you ready to serve me?”

Karta licked her lips. “You better get ready to call me Master,” she said. “I predict your avatar is going to die within the next ten minutes.”

Vremya stroked his chin. He could only see and hear the things his avatar could see and hear. It didn’t seem like there was any danger approaching. Vremya shook his head. Karta was likely trying to trick him to—

“Die, river demon!”

The avatar turned around, revealing a handsome man with a sword. Unfortunately, the sword was a lot closer than Vremya would’ve liked it to be. In fact, the distance between Vremya’s avatar and the sword had already reached a negative distance. The display went dark.

Karta snorted, trying to hold back her laughter. “See?”

The display went from a first-person perspective to a third-person perspective. Three handsome men with swords and white robes were standing around the avatar’s headless body. Two of the men were praising the one with the bloody sword. Vremya’s expression darkened, and he vanished from his place beside Karta.

The god of potato chips blinked twice and climbed to her feet. She was about to call out for Vremya, but she located the old man in an instant. He was inside the display, standing over the corpse of his avatar. With a wave of his hand, the three humans froze. When he lowered his hand, a breeze blew past, and the three humans dissolved into dust as if they were artifacts that had been preserved for millions of years, breaking at the slightest touch. Karta’s jaw dropped open, and not even a second later, Vremya was standing back beside her. The Labrador Retriever barked at Vremya. “Woof! You moron! You read through the user manual for the personal computer, but you didn’t read through the book of laws? You can’t interfere in the lower dimensions like that!”

Vremya snorted, his anger still there despite taking revenge. “I know the law. I killed those three humans; as a punishment, I’m not allowed to have contact outside of my territory for a hundred thousand years, but that’s a small price to pay.”

Karta’s eye twitched. “You call that a small price?”

Vremya clapped his hands once. “There. A hundred thousand years have passed. See how small of a price it was?”

Karta’s eyes bulged as her personal computer rang like crazy. All of her apps gained a red dot in the corners of their icons, and the numbers within the dots were rising like crazy. “You fast-forwarded time!?” She pressed through her apps, and despair gradually settled in on her face. “What have you done!? My users are all dead! The potato chip market has dwindled into almost nothing!” Her eyes turned bloodshot, and she lunged at Vremya, biting at his leg despite the barrier preventing her from injuring him. “How dare you do this to your master!?”

“Let go of me! Don’t touch my leg with your chicken-poop-stained tongue!”

“Who has a poop-stained tongue!? I’ll stain your tongue with poop!” Karta viciously swatted at Vremya’s crotch. The old man was lucky violence amongst gods was banned, or he would’ve turned into a eunuch. Fat tears dripped out of Karta’s eyes. “All my hard work! I don’t think I’ll ever recover from this!”

“W-wait,” Vremya said. “Don’t cry. I can undo it, okay? I’ll go back in time by a hundred thousand years.” He clapped his hands, and Karta sat back on her haunches, wiping at her eyes with the backs of her paws. “Huh…. That’s odd,” Vremya muttered.

“What?”

Vremya frowned. “It seems like I can’t go back in time.” He clapped his hands again. The frown deepened. “But I can go forward. How odd.”

Karta’s personal computer rang like crazy again. “Old man!” Karta shouted while raising her lips up, revealing her teeth and gums. “If you clap your hands one more time, I’m going to rip the battery out of your computer at a crucial moment!”