How large was the world on the other side of the gates? Could it really hold every living being from another world?
Could the inhabitants of fifteen Black Flag worlds properly distribute themselves among the safe worlds? Would one world end up bearing more life than it could sustain?
Would the inhabitants of safe worlds be willing to accept refugees from other races?
What did they eat? And after we arrived, what would we eat?
Would our arrival cause panic, seizing their living space and resources?
The condition for the ga to end was tied to the number of living beings. What did that truly an?
My mother quietly raised question after question.
At last, she asked , "You were just thinking about going to other worlds to play, weren’t you? Then let ask you this instead. If all the beings from another world ca to ours, what would your first reaction be?"
I did not answer.
The countdown in the sky had ended, and I had already seen the outsiders charging through the gates.
My mother did not press for an answer. The look on my face must have answered her already.
And every one of her questions would later receive an answer.
When the Black Flags began to wave in the sky, panic was born.
When the black fog that could corrode living beings started to spread, only one thought remained in everyone’s mind. Squeeze into a safe gate. Any gate would do.
No one knew who struck first.
No one knew whether the attacks were for survival, for leveling up and gaining power, or simply to make the ga end sooner.
Chaos was the perfect breeding ground for geniuses and leaders.
Frost Deer of Among Antlers. Rock Breath of Winter Sea. Mirror Dance of Tingo. Crow Cry of Sakura.
By the ti I went from crying for my mother to killing any approaching outsider without hesitation, the long ga finally ended.
I stood there in a daze, listening to the sound of the ga ending.
That voice announced that Among Antlers was officially online, that the ga had formally begun, and that the temporarily descended world gates would close.
So only after such a brutal war did Among Antlers count as officially launched?
I looked toward the nearest gate, that fated gate, the first one I had ever seen when the ga began.
It was still Tingo. Still that young wind whale.
JE
Wind Whale race
Level 11
I had been to Tingo. It was truly the hardest world to survive in. The Mountainbound cannot swim.
I had also t this wind whale nad JE. A very timid wind whale.
Afraid of killing. Afraid of conflict. Afraid of aggressive beings. It longed for peace and told that wind whales were easy to satisfy. All they needed was a sea.
I told it that the Mountainbound were easy to satisfy as well. All we needed was a small mountain of ore.
Once again, we looked at each other.
Neither of us could tell whether what we saw in the other’s eyes was relief or confusion.
Among Antlers
...
At this ti, it was Calico’s turn to rest. It had been squatting by the desk, watching BS Rita write for a long while.
When it saw her put down her pen, it anxiously slapped the table with its paw. "Keep going."
Rita shook her head. "The sigh of Among Antlers is not very long."
Before the ga descended, the civilization of Among Antlers consisted of little more than various minerals and everyday customs.
After the ga arrived and the chaotic early stage passed, Frost Deer, the leader of Among Antlers, began leading them into conquest.
Rita had not entered Frost Deer’s perspective in the World Sigh, but as a Divine Ga player herself, she could easily judge from other viewpoints that Frost Deer had entered the Divine Ga.
Those worlds that shattered because their surviving population fell below twenty percent beca the earliest World Graveyard.
After that ca a long stretch of numb invasions and counter invasions. Until Among Antlers was successfully invaded by Tingo, Autumn Deer was still only a level thirty five minor figure.
From the mories, Tingo’s JE seed even younger.
In Autumn Deer’s mories, Tingo JE was practically a newborn calf whale.
It all felt like a story from another era.
What happened to Frost Deer in the end, that leader beautiful like a miracle, Rita did not know. What happened after Autumn Deer went to Tingo, she did not know either.
But it must have been related to Frost Deer. Frost Deer’s favorite thing was letting go, distributing unused items and equipnt to her kin.
In the World Sigh, Autumn Deer complained more than once.
It complained countless tis about why its mother gave unused things to other Mountainbound.
So young, yet full of argunts.
"You will spoil them."
"They will get used to your giving."
"You give now, and the mont you stop, they will hate you."
Frost Deer’s answer was always the sa.
"No. I am a Mountainbound. I trust the Mountainbound."
On the night before Tingo finally descended, Frost Deer asked Autumn Deer if it had any regrets.
Autumn Deer pretended to be relaxed. "My only regret is that you keep giving away good things. And it is not just you. The other two leaders do it too. I really do not understand."
Frost Deer finally gave a different answer.
"If in the future I get sothing good and do not give it to you, would you hate ?"
Autumn Deer felt slandered and insulted. It snapped back angrily. "Of course not. You are my mother."
"I am also the mother of the Mountainbound." Frost Deer lowered her head and gently touched Autumn Deer’s antlers while it was still angry. "The other two leaders think the sa way. From the day we beca leaders of Among Antlers, we were no longer just Mountainbound. We were also Among Antlers."
Rita lifted her pen and added this conversation.
Did Tingo’s Autumn Deer, now a leader, think the sa way?
After Among Antlers shattered, it beca the Mountainbound of Among Antlers.
She thought of the antler pattern carved into the bowl of Delicious Funeral. She suspected this divine relic ca from a Mountainbound god.
Relics like that could only be used by the Mountainbound.
Her pen paused.
Rita thought of the players’ Player Relics.
If Player Relics were the predecessors of divine relics, and she found it hard not to think so, and if divine relics passed into players’ hands after gods fell, then what about Player Relics?
If all skills were invented or comprehended by players, if all equipnt, items, and wonders were created by players.
In a flash of realization, a thought struck her.
Where did all the Divine Ga rewards she had received co from?
She looked up at the golden rain curtain that never ceased in the sky.
Did it co from an imnsely powerful Celestialkin?
The gods generously awakened Player Relics for them. The Divine Ga lavishly granted them god given talents and all kinds of rewards.
It all looked like cultivation.
How contradictory.
On one hand, they were guided like insects in a jar to destroy one another. On the other, they were being carefully raised.
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