"Long, long ago, before we knew how to farm, we lived on this island like savages. The terrifying monsters that sometimes appeared in the sea could easily take our lives."
"Then, the god descended."
"He had a miraculous Paintbrush."
"He painted the towering Red Tree, and from then on, we no longer feared the waves."
"He painted fertile soil, and from then on, we no longer worried about famine."
"For generations, we guarded this God-Gifted Land, never again drawing near to the mysterious sea. We slept soundly in the embrace of our merciful god."
"But for the past hundred years, the god has stopped bestowing gifts upon our island."
"God, why won't you give us your blessings?"
"God, please come back! We need you!"
Mona watched quietly as the little figures on the Drawing Board led the crowd in calling out to him again and again in the temple. He merely gave a faint, indifferent chuckle.
Why had the god stopped bestowing gifts?
Only he knew the answer.
It had begun more than a hundred years ago:
When he, a frail human, died in an accident.
His new self, now a god, awoke in this world and descended upon this island.
He soon discovered that he possessed a miraculous [Paintbrush] and [Palette].
Though the [Paintbrush] held no paint, it could take up the colors of anything in the world and store them on the [Palette] for later use.
So he dipped the tip of the brush into the island's soil and trees.
Soon, two usable colors appeared on the [Palette].
They were [Soil] and [Red Tree].
[You have acquired two new colors.]
[The Palette has infused these colors with a trace of divine power.]
[They have now become extraordinary colors.]
[Soil → God-Given Soil]
[Red Tree → Great Divine Tree]
[God-Given Soil]: Divine soil teeming with fertility. It can nurture special crops suited to the current environment.
[Great Divine Tree]: A gigantic Red Tree that can absorb the energy of natural disasters and shield people from calamities.
"Everything in creation is my paint, and the world is my canvas. Everything I paint will be imbued with divine power."
Mona murmured.
He soon became familiar with his powers and tried dabbing each color onto the canvas. With a gentle sweep of his brush, he painted [Red Tree] and [Soil].
Just as he expected.
The Red Tree he painted on the coast became a towering wall, a [Great Divine Tree] capable of withstanding all kinds of disasters.
The soil he painted on the highlands was upgraded to [God-Given Fertile Soil], which could nurture excellent crops.
And the miracles he painted had, by chance, helped the people on this lonely island survive.
"God!"
"God!"
Those who happened to witness the miracle's birth dropped to their knees, overcome with emotion.
The people who had witnessed the miracle soon formed a Tribe that worshipped him.
Whether it was because of the remnants of his humanity or his instinctive desire to seek amusement,
he grew interested in the civilization that had developed thanks to his powers and chose to help these people.
So he dipped his Paintbrush into more colors.
He began painting more miracles, hoping the civilization would continue to develop in interesting ways.
However, after he had bestowed miracle after miracle,
the people were grateful to their god.
But this gratitude gave rise to laziness and greed.
When drought struck, they begged the god for [True Rain], which nourished all things.
When storms threatened, they prayed for [Holy Fire], which could not easily be extinguished by wind and rain.
The people were like children who believed they had nothing to fear.
They lay greedily in their god's embrace, unwilling to seek out a new way of life.
So a hundred years ago, before he went to sleep to consolidate his memories, he chose to stop bestowing gifts.
He hoped the people would understand—
A god's gifts were not endless.
Civilization had never advanced through the efforts of the gods alone.
Soon after he stopped bestowing gifts, life on the island began to change.
A century of intensive farming had gradually left even the soil imbued with divine power too barren to grow crops.
The growing population made the already scarce food supply all the more precarious.
Famine came.
But disaster did not awaken the Tribe.
In the temple,
they simply worshipped the god more devoutly each day and offered him all kinds of sacrifices, believing this would make him bestow once more a world full of divine power.
But the god still gave no gifts.
At last, the people began to feel resentment.
But their resentment was not directed at the god.
The god could not be wrong.
It was people who made mistakes.
"Someone must have angered the god. That's why he hasn't bestowed any gifts."
The stone-helmeted man's expression was dark.
"Only by killing the sinner who angered the god will his gifts return."
At the Tribe chief's command,
the island descended into slaughter.
Soon, disabled islanders who could no longer work were burned alive.
They were deemed unworthy of the god's gifts.
Then it was the deformed and the elderly.
They were sent into the flames under the same accusation.
Finally, the Tribe's rulers began burning anyone who dared to protest or disagree with them.
The slaughter went on for a long time.
And so, the present day arrived.
"Burn him!"
"Burn him!"
The torch-bearing crowd was frenzied.
This time, the man bound to the execution frame was a gaunt young man with a calm expression.
Perhaps driven mad by the threat of starvation, he had tried to catch fish by the sea.
And so the young man had defied the ancestral rules and gone to the ocean.
The onlookers stared fearfully at the young man about to be burned alive.
They wondered if such a fate might one day suddenly befall them, too.
"This tedious farce has gone on long enough."
Mona swiped across the Drawing Board.
He quickly reviewed everything that had happened on the island while he slept for a hundred years.
When he dragged the timeline to the present and happened upon this scene,
the indifference on his face slowly faded.
In its place appeared a trace of weariness.
This was getting dull.
Too much of this had happened while he slept.
If things continued like this, the world would only stagnate.
It was time to end this farce.
He took the [Eraser] from the [Divine Artifact].
Then he gently erased the executioners' necks, as if wiping away a few insignificant smudges.
Someone suddenly looked up at the sky.
A cube, like an Obelisk, shimmered faintly in the haze.
"Oh my god, it's God!"
Hearing the commotion behind them, the executioners looked up, stunned, and dropped their torches.
