He paid no heed to Orsaga's teasing.
The Jade Emperor shook his head gently and said quite calmly:
"It's just a bit of a shame. After all, I bet on 'myself' winning..."
Bettors like them.
Though they could not personally enter the fray in any meaningful sense and control the whole board.
After all, that would turn it into a strategy game, determined solely by each bettor's abilities, stripping the game of most of its randomness.
The other pieces.
Would probably be eliminated before they even had a chance to appear.
However.
If they really wanted a greater sense of participation, there were still some compromise options.
For example, they could project their information into the two worlds, allowing each world to produce a projection of them that fit its worldview. Then they could let those projections, which carried none of their original memories, develop and grow freely within those worlds, or even bet outright on their own projections claiming the final victory.
Take Orsaga, for instance.
If he wanted to play that way.
Then all he needed to do was project his information into them, and the two worlds would automatically generate a villainous character similar to Styx of the Blood Sea.
That character's origins would most likely involve some contingency left behind by a certain Innate Chaos Demon God...
In any case, his backstory would resemble that of someone like Hongjun.
Of course, that was not an absolute certainty.
If Orsaga really did leave everything alone and refuse to intervene, there was also a chance that his projection would perish along the way.
Just like the Jade Emperor.
Originally, within a setting like the Primordial World.
According to the lore, his initial identity was that of Hongjun's spirit attendant.
He had evolved from a piece of innate spiritual