The Useless Goddess and the Summoner

From the most ancient times, people prayed to the wind.

The faith of countless ancestors coalesced into form, giving birth to a wind spirit named Janna.

Janna's power was once immense. But as the years passed and history shifted, people gradually abandoned their belief in the wind spirit.

They still cried out, "By Janna above," but that was no different from modern folks occasionally exclaiming, "Mazu protect me"—just a folk saying turned idle phrase. Those who truly believed in Janna's existence were few and far between.

A faith without believers is a tree without roots, and so Janna slowly lost her power.

She could barely maintain her divine form for long, often descending into the world as a blue bird.

And just a few hours ago—

Janna, in her blue bird form, rested on a tree outside this apartment building, when she happened to glimpse Li Wei's corpse through the window.

He had just returned from an all-night shift and died of exhaustion in his rented room.

Janna was about to offer a prayer for this poor Zaunite.

But not long after, she saw this dead young man suddenly sit up, full of life!

Only, this resurrected Li Wei was clearly not the same Li Wei.

If it were just that, Janna wouldn't have been too surprised.

As a goddess with millennia of experience, Janna, who knew nearly everything, was well aware that many dark rituals could seize a dead body.

Soul possession might sound bizarre to mortals, but to her, it was nothing new.

The problem was that Li Wei's abilities went far beyond merely taking over a corpse.

The moment Li Wei "resurrected through possession," Janna found herself uncontrollably teleporting across space, appearing right before him!

In shock and fury, she drained every last shred of her remaining power to resist, but the result—

The mighty divine force she unleashed at Li Wei vanished like a stone dropped into the ocean, without even a ripple, disappearing into thin air in the most eerie way.

Not only did Janna fail to break free from the "enslavement curse," but she also exhausted her last vestige of divine power, drained her final ounce of strength, and degenerated into a useless bird that could barely fly.

Then, to her horror, she realized she had already lost her freedom without even noticing, utterly enslaved to this terrifying being!

Whatever Li Wei said, she had to do, and even escape was a distant hope.

For this mysterious figure who could enslave even a god, Janna felt deep wariness.

After several futile struggles, she had no choice but to accept her fate of being controlled, cautiously probing:

"Who exactly are you?"

"A wandering spirit from the cosmos, an emperor reborn from the underworld, or a star spirit descended from the heavens?"

In Janna's eyes, Li Wei had to be at least a demigod-level powerhouse.

Yet Li Wei's answer was:

"I'm nothing. I'm just a League of Legends player."

"I was just playing a game at home, minding my own business, and because I picked you in champion select, I somehow got transported here—"

"Transported as your Summoner."

He even sighed: "Ah, if I'd known, I should've picked the Star Forger back then."

Janna naturally couldn't make sense of this nonsense.

But the casual tone with which Li Wei mentioned her, a goddess, and even the Star Forger as if they were mere chess pieces, still sent a chill through her.

She grew even more wary of him.

So she quietly observed Li Wei's every move, trying to figure out the true purpose of this terrifying being's arrival.

Yet Li Wei's actions only confused her further.

First, he had a serious talk with her. After learning that her faith had crumbled, her divine power was gone, and she was just a useless bird that could barely fly a few meters—

Li Wei's expression turned grim.

He stopped speaking to Janna and stood silently in the cramped rented room, lost in thought for a long time.

Just as Janna was wondering if this evil god was plotting some terrible scheme, Li Wei's eyes suddenly darkened, as if he had made up his mind.

Then, from the bookcase of his original body's sister—now his sister—he pulled out an old copy of A Brief History of Piltover and Zaun.

And then, Li Wei quietly began to read, studying history.

Not just self-study—he also ordered Janna, a living history textbook thousands of years old, to provide one-on-one tutoring by his side.

He studied for hours, from ancient times to the modern era, asking countless details along the way. He was even more diligent than a history student at Piltover University.

This left Janna even more bewildered.

So she couldn't help but ask:

"Summoner sir." Since Li Wei called himself a Summoner, Janna followed suit: "What exactly are you trying to do?"

"Did you possess a dead man and enslave a goddess just to learn history from me?"

"Of course not." Li Wei explained: "Janna, I'm trying to help you regain your power. Only if you get stronger can I get stronger too."

This explanation only made Janna more confused:

What did studying history have to do with restoring her divine power?

She was a deity shaped by the power of faith.

There was only one way to help her regain her power—spread her faith, grow her followers, and make more believers worship Janna anew, providing her with a steady stream of faith.

But how could followers and divine power come from reading history books?

"That's because you don't understand what a 'god' really is, Janna."

"?" Janna was speechless. She was a god—how could she not understand what a god was?

"Janna, let me ask you: to your followers, what do you think you are?"

"I'm their goddess, of course."

"Wrong!" Li Wei's answer caught her off guard: "To your followers, you're just a story—a tale someone told them."

"It's because they're willing to believe that story that you, the goddess, exist."

Janna fell silent for a moment, but eventually nodded in agreement.

