---Third POV---
With the updated announcent, Viktor placed the mini-ga in a more prominent spot on the hopage.
As ti went by, curiosity led more and more people to notice it.
Sarah was one of them.
She blinked in surprise and said, "A ga embedded within the official site? Is this so kind of nesting doll trick?"
Initially, she had only seen a funny video on Platform A, which led her to click on the link in the comnt section and visit the official site.
Who would have thought the site also hosted a forum, with posts that felt so realistic they could almost pass for live-action performances.
The guides were a complete ss.
In addition to proper gaming strategies, there were even guides on weaving fabric, building houses, and solving language barriers.
If soone didn't know better, they might think they'd stumbled into an educational knowledge hub.
Thanks to the video, even experts from Platform X started appearing in the comnts section.
Each self-proclaid guru claid to be an expert in so niche field, from tightening screws to building rockets, sharing an overwhelming amount of techniques.
Whether these thods were feasible or not didn't matter—Sarah found it all extrely entertaining.
It felt like a collective group effort to muddle through and build a ga from scratch!
Before she knew it, she had been scrolling for over an hour and stumbled upon the announcent for the ga's new update.
"A God of Gods? What a weird na."
Sarah muttered the ga's na aloud, glanced at the clock hanging on the wall, and saw that it was already midnight.
"Well, since I can access the site on my phone, I'll treat it as a bedti mini-ga."
Even though a ga like this "nested doll" one likely wasn't top-notch, the content didn't matter much. After experiencing the ga herself, she was sure the forums would be flooded with even more entertaining posts!
With that thought, she decisively shut down her computer, rolled into bed, and launched the ga on her phone.
The progress bar vanished almost instantly, and she was taken straight to the main nu.
"Well, the loading speed is impressive. Maybe it uses a different server from the official site?" Sarah muttered.
She skipped the usual disclairs that appear in every ga, only to be greeted by a new pop-up ssage.
[Clear all levels to win a luxurious prize. Current winners: 0. Participants: 32.]
"Huh? A ga with a competitive leaderboard? I like that!"
Sarah's eyes lit up.
She was the type of player with a strong competitive streak, thriving on the thrill of victory and high rankings.
Leaderboards were her kryptonite!
"Now's the perfect ti, with so few players. Let see if I can snag the top spot."
Her fighting spirit ignited, she imdiately clicked "Start Ga."
The screen transitioned to a large continent piled with fifteen tiny characters of various sizes.
The characters were drawn in a refined, colorful, and vibrant art style, which was visually pleasing.
However, the chibi-style graphics gave off a childish vibe.
As soone who had played hundreds of gas, she quickly grasped the essence of this so-called God of Gods ga.
"Isn't this just one of those match-3 gas that were briefly popular years ago before disappearing? Piece of cake!"
The first tutorial level was a breeze, and she cleared it in under ten seconds.
But as she watched, the initially empty continent quickly beca stacked with overlapping layers of characters, filling the entire screen in re monts.
She squinted, trying to count the characters, but her eyes soon grew tired.
"What? The difficulty spiked this much already?" Sarah exclaid.
She wasn't daunted by such simple and mindless match-3 gas, but the absurdity of the scene amused her—it felt like being asked to solve Sudoku after barely learning how to count to ten.
[Final Level!]
[Countdown: 10 minutes. Begin!]
"What? There are only two levels in this ga?"
There was no ti to complain. The mont she saw the tir, Sarah got to work.
Since the Gods of Aeltia weren't mainstream on Earth, Sarah wasn't entirely familiar with them, and she found the chibi characters hard to differentiate.
Her first attempt ended in failure.
She analyzed her performance. "My reaction ti and focus weren't fast enough. Just missed it. Let's try again!"
On her second attempt, she managed to clear all but a small cluster of characters in the center.
It looked like fewer than twenty characters remained.
Eyes locked on the screen, fingers flying, she moved a character into the slot.
Suddenly, six of the seven slots emptied at once.
She couldn't help but smile and smugly said, "This is too easy. Honestly, it's not even… What the heck?!"
Thinking she was about to win, she casually placed four different characters into the slots.
