Summoning (1)
The world of the gods is a tedious place. The divine race lives for tens of thousands of years at minimum, so they went looking for ways to kill time.
Making humans from lower planets into followers and watching them became a trend for a while. Evil-god roleplay and creation-god simulators had their brief flashes of popularity too—but solo play was always going to get old eventually.
Around the time a few gods, crushed by sheer boredom, started offing themselves, the God of Amusement invented a new game: raise a follower and pit them against another god's follower in a proxy duel.
Proxy duels pumped fresh life into the gods' stagnant society. Everything before had been hands-off observation games where gods barely intervened. A game that let you directly shape a single human was so novel it spread across every planet in a heartbeat.
Thousands of years later, proxy duels had grown into a colossal sport enjoyed even by gods from the remote outer cosmos. The old name was deemed uncool, so the event was rebranded the War of the Gods.
A young goddess who had only just attained divinity out on the fringes of the outer cosmos—Sophia—fell hard for the War of the Gods. She was completely smitten after watching a legendary match put on by this year's Champions League winner.
Putting a human in the squad and winning the championship!
In the early meta, only humans were used. But gods hungry for stronger minions started recruiting elves, ogres, dragons, and the rest.
Humans had excellent growth potential, yet they were harder to raise than other races, so trainers who made them their mainstay were rare. Among everyone who reached the Champions League semifinals this year, the only one still running humans was the champion themselves.
I've decided—my first minion is going to be a human!
I'll raise a human properly and become champion! Full of ambition, Sophia browsed the minion market—and despaired.
"They're so expensive..."
Her planet had a highly developed machine civilization, which made gathering Faith—the currency of the Divine Realm—painfully difficult.
No choice. I'll have to use a human from my own planet.
A god strong enough to snatch humans from other worlds could just shake minions down for free, but for a young goddess like Sophia, that was impossible.
She'd have to use the starter gacha given only once to beginner trainers. It summoned the human best suited for the War of the Gods from among those under her domain, making it a massive help for newcomers.
The catch was that you had to grant the summoned human one wish—but they'd probably just ask for something like eternal life. There were adjustments based on how many minions you already had and how strong they were, but she was so broke she couldn't afford to hoard the ticket.
On my planet, there's a saying—be too thrifty and you end up with nothing but shit!
Decision made, Sophia used the gacha ticket. A blinding light flared and vanished, and a man wearing nothing but his underwear appeared.
"S-sex?"
Earth in the twenty-second century had entered the great age of virtual reality. Of all the countless VR games out there, I liked the fighting-game genre the most.
It was a genre where raw talent could cover for not grinding hours into it. I scraped by on part-time jobs, so games where money equaled power were off the table, and time-sink MMORPGs were just as impossible.
I'd dabbled a bit in AOS and FPS, but the team stress was too much, so I dropped them. Today, like always, I was thrashing the opponent I'd matched with in ranked.
"Low! High! Mid! How many times do I have to hit you before you dodge this obvious pattern? You playing with your feet?"
"You fucking piece of shit..."
"Reporting for verbal abuse."
"This is some real bullshit."
"Thanks for the compliment."
Even I found my own tone disgusting, but so what? It's not like I was ever going to meet this asshole in real life. Plenty of people trash-talked me on the internet communities, but to me it was basically praise.
Losers huddling up for a group circlejerk again. The game was fun, sure, but watching people seethe was even better.
I dropped a comment to throw more fuel on the fire.
I was mid-flame-war with two people who'd spontaneously combusted when a comment showed up that killed the whole mood.
"Ah."
Every last drop of motivation vanished. Dating had already been hard in twenty-first-century Korea, and the twenty-second century was worse.
According to one study, seventy percent of men in their early twenties were lifelong virgins. In a world where you could have a proxy relationship in virtual reality, neither men nor women felt much need to chase romance in the real world.
But I wanted a real relationship. Not a VR character—a real woman. Soft, sweet dating. Actual sex.
"Why the hell is a flexing bastard even on this board..."
