52 - Worry

As I felt the divine power coursing through my body, I must admit that I've never felt so good in my life.

I felt like a certain captain in World War II who threw shields at his enemies after taking a serum that made him very powerful.

Slowly rising from the comfortable chair in my cabin, where I spent most of my time during this test, I looked at myself in the mirror and smiled at what I saw.

My body, which had once been thin and apparently malnourished, was now much healthier, with muscles appearing on my body, indicating my growing strength.

With a divine body, even though the muscles on my body weren't as big as they looked on the surface, my strength was now much greater than when I started the test.

Just as my use of divine power was becoming more efficient, my body was becoming more and more perfect so that I could use divine power efficiently!

My eyes, which used to glow with a faint blue light, now seemed to be like two powerful blue lanterns, and they could even light up dark places with their natural luminosity.

My hair was getting silkier, my skin was getting smoother and cleaner, everything about me had been perfected into almost the perfect body that a God of the Peak of Embryonic Divinity should have.

Out of curiosity, I opened my status panel again, curious to see the price of ascending to an Elemental God, but what I saw shocked me.

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| Character Status

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| Name: Adrian Innovashine

| Titles: God of Creativity, God of the Internet

| Level: Rank 9 Embryonic Deity

| Number of believers: 782,413

| Average usage per user: 4 hours

|------------------------

| Divine power: 3,192,904 / 1,280,000 -> 1,912,904 / 12,800,000

=========================

Damn it... the cost to rise from a rank 9 embryonic god to a rank 1 elemental god was ten times higher!

That's why no other god had become an elemental god in any of the school's other tests in the past, with such a staggering cost, even if the god dominated 100% of the population of his realm, it would still require 7 weeks of accumulating divine power, or 49 days of the mortal world!

Not to mention the cost of advancing from rank 1 to rank 9, plus the cost of fighting other gods, which made it virtually impossible for other young gods to advance beyond rank 9 during the test.

But while it was impossible for other gods, it wasn't necessarily impossible for me...

With my average gain of 577k per day, even if my number of followers didn't increase any further and I just continued to receive this current number, I would still only need 22 more days to accumulate enough Divine Power to move up in rank.

Or rather, with the nearly 2 million of Divine Power I've already accumulated, I could possibly advance in rank in 18 or 19 days if I didn't spend Divine Power on anything else!

Not to mention the 5% more I'd get from each prayer, plus the 5% less I'd spend teaching mortals to read Robert's audios, which would cut that time down even more!

Of course, even though I was surprised by the amount of Divine Power I had to expend to move up in rank, I wasn't shocked by it.

After all, during the school lessons, the teachers made it clear how much of an advantage it was to move up a rank after reaching Rank 9 at any power level.

While the efficiency and power upgrades happened only every 5% with each small rank, the efficiency increase of moving from rank 9 to rank 1 of the next level was at least 50%, which was 10 times greater than the previous development, so it was proportional to the 10 times greater cost I would have to pay to move up a rank.

The power increase after that wasn't specified by the teachers, because they thought that no student would need it while they were still their student, since all the former students only became Elemental Gods after graduation, when they were already in the army.

But I didn't worry about it, even with the lack of information, I was just more curious to find out for myself.

So while my body focused on improving my efficiency in using the audio on the Internet to reduce my cost each time the believers listened to the lessons, my consciousness returned to the mortal world to find out how things were going there.

At that point, neither my body in the divine world nor my consciousness in the mortal world had any idea how chaotic the school's control room was.

=== First Sergeant Dillon's POV ===

How is this possible?! I asked in shock as I once again felt a young God advance to a new rank.

Whenever a student advanced in rank, all the teachers would get excited and celebrate a little, as each student's advancement was a good sign for the future of the army.

But this time, no one was celebrating like me.

Everyone had completely shocked expressions on their faces when they realized that young Adrian Innovashine had risen in rank again...

Even though he had just fought Zane Dreadmourne, the God of Fear, Adrian had managed to accumulate Divine Power fast enough to rise to rank 9 so quickly!

That was just 15 days after the event, in just 15 days, he had accumulated enough Divine Power to rise from rank 1 of an embryonic god to rank 9!

And since he had ruled the Zane Empire by killing only a few thousand mortals, he now received twice as much Divine Power as the other gods who ruled empires by destroying them!

This meant that the probability of Adrian actually becoming an Elemental God during the test was very high!

Damn it, Zack, what's taking you so long? I already told you that you should rush to Arcantor to destroy Adrian while he was still weak from the recent war, if you take any longer, Adrian might even become an Elemental God!

At this point, I was very worried about Zack.

My potential as a god was too low, both in battle to conquer more territories and in my divinity to gain believers in places I didn't invest in, so I was assigned to teach at the Divine School while slowly absorbing Divine Power from the realms I already controlled.

Even though the amount of Divine Power I received was small for my level of power, I was able to rise in rank in a few hundred years without taking any risk.

The problem with this low risk was that the benefits were also very low, with a very low chance of promotion in the army.

But when Zack, my nephew, became my disciple, with the potential he had, it was only a matter of a few centuries before he would pass me and have a higher rank than me in the army, so he could repay my investment in him, so I would remain safe and increase my chance of promotion.

The problem with all of this is that while I treated Zack with a veiled favoritism that few students noticed, I'm sure Adrian was one of the students who did, since I ignored his complaints and requests for help with the pranks Zack played on him.

And if he climbed faster than Zack, Adrian could use his position to get back at me...

Though the students didn't know it, there was an extra reward for coming in first in this test, something that would be very useful for the young gods, or rather for any god, something that could further stimulate that god's growth and potential so that he would be even stronger in the future.

Even if Adrian had shown great potential now, as long as Zack got that first place reward, he could overtake Adrian again.

Except that if Adrian got first place, I'd be twice as screwed because he'd grow even faster than he was growing now!

That's why I helped Zack by warning him to stay in Arcantor.

Even if there was Valoria between Zack's realm and Arcantor, with the training I gave Zack on how to hide his power and disguise his weaknesses, it would be easy to deal with unsuspecting young gods.

At this point, all I could do was have faith in Zack and hope that he would do well in this battle.

Even though Adrian was a few ranks above Zack, and his attack costs were several times lower than Adrian's, I had faith in Zack!

When I looked around, I saw Director Spearstrike looking at me suspiciously for some reason.

Sensing that something was wrong, I quickly looked away and went back to doing my thing, hoping that this scary woman wouldn't pay any more attention to me and wouldn't suspect anything...