Chapter 113: Chapter 112: How Can You Lose With a Red Dragon in Your Face?

「Deep in the forest.」

Surrounded by a boundless forest of spruce and pine, a wide, flat, snow-covered plain encircled a colossal tree nearly a hundred meters tall. Dotted around the tree were several hundred round houses of varying sizes, built from stone.

On an altar beneath the colossal tree rested the Divine Remains of a deceased deity. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

But unlike other lifeless Divine Remains, standing right beside the bones was a life-form that was almost a Spirit Body. It had complex, coral-like antlers, eyes with double pupils, and the appearance of a deer.

In front of the altar stood Little Deer, back in his human form, and an old woman.

"Grandma, is that Dragon going to follow us?" Little Deer still looked very anxious.

The old woman, whom he called Grandma, placed several paper cards before the altar and began to pray devoutly to the Deer Spirit Body.

The cards then lit up, conjuring a rather crude Illusion.

"The prophecy shows a ninety-percent probability that the bewildered Dragon will appear here tonight."

"Grandma, Grandma!"

"Don’t panic. It is all the inevitability of fate. It was the prophecy that guided you to Twin Tower City, and it is destiny that you meet the Red Dragon."

"No, Grandma, look!"

"Do not be discourteous before the deity. There is a seventy-percent chance the Red Dragon’s arrival will bring us hope. Even if things don’t go as we wish, it will be but a small ripple in the long river of life."

"The Dragon! The Dragon is here!" Little Deer cried out in a panic.

"How could that be? A Dragon’s arrival would cause such a commotion; how could I not hear it? I’m just old, not deaf."

Grandma looked up at the sky, which was filled with stars.

"See? I told you it was impossible..."

She looked down, and a not-so-tall Dragon was pawing at the cards on the ground, looking very interested.

"You are...?" Grandma hadn’t noticed at all when Zog had arrived.

"Returning your fireflies." Zog opened his claw, and a swarm of fireflies escaped their confinement, vanishing into the night. They were clearly not mere Insects.

"So this so-called Prophetic Art is actually a big data model?" Zog asked, turning to look at the Deer Spirit.

’He originally wanted to say it was AI, but it wasn’t artificial. Divine intelligence? Faith intelligence?’

’He decided to just call it a big data model.’

’He had already connected to the Divine Remains and looked through them just now, while observing from high up in the sky.’

As a Dragon who had lived long enough, Zog was naturally not so reckless as to come face-to-face with a creature of unknown origin right away.

So, he had first observed and eavesdropped from several hundred meters up, relying on his excellent sight and hearing for a long time.

He quickly determined that whatever this thing was, it definitely wasn’t the God of Nature.

’At least not the one he knew. That one was well and truly dead, and had been humanoid.’

This deer was very weak, merely a Spirit Body that depended entirely on the Divine Remains for its existence.

And Divine Remains could be destroyed. Easily, in fact.

In the period right after the war of the Divine Race ended, Divine Remains were relatively abundant. They were used as decorations, Casting materials, and even eaten.

That’s right. Back then, people believed that eating Divine Remains could grant them the power of the Deities, extend their lifespan, and so on.

It was during this period that the number of Divine Remains dropped dramatically.

But people later discovered it was useless—they might as well just drink more water every day.

They weren’t good for Casting, and as decorations, they looked no different from other bones.

The few remaining bones were gradually forgotten by history, left to gather dust in forgotten corners.

After confirming there was no danger, Zog imitated the old woman on the ground and connected to the Divine Remains from the sky.

’Inside, it looked no different from the one the Zog Group used for its network.’

The only difference was an extremely complex Inscription program inside—or what seemed to be a program.

Its structural logic was completely different from anything written by a person. The logic was extremely disjointed, not like an algorithm derived step by step.

’Could it be that when faith accumulates to a certain point, an intelligent program spontaneously generates inside the Divine Remains?’

’The external manifestation is that Deer Spirit Body.’

He also noticed how the old woman was using the Deer Spirit Body.

She wrote a large amount of known information about the Zog Group onto the cards.

Then, she fed them into the program, which would then output the probability of whether Zog would come, and whether the outcome of his arrival would be good or bad.

’Yes, a probability.’

The probability of Zog’s arrival was 91.24%. Functionally, it really was just an intelligent program that made judgments based on known conditions.

