=== Zane Dreadmourne (God of Fear) POV ===

Hearing Adrian's explanation of his deal with Lucy was very different from my earlier speculations.

Before, I had thought that he had simply subjugated her, made her accept that he would spread the Internet throughout her kingdom, and in return he wouldn't destroy her and let her continue to have believers there, which was already a very good possibility, something I would gladly accept after seeing what he had done to my kingdom.

But knowing that he was offering Lucy a stake in the Internet he had created, only at the cost of being able to use her divinity to develop more features for the Internet, completely shocked me.

When you think about how many followers he has, and how many followers he will have once he has taken over this entire planet... to receive 5% of the Divine Power that 12 million people would generate for him, considering that these people pray to him an average of 4 times a day, would be the equivalent of receiving 2.4 million Divine Power points a day for doing nothing, or a whopping 16.8 million a week!

It would be practically like selling your house, investing all your money in a million-dollar company, and receiving a small portion of that company's income.

Even if you only received a small portion of that, it would still be an amount that would retire you for the rest of your life, earning you much more than you could earn working alone for the rest of your life!

Even my father didn't get that much Divine Power every week, even though he was a unique God, so if I could team up with Adrian and Lucy, my future would be guaranteed!

Sure, I know he said several times that Lucy hadn't surrendered to him since she was on equal footing with him in the Pantheon they had formed, but if Adrian cut off Lucy's supply of Divine Power and threatened to destroy her, she could only surrender to him and quietly accept all his demands.

So I was aware that offering to join his Pantheon was the same as surrendering to him completely. To the point that if he asked me to sacrifice all my divine power to help him in battle, I would have to do it without thinking twice, since he would have control over all my future followers.

But considering the gain I would get from surrendering to him... was it better to have 5% of a pie with 12 million slices or 100% of a pie with less than 50,000 slices?

The answer was obvious!

So, having made up my mind, I lifted my head, flicked my bangs to the side, opened my eyes to Adrian, and found myself staring into his bright blue eyes.

From his eyes alone, I could feel the power he was hiding in this divine consciousness, a power that could crush my divine consciousness with a simple blink if he wanted to.

Compared to the faint glow in his eyes at school, and how bright and intimidating his eyes were now, it was like two different worlds.

But I stood my ground and stared into his two blue eyes with my green ones, even though my instincts were screaming at me to look away and down.

"Adrian Innovashine, please let me into your pantheon!" I said, using all my willpower and concentrating only on keeping my eyes on his bright blue eyes as I waited for an answer.

Adrian didn't change his expression at any point, always keeping his face passive and cold, as if nothing he saw or heard from me now could affect him, which was completely true, considering that with his current power I was nothing more than a wimp he could kick around with ease.

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But I still had hope.

At this point, I had no choice but to beg him, because if the test continued like this, the only thing left for me would be to become an ordinary army soldier, sharing a small world with hundreds of other soldiers and trying to secure a minimum of divine power to slowly rise in rank over the centuries.

The silence around us was deafening until Adrian finally answered.

"What use would you be in my Pantheon?" He asked me, making my body freeze.

Yes... I was of no use to him, was I? My divinity was weak, like the divinity of an evil god or a demon, he could replicate everything I could do with his full divinity...

Think Zane, think fast, you must be of some use...

"I can do everything you need... if I don't get this chance with you, my fate in the future will be that of a mere cannon fodder soldier... so know that I will cherish this opportunity as the chance of a lifetime! I will teach you everything you want to know about my divinity for you to use as you wish, as long as you just help me with the basics so that I can progress slowly, I will be satisfied... please..." I decided to be honest and just open my heart.

I couldn't think of any use I could be to him except to give 100% to whatever he needed.

Unlike him, who was extremely important to me, I was completely expendable to him, so I had to at least show him my sincerity and try to convince him.

The silence he gave me after I said those words was even more deafening than the first.

Now I couldn't even raise my head to look at him, just kept my head down with my hair covering my eyes in shame.

But I held my ground, waiting as long as it took for him to answer.

In the silence that seemed like an eternity between us, the only thing I could hear were the demons I had trapped below, draining my Divine Power and roaring in fear as they huddled in the center of the forest.

Even though what little Divine Power I had was being used like an open faucet, I continued to use it to show Adrian even more sincerity.

And hearing his response made it all worthwhile!

"I might consider allowing you into my Pantheon, but it will only be for a trial period." He said.

Whether it was a trial period or not, just as he was considering it, I started to smile and raised my face to look at him.

Adrian still had that cold expression on his face, his eyes shining with the same intensity as the first time I saw him, but I don't know if it was just me, but he seemed even nicer now.

"Don't worry, I'll do whatever you want during this trial period to prove that I can be useful!" I said excitedly as I nodded at him.

"During this trial period, you will be able to enter the Internet Pantheon, but you will only be able to leave after a 23-day trial of the mortal world, which is the time for the end of the school trial. If at the end of the trial your attitude is satisfactory, we can change your contract to a permanent and fair contract in the Internet Pantheon. Adrian explained, making me nod, not worried about this trial period. "Your payment will be 5% of the Divine Power generated by the applications that use your Internet domain during the trial period, which will increase to 10-20% in the future, just like Lucy, depending on how you do in the trial period."

After that, he began to explain to me the cost of Divine Power to create the Internet and get it up and running, and how the profit was calculated, in addition to the number of believers he currently had, a much higher number than I had imagined.

When I heard that I would receive 5% of the Divine Power generated by using my divinity on the Internet, I was amazed.

I thought he had about 1.3 million believers, but he said he already had 1.7 million with the 4 realms he controlled, plus Aetheris, which he had just mastered, which would also increase that number!

If just 30% of those people used applications with my divinity for one hour a day, I would receive almost 20,000 Divine Power Points a day with the 5% I received in the test period, which could increase to up to 80,000 a day if I could get up to 20% in the future!

Not to mention that the number of believers using the Internet would only increase in the future, and the apps with my divinity might have even more uses than I realized, all of which could mean that my Divine Power income would quickly surpass what I earned from controlling Eldoria alone, and would be many times more than what I would receive as a normal soldier in the army who would have to share a Small World with other soldiers in the future.

Smiling, I held out my hand to Adrian and said. "I accept!"

At that point, I was amazed at how much I was getting from Adrian at that moment, not knowing how important this decision would be for my future.

///NunuNote///

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