“Hehehehehe…, pff pff pff pff…, heh heh heh heh heh heh heh.”

The laughter came out of me like a madman’s.

In a dream that didn’t feel like a dream, the laughing wouldn’t stop.

“You…, you’re in a strange state. Has something happened in the human world?”

This god of an uncle is a Westerner and his way of speaking is really musty.

I told him it was uncomfortable to listen to, and he dropped the young hero.

He’s well on in years, so I gave him permission to speak casually too.

“You’re a god and you don’t even know that?”

“A god has to be up around those high-level gods before he can look at this and that as he pleases. A beginner like me only gets his eye of insight opened now and then. With my divine power, even enjoying one room of a house like this is a strain.”

“You’re not from the Zeus Olympia Cup, are you?”

“…Did I not tell you I was a special consideration case in the language division of the goddess Athena?”

“Ah~ that’s right.”

The feel of it came to me.

If the Zeus Cup is the level of the grade-five central administration examination, then the lower-god selection below it is about the grade-nine local service.

A special consideration case seems to be something like a special-hire appointment.

Athena is the goddess who stands for wisdom.

Next to Nova hyungnim, who came out of the Zeus Olympia Cup, his god-pull is clearly on another level.

“I’m in the mood today. Shall I plant you a tree?”

“Ohhh! Thank you! You are my benefactor!”

My mood was very good.

In a single night I had taken one enormous American bear apart and eaten it clean up.

I took only the parts with money in them — the gallbladder that is good for the body, the paws that are a delicacy, the whole hide for decoration.

Me…, in the five-trillion club…

Before the night was out, I had popcorned a billion dollars to five times the size.

I closed out the short-position futures like a madman.

With the stock price plunging toward the floor, the futures dove after it.

I threw them to the wolves that had rushed in to tear meat off the bear’s body.

Those boys brought the bear down with me.

The individual stock options blew a jackpot too.

It was a shame the board was too small to eat more.

The stocks I had sold short when they were expensive I bought back cheap, filling the position.

A perfect victory for me.

A rate of return of a full five hundred percent.

This is an unbreakable legend of the financial world.

It wouldn’t be strange if George Soros or Warren Buffett called me hyungnim.

It was a shame I was the only one who knew, but it was good anyway.

Whatever anybody says, in one night I had gone into the top two hundred of the world’s rich list that Forbes publishes.

To share this chest-bursting happiness I had come to the most pitiful god I know.

In the meantime Chris Barnsdale had put up a splendid main hall with my points.

There were rocks and flowering plants I hadn’t seen before.

It looked like the great estates in wuxia films.

But there was nothing that looked genuinely expensive.

It had exactly the air of a household outfitted at Daisso. (TL Note: 다있소, Daisso — the author’s play on the name of a Korean chain of cheap variety stores, and on the phrase “we have it all.”)

“How about one of those great old pines?”

“Th-That’s an expensive one.”

He’s a linguist, so he knows his Chinese characters well.

I could see the greed in his eyes.

He’d become a god and he still knew what was expensive.

“I’m a man who knows how to shoot when it’s time to shoot.”

“Kuh… thank you! In my past life and my life as a god both, you are the first good human being like this.”

A human being like me, a good human being…

You could tell a lot about that man’s life.

“How do I put one up?”

“You call up the one you are thinking of in your heart, in that spot.”

“Not by handing over points, like last time?”

“Why? You leveled up, didn’t you?”

“Leveled up?”

“Ah! You’re not a god yet, so you don’t know. You leveled up.”

“…”

This was the first I’d heard of it.

Who in the world decides when I level up?

And leveling up hadn’t changed anything either.

The way going from level one to level two in a game doesn’t amount to much.

“What can you see on my body?”

Chris Barnsdale was looking at my body, and the question came to me.

I couldn’t feel a thing myself.

“Mm. I can see it. The light running off your body has changed from transparent to a pale sky blue. That is the proof of a level-up.”

“That’s a good thing, right?”

“Of course~ the closer you get to a level-up, the closer you are to the world of the gods. If you work without stopping from the ability you have now, in about twenty years you might be able to become a god by yourself.”

That is not an answer I especially wanted to hear.

Being an immortal is not a good thing.

Ascension to Immortality is not the future I dream about.

What does it mean to print a number with no end to it in a bank account and then die without spending any of it?

I’m going to spend it to the absolute limit before I die!

It’s the man who has spent money who knows about money.

I wanted to widen my experience of the world a little more and learn how rich men throw money around.

“Then I’ll plant the tree.”

I was curious about my own ability too.

I took up a position on the empty ground in front of the newly built main hall.

“Imagine it and put some real force into your mind!”

I heard Chris Barnsdale’s instruction.

I closed my eyes and called up the image.

A single old pine that the school looked after and doted on because the board chairman had planted it.

I thought about moving that tree here.

Fwaaaash!

Behind my closed eyes I felt a pure white light burst.

Startled, I opened them.

In that moment, out of that light, something came sliding up and grew and settled into place.

“Hah!”

“Ohhhhhh! Your god-pull is killer!”

I-It appeared! It really did!

Astonishingly, the pine I’d been imagining had turned up, its trunk good and twisted around itself.

It was exactly the same as the one at the school.

I couldn’t believe it even looking at it.

This is a garden a god lives in.

I hadn’t known my karma points could do a job like this.

“I-Is this for real? It isn’t just some nonsense dream inside my dream, is it?”

“Is your ability in the world a lie?”

“No.”

“Then believe it. That a thing cannot be seen by human eyes does not mean it does not exist.”

At times like this, Chris Barnsdale really is like a god.

He had changed his clothes too, with the points I gave him.

