The 23rd century of government of the United Earth, Moon and Mars was not like its predecessors in a variety of ways. Humans as a whole were no longer divided in micronations, each with their own ideologies such as capitalism or communism.

It was a hybrid government that at least tried to take in all the good parts and leave out the bad parts of each of the past governing systems. Even monarchy and dictatorship.

For example, the current government has ensured that no citizen ever had to worry about meeting their basic needs. Meaning food, housing, education, internet, religion, health, universal basic income and such were guaranteed to them from birth. This was an aspect of socialism everyone in Arthur’s generation could enjoy.

The government, or UEG for short, also tried to create and stabilize a competitive environment in the free market. This could be credited to the capitalist system of the past.

This meant that while basic needs were all met, if someone wanted more, they had to work for it.

This could also be said to be one of the current prevailing ideologies of the masses, which many people abided by.

Skilled people as a whole found it quite easy to make a luxurious living in this era. Even the minimum wage for the unskilled was enough to feed a family of four whilst paying for all the miscellaneous expenses. After a few decades, they might even have a large saving.

This was different from what was essentially labeled the American Dream in the 20th century. No one went from rags to riches. There were no rags.

As mentioned earlier, Universal Basic Income was ensured for all. No one lost everything when trying to get those riches.

All of this didn’t mean that there weren’t any rich people though.

No, people as a whole were very rich now. But the truly rich got exponentially richer. It wasn’t, however, riches earned by exploiting the people, embezzlement or other unhanded means.

The UEG was nothing like the governments of the past, where corruption, lobbying, and bad politicking were rampant in even the most transparent of systems. Policies those days were more for the politician’s personal gain rather than for the people.

Currently, strict laws made sure there were no dubious tax breaks for corporations. Every transaction was matched and double checked to detect kickbacks. Every action of a policymaker was judged by several 3rd and 4th parties, and they were literally put under the microscope if even one decision of theirs raised suspicions of corruption.

How was all this possible you ask? Did god finally make decide to make the perfect world with her magic?

No, the loli didn’t care for that.

The correct answer is, science.

Science, Digital Wallets, and Quantum Super Computer Artificial Intelligences (QScAI).

A government largely run by very neutral QScAIs meant no greed for lobbyists to exploit.

And while the central government was still made out of equal parts QScAIs and human policymakers, two centuries since the war of unification, there were no lobbyists anymore. Not in the conventional sense.

Companies that sold products such as ‘Public Relations’ were a thing of the past.

Everyone who was rich now a days earned those riches through completely legal means. Of course, not all of them had to work hard for it, sacrificing blood and tears. For example, there were a lot of 3rd gens who inherited a truckload of cash just by being born. For the most part though, they were clean.

These were the minority however. Starting a business was a lot more streamlined now. The roadblocks like copyrights, legal contracts, and so on so forth were also much more manageable than the past. Working your guts of and sacrificing blood and tears really could get you as rich as those entitled 3rd gens and then some.

Of course, money was still money. It had both good and bad effects.

Taking decades to earn a few millions through smart business or pure grind was one thing, while getting filthy rich overnight was another.

The later case would more often than not give people a complete personality re-work. Or maybe it would bring out the real personality of a person, which was repressed through the years because of economic constraints.

Whatever the case, the change in personality would seldom be for the better.

It was like a bronze player on a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (Moba) game suddenly becoming a Challenger overnight, and he did not become toxic about it.

Arthur, for example, was always a bronze III player in real life. Now however,

“Y-You’ve changed Arthur! You weren’t like this before!” Zoe cried, her magic unleased to seal that ‘Checkout’ button on the holoscreen of Arthur’s computer.

As a responsible eldritch horror, couldn’t stand seeing her benefactor’s son going astray. So she was prepared to met out some disciplinary actions, even if she had to be forceful about it!

“It’s a Stewie Griffin diamond necklace Zoe! A STEWIE GRIFFIN DIAMOND NECKLACE” Arthur yelled out defiantly, the horde of tentacles obstructing his limbs did nothing to obstruct his filthy desires.

“No! You can’t. You’re a responsible adult now, you can’t spend that much money recklessly.”

“It’s my money, my responsibility, you old hag!”

Zoe gasped.

“You did not just say that young man.” A cold glint shone in her turquoise eyes. The tentacles coiling around Arthur started to show an unexpected change. An unexpected feathery change.

“W-Wait, no. T-This is domestic abuse. Wait, parley! I wish tHAAHHAHAHASTOPHITHAGAH-”

***

That evening,

“… There, I made it a shared account between the both of us. Happy now?” Arthur grumbled.

