Supreme Stealthy Summoner Squirrel Chapter 1: Character Creation

This is chapter 1 of a possible story to follow Shadow of the Soul King once that story finishes. Please enjoy and give comments!

Aaron Anderson woke up to find himself lying with his back up against a stone wall inside a large cavern, seemingly hewn from a natural cave by primitive tools. There was a circular hole in the ceiling, providing a vent for the smoke from the fire in the center of the large chamber. And, standing next to that fire, dwarfing it, was a creature that looked like an antlered faun crossed with a yeti, a beast about three stories tall.

Then, before Aaron could start asking the monster any questions, an azure text window appeared before his eyes.

You have been chosen, Mr. Anderson, by the great and powerful Cadmus!

Welcome to the Game of Gods!

“Oh, so that’s what’s happening.” Aaron shook his head slightly, causing the text window to disappear. Then he fell to his side and started using his arms to drag his body—thankfully clothed in gray sweatpants and a gray sweatshirt—towards the giant beast creature, who he now realized was Cadmus, the God of Beasts from the virtual reality massive multiplayer role playing game Game of Gods.

It was a widely known fact that, buried in the terms and conditions of the game, was a line saying the user’s soul could be transmigrated to another world to become a god’s champion, like in the game, and it now seemed that line wasn’t a joke by the developers as everyone had thought.

Within the next 30 minutes, Cadmus will choose your race, stats, pillars, talent, and starting location and you will begin your new life on Asphodel.

Aaron again shook his head to get rid of the text window and then looked up at the god. “Wait a minute. What gives you the right to make those decisions for me?”

“YOU SIGNED YOUR LIFE AWAY.” The god’s voice was deep and booming, at least that’s how it sounded in Aaron’s head.

The god didn’t actually talk, instead using some form of telepathy to speak directly into Aaron’s mind.

“No. I didn’t.”

“EVERYONE WHO PLAYED GAME OF GODS ON YOUR HOME PLANET DID.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

The giant god looked down at him with an expression of confusion, a look Aaron was so used to seeing he could even recognize it on the dear-like face. So, Aaron did what he always did whenever someone gave that look. He started to question the god’s intelligence and began to explain, probably speaking a bit too fast for the creature’s slow brain.

“I’ve been paralyzed since I was six, and the game capsules didn’t account for that. I couldn’t play the game even if I wanted to. Also, I’m twelve. And the terms of service required someone to be eighteen to accept.”

A large normal-sized book suddenly poofed into existence in the god’s giant hands, tiny by comparison, and the god struggled to flip through its pages. Then he walked over to where Aaron had gotten to with his crawling and held the two visible pages of the book down so Aaron could see it.

“SEE. YOU’RE IN THE BOOK.”

On the left page was a picture of Aaron, a brown-eyed, brown-haired, small white boy wearing a hospital gown in a hospital bed, reading on a laptop like he was usually wont to do, but the more interesting part to Aaron was the text on the right page.

Name: Aaron Anderson

Age: 12

Overall Seed: 8

Progression in Game of Gods: NA

The Good:

The highest IQ of all candidates, 23rd most knowledgeable candidate on the world and workings of Asphodel, unlikely to have Law comprehension bottlenecks

The Bad:

EQ far below IQ, reckless, physical combat skill 5th from the bottom of all candidates

Extra:

Paralyzed since age 6, so will have to relearn how to walk

Did not agree to the binding soul contract

“Look at the last sentence.”

The god turned the book around and brought the text right up to his left eye. “OH.”

“THEN WHY DID TADMU RECOMMEND YOU?”

Aaron thought about it for a couple seconds, realizing after one that Tadmu was likely a shortened form of address for Tadmuson Karvac, the God of Monster Tamers. Then it took him another second to realize Cadmus, the idiot he seemed to be, had likely been following the recommendation of the more powerful god to the letter without understanding the reasons why.

Aaron, however, easily could.

“He probably wants me to help you.” Aaron rolled himself over so he was lying on his back and raised his hands up toward the god. “Could you give me that book and transfer the information on the choices you have access to to me? I’ll decide if I want to reincarnate after taking a look.”

Without even an ounce of hesitation or protective instinct, the god handed him the book, and, looking through the first several pages, Aaron quickly understood what was going on.

The 144 intermediate level gods of the universe were having a draft where all the humans on Earth who’d either played Game of Gods or signed up for the game’s official wiki were the possible choices.

There would be 144 rounds in the draft, with each round’s chosen champions being born into the world of Asphodel six months later than those from the round before—likely due to some time magic shenanigans—and Cadmus had chosen him as the third pick of the first round.

Each god had a certain number of draft points, marked in the book as DP, and different races, stats, talents, and specificity of starting location cost a different number of points.