It’s a dragon robe with a golden dragon flying across it.

It looks as though his dream was to be a Chinese emperor.

“What’s the good of decorating the house like this? Do fairies and goddesses come to visit, the way they do at Nova hyungnim’s place?”

“H-How did you know that? Nova, you say? Have you formed a connection with gods besides me? Have you actually seen fairies or goddesses come to visit?”

Chris Barnsdale got excited.

This old man…, isn’t normal either.

No — every god I’ve met has been a long way from solemn or dignified.

The old man who appeared in the first dream and sent me back was strange too.

He cursed juicily and his temper was foul.

Divine Lord Cheollyong, my illegal martial-arts tutor, isn’t a legal immortal either.

By the standards of the world, Chris Barnsdale here and Nova hyungnim were definitely not normal either.

“What changes when they come to visit? Do points just pile up? Like! There isn’t a function like that, is there? You don’t press that Like and go up on the best-of board and win points, do you?”

“…, hrk!”

Chris Barnsdale the god, startled.

What? That look on his face!

“H-How do you know the secrets of the divine world so well? The Like! function is the newest update version, only installed recently…”

“…”

Oh, hell!

Does this make any sense?

The world of the gods really has a function like that?

Shouldn’t it be more classical and mysterious than this, if it’s normal?

Is a world of immortals with white beards, where one game of baduk goes by and a hundred years have shot past, really a story that only exists in novels?

Is the kind-hearted rich immortal who hands you a golden axe when you drop yours really not here?

What kind of divine world is this!

It’s exactly the same as the human world…

“Really?”

“A god cannot speak a falsehood. Silence is permitted, but a lie cannot be put in the mouth.”

“Whoaaa…, that’s something else. The world of the gods~.”

It looks as though the gods change as much as the human world changes.

Nova hyungnim’s way of speaking was the same as a modern man’s too.

If they’re gods who can look down and watch over human beings, it could happen.

If human beings die and become gods, all the more so.

“Gods aren’t much different from the human world either.”

“That’s right. Living as a god, I found there was nothing different. Here too, if you pile up plenty of points while you’re alive and your ancestor pull is good, you’ve got a winning hand. The world of the gods is fiercer than the human one.”

“Why ancestor pull?”

“Why do you think! If the ancestors have piled up a lot of good-deed points, the points get inherited by their descendant gods, and gifted too!”

Oh, for…

There really was nothing at all different about it from the human world.

It is true, the saying that your ancestors’ merit has to be thick for the descendants to do well.

It wasn’t a matter of my doing well by myself.

“…, the divine world is a very good place… which is why the longer I live here, the more of a shame it is…”

“What is?”

“Building a fine house like this and eating good food every day and having music played while you keep company with pretty goddesses and fairies is good, it’s good, but…”

“Is there more you could want? It’s the utopia human beings want, isn’t it, where you don’t even fall sick?”

“P! O! I! N! T! S! That’s the problem, I tell you! A fellow lowest-rank god who became a god the hard way along with me hit a point jackpot off a descendant of his…, and moved to Olympia District! Ah…, it turns my stomach! If I’d known it would go like this I’d have gotten married while I was alive…”

This gentleman had a great deal of bitterness stored up about points.

Olympia District sounded exactly like Gangnam District, where the rich people live.

Somewhere in that conversation with Chris Barnsdale about the world of the gods, I realized something.

Ah! Gold spoons and dirt spoons work in the world of the gods too. (TL Note: 금수저 / 흙수저 — Korean slang for being born rich or born poor, from the English “born with a silver spoon”; the dirt spoon is its opposite.)

For human beings it is money; here it was karma points.

All of a sudden Chris Barnsdale looked pitiful to me.

His face wasn’t the sharp, good-looking style Nova hyung has.

If the pretty heavenly maidens have eyes in their heads, they’d play at Nova hyung’s classy mansion, not come to a house in this style.

The house is really…, middle-aged-uncle style.

Cheap Chinese-made, on top of that.

It looks as though earning points is going to be really hard for him from here on too.

“Are the female gods who visit here all in the European league?”

I changed the subject for the sake of a depressed Chris Barnsdale.

I was curious too.

“No. They come from all over.”

“What? Then do heavenly maidens from the Asian league come too?”

“Of course. Isn’t that obvious? That’s why I built the house in the Eastern style like this. These days the Eastern goddesses spend points harder than the European ones.”

It looks as though the aftershock of the Asian boom reaches the world of the gods too.

“Really? The chief gods are different, aren’t they. And the races, and the cultures and the languages are different too…, is it all right for gods to mix like that?”

“What era are you talking about? It’s a global age in heaven. With the wave of liberalization in the divine world, you can go anywhere at all now.”

Ah! Global!

At this point, saying anything more would only wear my mouth out.

I was the only one turned into an ignorant fool who doesn’t even know global.

“When I have time now and then, I’ll press Like for you.”

One vote of mine is hardly important, but pity rose in me.

Still, thanks to Chris Barnsdale I have no worries about language.

The style stored in my head wasn’t bad either.

“Heh heh heh. We’re going to be meeting often.”

Chris Barnsdale opened his eyes to a heavy-lidded slit and handed me a line full of meaning.

“Yes?”

“I broke through a new language this time. It’s going to pull at you hard.”

It didn’t pull at me much.

There was nothing to gain by adding one more language here.

I wasn’t the least bit curious, even about an alien tongue.

“What is it?”

I asked anyway, for politeness’ sake.

When a man talks like that, not asking seems like bad manners.

It looks as though he has no god to play with except me.

“Hu hu hu hu…, the Rune language.”

“Yes? The R-Rune language!!!”

(End of Chapter 48)