A moment later, they fell to their knees in wild joy, shouting something.
Their delight at the resurrection of the legendary god was so overwhelming that they even forgot the execution was underway.
A miracle had descended.
But this time, it was not the blessing people had hoped for.
It was punishment.
A head,
as if lifted by the wind, rolled lightly to the ground.
The people's cheers cut off abruptly.
But the faint cube in the sky did not pause.
Like flowers withering in the wind,
one head after another kept rolling to the ground.
Not a drop of blood spilled.
Every trace of blood was erased in midair by some invisible force.
Faced with these incomprehensible deaths,
fear and confusion finally seized them.
Why?
Why was God killing them?
Had they not been carrying out God's will by executing sinners?
The eyes on the severed heads
held only deep bewilderment and confusion.
But the dead would never get their answers.
Just as the god had never explained why he stopped bestowing gifts.
After a long while,
the world fell silent.
The terrifying apparition in the sky vanished.
The people who had gathered to watch the execution knelt in fear.
They clearly did not understand
why divine punishment had befallen them.
In their unease,
someone suddenly noticed that the bloodied man on the execution frame was still breathing faintly.
"Look!"
Everyone followed the direction of the trembling finger.
In that place of execution, thick with the stench of death,
only the gaunt sinner bound to the tree still stood.
Morning light pierced the clouds and cast mottled shadows across his lowered, emaciated face.
The wooden frame, blackened by fire, was no longer a sinner's shackles. Instead, it seemed as pure and sacred as a gilded cross.
The people were so overwhelmed by the holy sight that they could barely comprehend it.
But they suddenly understood.
God had delivered his punishment to save this man.
The crowd rushed forward, reaching out with countless hands to untie the young man.
They believed
that God had appeared at that moment to save the young man—and to save people like them, who were suffering.
Their fear turned to fervor. They prostrated themselves at his feet and kissed his toes.
It was as if he were the embodiment of God in the mortal world.
The crowd surrounded him like a star and sang his praises.
The young man who had been about to die soon came to his senses amid the noise, staring blankly at what had happened.
To go from the brink of death to a new life, revered by all, left him at a loss.
It amazed him even more than the capriciousness of the mysterious sea.
But he didn't remain stunned for long.
Once he understood everything,
excitement showed on his gaunt face, its cheekbones prominent, and he lifted his head to gaze at the sky.
"God, you saved me!"
"Was it because you couldn't bear to watch those cruel people's actions that you sent down divine punishment?"
"Please, in your mercy, grant me a revelation!"
"What must I do to save the innocent people of the Tribe?"
But Mona didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
To a god,
saving him had nothing to do with him.
And it had even less to do with mercy.
In the eyes of a god,
this was a game of civilization.
Whether to interfere was simply a matter of whim.
It was enough to clear away a few uninteresting factors and let the game continue while remaining entertaining.
Mona waved his hand, and the Drawing Board darkened.
The clamorous voice disappeared.
He could feel that after he performed the Divine Miracle, the [Faith] that had waned while he slept seemed to have increased again.
That Faith would sustain him as he continued playing this game of civilization.
That was enough.
"A game of civilization...? I remember that I used to be fond of this sort of thing, too. I just can't quite recall everything anymore."
Looking at the darkened Drawing Board, Mona suddenly recalled a fragment of his memories from when he was human, and felt the faintest stir in his heart.
Games had occupied a large part of his memories and emotions in his previous life.
He remembered that he had once been a human known as a "game illustrator."
As a human, he had been passionate about drawing and games.
Even now, as a god, he hadn't forgotten them. Even the way he wielded his powers was connected to drawing and games.
Mona glanced at the game-like panel on the left side of what looked like a Drawing Board in his hands.
There, he saw [Divine Artifact] and [Faith].
[Divine Artifact] represented objects imbued with divine power.
[Paintbrush] and [Eraser] were merely a small fraction of his many [Divine Artifacts].
Using these powers consumed divine energy. Once he had used up a certain amount, he would fall into slumber.
[Faith] wasn't a source of a god's power, but it represented a certain connection between him and this world.
[After a hundred years, you have performed a Divine Miracle once more.]
[The Torch of Faith has been rekindled.]
[Your Anchor Point in this world has strengthened.]
[Your field of vision will no longer be limited to your followers. It can also rest upon objects that still retain the power of Faith.]
Now, after performing the Divine Miracle,
his connection to this world had grown stronger.
Reading the message on the Drawing Board, Mona tried switching the view.
The next second, he found himself inside an empty stone temple.
The faceless stone statue, depicting his mighty form, was his Anchor Point.
"My vision can now rest not only on my followers, but also on related objects. I can save my view there, too."
Mona looked around the empty temple and pondered.
This meant that his anchor in this world had grown stronger.
Although his view was still limited to this small island,
it had indeed become much wider and more stable.
When he had first descended here, he had always felt groggy. His view had wavered, as if he might leave this world at any moment.
It was as though this world couldn't contain his will and power.
Faith might not grant him any power, and its amount didn't matter.
But it was his [Anchor Point] in this world.
As long as even a spark of Faith remained in this world, he wouldn't leave.
Conversely, if he lost all his anchors, he would soon lose his [Anchor Point] in this world and become a true god.
A god had transcended the bounds of living beings, lost consciousness and emotion, lost all memories, and become an incarnation of the rules and concepts above the world.
Becoming a so-called true god would be far too lonely and far too dull.
He didn't want that.
At least, not yet.
He wanted to wait a little longer.
To remain in this world and watch the game of civilization play out.
Until the day arrived.
Before you continue