At the end of the competition period, 144 years after the first round of champions were transmigrated to Asphodel and 72 years after the last round were, the gods whose champions had done the best would be rewarded with more divine power, taken from the gods whose champions did poorly. But, not too much divine power as this was, to them, just a game.

Cadmus, as the god who’d done the third worst in the last competition, was obviously not very good at choosing and supporting champions, but, looking through the rules, Aaron could also tell he was disadvantaged in several ways and not just incompetent.

Gods, depending on the nature of their divine domains, would have unique options they could give their champions, and Cadmus, as the God of Beasts, had rather bad ones.

First, unlike most gods, he could let his champions reincarnate as races other than the normal list of intelligent lifeforms. But these other races weren’t things like undead, dragons, or even beast-like monsters, creatures that could advance in tier and even potentially reach godhood, but normal animals, beings without even the potential to rise to tier 1, let alone tier 6 or divinity. And the only advantage to these animal forms, beyond effectively crippling a champion’s ability to gain power, was extra DP that could be used on the animal champion to make their starting power a bit less terrible.

Second, talents, singular unique abilities all creatures with a soul were born with on Asphodel, that had to do with beasts cost less DP. Though, given how worthless beasts were in the grand scheme of things, these talents were mostly worthless as well.

Finally, third, transmigrating to wild environments on Asphodel, away from civilization, was cheaper than for champions of other gods.

Aaron wanted to look into things more, as he was getting really interested in how to optimize a character based on the limitations he’d been presented, but he realized they’d already wasted 10 minutes of the 30 minutes the System, the magical computer program created by the higher gods to run the game, had said they’d had, so he quickly looked up at Cadmus again.

“Trade your first round draft pick for someone later in the first round, whoever agrees to pay you the most DP. I won’t be signing a contract with anyone else, and this will give me more time to study. Even if I don’t choose to play, I’ll help you make a plan for other candidates.”

“ALRIGHT.”

A second later, Aaron noticed the total amount of DP he had to work with had gone up by 8%, the process far faster than he’d been expecting, and he looked up at the god questioningly.

“I ALREADY HAD MANY OFFERS.”

“Nice.” Aaron gave the god a thumbs up, already thinking better about the deer-like thing. Then he went back to studying.

What builds would be best? There was the age old Consumption is King, but finding the right beings to eat for good skills at higher tiers would be difficult. Also, cannibalism. Not so fun when a game was real. Then there was the Necromancer’s Guide to Evil, but one good whack to the head could put the main body down no matter how big the necromantic army, so there was no good long term potential. In fact, most of the standard gimmicky builds would have practical problems in a real world setting with only one life.

So, a variation on the Prime Cultivator, the standard build for truly powerful late game characters, was probably the way to go.

That tentatively decided, Aaron then thought about the time period that the first round would be transmigrated into on Asphodel. The VRMMORPG Game of Gods took place between the years 4,037 and 4,073 of Asphodel’s standard calendar, at least up until the time Aaron and the other champions were pulled into this real game, but the first round of the gods’ draft would be transmigrated into Asphodel in 4,036, one year before the start of the game’s time. And their presence, along with the additional transmigrations that would follow, would mess up everything, the knowledge of Aaron and the others becoming less and less useful.

So, they had to make as much use as possible of their knowledge before it became useless.

To that end then, what were the best opportunities for creating powerful characters present one year before the start of the game?

The most obvious was definitely the Sword of Seantar, the divine weapon of the King of the West, but it was a bit too obvious for Aaron’s taste as it would fall from the sky exactly twelve days after the first round transmigrated. Many gods would send their round one champions after the blade, and only one would be able to claim the weapon.

It was way too risky for someone blessed by the God of Beasts, especially if that individual was him.

Then there were the Seed of the World Tree, the Calabash of the Fallen Sea God, the Bone Scroll of the 108 Risen, the Eye of the Summer Queen, and the Ring of Carthuun.

Aaron didn’t think he’d gain much from the old grandpa in the ring given he was, out of millions and millions of candidates, apparently the 23rd most knowledgeable on the world and workings of Asphodel. The Calabash of the Fallen Sea God and the Bone Scroll of the 108 Risen were only useful for specialized builds, neither of which Aaron thought provided a good clean path to end game power. And there was a really dangerous destructive event which would need to be survived to gain first dibs on the Seed of the World Tree, not to mention how the seed would only appear three months after the second round’s arrival, not the first’s.

So, that left the Eye of the Summer Queen, which would…

Aaron’s mind immediately went back to the Seed of the World Tree and the normally terrible extra options Cadmus’s divine role gave his champions access to, his thoughts moving as fast as they always did when he had an epiphany on a new build for a Game of Gods character.

