<h4>Chapter 661: I Want to y a Game</h4>


    Now that I knew that fallen gods were actually helpful in a way, I could ask the others to be a bit more lenient on them. It’s a bit toote to spread that ‘faith’ in any of the currently civilizeds, but perhaps there would be some that appear in the future in other worlds. Either way, what I needed to do now was focus on my final preparations for theing invasion.


    I had previously obtained several decks of spell cards from Deckan, representing various domains that I wanted to specialize in when it came tobat. However, after giving it some thought, I realized that there were other domain abilities that I could utilize even outside ofbat.


    Tsubaki. I sent a mental message towards the fox-girl who I knew would be waiting for me to message her. Sure enough, she appeared in front of my desk no more than a few secondster, already kneeling.


    “You summoned me, my Keeper?” She asked, her tails swaying happily. Okay, I’ve got to make sure toe down and spend more time with her from now on. It’s pretty clear she’s missed having me around.


    I simply nodded my head, not expressing my inner thoughts. “I want you to put in an order with nk. If necessary, have Dana work with you on it. There’s a very special type of magic card I want you to purchase, and I’d prefer if it was delivered within the next three days.”


    nk was floating through the vast, digital void, out on a stroll when a letter appeared in his hand. There was a red exmation mark in the top-right corner, as well as a blue K next to it, indicating that this was an alert from the office of the Keeper.


    Curious, he flicked his wrist, throwing the letter in front of him and letting it open up to transform into arge screen. On the screen was a familiar scene, numerous cards beingid out and arranged. “Oh? It seems that they’re ordering another deck. I wonder what it will be this time.” He remarked, a slight glimmer in his ck eyes.


    Thanks to the inspiration from many years ago, he had opened a specialized service catered to newborn deities, selling them cards to help them take advantage of their domain. Through this, he had earned quite a stream of revenue, and had managed to purchase a physical data center to use as his base of operations for himself and his subordinates.


    As he looked at the screen, he quickly began to discern the characteristics of each card that was appearing. “This is definitely the fourth-tier. But… one card calctes resource costs and production, another seems to be… pathing data?”


    It took a little while for nk to realize that these were not separate cards in the deck, but were rather being stored to be used asterponents for a single card. “Could it be?” His eyes shed in realization, his excitement rapidly growing.


    I closed my eyes, counting down the seconds until the invasion began. Thankfully, nk contacted us and cooperated to help get the new cardpleted, otherwise it was unlikely that Dana would have been able to do so in time by herself. Now, I felt it in my hand, waiting to be deployed at a moment’s notice.


    Soon, it was time, and I felt the world seem to shift and lock around me. I knew that my connection with the Admin Room had been severed at this moment. Until the invasion was over, I wouldn’t be able to return, or evenmunicate with the others aside from their local incarnations.


    “Tsubaki!” I shouted out, issuing my first order of the event. “Contact the fleets stationed at each world, and report any anomalies. You’re looking for a medium orrger spacecraft that would have suddenly appeared without any valid identification.”


    “Understood, my Keeper!” She nodded seriously, leaning her head forward as she contacted the different groups, likely using avatars that she stationed at amunications ry.


    My left hand clenched, hoping that they were unlucky enough to appear within detection range. ording to the system prompt, there were exactly two hundred individuals sent in this invasion, which would have been more than enough to kick things off if we go by James’s estimate of events.


    After roughly five minutes, Tsubaki raised her head, before shaking it. “No suspicious ships detected within thest hour, my Keeper.”


    I cursed under my breath at that, slowly standing up. “Then, it’s time to y a game. Keep my presence confidential for the time being. There’s still the chance that they deployed ground troops.”


    Tsubaki nodded, watching me walk out into the courtyard. In my right hand, I lifted up the card that I hadmissioned, at the same time focusing to channel the Games domain. “Game, start. My opponents are all matured humanoid creatures who appeared in my worlds within thest ten minutes, grouped in teams of at least twenty individuals.”


    Normally, such a demand would not be possible, no matter the card used. However, if the card is amplified by the Games domain, I can use my divine power to ‘force’ a game on a target group. Of course, for it to be a true game, both groups had to y it. Therefore, I naturally could not make it a game that allowed direct attacks.


    Gctic Seeker is now online.


    Registering yers…


    Two groups match target specifications. Invite both to y?


    “Yes.” I said, focusing on my divinity to make it a far more forceful invitation. As the name implied, this was a game of gctic hide and seek, though it contained a city builder aspect. As a game itself, it was meant to give the yers ess to a simtion space, where they would be able to construct their own base.


    From there, they would gradually upgrade and collect resources, until one side managed to prate the stealth systems of the other and find their location. For normal people, it was just a simple game to enjoy over the course of a few days in the background. Although I would have preferred to make the game faster paced, doing so would have likely cost far more divinity to keep it active in this state.


