Chapter 2: The Trashy Goddess and the Summoner
Since ancient times, people have prayed to the wind.
The power of faith of countless ancestors came together to form a wind elf named Janna.
Janna's power was once very strong. But as time passed and history changed, people gradually abandoned their faith in the wind spirit.
They would also shout "Jana is above", but this is just like modern people occasionally shouting "Mazu bless you", which is just a catchphrase derived from folk customs. There are not many people who truly believe in the existence of Jana left.
Faith without believers is like a tree without roots, and Janna gradually lost her power.
Normally, she even finds it difficult to maintain her divine body for long, and can only descend to the world in the form of a blue bird.
And just a few hours ago...
Janna transformed into a blue bird, resting on a tree outside the apartment building, and happened to see Levi's body through the window.
He had just returned from working the night shift and had died suddenly in his rental house.
Janna was about to pray for the poor Zaun.
However, not long after, she saw that the dead young man sat up again and was full of energy!
However, the resurrected Levi is obviously not the original Levi.
If that were all, Janna wouldn't be surprised.
As a goddess with thousands of years of experience, the nearly omniscient Janna certainly knows that there are many evil spells in this world that can take over the bodies of the dead.
Reincarnation by taking over another's body may sound bizarre enough to ordinary people, but it is nothing new to her.
But the problem is that Levi's ability is far more than just possessing a dead body:
The moment after Levi "took over another body and was reborn", Janna found that she was uncontrollably crossing the space and teleporting in front of Levi!
In fear and anger, she used up all her remaining strength to try to resist, but the result was...
The powerful divine power she released on Levi was like a drop in the ocean, without causing even a ripple, and disappeared out of thin air in an extremely strange way.
As a result, not only did Janna fail to break free from the "slavery curse", but she also overdrew the last of her divine power and squeezed out her last bit of strength, becoming a useless bird that could barely fly.
Then, she was horrified to find that she had lost her freedom without even realizing it, and had completely become a slave to this horrible existence!
She had to do whatever Levi said, even escaping was a luxury.
Janna was extremely wary of this mysterious man who could easily enslave even the gods.
She struggled several times but to no avail, so she had no choice but to accept her fate of being controlled by others, and tried cautiously:
"Who are you?"
"A wandering god from the universe, an emperor resurrected from the underworld, or a star spirit descended from heaven?"
In Janna's opinion, Levi must be at least a demigod-level warrior.
However, Levi's answer was:
"I am nothing, I am just a League of Legends player."
"I was playing games at home, but because I chose you when I was matching heroes, I ended up traveling here inexplicably—"
"I have traveled through time and space and become your [Summoner]."
As he spoke, he sighed: "Oh, if I had known this, I should have chosen the Star-Forging Dragon King..."
Of course, Janna couldn't understand this weird talk.
But Levi's leisurely tone, in which he casually mentioned her, the goddess, and even the Star-Forging Dragon King as if they were chess pieces, still made her secretly frightened.
Janna became even more wary of him.
So she secretly observed Levi's every move, trying to find out the real purpose of this terrifying existence coming here.
However, Levi's actions made her even more confused.
He first had a serious chat with her, and after learning that her faith had collapsed and her divine power had been completely lost, she was just a useless bird that couldn't fly a few meters before running out of energy...
Levi's face turned a little bad.
He didn't speak to Janna anymore, but just stood quietly in the narrow rental house, thinking alone for a long time.
Just as Cana was wondering if this evil god was planning some horrific plot, Levi's eyes suddenly darkened, as if he had made up his mind...
Then he took out an old book, "A Brief History of Piltover and Zaun", from the bookcase of the original owner's sister... who is now his sister.
Then, Levi began to read and study history quietly.
Not only did he study and teach on his own, he also ordered Janna, a thousands-year-old living history textbook, to be by his side throughout the process to answer his questions and provide one-on-one tutoring.
He studied for hours, from ancient times to modern times, and asked a lot of details. He was more serious than the history students at Piltover University.
This made Janna even more confused.
So she couldn't help asking:
"Mr. Summoner." Levi called himself a summoner, so Janna called him that too: "What do you want to do?"
"You took over the body of a dead person and enslaved a goddess just to learn history from me?"
"Of course not." Levi explained: "Jana, I'm trying to find a way to help you regain your strength . Only when you become stronger can I become stronger as well."
This explanation made Janna even more confused:
Studying history and helping her regain her divine power...what is the connection between the two?
She is a god shaped by the power of faith.
There is only one way to help her restore her divine power, and that is to spread faith and develop believers for her, so that more devout believers will believe in Janna again and provide her with a continuous supply of power of faith.
But can these believers and divine powers be found by reading history books?
"That's why you don't understand what 'God' is, Janna."
"?" Janna was speechless. She was a god, how could she not understand what a god was?
"Janna, let me ask you, what do you think you are to the believers?"
"Of course I am their God."
"Wrong!" Levi's answer was unexpected: "To believers, you are actually just a story, a story told to them by others."
"Because they are willing to believe this story, there is a goddess like you."
Janna was silent for a while, but finally nodded in agreement.
