Clank! Clank!
A steel pipe has been swung at Ren's face for a while now. But all those wimpy swings only hit the walls on the left and right. This one guy is just too careless. Let's just call him Fans number #02.
"Don't dodge like that, you bastard! And you call yourself a God Candidate?"
These people cannot be talked to. Ren never called himself that.
"If it comes to this..."
Number 02 grabs his steel pipe with both hands. He closes his eyes, gathering his focus on the thing.
"[Mutual Destruction]!"
For a moment, Ren felt a disturbance in the air. He instinctively dodges to another branch of the back alley. The steel pipe 02 holds shatters to pieces. At the same time, a garbage can around Ren explodes.
"Oww! Oww! That hurts so much, dammit!!"
It's not Ren who said that. It was number 02. His hands are impacted by the shattering force of the pipe.
"And you still dodge? Unforgivable!!"
Number 02 is grunting in pain when a hand reaches his shoulder.
"This is why I told you we need to restrain the target before you do that."
A tall man, fixing his glasses like an intellect, appears behind number 02. Let's call him Fans number #04.
"[Empowering Destruction]"
Number 04 grabs the right side of the alley with his right hand. The wall cracks, and many of its chunks crumble to the floor. In an instant, number 04's arms get bigger and bigger. The muscles grow at an alarming rate, massively increasing his body mass until it overflows with muscle.
Ren would be freaking out if it were anyone else. But these grunts couldn't do anything right.
"Prepare to be crushed by my mighty muscles!"
Number 04 smirks wide, contrary to his previous intelligent aura. He is now a full-blown muscular bouncer.
Ren takes steps back bit by bit, analyzing the situation. He knows something should be wrong about this.
Remembering his main objective, he turns around and dashes to get out of the alley. After crossing the street, he looks behind.
Number 04 has still not appeared. Ren knows it. Gaining that much muscle should not equal an increase in base strength.
"W-wait! G-get over here, you punk! We can't let you disturb the concert!!"
Number 04 is heavily gasping like he finished a marathon. His stamina seems to be very bad. He can't even move properly, barely fast with that muscular body!
"[Projected Destruction]!!"
Hearing a shout of an ability name in the air, Ren evades in a random direction. A flower pot five meters from him explodes.
On the other side of the street, there is a young brat with a baseball bat in his hands. Let's just call him Fans number #03.
"You are now done! Compared to both of them, I'm built different. They're just too dumb to use their power."
Number 03 swings his bat into the concrete railings. Instead of hitting a hard surface, the bat easily damages a chunk of concrete from the railings. Less than a moment later, another flower pot explodes.
"You should cower in fear now! When I manage to swing in your direction, you are done for!"
This one cannot aim, Ren figures.
Ignoring number 03, Ren quickly heads in the direction of the livehouse. Just before he can run, a thin blue laser beam cuts his path.
"I order you to stay right there."
A beautiful girl in a stage costume appears before him. Her blue-sky-long hair flutters under the night light.
"[Bisected Destruction] I will never let you, another God Candidate, meet with our one and only Goddess!"
Several blue laser beams cut through the night wildly. Ren wouldn't have survived if not for her brief monologue.
Destruction my ass! That is a full-blown laser beam! Even an idiot should be able to use it easily! Ren curses behind a corner of a building.
He never thought that the supposedly brief experiment could be escalated into this.
It all started from their small gamedev club room. Today is the weekend, and almost everyone has already gone home. Only two of the five members of the gamedev club were present.
"Ren, look! A message from the God of Games!"
[If you have time, please test our game before Monday. I have already added some extra lines of code. It should be working perfectly for our project!]
"You should be the one to try it first, Ren! Our dependable programmer should know how hard it is to make the code compatible with the aspect of divinity, just so that our project has any chance to progress."
The girl in front of Ren right now is Fia, another member of the club. The right-hand woman who serves the God of Games. After studying divinity directly from the source, she is incredibly hyped up.
The God of Games, who is also their club member, has a certain purpose to reach. That was creating the True Digital God before her school graduation. By the way, the God of Games is also a True variant of a god, meaning there is no other God of Games except for herself.
"She is truly a demon. I need to prepare for midterms. I don't want to spend my precious sleeping time just testing this game right now."
"C'mon. C'mon. We'll just test it for half an hour and be done with it!"
Ren sighs at this situation. He knows he wouldn't have the heart to decline the request from the God of Games. He grabs the VR device and plugs it into the computer. After wearing it on his head, his vision blurs, followed by an incredibly bright light.
"WHAT! WHAT IS HAPPENING? FIA!!"
When the light dims, he realizes he is standing on the side of the road.
What is happening? Wasn't I just in the club room a moment ago? Ren thinks in panic.
[Mic check. Mic check. Hello! Ren, do you hear me?]
Fia's voice can be heard coming from his smartphone.
"F-Fia? What is happening? What is this? Is this what I think it is??"
[That's right. You are doing a full dive into the game world we created together.]
"Goddammit. The God of Games is messing around again! Extra lines of code my ass! Why didn't she tell us earlier??"
[Dunno. I'm also surprised she would create something like this when we wouldn't be able to make it in this era.]
Fia takes a pause.
[Well, you know. Let's just enjoy it for now.]
"Enjoy what? What should I do now to log out? This game doesn't even have any main quest right now, does it? I don't even see any floating console to check."
[We might need to use our knowledge of the game to solve it right now. You are the programmer, after all.]
Ren calms down.
Yeah, right. We can do it together from here. Everything is going to be fine.
[Ah! I just checked. I think you seem to have some Admin privileges, Ren!]