The newly turned Sentinel had to unfortunately remove the Stewie Griffin diamond necklace from the shopping cart. He tried to sneak it back in a few times, but now his hand was too swollen to try the same trick again.

Of course, as a proper rebel, he decided to smuggle in a mini 2 thousand credit team rocket themed princess bed for the cat. For some reason Zoe had no complaints to that.

“That’s a good boy.” Zoe replied nonchalantly from the kitchen. She was making some instant pop-corn and soda.

The buttery fragrance drifting into the living room was making Arthur hungry.

He was still feeling grumpy, but he had to accept the reality of the situation. The eldritch maiden was too strong for him to defy. Her magic was standing between him and his dream life, and he could do nothing about it.

He couldn’t even splurge and live the life of a lazy bum, so what was the point of being filthy rich?

Was he supposed to just look at the numbers in his bank balance? No! Those digits were meant to be spent.

Wait, you’re saying as someone with the profound mission of finding his missing parents, he should learn to be disciplined, courageous, humble, virtuous, and honest?

Well… you’re right. But that did not mean Arthur had to always act all stuck up and serious like a grumpy grandpa! He would burn himself off.

However, he could not convince Zoe that.

Granted, the way he went about it was probably wrong. That did not change the fact that she was limiting his freedom with threats of violence.

The root cause of the problem was simple. Arthur was too weak. So, he had to become stronger.

The first thing on his list right now was watching that tutorial chip Vileplume gave him. The comet-like space body cutting through solar system washed away all doubts he had on whether she was actually an omnipotent all-powerful goddess or not.

Even if she wasn’t completely omnipotent, she should be way stronger than Zoe.

Hopefully, the tutorial would shed some light on what being a demigod actually meant in the Xylnareon divinity.

Of course, him watching meant Zoe watching, which was unavoidable. If she also received a power up, then they’d be back to square one.

It could also be that whatever secret sauce the tutorial was going to reveal would only affect him and no one else.

In that case, good! He could proceed to step to and return all the threats of violence he received.

There was also the cat. Snowy was currently curled up on the couch hugging a miniature Roomba. Her ears perked up as she noticed Arthur looking at her.

The feline returned his stare for a few seconds, then jumped off the couch.

“C’mere.”

“Meow~”

“Who’s a good girl! You are.”

Arthur scritches the cat under the chin. Snowy looked annoyed at first, then her eyes turned into to crescents in bliss.

Arthur stopped scratching for a second, and the cat gave him a long stare as if to say, “Servant! I demand you to continue!”

The sentinel laughed, cuddling up to the fluffy feline.

Snowy was part of plan B. Arthur was planning to have her watch the tutorial with him too. There was a chance that she could assist him when he moved onto stage 3, which was infinitely more complicated then stage 2.

Of course, like every good story, there was a real chance of betrayal.

Heck, most of Snowy’s meals were in fact provided by Zoe. So the chance wasn’t small either.

Luckily, Arthur was able to bribe the cat with some extra cans fatty tuna, and a promise to buy a hundred cans of it every month. He didn’t know if the cat actually understood, but he was optimistic. Two versus one, there was a tiny chance he could seize victory, definitely.

As Arthur was brooding his evil plan under the warm kotatsu with the purring cat, Zoe came in from the kitchen. She was holding a large bowl of popcorn for the two of them, and a small bowl of cat food for Snowy.

As she was placing the bowls on the table, the eldritch maiden noticed a suspicious glint in Arthur’s eyes.

Before she could ask what was up though, Arthur inserted the chip into the TV slot.

“You ready?”

“…Yes.”

“Ok, here goes nothing!” with that, Arthur pressed the play button on the remote controller. His other hand was already reaching for the delicious butterscotch popcorn.

Midway though, he forgot all about the popcorn.

His eyes were glued to the screen of the crystal… TV?

‘No, if it was a television, then why am I inside it?’

The sentinel was confused, but soon, even that confusion was gone. A warm, soothing current came from deep inside his body.

‘Awww, this feels…good.’

He fidgeted left, then turned right. He wanted to see if Zoe ‘Who’s Zoe?’ was there with him too.

However, he didn’t see anyone. To his left was just some swirling turquois light trapped in a pool of floating water. On his lap ‘Lap?’ was a group of feline kittens nibbling away at his fingers.

‘Ah, right. I need to take Snowy… Snowies to the vet…’

Arthur wanted to think more on that, but a loud but unusually calming sound came from the distance.

He gazed into the void, into the direction of the noise.

For the first few seconds, there was nothing.

Then, there was everything.

