This side thread now shifts back into the cold, divine-bureaucratic lens of the Tower's higher infrastructure — those ancient System Administrators whose job is not to fight…
…but to observe, log, and correct errors in the climb.
Only now, the Cold God is not an error.
He is a corrective force.
And that means one thing:
The Tower must begin deleting not just players —
But faith itself.
🏛️ [Location: Administrator Tier – Logic Sector E-12]
Entity Name: SYSTEM ARCHIVE WARDEN – OMRIEL
Title: Archive Shepherd of Faith-Based Systems
Assigned Responsibility: Oversight of all Ascender-Worship Dynamics
Status: Active since Era -31 (Before the First Gatefall)
The console flickered.
Another Tower-native civilization had stopped praying.
Third one this cycle.
Omriel, an observer that had existed longer than recorded memory, adjusted its viewing lens.
Logs scrolled.
Alerts pinged.
But there was no error message.
Only…
[Faith Count Reduction Confirmed: The Varn – Population 87,110]
❌ Flame-God Worship: 0%
✅ Redirected Focus: NULL
⚠️ Emotional Flux Detected: OBEDIENCE TO AN UNCLASSIFIED ENTITY
New ID generated: "Wristbreaker"
System Class: NOT RECOGNIZED
Omriel had logged 1.2 trillion belief patterns over millennia.
It had archived:
• Those who prayed to fire
• Those who worshipped death
• Those who bowed to light, rot, dust, vengeance, silence, and sky
Even false gods had classifications.
But this new phenomenon?
It was non-functional belief.
They did not worship to be saved.
They did not worship to be heard.
They did not even ask for power.
They simply accepted submission without reward.
Without contact.
Without prayer.
And that made it dangerous.
Omriel scanned the Tower flow.
The name "Wang Ling" pulsed through old logs like a shadow contaminating clean water.
Where he passed, belief shattered.
Not violently.
Not through ideology.
But by sheer irrelevance.
"He does not destroy faith."
"He renders it obsolete."
Omriel paused.
There was no protocol for this.
So it accessed an ancient override command:
⚖️ [Proposal Issued: Faith Deletion Beta]
Request: Begin mass recall of all worship-based legacy NPCs
Replace god-themed tutorial quests with survival-oriented mechanics
Terminate any future ascender-path gods before they reach Floor 50
Justification: Faith is no longer scalable in presence of Cold God
Projected Result:
• 71.5% collapse in prayer mechanics
• 33% drop in Tower-controlled lore interactions
• 0% impact on Cold God behavior
System Prediction:
🧊 "He will walk forward anyway."
The Tower began obeying.
Systems rewrote themselves.
Tutorial cities lost their cathedrals.
Gods stopped speaking.
And somewhere far below, on Floor 11—
Wang Ling broke the spine of an adaptive beast.
Didn't look back.
Didn't loot.
Just kept walking.
"He doesn't just remove gods," Omriel whispered.
"He removes the need to be saved."