Chapter 27 (1/2)

Karta licked her lips and stared at the mastiff in front of her with expectation in her eyes. If she could pull this off, then she was going to be the greatest snack god to ever exist. The mastiff, however, wasn’t staring at Karta in return; he was staring at a small pile of spirit stones resting on the floor. “Alright,” the god of ice cream said. “You have yourself a deal.”

Karta chuckled to herself. It was obvious her plan was going to work. Which snack god wasn’t poor? The people who could be bribed the most easily were the poorest ones! But now, thanks to her exploitation of Vremya, she was no longer one of the bribees; she was the briber. “I’ll send you everything you need to get started.”

The god of ice cream sighed and sat back on his haunches. “Don’t get too happy now,” he said. “I’m not sure how beings in the lower dimension will react to ice cream potato chips. I still think it’d be better if you molded your potato chips into a cone to hold the ice cream in.”

“I’m the god of potato chips, not the god of wafers,” Karta said. After thinking about it, her forehead scrunched up. “Actually…, yeah. Let’s do both. We’ll have ice-cream-flavored chips, and we’ll have potato chip cones.”

“You’re declaring war on the god of wafers?” the mastiff asked, raising an eyebrow. “It must be nice having a primordial god backing you.”

Karta snickered in reply. “It’s an amazing feeling. I’m lucky an old grandpa was sleeping in the land I decided to rent,” she said. “What were the odds, really?” She shook her head. “But I have a feeling he’s not going to stick around forever, so I have to use this time to my advantage.”

“Is he leaving?”

Karta shook her head. “He’s just so pigheaded,” she said. “He doesn’t really know how to adapt, and if he keeps plodding along, someone stronger than him is going to push him over.”

The god of ice cream tilted his head. “Isn’t that when you step in and help him out?”

“I’ve already helped him so much!” Karta said. “Besides, I just look like a dog. I’m not actually like a dog, okay?”

“You can say that when your tail stops wagging,” the mastiff said and snorted. “Get out of here. I don’t want to listen to you brag anymore.”

The scenery around Karta shifted, and the room she was in faded away, leaving her standing outside a doghouse. “Even the god of ice cream gets jealous, huh?” Karta asked scratched behind her ear with her hindleg. She looked around before narrowing her eyes. She whipped out her phone and muttered to herself, “I suppose I should go see Bananov now.”

Karta swiped through her phone and pressed on her banking app. She stared at the long string of numbers before laughing to herself. Then, she went to Kosmos’ portal app and called a portal. Over the past few days, she had been going from snack god to snack god, proposing collaborations with them. With a little help from the social lube she called money, everyone let her in. With the help of money, she’d easily regain the divinity she lost when she had traveled forward in time. She could feel it working already. It was probably Sush Kal who implemented the collaboration first. Potato chips that tasted like dried squid, and dried squid that tasted like potato chips, who wouldn’t pick those snacks up upon seeing them?

After a bit, a portal appeared in front of Karta. She was quite surprised, seeing how the service had been down for a while. Did Kosmos finally give up on Vremya? Maybe she got in and fused with him. Either way, it seemed like Karta had missed out on some drama. Hopefully, Vremya was still alive and himself. It would really suck if he stopped caring about her. Although the grumpy old man called her stinky dog all the time, Karta was sure stinky was just his term of endearment. Even if the old man did die, Karta still had things to do. She walked through the portal and ended up in front of another doghouse. First, she sent a message to Vremya to make sure he was okay—for the sake of her future, not because she cared about him. Then, she went up to the doghouse and barked three times.

The door creaked open, and half of a dachshund’s face appeared. The wiener dog’s right eye roamed up and down, observing Karta. “The god of potato chips?”

“That’s me,” Karta said, puffing her chest out.