He saw a giant bigger than a galaxy die and his body turn into heaven and earth.

He saw a figure made out of light snap his finger, and then there was more light.

He saw planet sized stone books come into existence as the chaos around them turned into the very universe.

He saw the beginning of Chaos, the yawning nothingness, and out of the void came Gaia.

He saw an infinite singularity explode into reality, matter, time, space, energy, and everything else in between.

He saw the lands of Earth emerge out of an endless sea, staring with a triangular peak.

‘Ah, Benben. The pyramid of ancients with its cute little name.’ thought the sentinel absentmindedly. But the kaleidoscope of creation was not over.

“Caaaaaaaaaaw!”

A distant howling of a…bird?

The scenes continued.

He saw thousands of insects dying under the radiance of a strawberry sun, each turning into a galaxy.

He saw a man doing his best to save his lover, but his lover was the world.

He saw… an endless stream of greenish blue water cutting straight through thousands of dimensions, as life began to appear on the once barren worlds.

He saw… … a basketball field sized egg made of steel and potato starch hatch open and become an elegant shrimp newscaster, forecasting sharks in tornadoes causing the Armageddon.

He saw a lot of things.

Hundreds of septillions of things.

“Arthur! Arthur! Snap out of it.” Zoe was violently shaking him as Arthur woke up from his stupor.

“Huh? Wait, who’re you? That’s not right…”

He looked to his left, then to his right.

“Z…oe?”

She was looking at him with a concerned expression. But Arthur saw more than that in her eyes. She was… afraid? There was an incomprehensible terror colouring the eldritch maiden’s pale face.

“Mraow.”

Arthur felt a sudden jolt on his lap, then a massive weight. As if the world itself was trying to press down on him.

He looked down.

It was Snowy.

Her eyes were wide open, staring at the crystal TV. A slow glowing mist was excluding out of her body, turning into various shapes of her feline ancestry. Then the mist started to return back to her body, creating a cycle.

Arthur then looked up at the TV. It was showing a certificate and had Arthur, Zoe, and Snowy’s name on it.

Like the ones you get after completing a programming course online.

He turned his head in confusion. Then his face slowly broke into a large smile.

“That…” Arthur laughed, “was awesome!”

Zoe sighed a relief. A high Arthur was better than a braindead one.

“I know things about things that nobody should ever know.” Arthur said in wonder. The tutorial was a real tutorial. It was a tutorial for gods.

Zoe nodded. She too had gone through all of… that. The poor eldritch was feeling cold for the first time in… forever. She hugged the boy’s arm tight, trying to remember and forget the things she saw at the same time.

Never before had she felt so…vulnerable.

For eons, she was one of the strongest beings on this rock, and every other rock in this solar system. While not the absolute strongest, she was definitely the toughest.

Now, suddenly, her head was thrust full of a million things in the universe that could theoretically end her in a heartbeat. No women, let alone eldritch horror, wanted to ever feel that inferior.

She shook her head, as if to throw those ridiculous thoughts away.

“Meow!”

Snowy called out again, this time her meow was tinted with something else. Something, divine.

Arthur didn’t notice, still trying to gather his bearing.

Zoe did. She looked at the cat worriedly. Snowy was going through what the old fogies in the eastern mountains called immortal ascension. Apparently, she learnt secrets of catkind that could change the very fabrics of reality. Like why they don’t have opposable thumbs. Zoe shuddered at the thought.

Arthur on the other hand, had finally manage to come to. He noticed his hand was still grasping for popcorn in the now empty popcorn bowl. He stopped.

He had calmed down enough. He now knew what a demigod was. Or at least, what he was.

He got the goddess’s direct blessing. That made him strong, almost undying, and very knowledgeable.

He wasn’t strong like superman, or a super Saiyan. It was a relative kind of strength. I depended on which path to power he wanted to follow. That meant Zoe still had the upper hand, unfortunately.

He also wasn’t unperishable. Things could still kill him. However, and this part he felt both happy and worried about, he had unlimited lifespan now. There was also the fact that death to him was like death to anyone in Dragon Ball Z. One of the basic rights of every Sentinel in Xylnareon was an infinite amount of revivals.

His knowledge, conversely, wasn’t like he instantly knew everything from the get go. It was more like an intuitive knowledge of the essence of creation and destruction itself. Not the subject matter, but the concepts themselves.

Arthur instinctively knew, that this knowledge was directly supplemented by his intuition. Gut feelings were something he had to take very seriously from now out.

As a side not, every sentinel also got direct access to the Xylnareon Databases, which might as well be considered to home to all wisdom, knowledge, and information in this and the surrounding universes.

