When Kali woke up from his meditation, 2 days had passed, from modifying his planet all the way to condensing all his remaining SE. In those two days, aside from eating once in a while, he had worked nonstop.
His current status:
[Name: Kali
Age: 18
Talent: God's Playground (Mythical)
Level: 0
SE: 250,000 2SE
Techniques:
Blood Vein Circulation Technique (Uncommon) Level: 3]
Level 0. He had a Mythical talent, a whole planet, and a quarter of a million SE, and the system still looked at him and said "Level 0." It was the most humbled a God had ever been while still technically being a God.
Fine. Level 0 Gods could still create, surely. He had plans. Grand ones. So he went outside the City Wall, through the secret hole near his house that he always used to get out, and headed to his favorite spot: a beachfront surrounded on all sides by rocks, seldom visited due to how hidden it was. Instead of enjoying the peace and quiet like usual, he went straight to touching the sea and willing the water into his planet.
[Use Item Slot to take in 'Sea Water'? Error: No Item Slots available. Item Slots unlock with World Level. Current World Level: 0.]
Kali stared at the notification for a long, long moment.
"I'm a God," he said to the empty beach, "whose divine power is owning a rock."
There was apparently no such thing as a free lunch in godhood. If he wanted Item Slots, he had to raise his World Level. And raising his World Level meant running his Blood Vein Circulation Technique through the entire planet, strengthening the world the way the technique strengthened a body. World Level 1 cost ten times what his body's own level 1 had cost: 1,000 1SE, or 500 2SE.
With the heavy sigh of a man who could see the shape of the next several years of his life, Kali went home, sat down, and got to work.
After 10 hours, the world drank its fill.
[World Level Up! World Level: 1. Item Slot unlocked: 1.]
"Yes! FINALLY! Creation! Divine creation!"
He was finally Level 1! It had only cost him 500 2SE and most of a day of sitting, which, all things considered, was the cheapest anything had ever been in his life. He could now introduce an item into his planet, and the item had already been decided upon by his careful consideration: Water! Seeing a waterless planet really weirded him out, given the abundant rivers and seas around Pont City. It was also one of the few choices where he could experiment on just how much his Planet could accommodate.
Back at the hidden beach, he touched the sea and willed the water in.
[Use Item Slot 1 to take in 'Sea Water'? Notice: Once an Item Slot is used it is irreversible. Any additional items not too dissimilar with Items in the Item Slot can also be taken in.]
"Yes!"
['Sea Water' taken in. Mundane Item: no growth potential detected. It will remain unchanged as the world levels.]
"Even the water has no ambition. Great. My first subject is a slacker."
His plan was grand and simple: flood his whole planet with a mile-deep ocean. His planet was, after all, a modest little world, a ball of land about 100 kilometers across. Kali, who had never once in his life needed to think about cubic kilometers, estimated the flood would need somewhere in the range of fifty thousand of them, shrugged, and saw no problem with this.
From his hand, a vortex formed, and the water level at the beach visibly lowered.
While absorbing, Kali monitored his planet and noticed something odd. Unlike SE, which arrived multiplied by ten, the water he took in was exactly the amount that appeared on his planet. One bucket out meant one bucket in. This put quite a wrench in his plans.
The amount he had absorbed so far, already visible as a sad little puddle on the beach behind him, wasn't even 0.000001% of what he needed to flood his world. Well. Change of plans! For now, he would absorb only amounts too small for the citizens of Pont City to notice, and the rest of the water he would just have to brainstorm for. And if there was truly no other way, he could visit the beach from time to time whenever the water level recovered, though that could take years. Worse, the moment his world hit level 10, it would double in size, and his water debt would double with it. The faster he got stronger, the more ocean he owed. It was like a mortgage.
Kali stayed on the beach for about 10 hours. The water level lowered so much that some fish were exposed to air and died, which he collected with zero ceremony. Free dinner, he guessed. By the end, his water plan was about 0.0001% done, still a very long, long way to go, and the sun was finally setting, so he decided to head back to the city.
But instead of going straight home, he went to the other side of the slums, opposite from the direction of his house, and into a dilapidated, seemingly abandoned house with only an old man sitting on a wooden chair inside.
"You again, brat. What do you need?" said the old man.
"Old man, is there any kind of cheap item that can generate a whole lot of water?"
For context: the old man in that chair was a Tier 3 Awakened, and the source of nearly everything Kali knew about Awakeners. (Tiers of Awakeners: Tier 1 covers Levels 1-10, Tier 2 covers Levels 11-20, Tier 3 covers Levels 21-30, and so on.) He also hated the government and the nobles with a passion, which made him the source of all the gossip about how powerless the government really was. And, whether he admitted it or not, he was the source of Kali's strange habit of role-playing, too.
"Oh, I know some items with that purpose in mind. What can you pay me?"
"See this bag? Old man, I'll give you half of the fish I caught if you tell me!" Kali responded, while pointing at the sack almost his own size, which he was currently carrying as if he were selling some kind of illegal contraband.
"HAHAHAHHA! Brat, you still love playing with this old man. Fine, cook that fish up and I'll tell you what you want to know."
Of course, even without payment, the old man would have talked about anything anyway. He just loved to joke around and act like a mysterious information broker, and Kali, being the role-play enthusiast that he was, always went along with whatever role the old man felt like playing that day. The two were actually quite close, almost like a grandfather and grandson. When Kali was still a child, the old man was the one who occasionally gave him food, so no matter how eccentric he was, Kali considered him the only family he had. Now that he had his own house, Kali still visited from time to time and brought food they could share.
After serving the fish on the table, Kali finally got the answer he wanted: the Water Stone. It was a stone that, when placed somewhere water-abundant, would passively generate more water. It consumed no resource at all, and given enough time it would even multiply when the water around it grew too plentiful. It was perfect for his current situation. Better still, it was free; he just had to dive and collect them from the waters surrounding Pont City. In fact, he might have seen some at the beach he had drained dry, he just hadn't recognized them. He also realized, with the delight of a man solving a citywide mystery, that Water Stones were probably the reason Encantadia had never once lacked water.
"Thanks for the valuable information, Old Man Kane. Here's my tip for your good service," Kali said, once again assuming the role of a shady man acquiring secret intelligence, and handed the now-named Old Man Kane the rest of the fish.
"Pleasure doing business with you, sir. Head on out. I will await your next visit," the old man replied, ever the actor, slipping into his shady broker persona without breaking stride.
Without breaking character either, Kali headed out the door and straight home, where he once again sat down, because World Level 2 wasn't going to buy itself.
The butt torture continues... except now it was the planet's butt too.