Becoming a God Starts with Acting
Chapter 152: The Preparation

Chapter 152: The Preparation

[Had put the pants back on]

[This ID deserves to die!]

In the end, no ID died. That ID took off their pants and still had to put them back on. Silas stood in the middle of the collapsing dungeon, unable to comprehend the chaos erupting in the comment section before the entire dungeon was swallowed by darkness.

The whole village had been reduced to just Silas. He stared into the space ahead, his icy eyes calm and emotionless.

Just moments earlier, when he was about to reach out to stop Silvanus, Silvanus’s entire body suddenly lit up. The blinding light made Silas squint instinctively, but he didn’t close his eyes. Instead, he widened them, staring at everything happening before him—wanting to etch Silvanus’s image into his mind. Some intuition told him this might be the last time he would see Silvanus.

It was a terrible feeling—like a dog being kicked out of its home. The analogy was so bizarre that even Silas couldn’t understand why he would think of such a thing.

"No!"

Silas almost roared out of instinct, lunging forward at full speed, arms stretched out as if to hold on to Silvanus. But everything happened too fast. All he managed to grab was empty air—Silvanus was already gone!

Silas lowered his eyes to his hands. Behind him, the ground kept collapsing, leaving only water and spreading darkness, as if trying to consume everything—and indeed, that was precisely what was happening.

Silas’s eyes flickered and changed at that moment—the red hue became even more transparent, and his pupils turned a brilliant blue.

"Ha..." Silas curled his lips into a smile, though no one could tell what he was mocking.

"We’ll meet again, □□□."

Like a lover’s whisper, his voice was quickly drowned out by the dungeon’s collapse. Darkness and icy water swallowed everything, leaving behind a cold, dead silence—stretching to the edge of the universe...

"Damn it!"

"Damn you, Envy!"

Inside Lucifer’s sanctuary, the echoing roar was enough to shake the entire temple. But the worshippers happened to be absent at that moment, unaware that their angel had just descended—and that he was livid.

Silvanus’s eyes snapped open. The dazzling star shining overhead made him squint, and tears welled up reflexively.

"Haa... haa..."

He gasped for air as if the pain still lingered on his body.

Of course, the pain wasn’t nearly enough to make Silvanus go mad in front of Silas—every bit of it had been part of his performance to make the act flawless.

Still, gouging out one’s own eyes was a chilling experience. Silvanus touched his eyelids, a shiver running down his spine as he recalled everything.

Anyway, he would never see Silas again in the future. Hopefully, his final performance left a deep impression on him... and the viewers.

Silvanus had a gut feeling that this wouldn’t be the last level-up dungeon.

He sat up, staring at the reflection of the starry sky beneath his feet, his brows knitting slightly.

He could feel the vast stream of energy flowing through his body—like this star. Once, it was just a slightly brighter speck in the galaxy, but now, it burned brilliantly, outshining the other stars, carving out a sky that belonged to it alone.

Even if he didn’t want to admit it, he was becoming a god...

[Bingo! Congratulations on accepting the truth!]

The system’s usual annoyingly cheerful voice suddenly rang out, startling Silvanus. It had been a while since he last heard from the acting system, and now he suddenly felt oddly distant from it—as if they’d been apart for ages.

[You’ve broken my heart, you know. Based on the flow of time in the level-up dungeon, you’ve only been gone for four days! Just four days, and already I feel like a stranger to you?!]

The system’s pitiful whining echoed in Silvanus’s head, making him feel a bit of a headache. He couldn’t help but wonder—why wasn’t his system like other people’s? At the very least, couldn’t it be more cold and aloof? Instead, his acting system was like... like a dog.

A husky, to be exact.

"Shut up. And what do you mean by ’accepting the truth’? You never told me from the start that everything would eventually become real! This was supposed to be—"

Suddenly, Silvanus couldn’t remember what the system had initially been told him. Realizing that made his brow furrow deeply, and his eyes turned colder than ever.

"Just what are you? Why did you bring me here?"

Silvanus’s icy tone silenced the system’s playful act.

It paused for a moment before finally speaking slowly:

[From the beginning, you had only one mission—to save this world.]

Only you can do it, my god, the system whispered.