Zoe and the cat apparently gained something too from the tutorial. Most of the things he did and some things he did not.

There was one thing though, that only he gained.

Emblematic Governance of the Universe!

It was the essence of what made him a demi-god.

Like in myths and creationism, his words now had meaning. Everything he said would now be directly backed by the world itself, and consequences now were very real.

That was why Vileplume said it was hard to put Demigods into traditional power systems. Look at Arthur now, he was still super weak. However, he was still a demigod!

The cat might be ascending to a super cat, and Zoe might also have some cheat-like gains to her already cheat-like existence, but they had not the governance.

They would need a level of security clearance to access it. The firewall to the fabrics of reality was too strong and rejected any trespassers. They did give the trespassers a virtual divine cookie for making it that far though, but that was it.

Arthur even had to make a username and password, using the employee ID he got after signing the contract with the goddess.

As he was in his musings, the phone on the table suddenly rang. Arthur cast a glance at Zoe, and answered it. The caller was Vileplume.

“Yaho! Didja watch the tutes?” The loli goddess said from the other side. Loud enough for Zoe to hear, Arthur guessed from the frown on her face.

She didn’t like words like ‘tutes’.

“Yeah... I did. I think, I might ready for the job now.” Arthur replied.

“Cool! Come by heaven tomorrow. But definitely not during 4 to 6 pm your time. You hear me? I got important adult stuff to do.

Your standard employee package is ready. Bring the big booby jellyfish with you too. Okay, that was all from me. Ciao!”

“Jellyfish?”

Before he could press the loli for answers, the fuming Zoe snatched the phone. But all she got was a series of beeps.

“That…brat!”

Arthur shook his head in mild apprehension. Vileplume, apparently, was really addicted to reality TV.

And for whatever reason, had some beef with Zoe.

“Calm down, she’s just a kid.” Arthur said.

Zoe took a deep breath but her anger still bubbling, “No! There’s a big problem with Xylnareon’s education policy for children. We need to fix it, and whip that brat’s potty mouth into shape.”

“… … I think that’s above my paygrade.” Arthur said. “Besides, children are naughty sometimes.”

BOOOOOM!

Suddenly, there was a huge explosion sound that came from above. Arthur could feel the whole place quaking. The cat was interrupted out of her immortal meditation. She yowled loudly and ran straight into the basement.

Arthur rushed out of the house and looked up. Zoe soon followed after.

There was a red flicker and a fire going on top of the dome. Debris were spilling outwards from the zone of the explosion.

It looked like it was hit by a meteorite or something. The alarms started blazing, and there was an announcement for all the people in Arthur’s neighborhood to stay indoors.

Of course, everyone ignored that.

Arthur could also see some drones already working to fix the damaged layers of the dome. Meteorite strikes happened almost every day, but usually they were smaller meteorites. The dome was definitely strong enough to shrug off hundreds of those daily. The bigger ones got lasered away before they could even come into range. For one to actually cause damage and melt parts of the dome, this was definitely a first in recent decades.

Arthur’s phone rang again. It was Vileplume.

“… Hello?” The loli goddess asked, “Did you just curse me?”

“What? No I did not.” Arthur vehemently denied.

“No! You definitely did! The anti-blasphemy measures were activated!” The loli giggled for some reason. Not mad at all why Arthur might’ve cursed her.

“The wha-, wait, the meteorite?”

“Yes! Usually it’s lightning strikes but since you’re on the moon, the system had to improvise. Let me warn you, even though I don’t mind people calling me the Z-word or the T-word, the world itself is not so forgiving. The guys at the reality coder department made really strict rules against that. They are so inflexible, always snapping in half when I high-five them.” She explained.

Arthur grimaced. He almost got turned into space debris for calling this little twat naughty, “Wait, then why didn’t it do anything when” he turned to look at Zoe who had a complicated expression, “erm, Zoe called you the b-word.”

“Well that’s because you’re the one blaspheming. You know what every religion hates more than non-believers? Blasphemers and Heretics!” The loli goddess said. Then she suddenly broke out laughing, “In any case dude, be more careful next time.”

Arthur sighed.

Religion was no less complicated when it was actually real.

He wanted to hang up but before he could, Zoe snatched his phone with a ‘Hah! So it’s fine for me to educate her then!’ and yelled into it, “Listen here young lady, I need to have a word with you about your horrible humor! Let me sp-”

It was not Arthur’s problem any more. He could hear flabbergasted squeaks from the other side of the phone because of Zoe’s onslaught, but he needed to check up on the cat.

He'd learned one too many lessons today.