The Holy Emperor's Strategy
The game’s systems strongly encourage accepting an opponent’s surrender.
Accepting a surrender carries no downside whatsoever. When a subordinate god is appointed, the usual concerns—such as deliberate sabotage or trolling—are instantly resolved: the offender is erased, the damage is reversed with a surge of divinity, and extra time is granted. Even unintentional mistakes that lower a civilization’s performance can be prevented simply by the chief god issuing a prior command of “Do not do that.” Disobedience results in soul annihilation.
Subordinate gods are not treated unfairly either. The system prevents the usual abuses of power hierarchies; irrational demands cannot exist. Gods feel neither lust nor hunger. Even if a chief god wished to inflict inhumane treatment, there is no physical body to torment and no pain to inflict. More importantly, there is no reason to waste time on such pointless “torture” when rivals are running their worlds at maximum efficiency. Such players are quickly eliminated. By round ten, none remain. Every surviving player is a victory-point machine that knows only how to win.
The generous cooperation mechanics exist for another reason as well. Without accepting surrenders, even the strongest player hits a hard limit by round ten: the world is simply too vast to manage with too few gods. Traits, Spiritual Realm construction, clone creation, and raising the Politics stat can mitigate the problem, but none are as efficient as simply commanding subordinate gods.
Therefore, no matter how distasteful an opponent may be, accepting their surrender is always advantageous. Once absolute obedience is secured, there is no reason to refuse.
Terasion understood the benefits of absolute cooperation better than anyone. After the disaster phase he accepted the surrender of a Poison-build player and even the pirates who had tried to devour him. (The Poison player had refused at first, only surrendering once the dimensional fusion stage made refusal impossible. There had been no true madness in him after all.)
Terasion managed his 819 subordinate gods with extreme efficiency. Gathering that many was perhaps the single stroke of luck amid countless misfortunes; even if he accepted every player’s surrender, he could never have assembled so many if their worlds had lacked sufficient subordinates.
He classified the players he had collected into three broad categories:
First, the Bureaucrat type—players who had held ruling or administrative positions in life. They completed the actual governance protocols and ruled provinces, cities, and villages.
Second, the Scholar type—players who maximized knowledge to issue revelations and advance civilization.
Third, the Gamer type—players who understood divinity mechanics and possessed broad knowledge of the game system itself.
These were further divided into three realms—Material, Intermediate, and Spiritual—creating nine total classifications. Each subordinate was expected to perform at their best within their assigned field.
Because the number of subordinates kept growing and names became difficult to remember, Terasion assigned simple codenames.
“Material-Bureaucrat-Deer-Division-10-56 reporting. The deer tribe is clashing with the wolf tribe over manna. The wolves are emphasizing their superior combat ability and pressuring the deer by claiming they can hunt them. It appears to be a standard judicial matter, so I have issued a revelation to the magistrate for resolution.”
“Material-Bureaucrat” indicated a Material-realm bureaucrat-type player. “Deer-Division” meant the player was responsible for the deer tribe. “10” signified they had joined Terasion’s world in round ten, and “56” indicated they had ranked fifty-sixth in contribution at the time of joining.
Terasion reviewed the report, confirming details through a clone created from his Faith stat.
“Correct handling. Continue as you have been.”
This was his usual response. “There appears to be a problem; I will consult the relevant specialists” rarely occurred. “This is incorrect; correct it immediately” occurred even less.
The specialists’ reports were clean. Terasion had formed a “Pantheon Leadership” with his most capable gods and now performed only the role of final decision-maker. Minor matters were delegated; only finalized proposals reached him for review. He made decisions proactively rather than being swayed by others’ opinions.
“The Faith stat is significantly below target. There seems to be an issue with the Culture stat—residents appear to be consuming too many hallucinogenic plants.”
“Even so, those plants raise the rate of Mystery awakenings.”
“No. Faith is more important. Fairy Tale Land ends the moment its residents begin devouring one another. We must ensure manna and nectar remain perpetually abundant.”
“Understood.”
Terasion’s build relied heavily on Fairy Tale Land. The trait granted human-level intelligence to every creature weighing more than one kilogram, turning them into intelligent beings. Not every living thing qualified—mice, small frogs, and insects remained unintelligent, as did ordinary grass—but trees, foxes, large rabbits, and sizable fish all became sapient. With minor evolutionary tuning, even frogs and birds could be elevated.
These “humans” received an effective doubling of their Intelligence stat—specifically creativity, reasoning, deduction, and memory, excluding Perception. The advantage was obvious: virtually every animal and plant became an elite soldier. Their combat prowess and physical capabilities surpassed those of ordinary humans. A little Evolution could even grant speech to dogs or horses.
The drawback was catastrophic racial conflict. Even different human ethnicities fought; here, predator and prey species were forced to coexist as fellow “humans.” While humans held the top position thanks to the intelligence bonus, conflicts between bears and salmon were fundamentally insoluble. Even with unlimited manna and nectar, size differences guaranteed tension.