Was this just some psy-op designed to piss me off? I couldn't take it and demanded proof. A photo of him with a girl went up.
"That son of a bitch... he's handsome..."
The good looks punched straight through the mosaic. The girl had a body like a VR character.
"Please let him have a three-centimeter dick."
I burned with ugly jealousy, but it didn't make me feel any better. I wasn't in the mood to play, so I flopped down in my VR rig.
"I want to have sex."
Sex with a real woman. Finish inside her, hold each other, fall asleep. Wake up in the morning to a blowjob.
Feeling like shit, I figured I might as well fire up an adult game. I was stripping so I wouldn't soak my clothes when a weird message appeared.
A goddess requires you. Do you accept the summon?
What the hell. An ad for a new game?
The company that made my headset occasionally pushed ads like this. Ad removal was a paid option, and I couldn't afford it.
I'd have to keep pinching pennies until the headset installments were done. Goddess talk—probably one of those constellation-type games. Most of those were MMORPGs, which I didn't care for.
Accept the summon and you may demand one wish from the goddess.
"For real? How far does the wish go?"
Anything is possible.
Sometimes games handed you an objective and paid out a reward for clearing it. Usually a mid-tier studio's way of hyping a title—but leave it to a big company to go this hard on the prize.
"Does sex count?"
Of course.
Hardcore adult game, then. Being a big-studio product, sex probably wasn't the main content—but I preferred games where you raised a character yourself, built affection with the female cast, and earned the sex over generic porn games anyway.
That meant higher freedom, and I could pick the characters I actually wanted to pursue.
"I accept the summon."
The download would start any second. I wouldn't be diving straight into sex the moment I logged in, so maybe I'd blow off some steam in another game first.
"Sex isn't even a big deal. VR adult games are still sex."
I was muttering "sex, sex" under my breath and booting something up when my body went strange. A floating sensation hit me, space flipped in an instant, and a woman prettier than any celebrity appeared.
Look at this big-studio production. Even the best VR always had a little uncanny valley, but this felt like actual reality. Especially the woman's model—it was unreal.
No character I'd ever seen came close. I was staring blankly when that familiar message floated up again.
Speak your wish to the goddess!
They grant the wish right away? What a generous-ass game!
"S-sex?"
Please state a more precise wish.
"I want to have sex with the goddess!"
I squeezed my eyes shut and shouted it. The goddess's closed mouth finally opened.
"Ah."
"Goddess? I want to have sex."
"A-awa..."
"Goddess. I want to have sex!"
"Th-that's, I mean..."
"Goddess!"
I took a step closer. She flinched and backed away. They really nailed this character. She didn't feel like AI at all—she felt like a person.
The flustered expression, the trembling eyelids. Every little gesture was human. Technology had come this far, huh. RPGs weren't my thing, but a god-tier game like this deserved to be played.
How do I break through this goddess's guard and get to the sex? Just a little more pressure and it felt like she'd crack.
"I-I'm a virgin!"
"Even better."
"That's not— I mean, c-could you wish for something else? Eternal life is possible, becoming a Sword Master is possible..."
"So this game's genre is fantasy."
A genre that never really went out of style. That famous gladiator-raising game was medieval fantasy too.
Hearing me, the goddess muttered in a panic.
"G-game? This isn't a game. This is reality!"
"Reality?"
Say something believable. If this were real, pinching my cheek would—
"Ow?"
Back when VR first launched, people died playing games. Pain reduction settings controlled how much you felt, and people who cranked it to a hundred percent treated in-game death like real death.
To stop the body count, modern VR wouldn't let you set pain reduction above fifty percent. Pinching your cheek should feel like a light, ticklish touch—but that hurt.
"This is actually real?"
"Yes! So now you understand how absurd your wish is, right? Wanting to have sex with a goddess!"
"Then sex with the goddess would be real sex."
"What?"
My long-held wish was about to come true! Goddesses are the best!
"Goddess! Let's have sex!"
"Kyaaaaah!!"