I grabbed the mouse and clicked firmly on the forums button.
“These look just like any other forums.”
Their layout and design were reminiscent of the most famous discussion boards in Japan. The “discussion forums” header was at the top in big letters, and underneath was a list of threads. I let my eyes wander down.
Monster Identification Thread (179)
Corrupted God Positivity Thread (Anti-Corrupted God Discussion Strictly Forbidden) (234)
Who’s the Cutest Minor God? (66)
How to Save up Fate Points Effectively (16)
Do you guys not know how to read the rules? (7)
Elite Players Thread (Level 3 and Over) (18)
Level 2 Noobs Complaints Thread (7)
I’ll rate your village! (32)
Something cool I did with miracles… (14)
I think there’s something wrong with my villagers? (3)
Need advice for my village! (22)
Just learned female dwarves can grow beards too (5)
Let’s see who’s got the strongest villager! (33)
My villager asked me about his divorce, but I’m a single guy… (4)
The religious stuff in this game is kinda weird (5)
Cat- and Dogmen suddenly showed up at my village! (23)
“This is totally not what I was expecting,” I muttered to myself.
There had to be at least a hundred threads here. Some of them seemed serious, others less so. This was almost weirdly casual. I clicked on the first thread curiously. A warning popped up.
Do not post real names or addresses.
Do not post any personally identifiable information.
Feel free to leave abusive messages about the corrupted gods.
Do not post any false information in this thread.
Other players will not be able to read any information they are not allowed to know.
This forum is for players on the side of the major gods only. Players of corrupted gods are unable to see this forum.
A hundred thoughts rushed into my head all at once, and not all of them were great. Players weren’t allowed to post any personally identifiable information according to points 1 and 2, but I already knew that rule had been broken. That guy in the park said everyone was talking about me. The discrepancy likely had something to do with rule number 6. Players who controlled corrupted gods used a different forum from us, meaning we couldn’t communicate with them here. 4 and 5 gave me pause, too, but I could deal with that later. I just wanted to read the thread itself for now.
1: Green goblins have gotta be the poster monsters of this game.
2: Yeah, they’re kinda smart so actually annoying to deal with.
3: Smart in the same way as monkeys, yeah.
4: Hey, that makes them as smart as some humans.
5: That’s it! Who’s making fun of me?!
6: Let’s talk about sharks instead of monkeys!
It was just like any other Internet forum: twenty percent serious discussion, eighty percent off-topic nonsense. There was some useful stuff on monsters in there, though, and I made a note to come back to it later. I scrolled through until I came across thread 27: Newbie FAQ Thread.
“Now this looks helpful.”
“Your points are named after your god.”
I was the God of Fate, so my points were called Fate Points. Made sense.
“The number of gods in the game is currently undetermined. However, each god has only one human player. No gods are controlled by more than one player.”
In other words, I had sole control of the God of Fate.
“Players are separated into those allied with the corrupted gods and those allied with the major gods. Players allied with the major gods are generally discouraged from fighting with each other, though there may not be any punishment for doing so.”
That meant there could be a punishment, which was probably enough to dissuade people from turning on each other, though I wondered about the use of the word “generally.”
“It is thought there are up to five levels, but only four have been confirmed.”
I still had a long way to go, huh?
“Using miracles for criminal purposes will get you an immediate game over.”
That looked like a rule for players on the major gods’ side only. Controlling people to steal a book had to count as a crime, right?
“Some thread content will be invisible to players beneath a certain level. Visible text is color-coded. Black means that the text can be seen by all players. Yellow is for level 3 and above. Red is for level 4 and above.”
That explained the different colors. I tried clicking on the thread for level 3 and above players. Most of the text in there was red or yellow and had a message saying, “You cannot read this message.” over it. I still had tons of questions, but a few unlocked threads looked promising. I’d check those out later. First, though, I had to make a post of my own.
“How should I write this?”
I was used to making threads on regular forums, but this was a completely new experience.
“‘A corrupted god player came and harassed me in real life. Is that not against the rules?’ That should do it.”
I had my first responses in seconds.
543 Sure they did lol
545 Nope
546 Sure this “player” wasn’t just in your imagination?
“Bastards…”
Those sorts of responses were common on regular boards. I figured I didn’t need to be so formal after all. I didn’t feel nervous anymore, either. But it really did seem like what happened to me was rare.
547 Wait, why do you guys think he’s lying? These boards don’t let you post any false information, right?
548 Oh yeah. Wait, you mean he’s telling the truth?
549 Ok, now I need to know! Tell us everything, 542!
They were starting to believe me. 542 was my post number.
“How am I supposed to explain? ‘The corrupted god found out my address and came to steal my holy book. He said there was a group of people who would pay ten million yen for it.’ That was okay, right?”
552 He came to steal your ***? For *** yen?! Kinky.
553 You must’ve written something against the rules, because some of that got censored.
554 He came to steal his ass lol
555 Did someone say yaoi?
556 No. Get outta here.
What were they talking about? The thread was going way off topic.
Oh, wait. There was that rule about players not being able to read information they weren’t allowed to know, right? So I wasn’t allowed to talk about the situation with my holy book to them? I guess this was an unprecedented situation.
Thinking back, it was strange how honest that punk was with me. I let the other forum users know there was some information I couldn’t tell them before trying to explain in as much detail as I could. I told them I was targeted by two separate corrupted god players in the two months since I started playing the game. I told them what had happened since New Year’s Eve while trying not to trigger the censor again.
560 This sounds serious. There’s a thread where you can talk to the devs directly, so why not ask there?
561 This is crazy. But if it’s true, it sounds like you’re in deep trouble.
562 Let us know what the devs say.
563 I wanna know too.
564 I’m sitting here naked, and I’m not gonna move till you’re back.
565 Put some clothes on.
566 And if I’m a girl with E-cup tits?
567 Send nudes.
And we were off topic again. Regardless, the advice was reassuring, even if the interaction was all via text. I’d always thought I was in this alone, so it was nice to know there were so many other god players out there willing to help. Just knowing that filled me with determination.
I found the thread to contact the developers and told them everything that happened over these past two days without sparing the slightest detail.
Nothing’ll get censored from them, right?
I wasn’t expecting an answer right away, so I went to browse other threads in the meantime. Then my phone rang. The name on the screen said “Developers.”