Where to go? What to kill? How many to kill? These three questions, jokingly called the "three questions of the soul," neatly summed up the logic of players who had no patience for the story but insisted on completing every quest.
They were also jokingly called "emotionless quest machines." At least, despite their lack of feeling, they were better than the homicidal maniacs who looked at everything and wondered, What loot would this drop?
At least they would not dig a pond specifically to drown a friendly NPC just because that NPC dropped a unique decorative hat on death.
The Dungeons & Dragons games had always had stories that dragged on forever, and Pan Long had never cared for them. Cultural differences made it impossible for him to understand the characters' joys and sorrows, especially when faith and gods were involved.
Asking an atheist to understand such things was simply too much.
In this life, he was no longer an atheist, but he still did not accept the existence of a god who stood above all else. He acknowledged that beings far stronger than himself existed and was willing to call them gods. He even accepted that these gods could grant blessings or bring calamity through faith. But that was as far as it went.
Gods were gods not because they were so exalted that they stood above thought and morality, but simply because they possessed immense power. That was all.
Given the right circumstances, he, Pan Long, could become a god too.
In his previous world, his views would probably have counted as polytheism. They were the mortal enemy of monotheism, the dominant tradition in Western culture. The gulf between them was even wider than the one between atheism and monotheism. Perhaps only the disputes among monotheism's own branches