【 DIVINE JUDGEMENT 】
The statues enshrined in temples were not the same as the makeshift replicas the players had crafted. If they truly desecrated a statue that has been sanctified by a God, then a divine judgment might actually descend upon them…
Not only that, but the entity they had provoked could very well sense the presence of Evé through the actions of the troublemaking players.
Of course, given her established public persona, even if she were detected, it would not pose any real issue for her. However, the reckless players who caused the disturbance would not be so fortunate.
Although Uller was not as powerful as the Eternal Lord, Etriōu, a True God was still a True God.
And the wrath of a True God was not something players could withstand.
“Still, Salty Cat clearly stated in her strategy guide that players should bring their own statues as a precaution. Hopefully, they would follow that and not do the same thing they did before. Stealing sanctified statues and self-destructing themselves by desecrating them in some absurd way, only to bring about divine judgment upon themselves.”
Evé murmured to herself.
Yet, ironically, as if mocking her words, not long after this thought crossed her mind, Evé suddenly sensed a surge of divine power erupting somewhere in the Desert of Death.
In the blink of an eye, dozens of players were obliterated, their existences snuffed out as if they had never been there.It was not just physical death—it was total and absolute annihilation. The force was so overwhelming that their remaining life energy barely had time to disperse, let alone be recovered.
At the same time, Evé abruptly sensed a familiar power attempting to trace its way back to her through the deaths of those players, reaching toward her game network like an unseen hand grasping in the dark…
However, her game network was intricately woven into her faith network, making the two interconnected with one another.
Within this space, she was the absolute ruler. Thus, no foreign power could breach it without her consent.
So, with just a thought, she severed the connection, blocking the intruder before they could grasp even a single thread of her presence.
Nevertheless, she had to forgo the small amount of life force she could have recovered from those fallen players, to ensure that the other party was left with nothing to use to track her.
However, just before the invading trace was severed, she suddenly heard a faint roar echoing from the distant void outside—
A voice vast and commanding, filled with righteous fury:
“Blasphemers! Die!”
Eve: “…”
She fell silent for a moment, then reached out and lightly tapped the air. Instantly, she connected to the minds of those players who had just perished, sifting through their final memories to uncover what had led to their abrupt demise…
The fallen players were part of a raid group from a small guild.
Like many others, they had set their sights on a small orc settlement. Following the tactics of Moe Moe Committee, they too launched a surprise attack under the cover of night and secured themselves a victory.
However, their numbers alone had not been enough to overwhelm the orcs, so they had collaborated with a few other smaller guilds for the battle.
Their final moments recorded showed them inside a tent, forcing their captive orc prisoners to spit on a statue of Uller…
However, what they did different was they chose to desecrate a statue enshrined within the orc settlement, one that had been sanctified by the God of Winter and the Hunt.
Therefore, the very moment they tried to defile the statue, it immediately erupted with dazzling radiance. The accumulated faith within it manifested into a colossal lightning bolt and before the horrified eyes of the orcs and the astonished gazes of the players, the bolt struck down with immense fury—
Boom!
Brilliant light consumed everything as they received Uller’s divine judgment.
Then, darkness followed, with the last thing they heard being a furious voice echoing from the distance, proclaiming—
“Blasphemers! Die!”
The tone and the familiar manner of speaking…yeah, it was definitely Uller.
His voice carried an uncontainable rage, like a volcano on the verge of eruption.
Eve: “…”
For a moment, she remained silent.
In the next instant, she sensed a group of fallen players respawning in the Elven Forest, their newly restored avatars radiating with holy light.
They were the same rascals who had just been struck down by divine judgment, now resurrected through the backup avatars Evé had prepared in advance, following the game’s pre-set revival procedures. ⱤÃNôᛒÊŜ
Each of them still had a somewhat dazed expression, as if they had not yet processed what had just happened.
But soon, laughter erupted among them.
“Pfft… Hahaha! We actually got smited! Completely obliterated to smithereens! Man, that was dumb!”
Another player suddenly slapped their thigh as realization hit.
“Holy crap! Wait… so you really can’t spit on a sanctified statue? I had no idea that would actually trigger divine punishment!”
His shock was instantly met with eye rolls and scoffs from the others.