Silvanus suddenly heard another voice from the system echoing in his mind. He frowned—it seemed the system wasn’t the only one who could read his thoughts.

He lowered his gaze, trying to suppress the thoughts swirling in his head.

"System, display control panel."

At his command, the panel instantly appeared before him.

As expected, the Faith stat had dropped to a lonely zero. It should have been an enormous number—yet in exchange, he’d gained immense power flowing within him, although it was still difficult to control.

Silvanus raised his hand. Instantly, sparkling dust-like particles appeared in his palm, glowing beautifully. They quickly gathered together and formed a rectangular sheet—of paper.

Silvanus admitted it: the first thing he created after gaining his power... was money.

He held the "bill" in his hand. Perhaps due to his lack of control, it was slightly oversized, and some details were a bit warped. It hovered in his hand awkwardly.

Silvanus clenched his fist—and the bill crumbled back into glittering dust.

Silvanus kept opening and closing his palm—money kept appearing and then dissolving into dust. Each time, the "bills" looked more and more like real currency.

"I feel like we could go down another path. Say, becoming a billionaire. It’d be easier than becoming a god."

[Yes, and when the apocalypse comes, we’ll be buried under a pile of cash.]

"Doesn’t sound that bad."

The system fell silent, seemingly at a loss for words.

Silvanus chuckled a little but didn’t tease it further. Instead, he focused on observing his control panel.

He noticed that the panel was becoming increasingly sparse—some categories were unclear.

"You’re seriously too lazy even to fake being a proper system now? You can’t even bother to keep the control panel tidy?" Silvanus asked coldly.

The system hesitated for a moment, then cleared its throat as if trying to compose itself and said in a serious tone:

[Absolutely not! As you can see, all system functions have now been integrated into you. You can feel them, and you can use them freely! This is your reward for passing the level-up dungeon! Of course, the functions you haven’t used before will remain visible!]

As it finished speaking, two functions—Director Authority and Director’s Space—immediately lit up in bold, glowing yellow that nearly blinded Silvanus.

At this point, the Director Authority had extended its time-freezing ability to twenty seconds, and the Director’s Space had expanded to more than fifteen square meters. That was a massive upgrade!

Silvanus smiled slightly to himself. Now he could invite more actors into Director’s Space—he was curious how that would work.

Perhaps... it was time to prepare for the appearance of a new god.

A character concept was already forming in Silvanus’s mind:

What if it was a dangerous god who didn’t realize how dangerous he was? One who unconsciously brought danger to everyone around him, despite never intending to...

[Why not create a perfect god instead?]

[Why do you always lean toward brokenness?!]

Silvanus sighed.

"You don’t understand what the audience wants. Only imperfection draws them in. And besides, if I live long enough to save the world, the one who should be perfect... should be me, don’t you think?"

[...]

[You’re seriously narcissistic.]

[Anyway, I hope you succeed.]

[And you will live to the end of the world.]

No matter what happens.

The system didn’t say the last part, but Silvanus could hear it. He understood it perfectly.

After leveling up, it felt like he was beginning to surpass the system itself.

As for the system... it was unclear whether it had realized that yet.

Or maybe it had—and couldn’t do anything about it, just like he once had no power against the system’s will.

Silvanus looked down at his hands, deep green eyes reflecting no evident emotion.

He figured—maybe there was no need to create a new god.

Just a slight change to the script would do.

After several days, the Association of Espers suddenly had the chance to welcome an unexpected visitor.

Silvanus walked into the large conference room of the Association. At the moment, only Drake was there, feet propped up on the table, with Frank sitting opposite him, talking nonstop.

Silvanus’s sudden appearance caused both of them to pause their conversation—but even so, he could still faintly catch bits of what they had been discussing... something about gene modification.

It seemed humanity was about to undergo another revolution.

But in times this chaotic?

"Hah, never thought I’d see Priest Silvanus come to us again after the dungeon was shut down," Drake scoffed.

The man still hadn’t learned how to respect others.

But he worshipped the Prophet—and that was good enough.

Silvanus thought so to himself, then spoke:

"If humanity doesn’t want to lose this war... then no matter what it takes, Drake must participate in the next dungeon."