Chapter 358: Unending Greed

Of course, if Luther had kept the discovery to himself, he could have easily used his exclusive ability to communicate with the "Gods" to amass unimaginable wealth and power. In a religious civilization like this, such an ability was practically a cheat code for reality!

But what’s the point of being a king if I can’t change this damned world? Luther thought to himself. He was already a highly respected member of the upper class; he didn’t need money or higher social status.

Perhaps this is the fundamental difference between heroes and ordinary men. When a mediocre man finds a cheat code, he uses it to show off and enrich himself. When a hero finds one, he tries to fix a broken world...

But being a hero is a dangerous path. More often than not, the hero ends up with a far worse fate than the coward.

After conducting dozens of repeated, covert experiments, the brilliant scientist confirmed his results: the electromagnetic wave method had a staggering ninety percent success rate.

He secretly uploaded a detailed guide on how to communicate with the "Gods" to the planetary internet... His goal was to make everyone realize that the Gods were nothing more than biological machines!

"The Language of the Divine" was the title of the video.

Luther knew he couldn’t just boldly declare that the Gods didn’t exist. That would be immediate suicide. Instead, he took a subtle approach, providing the tools and letting the general public discover the horrific truth for themselves.

He uploaded it to V-Net, the planet’s highest-traffic video hosting platform. A single, small video was unlikely to make a huge ripple immediately. There were thousands of videos uploaded every year claiming to document "communication with the divine," but they were almost exclusively sermons, church services, or delusional personal vlogs.

The platform’s content moderation had relaxed over the years. As society modernized, the Church slightly loosened its grip on media to appear more progressive. As long as a video wasn’t blatantly blasphemous, it was usually allowed to stay up. But nobody ever dared to joke about the Sea God.

However, Luther’s video was entirely different from the usual religious ramblings. It was a rigorous, step-by-step scientific tutorial. First, it instructed the viewer to construct a high-powered radio transmitter and broadcast a highly specific electromagnetic frequency into the ocean, labeled the "Summoning Wave."

Once the Sea God Umorlu was drawn to the shoreline, the user was instructed to transmit a second, distinct frequency to "communicate."

If done correctly, the video claimed, the entity would fulfill the user’s request and manifest a miracle.

Many natives clicked on the video out of curiosity, but the vast majority were highly dismissive.

"Is he crazy? This guy is completely insane. He thinks he can command the Sea God to do tricks by playing a few radio noises? Who does he think he is?"

"This is brain-dead clickbait. Why hasn’t V-Net taken this down yet? Blasphemers like this should be locked in a dungeon!"

Furthermore, ordinary citizens didn’t just have high-powered radio transmitters lying around. The keyboard warriors mocking the video had no way to test the claims, so they simply hurled a few insults in the comment section and closed the tab.

Two days later, Luther realized that his video was a complete failure. The comments were entirely filled with trolls, and nobody believed his life’s work.

He quickly realized the fatal flaw in his plan: the experiment was too expensive. It required specialized, high-powered wireless equipment that the average person simply couldn’t afford. What could he do? He racked his brain but found no immediate solution. All he could do was wait.

Just wait. Just be patient, he told himself. There are millions of fanatics in this world. Eventually, someone with enough money will try it. As long as a single spark catches... the illusion of the Gods will burn to the ground! The truth cannot be buried forever! A storm is coming, and it will wash these charlatan Gods off the face of our world!

As the view count slowly ticked up, Luther regained his optimism. Let the trolls bump the algorithm. Any publicity is good publicity.

Weeks passed, and finally, the first breakthrough occurred. An elderly, fanatically devout worshipper of the Sea God actually tried it.

The old man had spent his entire life praying without receiving a single miracle, and his fanatical devotion had slowly pushed him into clinical insanity. Only a zealot desperate enough for divine validation would spend a fortune on industrial wireless equipment just to test a random internet video.

The old man never doubted the authenticity of his God. When the experiment actually succeeded, he dropped to the sand and wept uncontrollably. He genuinely believed that his lifelong piety had finally moved the heavens, earning him a true miracle.

Because he only offered seafood during his test, the entity simply replicated the seafood and gave it back. To the old man, this was the ultimate divine blessing. He asked for nothing more.

But this was exactly the spark Luther had been waiting for. The old man couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He blabbed about his "miracle" to his entire local congregation.

Because Luther’s method actually worked, the secret spread like wildfire among the wealthy zealots!

Tracking the commercial data on the planet’s largest e-commerce platform, Luther watched the sales of high-powered radio transmitters spike. At first, the growth was slow and sporadic. Then it became linear. Then quadratic. Finally... it went entirely exponential!