“Seriously dude? You’re just figuring that out now? Have you never paid attention to the Maple Leaf City questline? Demacia and his crew got blasted by divine judgment for dumping literal crap on the Eternal Lord’s statue! I even warned you guys, but nooo, you had to take the lazy way out and ignore me! Well, good fucking job. Now we’re all back here at the Elven Forest.”
After being roasted, the clueless player let out an awkward chuckle.
“Alright, alright, chill man, no need to rub it in. We’re just unlucky this time, that’s all… Who would’ve thought divine punishment was actually a thing? Ahem, whatever, our item’s coordinates are still there anyway. We’ll just head back and grab our stuff.”
“Ugh… this is such a pain in the ass. It’s a long trek back.”
“Let’s just hope our items are still there and won’t suffer the same thing like that one guild who got completely wiped out and the orcs looted all their stuff. Those poor guys had to chase them forever just to get it back.”
In the Desert of Death, any bound equipment was not automatically returned upon a player’s death.
However, their dropped items were marked on the mini-map.
Because of this, players typically stuck together to watch each other’s backs and recover their bounded items when one of them fell. If someone died, they would simply follow the coordinates marked in the mini-map to reclaim their belongings.
Of course, if an enemy was still lurking nearby, retrieving those stolen items could be a painful challenge.
However, if they had provoked a large orc tribe…
Well, they could kiss their equipment goodbye.
The only thing left to do was manually unbind the stolen items and move on, unless they wanted to waste even more time just to lose their contribution points as well.
Unfortunately, the player who had been smugly chuckling a moment ago soon found himself unable to laugh anymore.
“Wait—what the hell?! Where’s my bound equipment?!”
His expression shifted to panic as he stared at his now empty, unmarked mini-map.
“How could your bound equipment be missing? Did you forget to bind it properly?”
The other players snickered at his misfortune.
But within moments, the laughing players also descended into panic.
“Holy crap! My gear is gone too!”
“Mine’s missing as well! The coordinates vanished from my mini-map! It’s not even in my personal binding records!”
“Forget the equipment—my familiar is dead too!”
After triple-checking everything, they were forced to accept the grim reality. Their bound equipment had been completely erased, and even their familiars were now permanently marked as deceased.
A wave of despair swept over the entire group.
“T-This has to be a bug! It has to be!”
“I’m filing a complaint! I’m sending a ticket to the official site!”
“AHHH! My storage ring! I just bought it and now it’s gone! It had all the rare materials I saved for upgrading my firearm!”
“My familiar… my beloved Crypt Spider… I spent so long sucking up to Rose just to get it! I should have never taken it into the Desert of Death…”
These resurrected players completely lost their minds upon realizing that each of them had suffered a Zenloss. ¹
Eve: “…”
Watching these wailing players, she fell into silence once again.
After a long pause, she let out a slow exhale.
“I should have known. There will never be a shortage of daredevils who test their luck in the dumbest ways possible.”
A true God was still a true God, after all.
Hence, it wasn’t really unexpected that nothing remained of their belongings after they triggered divine judgment upon themselves.
These players were not some legendary-rank experts who are capable of resisting divine wrath, nor were their weapons divine artifacts. So naturally, Uller’s lightning had reduced everything to ashes.
It was simply bad luck on their part.
Henceforth, from that day on, the players added another rule to the list of taboos that must not be broken in Elven Kingdom.
Do not joke about the Goddess in front of the native elves.
Do not eat meat in front of Alice.
Do not ask Crypt Spiders to mine for you.
Do not call Meryer a black dragon.
And now, the fifth taboo:
Do not desecrate sanctified statues.
Even if the statue belongs to an enemy god.
Its better not to incur the wrath of the Gods.
For divine punishments leads to a Zenloss.
This was a lesson learned through blood and tears.
¹ Zenloss — (全ロス) is a Japanese term which is the combination of “Zenbu” (全部 all) and “Loss”. Referring to massive losses in games, like items a player took a long time to gather and farm for. The raw used the term ‘破产‘ which means bankruptcy in English but I felt it doesn’t really suit since the word is mainly used for loss of cash which the players didn’t. So I used a Japanese term instead (I don’t think there’s an english gaming term for it? Permaloss? Wipeout?)
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