But then, as the overlapping layers of characters disappeared, the screen revealed a new, hidden section beneath the main continent.
It wasn't victory—it was a mountain of new characters stacked in the middle!
And the variety of characters had suddenly increased, making it impossible to find matches to clear them.
She was stuck.
Reluctant to use any in-ga tools, she had no choice but to restart.
"Hopefully, everyone else's progress is just as slow. Give ten more minutes!"
Ten minutes later, Sarah was wide-eyed, still unable to find the critical characters needed to progress.
"Again!"
"The beginning was too slow. One more ti!"
"Bad opening. Restart!"
After an hour and a half, she had long forgotten about claiming first place.
At this point, just clearing the ga felt like a win.
As she found her rhythm and started to feel confident, the ga hit her with a new notification:
[Elimination progress: 50%. Keep it up, champ!]
"What?! Only 50%?!"
Sarah's heart skipped a beat.
With only 20% of the continent's area left occupied, she was being told half the characters were still there?
And now there were less than three minutes left on the tir!
"Is this ga really this hard?"
Determined not to back down, she glanced at the ga's paused screen and the three tool options below it.
Closing her eyes and gritting her teeth, she made a decision.
"Buy!"
Normally, she looked down on people who used tools in such simple gas, but this ti was different.
She had already spent so much ti on this ga—if she didn't clear it tonight, she wouldn't be able to sleep!
"The tool costs only 0.1 dollar? Sold!"
"Failed again… Try again!"
"Go!"
"Didn't do well that ti. Another round!"
"… Another two tools. This ti for sure!"
"What?! You can only buy one of each tool? Does this ga company even know how to make money?"
"I'm not giving up today!"
---
anwhile, most players lured into the ga had already given up and taken to the forums to vent their frustration.
"Who ca up with this ga? Is this difficulty even ant for humans?"
"As the title says, I've been playing for two hours, and my highest progress is only 51%!
I'm starting to think the developers intentionally made it impossible to clear just to keep us from winning the prize!
I've used all three tools, and I'm still stuck at 51%! Has anyone gotten further?"
"I'm dead set on beating this ga. See you all tomorrow—expect good news from !"
"This difficulty must an the grand prize is sothing amazing. For the hype alone, I'm giving it a shot!"
"I'm in too!"
"Don't, take my advice, this ga is addictive!"
"I'm at the point where just seeing chibi characters makes want to throw up."
" 1, my mind is currently filled with counting how many pearls the Goddess of Water has in her hair."
Although Viktor borrowed the idea from soone else, all the ga sprites were drawn by him.
The blue energy orb allowed him to upload his images, which required him to create them in his inner sanctum.
In simple terms: drawing with your mind.
It didn't require rigorous artistic skills—just pure imagination. The finished product could be created incredibly fast.
As for the design of the characters…
He spent a long ti deciding on this. All of them were based on the deities of Aeltia.
After all, since the ga was related to the gods, apart from drawing in new players, Viktor hoped it would familiarize them with the appearance of these deities.
Though it didn't seem useful now, having a backup plan never hurt.
Of course, in the forum, while so complained about the difficulty of the ga, others raised doubts.
"No way, no way, are there really people who find a match-3 ga hard?"
"Exactly! Aren't match-3 gas obsolete precisely because they're too easy?"
"Heh, why don't you try playing it yourself? The number of people who've cleared the ga is still zero! Armchair critics!"
"Still zero? Are you all just bad, or are you acting?"
"Haha, let be the one to break this deadlock!"
"…"
The more skepticism there was, the more people were drawn to try the ga.
Eventually, the comnt section even turned into a betting arena, with people wagering on who would clear the ga first!
Viktor shook his head as he read through the forum, sighing at how naive players could be.
Who said match-3 gas couldn't be difficult?
After obtaining the blue energy orb that allowed communication with Earth, he tried searching online for his parents from before his transmigration.
Unexpectedly, he discovered that this Earth was rely a parallel world to his original one.
The family address and the vague nas of his parents from his mories turned up completely unrelated results.
The bad news: he was still alone in this world.
The good news: there was a significant information gap between the two worlds.