’So Prophetic Art is actually this scientific?’

’Does that mean other Prophet Mages’ methods of prophecy work on the same principle, just calculated by the human brain?’

’So the mystical-seeming rituals of Prophet Mages are actually just their brains maxing out their processing power?’

’The predictions of other Mages aren’t as precise as this deer’s because the human brain’s processing power isn’t as high as a program’s.’

’And those times when they get a nosebleed or lose consciousness during a ritual? That’s just their processing power getting overloaded, triggering the body’s self-preservation mechanism.’

’As for why there are so few people in the Prophetic School, it’s not because it has no future, but because the processing power threshold is high. This is the School that truly demands the highest level of mathematical skill.’

Once the mystery was gone, there was naturally nothing to be afraid of.

Zog dove straight down, using Magic to brake and slow his descent just before landing.

Dragon flight didn’t rely purely on wings; aerodynamics alone couldn’t support a Dragon’s massive body. It was a hybrid system that also used Magic Power.

He landed lightly beside Little Deer and offered a friendly smile that showed off eighteen teeth.

And that was why Zog had suddenly appeared before the altar, pawing at the cards.

"What ’big data model’? Are you the Dragon trying to resurrect the Primordial God?"

The old woman’s mind was filled with questions. This was completely different from the meeting she had envisioned.

"That thing," Zog said, pointing at the Deer Spirit Body. "Let me guess. You were trying to resurrect the God of Nature through faith, but you ended up reviving this thing instead."

"Then, to prevent the faith your tribe had painstakingly gathered from collapsing, you called this thing the Primordial God, as in, the primordial form of a deity?"

"You believe this so-called deity will eventually grow into the God of Nature, but your tribe’s faith is insufficient. Then you discovered that a certain Zog Group was channeling a massive amount of faith into a piece of Divine Remains, and you want to learn how."

Zog had seen through it all.

The old woman was dumbfounded. How could something so sacred be described in such a mercenary way by this Dragon?

But he wasn’t wrong. She truly did need the Zog Group’s method for concentrating faith.

Whether this Deer Spirit Body was the God of Nature or not, she needed it to be.

"I want to learn," she answered with utmost sincerity.

’As expected, every believer willing to worship the Primordial God is a kind soul, willing to share their knowledge.’

Zog’s half-human-height figure immediately grew tall and radiant in her mind. A Holy Dragon, he was practically a Holy Dragon.

"In your dreams," Zog said mercilessly.

He wasn’t so radiant anymore.

"I told you he was an Evil Dragon," came Little Deer’s faint voice.

"Guilt-tripping, that’s what this is! So I’m an Evil Dragon just because I won’t teach you? If you weren’t still useful, I’d slice off your antlers."

"Ah!" Little Deer cowered into a ball, terrified. Although he didn’t know what antlers were, it sounded like a horrifying threat.

"What are your terms?" The old woman was, after all, worldly-wise. She immediately understood that Zog wanted to treat this as a business negotiation.

"I need your ’God of Nature’ here to be integrated into the Red Middle Network as a branch server."

Zog had already discovered that faith transmission also had a speed limit. The latency from the Northern Domain was clearly higher than from Twin Tower City, and there was even some packet loss, though it wasn’t very noticeable yet.

But what about when it expanded to even more distant regions?

So he needed to set up servers in various locations. Since there was a ready-made one right in front of him, he might as well start here and take the opportunity to study what this deer could do.

"No." The old woman refused immediately. Although she didn’t understand "server," she understood "branch." He wanted to make the God of Nature a subordinate deity.

"You don’t have a choice. Many of the houses in this tribe are already empty. The population is declining, isn’t it? I’m guessing quite a few young people have left, too."

"You know what kind of future awaits a tribe with no young people, and you know the fate of a deity with no faith. So, I’m actually saving you. And it."

The old woman was speechless. Due to the lack of population, many of the tribe’s newborns were already suffering from congenital diseases.

Finally, she relented. "Fine. But you have to prove you can make more people believe in the God of Nature."

"I can. But I’ll need the child behind you."

"Fine."

"Grandma!"

But Little Deer had no right to choose for himself.

"Also," Zog said, pointing at the cards on the ground, "I need your technique for producing Illusions from Control Cards through chanting."