Jasper felt his body ache, and he was desperate for a leak.

The neural helmet suppressed the discomfort and pain his body would normally feel, and he had been lying in the same spot for almost 14 hours.

He was sore. He was hungry. He was thirsty. He was sweaty, and he had to go to the toilet as if his life depended on it.

Jasper hadn't been that much later than his wife, and Celeste was in the same situation.

Thanks to Weird World Computing's cost-cutting, the office was an old apartment. That meant that the bathroom had a shower, though thanks to EU regulations, there had to be a male and female bathroom, even though there were no women in the office.

It had often been an in-joke between Martin and Jasper that more space was dedicated to the bathrooms than to office space, but right now, Jasper had never been happier to have two bathrooms.

A quick shower later, the game developer had broken out the full-grain flatbread and cottage cheese that was left over in the fridge.

Jasper and Celeste were sitting on the office couch, just talking about what had happened.

"So... in real-time, you survived, what... 30 seconds?" She teased him, and Jasper groaned a little.

"I mean, it is not like that. He was super strong. I wonder if Marcusburg will be destroyed." Jasper said, sighing a bit.

"That would suck. We had put... not a lot of effort, but some effort into that place." Celeste said, snuggling up to her husband.

Jasper sighed again, savouring the moment and just letting everything go. He didn't need to worry so much, and he was focusing on something he had no control over.

The two of them rested on the couch. Celeste couldn't sleep, thanks to the constant power naps she had been taking while in the game. However, Jasper hadn't been sleeping, but he kept himself awake to be with Celeste, if nothing else, then to enjoy her company.

The following week was a blur.

Celeste was mainly working. The part-time goddess was a teacher, and while she enjoyed imparting knowledge to her students, there was a reason why she hadn't sought out the younger members of Marcusburg to teach them about crafting.

The game was the ultimate escapism. Why would Celeste try to bring the real world into it?

She made sure to wrap up her grading and lettering during the week so that she could have the next weekend free.

On the other hand, Jasper looked over the world template and watched it generate another 100 years.

"Welp, it looks like the god system is working. The AI is much more efficient with its generation. It isn't creating as long and convoluted chain reactions, I think that it is capping at around 70 related events... What was that butter event you had last time around 273?" Jasper asked, making his colleague Martin laugh.

Martin had been a farmer for most of his life until an unfortunate accident forced him to leave his family farm. He had the choice of either finding a new profession or working at one of his neighbour's farms, and he had chosen to start learning how to code.

Martin had been working with some rather old tech at the farm, and thanks to various software constantly reaching "end of service" or simply being outdated and not working in some critical situations where a technician couldn't fix it in time, he had been forced to learn how to fix various programs and poking around Operating System architecture.

Martin was one of the few people Jasper knew who was fluent in assembly code and five other obscure coding languages. While Martin's game-making knowledge was limited, his ability to optimize code was legendary... well, as long as he had at least one beer.

"Yeah, I am still not sure how the AI managed to convert a batch of butter going bad into a nationwide revolution, and in so few steps... Well, compared to this new system, it is a lot of steps." Martin said.

He was a giant man, sporting a mountainous beard and often being mistaken for a rough guy thanks to the muscles built up through years of hard work. Jasper knew that Martin's favourite party trick was ending fights by simply standing up, towering over anyone who would confront him.

The pair of game developers spent most of their week adjusting the system's parameters and waiting for it to generate the world.

To ensure that they measured up to the main branch, their work was thoroughly documented through action points and daily meetings, despite the fact that there were only two of them.

Jasper looked into a couple of the bugs they had discussed and discovered that the system wouldn't fix on its own.

Celeste's game map was one of the bigger ones that required quite a bit of digging, though he realized that it was due to her Time Domain showing her the next iteration of the game world, which didn't bode well, but he fixed that bit with some manual coding.

Then Jasper looked into the weird accents some shopkeepers had and saw that they were leftovers from the previous game the AI had built, where it had identified the shopkeeper's accent as part of the overall class of an innkeeper. Jasper also fixed this, allowing people to have whatever accent came naturally but scaled it back a bit.

Lastly, Jasper also informed the company that they needed another deep-dive helmet for a third player, citing that it would if they had to show off to investors.

In all honesty, it was so that Martin could join in on the weekend debugging, though for now, it would have to be just Celeste and Jasper.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Finally, the weekend came. Jasper and Celeste were standing back in the office, looking at the VR setup. Jasper couldn't help but notice that his wife wasn't quite as bouncy and eager as she had been the week before.

"You know, you don't have to get back into the game. It will probably end up being quite uncomfortable when we are done and there is a good chance that it will only give you more stress." Jasper said, trying to sound like he wasn't eager to get back into things.

