55 - Internet Pantheon

Seeing Lucy show her Rank 7 Embryonic Divinity to demonstrate her dominance in the negotiation while trying to keep a serious expression, I smiled a little and showed my Rank 9 Divine Power as well.

When she felt my Divine Power being released, Lucy's expression, which she had been trying hard to keep serious, quickly changed to surprise.

Apparently, she finally realized that I was deliberately hiding my rank and understood why she couldn't feel my rank before I allowed her to feel it.

"How?" she asked, her mouth open in an 'O' shape.

Smiling, I answered in a calm voice. "I don't think the information has reached Novera yet, but in the last few days Arcantor and Eldoria clashed, and I defeated the God of Fear in addition to Eldoria's royal family, allowing me to annex Eldoria to Arcantor's sphere of influence, adding another 400,000 believers to the Internet users."

Upon hearing this, Lucy was completely shocked.

Thinking back to the information she had received from her followers about the Internet, she quickly began to calculate the divine power I could receive from those users and became frightened.

So much so that I could see the shock on her face when I imagined the staggering amount of Divine Power I was receiving every week.

"How many believers do you have now?" She asked, unable to close her mouth in surprise.

Quickly recalling my system screen, I replied: "More than 860,000 believers who pray to me an average of 4 times a day."

Hearing my confirmation, Lucy's mouth opened even wider.

"And I thought receiving two prayers a week was an amazing number to be proud of, then you come along and receive four times that amount every day..." She said as she slumped her shoulders.

All the confidence and arrogance she had obviously trained for this moment went down the drain when she learned of our difference.

I didn't try to comfort her, as that would have been too rude at that moment and would have looked like I was trying to mock her, so I just let her deal with her feelings in silence, while keeping a calm and polite expression on my face.

Fortunately, Lucy didn't need much time to do this and quickly perked up a bit and asked me. "Since you decided to come and meet me, is it possible that you're interested in becoming my partner?"

The tone of this question was the complete opposite of the way the subject had come up.

Instead of her acting as if a partnership with her was a favor I would receive, she was now the one who was excited about partnering with me.

"Sure, considering your honest personality, our good relationship at the Divine School, and the potential you've shown in handling your realm so well, I've decided to invite you into my pantheon." I said with a smile.

"Pantheon?" She asked confused.

Unlike the gods of my previous world, which were divided into several different pantheons based on the region where those gods gained their faith, this world didn't have a very well-defined pantheon system.

There were partnerships between gods, but nothing as intimate as pantheons.

"Yes, as you may have noticed, the Internet is an invention of mine that generates a huge amount of divine power every day, but while this brings a great advantage to my power, it also has a high cost in divine power that I have to study every day how to reduce, which reduces the time I could spend thinking about how to develop more applications or features." I began to explain.

"Even though I have a deity as complete as Creativity, I'm still limited by the high cost of Divine Power for developing and maintaining uses of Divine Power that I haven't mastered. So I thought of inviting other gods to form the Internet Pantheon, where several gods with different divinities would help me develop the Internet, and each god would receive a share of the Divine Power that the Internet generates because of their divinity," I explained. I explained.

Listening to my explanation, Lucy's eyes began to shine with excitement.

With the profit of 800,000 Divine Power Points per week that she currently had, compared to the 24 million Divine Power Points that the Internet theoretically generated for me, since I hadn't told her the cost yet, even if I gave her only 5% of that Divine Power, she would already be in profit compared to how much she currently received.

"But what would happen to my followers in Novera?" She asked, her eyebrows furrowed.

"I wouldn't require them to change their faith from you to me, they could still pray to you twice a week out of gratitude, while using the rest of their prayers on the Internet." I explained.

If I were to accept them on the Internet, Novera's population of 400,000 alone would bring me 800,000 Divine Power points of profit per day, just considering the 0.5 Divine Power points cost of the ordinary Internet, not counting the cost of the [School] application.

Even if I had to pay her a share of the big pie I had now, which was Arcantor and Eldoria, adding Novera to that pie would probably increase my profit even more, even if I had to pay her a share.

And for her, she would not only get Divine Power from Novera's 400,000 people, but she would also get a percentage of Arcantor and Eldoria's profits!

So at this point, we had a win-win situation where we would both benefit without either of us having to suffer.

"How much are you going to pay me to join your pantheon?" She asked me, the tips of her hair shining and the waves through it moving even more intensely, showing how excited she was getting.

"Honestly, since I have the Divinity of Creativity, I can replicate the powers of your Divinity, as I already do, but in the future this will become more and more complicated and tedious, so I thought I'd let you manage the part of the Internet that uses your Divinity, and in return I'll give you 15% of the Divine Power income from those sections." I explained as I opened my hand and projected a holographic screen.

On this holographic screen, I showed the number of users who used the school app on a daily basis while explaining how much it would cost with their interference and how much profit it could generate for us.

[School: 774,588 daily uses].

"With your participation in the Internet, the cost of this app would drop to just the standard cost of normal Internet, which would yield a profit of 445,000 Divine Power Points per day, your 15% participation in this app would mean 66,000 Divine Power Points per day, or 467,000 per week." I said as I displayed everything I was showing in numbers and graphs on the hologram.

"That's just with the population of Arcantor and Eldoria, not counting the population of Novera, which would increase the number of users of this app even more, increasing the profit even more, or even other kingdoms that we could dominate together in the future." I said as I showed everything on the screen.

With each explanation, I could see the excitement growing on her face.

As a game developer in my previous world, someone who had to deal with greedy businessmen who wanted to get the most out of me, I knew that the worst thing to do was to show what you were thinking by your facial expressions, as she was doing now, but I wasn't going to correct her now.

So I finally designed the ultimate cake for her. "Also, since I am the God of Creativity, I have several ideas for more applications of your divinity on the Internet in the future that would further increase your share of Internet revenues to unimaginable numbers."

As I said this, the graph on the holographic screen began to rise without stopping.

Since audio was a fundamental part of the Internet, her participation in all of this was very important.

And since I was paying her a percentage of the profits and she was paying some of the costs, there was no downside to this partnership for me.

Maybe if I waited for several years with each rank I rose to learn how to apply the efficiency of Divine Power on the Internet, I could do it all by myself, but paying such a percentage for the participation of a goddess with such high potential to become my ally was too cheap.

I still had to calculate how all this cost and profit sharing would work in the future so that nothing could be taken advantage of maliciously by either side, but from the look on Lucy's face now, I knew that I had already hooked this big fish.

So I held out my hand to her and smiled. "So, Lucy Wavecrest, do you agree to be the first member of the Internet Pantheon besides me?"

Looking at the screen with the presentations of what I had said, then feeling my current power, thinking about how much divine power I was receiving daily, and thinking about how many things she could do with that much power, Lucy smiled as she extended her hand to me and shook my hand as well.

"Yes Adrian Innovashine, as long as you show me that everything you've promised me is real, I agree to participate in the Internet Pantheon. She replied with a beautiful smile on her face.

With a simple handshake, a future legend of the Divine Kingdom was born.

///NunuNote//

Any ideas on how to improve Adrian's proposal? Please comment your thoughts.