The key to a truly powerful variation of the Prime Cultivator build was not resources, but the ability to gain more than six pillars, the equivalent of talent trees in older games. And, with the correct usage of the Seed of the World Tree, it was technically possible to gain access to eighteen pillars at Tier 1, the exact number needed for a perfect Prime Cultivator build.

Granted, only 12 of those pillars would be able to be brought up to Tier 2, but, if he optimized the build more, there might be ways around that.

The bigger question was how he could allow a character to make full use of the Seed of the World Tree’s power.

There was the specialized Talent, Resonance with the Seed of the World Tree, which was cheap and would allow for the full absorption of the seed, but then the character would lose said talent and have no way to gain another. Three gods who were not Cadmus had special options which would allow for the absorption of the seed while keeping a powerful talent. And then there was the extremely expensive option of taking the talent Dual Talents, which would allow for a total of three talents at Tier I including itself, along with Resonance with the Seed of the World Tree, but taking that talent would keep Cadmus from being able to choose any other champions.

Finally, there was a truly optimal build that, with the advantage of beast talents being cheaper for champions of the God of Beasts, would only require Cadmus to increase his total DP to 122% of its initial value to afford. And, while it also wouldn’t allow Cadmus to have any other champions, it was probably the best use of the god’s DP possible, given how much use it made of the god’s unique options.

The build was just not something Aaron himself would be willing to choose given the requirements on reflexes and agility to not die before making it start to work. So, he began looking through the book Cadmus had given him to try and find the perfect candidate for the god as he’d already given his word.

On looking at the third seeded candidate, however, the candidate chosen by the god Cadmus had traded first round picks with—Xerxes, the God of Combat, the god who’d gotten fourth in the last game of gods—Aaron started to grow angry. And then, seeing the twenty-seventh seeded candidate, he changed his mind.

He would personally reincarnate in to Asphodel, and he would gain power at all costs.

“Cadmus, I’ll work with you and help you win this game, but I’ll need to be your only champion. Is that okay?”

Cadmus looked down at him, frowning slightly, probably due to the suppressed rage now behind his words. But the god didn’t ask any questions and just nodded. “Yes.”

“Alright then, we need as much DP as possible, and I should be transmigrated with the second round, not the first. So, what can you get for offering to trade your first round pick for someone else’s second round?”

Aaron then waited for five minutes as Cadmus just stood there, likely telepathically talking with other gods somehow, but, overall, the god was pretty quick with his conversations. “SIX PERCENT OF MAXIMUM.”

Aaron thought about it for a few seconds. With only 114% of Cadmus’s original DP, his ideal build wouldn’t work. He wouldn’t be able to reincarnate as any type of flying creature, let alone a bat. But, there were beasts with less advantages that could still make the build work. And, in fact, they might have a higher survival chance as babies in the region he wanted to transmigrate to, something important given he’d have to choose the option of his soul possessing a fetus rather than appearing out of nothing if he wanted to have enough DP.

What creature, then, would be ideal.

It took Aaron seventeen seconds, but then his mind traveled to a type of creature he’d constantly seen outside his window at the hospital, and some of the marvelous feats it could naturally perform.

“Who’s willing to give you six percent?”

“DIOSCURIA.”

“Oh.” Aaron’s mind rapidly raced. Dioscuria was the Goddess of Links, and the unique options she could give would be best used by a pair of champions, ideally twins.

He then quickly looked through the book to see more champions and found a pair of twins that were seeded one hundred and eleventh and one hundred and forty-third. The first she’d likely be able to choose given she had the one hundred and eighth pick each round and the specific requirements of some of the gods who could pick before her, but the latter would almost certainly be picked by Coria, the Goddess of Severing, as her second pick if she didn’t do a trade given just how bad the relationship between the two goddesses was supposed to be based on the relationships between their forces in the game. But six percent was still likely her limit.

“What would other gods be willing to trade for all your other picks?”

Cadmus went quiet again for ten minutes, and Aaron decided to distract himself by looking through the book at more and more seeded candidates. Then, after about half an hour, the giant antlered creature finally had a number for him. “ONE POINT SEVEN PERCENT OF MAXIMUM.”

As expected, it wasn’t large, picks from the first round far more valuable than the second and later. But it was almost enough.

“Okay. Tell Dioscuria that she’ll have a deal for six point zero four percent of maximum and, if she accepts, take the deals for the other picks.”

“DONE.”

The speed at which Aaron saw the amount of DP he had access to rise from 108% of Cadmus’s initial amount to 115.74% suddenly made him realize something being underneath a giant three story monster had somehow not. Cadmus was a god, and, despite his seeming simplicity, he likely operated at speeds far beyond Aaron’s ken.

“It’s good working with you.”

Then, while waiting for the second round’s one hundred and eighth pick, and answering no to several dozen System notifications asking if he’d like to work with other gods, Aaron proceeded to look through and memorize all the top 20,736 candidates.