    Nheless, nk was excited as it represented a game created purely through cards, and showed a way that he could create his own divine deck. That was… not my intended reason behind creating this card, though.


    ording to the information that I obtained, my opponent would never use any type of supernatural energy. So, it is unlikely that they would have their own gods capable of countering a tracking method like this. And besides, there truly was a degree of risk to this n, as it was possible for them to use it to track me instead.


    At this moment, I was betting on the information I received being correct. MeatLover told me that the troops Silence deploys have their memories wiped from their world. If that’s true, and they retain only their military training and mission directive, they should not have the knowledge required to y this game. Furthermore, all of the prompts would be in an entirely foreignnguage to them.


    Even with all of this, I had no desire to take unnecessary risks. If my world did not have a God of Stealth, I would not be asfortable ying a game like this. With that domain in y, I was essentially ying this game with cheat codes.


    Gctic Seeker has been epted.


    yers may ess their bases at will.


    Finally, thest domain that I could employ, changing thendscape of this game from a ‘simted’ base to the real world. And also the reason that I had exited the citadel. My divine energy poured into the card, before I threw it out beyond the shield of the Sky Citadel, allowing it to stab into the dirt of a vast ins.


    The Cities domain activated, bringing the simted base to the real world. Buildings arose from the soil, creating what appeared to be a small, modern town. It’d be nice if the forced appearance of the city base directly destroyed their ships, but I doubt that’ll happen… that would vite the principle of the game, so it will likely just integrate itself into their ships instead.


    Stepping off the ledge of the citadel, I allowed my body to plummet towards the ground below. As I descended, I could see numerous individuals walking throughout the town, the NPCs created by the game. Sadly, these NPCs were not true AIs like nk, as the creation of those was not yet possible. Instead, each one served a specific purpose, like mining for resources or upgrading facilities.


    I considered using pseudo-AIs created through cards like Ana, but decided that it would be best not to have them be too intelligent. If the AI was able to get around thenguage barrier, I would lose my lead.


    Thus, I immediately began walking towards the Control Hub, where yers would make the choices for their game. In truth, the rest of the city existed mostly as a visual example of the yer’s progress, and to enable me to use the Cities domain to bring it to reality.


    Once inside the Control Hub, I sat down, opening the menu. Since the game didn’t respond to voice, I silently navigated through the purchasing options, upgrading the data miners to pull in more resources. I was not ambitious enough to try and create a new type of material for this game that I would manifest from thin air, so the ‘resource’ that had to be harvested and spent was simply data.


    I knew that it was azy way around the problem, but this was a somewhat rushed job. And the game itself was meant to be rather simple in its design. I’ll let nk modify the game after the invasion to release it to the masses. Maybe they’ll find it fun after some more work is put in.


    “What shall we do now, my Keeper?” Tsubaki asked, standing beside me. Having participated in the game’s creation, she surely knew that it would be some time before they were found using this method. Yet, it was far more likely to seed than randomly searching through space.


    “For now, we just pray that they don’t have a universal trantor that can decrypt ournguage.” I said with a somewhat bitter smile. As the opponent was a pure technological world, this was entirely possible. It was even possible that the ‘fairness’ of the game made that not required, and theputers produced for the base on their end was in their ownnguage.


    “Keep the fleets in orbit. I’ll need six hours before I can start signal amplification, ording to my initial n.” In other words, for six hours I would be relying on the Stealth domain to keep my base hidden.


    “Are you going to do this every invasion?” Dana asked curiously, looking at the map on the wall before me. The map was disying NPC movements, and how they were currently upgrading the data nodes for increased resource harvesting. “It seems kind of…”


    I shook my head, knowing what she was getting at. “If it wasn’t for the information that the opponent doesn’t use gods, I’d never resort to this n. The proper domain could counter a game like this, or potentially even attack me through it. And against monsters… well, they wouldn’t even keep a single base to y the game, so they’d avoid it entirely.”


    Tsubaki nodded, though seemed to think of something. “Then, what would happen if the invaders were to simply abandon their base and operate in a different region of space?”


    I chuckled dryly at that. “It’s a risk, I’ll give you that. I’m betting on the information I received being correct, as well as my own conjecture. If they arrived with small numbers, with the intention of establishing a deep-space structure, then they likely only arrived with the essential resources needed.”


    “If that is the case, they wouldn’t be able to afford to abandon their bases, because they need them to create their future fleet. The worst-case scenario is for them to only create a small factory at first, and then use that to build a new ship to take them elsewhere and start over, leaving the bases I ‘gave them’ behind. Most likely blowing them up in the process.”


    “If they do that, the game should end because there will no longer be an enemy yer. And if they don’t blow up their bases after they leave, we’ll get ess to their technology once I’m able to track their location.”


    I knew that this was by no means a perfect n. Regardless, it was the best one that I coulde up with using the resources at my disposal. It was simply too unreliable to send my main fleets out to scout for the enemy when I did not even know which universe they appeared in. That was why I set this game to be able to work across the dimensional boundaries.


    Of course… interdimensional scanning was a much higher tier of research in the game, and only really meant to counter specific stealth types. Regardless, I included it due to the likelihood that the enemy would not appear in the same universe as myself.