Because her origin is indeed a story -
An ancient sailor boasted to others after drinking that he saw a gust of wind at sea that turned into a blue bird. The blue bird used its singing to warn them and helped them avoid the terrible storm at sea.
The story spread further and further, becoming more and more mysterious. As it spread, more and more people saw the blue bird, and even a sailor saw the blue bird transformed into a beautiful girl with pointed ears. The girl also had a staff that could control the storm, and cast a spell to disperse the wind and waves for them.
Janna, the Storm's Fury, was born from the story.
"But why didn't they believe this story afterwards?" Levi asked again.
Janna herself summed up many reasons.
One is that during the ancient Shurima rule, the Shurima rulers who believed in the giant gods in the sky did not allow civilians to worship her as a "false idol", so her statues, temples, and sects in the mortal world were almost wiped out, and the faith was cut off.
Second, she almost exhausted all her strength in order to protect the victims from the massive earthquake and tsunami caused by the canal explosion more than 200 years ago.
Since then, Janna has rarely had the energy to show her divine power in front of others and continue to help her believers.
As the divine appearances became less frequent, people became less convinced that Janna was real.
As more and more people no longer believe in Janna, she naturally has no more divine power to show her power in front of people.
Under this vicious cycle, Janna's faith heritage completely died out.
"These are actually secondary reasons. The most important reason is that times have changed!"
"Ms. Janna, your teachings are outdated!"
“Doctrine?” Janna pondered.
Her teachings...
She has no doctrine at all!
Even including her, whether it is the giant gods of ancient Shurima or the demigods of Freljord, they actually have no doctrines.
Because all the gods in this world are real.
The true God is too lazy to make up stories for his believers.
I don't have any profound truths to teach you. I will just tell you what I think. It's up to you to believe it or not.
"That style of play is too primitive and too rough."
"You have failed to grasp the user's pain points, form a closed loop , and form a stable user ecosystem, let alone maintain the product's life cycle. No wonder you, a real god, have fallen to being eliminated by the market."
“???” Janna asked a question in her mind.
And Levi was still saying his weird words that made people confused:
"Ms. Janna, your story is too simple."
"Nature worship, worshiping fire, worshiping the moon, worshiping the wind, that is something that has existed since the Neolithic Age. In the final analysis, it is nothing more than the primitive worship of natural elements by ancient humans."
"Now Piltover and Zaun have both experienced the Industrial Revolution and even Cyberpunk. They can even build robots. They are better at math and physics than me—"
"If you ask them to pray to the wind, they can write you a paper on "Computational Methods of Fluid Dynamics for Wind Action" on the spot."
"Even if there are gods in this world, to the people of Twin Cities who are used to understanding the world through science, gods are nothing more than 'powerful magical creatures'."
"Tell me, can your story still fool people?"
Janna was speechless.
After being lectured by Levi, she found that... as a goddess, she didn't seem to know how to be a god as well as Levi did.
"So, what are you going to do?"
"Simple. Since the doctrine is completely outdated, we can start over and compile a set of belief theories that are more suitable for the times."
"You?!" Cana couldn't help but want to rebuke Levi for blasphemy.
Can belief theory be made up casually?
Wouldn't that be asking this goddess to cooperate in lying?
But even though she was angry, Cana quickly understood Levi's actions: "I see..."
"You are so serious about asking me about the history of Piltover and Zaun, just to understand the historical background here so that it will be easier for you to make up a story?"
“You can think of it that way.”
"So... what kind of story are you going to tell me?" Janna was worried that Levi would tamper with her teachings and turn her into an evil god like the Vile Maw.
In response to her question, Levi just muttered to himself:
“What kind of story do you want to tell?”
“That’s a real problem…”
Zaun and Piltover have entered the era of industrial revolution, and even have a bit of the flavor of 2077.
According to what Levi had seen and heard, there were roughly two types of beliefs that had strong vitality in this era.
The first one is of course to continue to go deeper on the path of metaphysics.
Abandoning primitive nature worship, they depict hell and promise heaven to believers, depict reincarnation and promise the afterlife.
In short, we should give those who are suffering a ray of hope, even if this hope is after death, in the next life.
As for the second one ...
"Janna." Levi did not answer directly, but asked meaningfully: "If a person is sick, very sick. And I have two kinds of medicine:"
"One is an anesthetic that allows people to die without pain."
"One is a strong medicine that can cure the disease, but the treatment process is very painful, even more painful than the disease itself. Many people die in pain before the disease is cured."
"Jana, which medicine do you think is better?"
"I choose the second one." Janna said without hesitation: "What's the use of medicine if it can't save people?"
"Well said, Janna."
Levi had actually made his decision long ago.
If it was before the time travel, he would probably choose the first option, because if the first option was successful, it would bring him endless wealth and endless enjoyment.
But after traveling through time, he inherited all the memories of this body.
He experienced firsthand what life was like for the people of Zaun.
The young man who died suddenly on this narrow bed...what he wanted was definitely not anesthesia.
“I choose the second one too.”
Li Wei picked up a pen and paper and wrote a line of speech before his newly made "story":
"For you, Mr. Levi."