"Fantastic! It’s happening!" Luther cheered in his hidden lab. "Not everyone is a blind fanatic! Eventually, someone is going to realize it’s just biology!" He couldn’t help but dream of a world free from the Church’s suffocating grip. Perhaps, without the anchor of religion, their civilization could finally reach for the stars.

But reality is never that simple. The situation quickly spiraled completely out of Luther’s control.

In a massive civilization, there are all types of people: good, bad, selfless, and incredibly greedy. Because the method was flawless, thousands of people suddenly received "miracles" and believed themselves to be the newly anointed "Sons of the Sea God."

But sharp-minded individuals quickly noticed a bizarre pattern. The "God" was incredibly generous, yes... but under the influence of the radio waves, it acted less like a deity and more like a biological mirror.

Whatever object you threw into the sandpit, the entity would perfectly replicate and throw back!

This realization immediately triggered the darkest, greediest impulses of the less pious citizens. Some lazy opportunists instinctively wondered, "What if I throw a handful of coins into the pit?"

Of course, it worked. The coins were just stamped metal. Replicating them was child’s play for the massive algae colony.

These opportunists quickly amassed massive piles of counterfeit coins. They had no idea where the matter came from, but they didn’t care. To them, it was free money from heaven.

But coins were small change. What about... solid gold?

"Oh great Sea God, grant us gold!" a greedy native prayed on the beach.

Just like on Earth, gold was a highly rare, incredibly valuable precious metal on Planet Dige.

The miracle happened flawlessly. A native tossed a single gold bar into the wet sand, and minutes later, the Sea God spat out an identical gold bar!

The natives lost their minds. They had never witnessed anything like this. They began frantically replicating gold bars around the clock. Did they care if it was a true God or just a giant biological machine? Absolutely not. Not when they were drowning in free gold.

"The Gods are so generous! Praise the Sea God!"

The situation officially escalated into total chaos. Faced with infinite, zero-effort wealth, no one could resist the temptation. The electromagnetic communication method spread from isolated coastal towns to entire provinces, and then globally.

Within a single month, industrial wireless transmitters were sold out worldwide. Gold became so hyper-abundant that its market value completely crashed. Even silver flooded the markets, with people desperately selling it at rock-bottom prices just to get rid of it.

The global economy was instantly thrown into hyperinflation. Since gold was now worthless, what held value? Real estate? Well, the algae couldn’t replicate a house...

But wait... the entity could replicate paper currency!

The natives started throwing stacks of cash into the ocean. The replicated bills came out soaking wet, but they were atomically perfect clones. The serial numbers were identical. The anti-counterfeit watermarks were flawless. No bank scanner on the planet could tell the difference. All you had to do was dry the cash in the sun, and it was perfectly spendable!

It was absolute economic apocalypse. Millions of perfect counterfeit bills flooded the global markets. Even the central banks were completely paralyzed.

Governments around the world launched massive, panicked investigations. They quickly traced the origin of the chaos back to Luther’s video, but they couldn’t find the uploader; Luther’s elite hacker skills kept his identity perfectly hidden.

Highly skeptical, government scientists secretly tested the video’s instructions on a secure military beach. To their absolute horror, it worked.

The smartest minds in the government quickly deduced the horrifying truth. Several high-ranking officials nearly suffered mental breakdowns on the spot. The omnipotent God they had worshipped for their entire lives... was just a massive colony of ocean algae.

The Holy Church was thrown into a violent, apocalyptic fury. They officially declared that the entity was not their true God, but a demonic "False God," and issued a global edict banning all communication with it. The Church immediately conscripted armies of biologists, demanding they find a way to exterminate the "demonic algae."

Simultaneously, governments worldwide deployed their militaries to blockade every inch of coastline to stop the rampant counterfeiting.

However, shutting down the coasts completely paralyzed global shipping, the fishing industry, and international trade. The blockades were economically unsustainable, which immediately triggered massive, violent riots.

Many natives, completely ignorant of the scientific truth, thought, Isn’t the Sea God omnipotent? Why is the Church calling it a demon? Maybe God just wants us to be rich!

Why shouldn’t they be allowed to have infinite wealth?

The entity’s ability to perfectly replicate physical matter at the atomic level was simply too powerful. The immense allure of infinite resources was entirely irresistible—not just to the citizens, but to the nations themselves.

On this planet, peace was a fragile illusion; total war was the historical norm.

Therefore, the ultimate instigators of the final, apocalyptic chaos were not the greedy citizens...

It was the governments!