Celeste shook her head. "It is fine. I am just a bit worried about what is going to happen if we need to reinstate some new city for the humans or something like that." She said with a deep sigh. "Let's get to this... What was Martin's catchphrase? Full Force?" She said, refocusing herself. The catchphrase did help a little.

Celeste put on the Deep Dive helmet, and Jasper quickly followed her.

The world crumbled around them, becoming a mess of impressions, a stark contrast from the previous time the game loaded. This time around, everything seemed to go by in a blur. It was impossible to make out anything but vague shapes and colours.

In an instant, they were in the game.

Jasper was standing on a large hill, while Celeste was just at its base. The god was stunned. A lot had happened in the last hundred years.

The trees that had surrounded them were gone. While the pair of gods were technically still in a forest, the city below them had expanded quite a bit.

When Jasper died, he couldn't see the town from his current position, but that was clearly due to the trees... and probably the massive number of orks.

In front of Jasper was a large town. It seemed to bustle, and the sound carried through the air.

"Marcusburg definitely survived," Jasper called down, and Celeste slowly made her way up the hill to look down at the town.

The walls were no longer poorly-made palisades but rather well-made stone.

Celeste blinked, confused. "I thought you said that you lost. How is the city still standing?" She asked.

Before Jasper could answer her, they were both bombarded with several pop-ups.

Rank up [https://i.postimg.cc/90njCrjJ/image.png]

Celeste gave a soft whistle.

"3 Domain Power Points seems to be the real prize in all this." She said, and without hesitation, she brought up her character sheet, though she ignored the stats since they hadn't changed.

Resource Value Rank 4 Health 24 Energy 5 Impact 4/5 Worship 1 Wealth 0 Available Domain Power Points 9

Celeste paused and looked at Jasper.

"What does the 4/5 mean?" She asked, and to her surprise, he looked confused.

"Oh yeah, I fixed the problem with the pop-ups. Simply think it towards me. That should be enough as long as we are in the same team." He explained.

Jasper looked it over and smiled. "That would be your dedication to the city, though I thought also you decided to fix the mine." Jasper paused for a second, then smiled. "Welp, would you look at that! People are writing books! Looks like the mine is considered part of the city. They have expanded rather rapidly." Jasper said.

As expected, Celeste's husband searched through the information pouring into him. "I might need to sort some things out, though," Jasper mumbled, and Celeste looked over the town to try and determine what they should do first.

She could see a massive tower in the middle of the city but couldn't spot the smithy she had created. Then again, it was pretty unassuming from the outside, and she would need to try and track it down once she had dedicated her new points.

She wanted to pick some of the stuff she hadn't gotten the first time around, and she wanted to get another Domain.

Celeste was considering the Death Domain, and while not something fun, it seemed like it would fit in with the rest of her motif.

Before Celeste could put much more thought into it, Jasper cleared his throat.

"I do think that we have bigger problems, though." He said. "It looks like we are not the only gods in the world anymore." He pointed to a building that Celeste had seen but hadn't put into context.

A large church stood in the middle of the town, proudly displaying a massive crown and the infinity symbol.

"Sweetie... what is that?" Celeste slowly asked, hoping that the god of knowledge might know something.

"Let me think this through... so the ork that killed me got ascended to divinity. He is apparently named Orlek, which... well, the creativity of this AI might need some adjustment. Whatever the case, to ensure that the other races weren't left behind, the AI elevated a new god among each of them. The human god and the gods for dwarves have been melted into one due to some rather complicated events... That god is called... this can't be right. Kelllwan... Three Ls+. That doesn't look right at all... I am registering that as a bug... might be too late to fix, but honestly, that is just weird.

The Drow god is called Daikia... Apparently, they are going for some matriarchal theme... good on them. OH! You are never guessing who the god of the elves are." Jasper said, clearly expecting Celeste to guess.

"Hmmm, that elven guy we gave magic to?" She guessed.

Jasper nodded. "Yup, Ewen... wow, apparently he tried to ascend under his own might, and one of his family ambushed him... turned the ritual into one big failure and set off a magical nuke," Jasper explained, which would help explain the scarred territory on Celeste's map.

"Might be a good system, though," Jasper said, looking through the knowledge he had access to. "I mean, we can't stay around and these gods appear to be incentivising conflict. Daikia, the Drow goddess, and Ewen, the elf god, are literally creating demi gods in the hopes of eradicating the other. We should look into creating some foils for Orlek and Kelllwan as well... god, three Ls... this is wrong. But that might need to be our current objective... you know, creating something a bit more interesting." Jasper explained, and Celeste smiled.

"Yeah, but I want to pick out our new abilities and then go into town and see what they have been up to, " the goddess said, and her smile turned into a grin.

Jasper nodded, more than happy to go over his build.