The Holy Emperor of Utopia had once resolved these conflicts through the individual efforts of his subordinates. Now he had found a truly “game-like” solution.
“It’s done. I’ve finally completed it.”
“What is it?”
Terasion’s angel asked quietly. He showed her a colossal altar where offerings were made to the celestial bodies of the universe, and the Constellation terrain that opened the sky above it. Thanks to the Center of the Universe trait, fifteen satellites—matching his current Faith level of fifteen—channeled powerful flows of energy from the heavens down to the altar.
“Because of the specialists I gathered, I was able to construct something that normally appears much later in the game. I’m glad I obtained the Center of the Universe trait both in-game and here.”
“Hmm. So this is a build you used in the game during your previous life?”
“Yes. That’s why I obtained both Fairy Tale Land and Center of the Universe early. Other traits could be applied, but these two are the most efficient.”
“So what exactly did you do?”
“Just a moment… watch.”
Terasion manipulated his divinity, briefly adjusting the cosmic spiritual structures. What had been possible in-game by tweaking the Spiritual Realm system had been greatly reinforced by the knowledge of his subordinate gods.
In that instant, every intelligent animal within Utopia had its intelligence stripped away entirely.
“Huh?”
Terasion’s angel was momentarily bewildered, countless question marks floating in her mind. Terasion gathered the stolen intelligence, channeled it between the celestial bodies, fused it into a single stream as though steaming it in a giant cooker, then redistributed it to the lower lifeforms.
The creatures that had been in conflict moments earlier now moved as though nothing had happened, faithfully carrying out their duties. With their diminished sense of self, they became utterly subservient to humans.
“It worked! People called it a bugged playstyle, but it really functions here too.”
“W-what did you just do?”
“Ah. While playing the game I discovered a technique. When traits like Fairy Tale Land grant intelligence, they don’t actually raise the Intelligence stat—they apply a buff that increases it. If you manipulate that buff slightly, you can temporarily steal the intelligence granted by a mythic-grade trait. The recovered buffs are treated as resources and accumulate. Since each stolen buff represents an animal’s sense of self, I processed them into a Spirit-manipulation Mystery that registers as a brainwashing device in-game, then returned them. The result is soldiers who retain full animal combat ability but possess no individual ego—capable of thought, yet unable to feel pain, fear, or anxiety.”
Terasion’s angel’s mouth fell open.
“What???”
“This is what’s known as the Cruel Fairy Tale Land build. With it, resources like manna and nectar remain available while animals can also be slaughtered, doubling food supply. As more animals are raised, the collective spirit entity grows larger, reducing dependence on food production. There’s no need to consider Politics at all. Eventually, even the humans being raised can be fed into it, turning them all into machines that obey only divine commands.”
Terasion’s angel was truly speechless.
“B-but wouldn’t that make them terribly unhappy?”
“Ah, it’s fine. One of the satellites continuously emits satisfaction. Even after their egos collapse inside the spirit entity, every lifeform feels nothing but endless satisfaction, which actually increases the Faith stat. That’s why Center of the Universe was essential—without it, creating an entity that radiates such a powerful flow would be difficult, and it would require reaching level twenty or so…”
“I-is that really okay? Doing something like that?”
Terasion answered calmly.
“What choice do I have? A Poison build appeared in round six, making it impossible to fuse all bodies into a single giant brain with high intelligence but no mobility to pump overall Intelligence. This was the only option left. I was planning to do this around round ten anyway.”
“N-no, I mean… ethically speaking, isn’t this different? You’re stripping away every individual’s sense of self. Can you still call this Utopia?”
“It is Utopia. Statistically, everyone is satisfied. The system confirms it as well. Any sense of revulsion comes simply from our inability to fully comprehend transcendent technology. …You are the successor of a super-dimensional civilization, yet you feel revulsion?”
“Uh… well. No, it’s not that. It’s just… far more unexpected than I imagined. You show remarkably little mercy toward living beings.”
Terasion replied flatly.
“So what? I am a god and they are my creations. In the game they were NPCs, so I played this way. Here I am a god, so I play this way.”
“……”
This was the method of the Holy Emperor of Utopia, who had declared that because humanity was vile, its contradictions must be resolved through technology and transcendent authority. Terasion had wished to transcend human limits through the advancement of technology and civilization. The framework of genes was an illusion; intelligence was an illusion; life itself was an illusion. What mattered was technological progress and the happiness of each individual. Compared to Biin—who despised humans for their ugliness yet pitied intelligent beings forced to die in the gods’ wars—Terasion’s stance was remarkably clean.
“You might actually win, Lord Terasion.”
“Why?”
“Hmm. Just a feeling.”
“Game freedom is so high that there are plenty of bizarre and perverted builds, but this one is simply the most efficient. That’s the only reason I’m using it.”
World Collision will begin shortly. Only surviving players will advance to the next round.
“Ah. Shall we move on to the next round, then? I need to defeat my next opponent first.”
Round eleven had begun.