Because her origin truly was a story—

An ancient sailor, drunk and bragging, claimed he'd seen a gust of wind turn into a blue bird on the sea, and that bird warned them with its calls, helping them avoid a terrible storm.

The story spread far and wide, growing more fantastical with each telling. As it spread, more people claimed to have seen the blue bird, and some sailors even said it transformed into a stunning, pointy-eared maiden holding a staff that could command the wind, using magic to drive away the waves.

The Storm's Fury, Janna, was born from that story.

"But then, why did they stop believing that story?" Li Wei asked again.

Janna had already thought of several reasons.

First, during the ancient rule of Shurima, the Shuriman rulers who worshipped the Celestial Titans forbade commoners from revering her as a "false idol," sweeping away her statues, temples, and cults from the mortal world, severing the faith's lineage.

Second, in the great canal explosion over two hundred years ago, she had used nearly all her power to shield disaster victims from the chain reaction of earthquakes and tsunamis.

Since then, Janna rarely had the strength to manifest before mortals and continue helping her followers.

With fewer manifestations, people grew more doubtful that Janna was real.

And as more and more people stopped believing, she naturally had even less divine power to show herself.

Caught in this vicious cycle, Janna's faith tradition withered into extinction.

"Those are all secondary reasons. The main one is—times have changed!"

"Miss Janna, your doctrine is completely outdated!"

"Doctrine?" Janna pondered.

Her doctrine...

She didn't have one at all!

In fact, including herself, whether it was the Celestial Titans of ancient Shurima or the demigods of Freljord, none of them really had doctrines.

Because the gods in this world were real.

Real gods couldn't be bothered to make up stories for their followers.

They had no grand lessons to teach—they said what they meant, and you could believe it or not.

"That approach is too primitive, too crude."

"It doesn't address the users' pain points, doesn't form a closed loop in the business logic, doesn't build a stable user ecosystem—let alone sustain the product's lifecycle. No wonder a real, existing deity like you ended up being phased out by the market."

"???" Janna mentally typed out question marks.

And Li Wei kept rambling in that strange, half-understandable way:

"Miss Janna, your story is far too simple."

"Nature worship—fire, moon, wind—that's Neolithic stuff. At its core, it's just ancient humans' primitive reverence for natural elements."

"Now Piltover and Zaun have had their industrial revolution, even gone cyberpunk. They can build robots, and their math and physics skills are better than mine—"

"If you tell them to pray to the wind, they'll whip up a 'Fluid Dynamics Calculation Method for Wind Effects' on the spot."

"Even if gods do exist in this world, to the people of the Twin Cities, who are used to understanding the world through science, a god is just a 'powerful magical creature.'"

"Tell me, can your story still fool anyone?"

Janna had nothing to say.

After being lectured so bluntly by Li Wei, she realized that as a goddess, she might not know how to be a god as well as he did.

"So, what do you plan to do?"

"Simple. Since the doctrine is completely outdated, we scrap it and start over. We'll craft a new faith theory that fits the modern era."

"You?!" Janna couldn't help but want to rebuke Li Wei for blasphemy.

A faith theory—was that something you could just make up?

Wasn't that asking her, the goddess, to participate in a lie?

But despite her irritation, Janna quickly grasped Li Wei's reasoning. "I see."

"You asked me so earnestly about the history of Piltover and Zaun just to master the background here, making it easier to spin your tales?"

"You could say that."

"Then what kind of story do you plan to tell for me?" Janna worried that Li Wei might recklessly twist her teachings, turning her into a dark god like The Loathsome Maw.

Faced with her question, Li Wei merely murmured to himself:

"What kind of story to tell?"

"That really is the question."

Zaun and Piltover had already entered the age of industrial revolution, even carrying a hint of 2077's flavor.

From what Li Wei had seen and heard, there were roughly two kinds of faiths that thrived with vitality in this era.

The first, of course, was to delve deeper along the path of mysticism.

Abandoning primitive nature worship, painting hell for believers, promising paradise, depicting reincarnation, and vowing an afterlife.

In short, offer a sliver of hope to the suffering—even if that hope lies after death, in the next life.

As for the second kind...

"Janna." Li Wei didn't answer directly, instead asking meaningfully, "Suppose a person is sick, gravely ill. And I have two medicines on hand:"

"One is an anesthetic, letting them die without pain."

"The other is a potent cure, but the treatment itself is excruciating—more painful than the illness. Many wouldn't survive to be healed, dying from the agony."

"Janna, which medicine do you think is better?"

"I choose the second." Janna didn't hesitate at all. "If it can't save people, what use is medicine?"

"Well said, Janna."

Li Wei had actually made his decision long ago.

If this were before his transmigration, he might have chosen the first. Because if that path succeeded, it could bring him endless wealth and endless pleasure.

But after crossing over, he had inherited all the memories of this body.

He had personally experienced what life was like for a Zaunite.

The young man who had died suddenly on this narrow bed—what he wanted surely wasn't anesthesia.

"I choose the second, too."

Li Wei picked up his pen and paper, writing a line of dedication before his newly crafted "story":

"For you, Mr. Li Wei."