Chapter 2: A Deviant Path

By the time Ava Gray reached her current stage, she had completely veered off the standard course for a deity. Opening her God's Domain in the first place had been a burden on her already meager finances, and any subsidies she might have received were canceled once she enrolled at the academy. Though there was a scholarship fund, it offered only specific resources instead of actual money. With no way to resell them, she was forced to use them up on campus.

To understand the variety of races within her domain, it helps to first recall how a normal deity develops a God's Domain. Typically, after a deity activates their divine authority, they don't immediately spawn subordinates. Even in an SSS-grade resource-rich domain, you'd only have the basics—minerals, plants, maybe some small fauna. Nurturing an entire race requires water, food, shelter, and a functioning civilization.

Usually, a god buys a few decree cards—like "Create Lake" or "Summon Forest"—and lets the environment evolve on its own. Only when it's fairly stable do they introduce animals, eventually leading to an intelligent species. That's when subordinates truly appear.

Ava Gray, however, was broke. She couldn't afford any high-tier cards. Her initial resources amounted to a few lakes and forests, nothing more. She certainly had no way to purchase advanced items like "Void Ward" or "Divine Envoy." Worse, she lacked the single most precious item of all—"Life Seeds"—which could birth a certain number of creatures inherently loyal to the god. Without such seeds, she was stuck.

Yet if she didn't generate any creatures, she wouldn't have survived this long. Out of desperation, she dug through the academy-issued textbooks and cobbled together random "birth decrees," forcibly spawning an initial batch of clueless beings in that barren land.

But that choice brought its own complications. In a typical domain, newly created life would be pampered by the deity, blessed with abundant resources and extraordinary talents. They'd eat the best food, wear the finest clothes, and even get weather-adjusting decree cards to ensure a pleasant climate. They'd face no real threats until they were advanced enough for simulated conflicts.

Ava's domain was nothing like that. Her newborns had to endure harsh winds, meager water, and constant relocation. Although her Resource Abundance was nominally B, the initial stock was tiny—nowhere near enough to sustain multiple races. She had six in total: one native to the Dark Realm portion of the domain, and five others who were forever teetering between starvation and survival. It was a bleak picture, but she had no alternative. Even the "deity" herself was perpetually on the brink of starvation, so how could she shield them?

Within a single week, her subordinates' population shrank by twenty percent. As despair set in, the first "void invasion" occurred. She still remembered the day a black haze blanketed the entire realm, radiating an ominous aura while dreadful roars echoed from the clouds. Yet the creatures' first reaction wasn't terror—it was to stare at the massive void whale drifting out of the darkness and think, "That fish looks mighty plump!"

After that, everything else seemed almost predictable. The domain's faith levels plummeted, and Ava Gray, lacking the resources to issue precise decrees, could only toss out random commands, hoping something might help. By now, nearly everyone in her domain was aware of her existence, but it didn't boost their faith. Even when she descended in person, it made little difference.

Here, "god" wasn't merely a lofty concept. Gods could know joy, exploitation, even poverty. Ava Gray belonged to that last, tragic category—exploited, penniless, and forced to watch her domain flounder. To prevent her starving masses from dying off, her only strategy was to churn out large volumes of cheap decrees, heedless of effect, hoping quantity might win out.

As a result, the domain's daily reality featured sporadic disasters, critical water shortages, and a weekly "fasting day" that everyone—Ava included—had to endure to scrape by. She clenched her teeth at the injustice of it all. Was it her fault she was poor? To keep up with other gods, she studied relentlessly and roamed far and wide. Yet she had no means to accelerate their civilization's development. The best she could do was learn each subject herself—agriculture, metallurgy, medicine, mining, even cultivation—and pass it on to them. Though they still went hungry, survived on nine meager meals every three days, and fended off weekly void incursions, at least the survival rate was inching upward.

The more she dwelled on it, the more she thought, No wonder their faith in me is so low. But she shook the thought aside. No, I can't let it continue. She needed to speak with them again.

A single thought, and she descended into her domain once more. As the sky lit with a column of light, many subordinates looked up momentarily—then returned to their chores. That clueless goddess is back again, they grumbled. Doesn't she know we're busy hunting?

When Ava Gray materialized, she saw that same battered altar, its stone cracked and covered in cobwebs, the surroundings a mess. She winced. Great, so this is how it is. If I hadn't insisted on at least one altar, I couldn't even get down here at all.

Exasperation welled up. Fine, let them mock her. She recalled her very first subordinates were the dragons—though they barely resembled the majestic creatures from legend. Sure, they had wings and horns like Western dragons, along with formidable physical prowess. But they had no magic, not even a simple fire breath. Some "dragon," she thought, rolling her eyes.

Elves in her domain could cast magic but lacked the strength to draw a bow. Demons lived on volcanoes yet subsisted on grain and meat. Darkkind yearned for sunlight, dwarves excelled in mecha engineering, and humans were average at everything—magic, craftsmanship, you name it. They all fell short of the epic creatures she'd imagined. Worse, she only had a few hundred thousand total, whereas rumor said the neighboring insectoid realm boasted populations in the billions.

No matter. She had a mission: to convince that dumb dragon to hold a worship ceremony. If not, she'd be done for. So she teleported dozens of kilometers to the so-called Dragon Valley, where a colossal dragon lay dozing on a sunlit boulder. In this arid land, many lifeforms evolved hibernation, but the dragons instead absorbed solar energy through their scales.

Sensing a formidable presence hurtling in from above, the dragon slowly opened one eye, exhaling a hot breath. It fixed its gaze on the approaching figure, tension visible in its stance.