This Earth was about 60 years ahead in its tiline compared to Viktor's original world.
Moreover, its technological advancents were much faster.
Before mini-program gas even erged, hardware companies had already solved the issue of insufficient phone and computer mory.
The loading ti for AAA gas was now almost the sa as for mini-program gas.
This ant that mini-program gas no longer had their advantage of being lightweight and easy to load, making it impossible for them to thrive.
This presented Viktor with a perfect opportunity to dive into an untapped market!
As long as his mini-ga beca popular, and he tied the beta testing slots for Chronicles of Aeltia to in-ga rewards, there would be no shortage of new players!
The ga was his first experint.
Despite players in his original world hating on it, it still exploded in popularity. It was the perfect fit for the player base Viktor wanted to attract.
Once they experienced the charm of Chronicles of Aeltia, letting go of God of Gods would be much easier—without any psychological burden.
"Let's go! Let's see if being an idea thief in a parallel world can lead to sothing!"
Viktor muttered as he stared at the increasing number of sign-ups on the ga's official site.
Of course, he wasn't insane enough to make God of Gods as purely luck-based and impossibly difficult as the original, where the clearance rate was 0.001%.
Instead, while retaining the high-difficulty charm of this type of ga, God of Gods was genuinely beatable!
---
As it turned out, players were all masochists.
They needed love.
They needed help.
They needed Jesus!
The initial group of curious onlookers, drawn in by promotional videos, tried out God of Gods. They ca in laughing and left cursing.
But then they went on to complain to their friends.
Their friends got curious, tried the ga, and started cursing too…
And that's how God of Gods went viral.
A free-to-play ga with no barriers to entry was naturally more easily spread than Chronicles of Aeltia.
Discussions about it popped up all over various platforms.
[Real-ti record: God of Gods highest progress at 75%!]
[I haven't slept all day, and there's still an item I haven't bought yet—unbelievable!]
[Why can't this ga let you pay to win? I hate the item usage limit!]
[Truly a casual ga—so far, I've only smashed two phone screens and one keyboard.]
[Pro tip: Don't forget to pay the registration fee for that virtual reality ga, or your maximum item purchases will cap at 98!]
[Don't ask how I know this.]
The influx of players grew.
Even official authorities checked it out.
Although Viktor hadn't managed to make his fictional ga company legitimate, he had successfully obtained in-app purchase authorization for the mini-ga—a process that didn't require strict licensing.
Everything was above board.
Except, well… the website did look a little strange. Ok, it was kind of ugly.
But after waiting through the three-minute loading animation and finding nothing wrong on the Chronicles of Aeltia official site, the officials assud it was just a content creator pulling a prank with a "pretend this is a real ga" concept.
And so, they left it alone…
---
Late the next night, at Sarah's ho:
[Congratulations on clearing the ga!]
Sarah stared at the fireworks animation on her phone screen, nearly crying tears of joy.
"Finally!"
She had spent her entire day—aside from als and bathroom breaks—on this ga.
The more ti she invested, the harder it was to quit.
At last, her perseverance paid off.
With massive dark circles under her eyes, she glanced at the clock.
11:59 PM.
"Hahaha, so playing from midnight to 11:59 PM wasn't just a joke!"
She let out a dry laugh, then couldn't help herself. She tossed her phone onto the bed with a slap.
"Ah! Stupid ga! If I ever touch it again!"
Her phone screen inadvertently triggered a touch input, causing the ga interface to change.
A pleasant female voice sounded:
[Congratulations on becoming the first player to clear the ga!]
[Your reward has been issued. Please check it!]
"Huh? I'm the first to clear it?"
Sarah's angry expression softened. She picked up her phone and checked the leaderboard.
It was true!
Her na was the only one there!
As ntioned before, she was a sucker for rankings and achievents.
Especially when it ca to dominating an entire leaderboard!
She imdiately took a screenshot, posted it to her social dia, and grinned like an idiot.
"Hehe, God of Gods is so much fun! I'm definitely playing it again!"
By the end, she was even considering creating a new account to dominate the entire leaderboard.
Fortunately, she rembered the system's notification about the clearance reward… just in ti.
What a weird woman.
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