Chapter 697 The effects of Rudra's manipulation  　　Rudra's interview became a worldwide sensation, not only was he an icon in terms of Omega worldwide, he was also one of the most popular celebrities in Japan where the locals almost worshipped him.

　　Naturally his words had far reaching consequences as from the very next day of his interview a massive line could be seen infront of every church of death , as once again players found a reason to join the cult by the numbers after the news about the first awakening was dropped.

　　The selfish players came in hopes of getting better quests and exp giving missions , while the players that were looking for support in this turmulous world came looking for a brotherhood.

　　Nonetheless, both parties were satisfied with the church .

　　Rudra not only scaled up the quests that gave out exp , but he also made it so that exp was the only thing that the church gave out , as he put a stop to all other forms of monetary rewards.

　　The wave of players wanting to join the church increased day after day , and the revised estimates showed Rudra thathe would reach the target of 100 million atleast 45 days before the previous estimates as the interview had streamlined the process by a huge margin.

　　The fact that Rudra was already at level 402 shocked the world as no other player in the light or dark faction was remotely close to Rudra. Unless ofcourse there were hidden powers who chose not to display their true level on the ranking boards.

　　But the situation became such that Rudra's influence over the world increased day by day as no matter which faction or institution a player belonged to , nobody could say the name Shakuni without putting some respect behind it.

　　With the church expanding he was labelled as the most influential player of all time as now he indirectly had over 70 million followers in his relegion.

　　This number was only going to increase in the coming future which meant that alongside ruling a kingdom of millions , and a super guild Rudra was also running a private relegion to make him a person who could sway the map of the continent should he please to do so.

　　Even Rudra did not realise how much power he had anymore as at his single action , literally a million players would jump into Activa Lava volcano should the need be.

　　While a lesser man would have been swayed by this sudden shift in power , Rudra was laser focused. He knew that against Lucifer it was still not enough and while things looked smooth for now it was a long journey to actually dethroning him before the first awakening.　　The funny thing was , the church of death started to actually become a cult where everyone had everyone's back as the seemingly weak bishops that he had appointment on a whim started to become devoted followers of the relegion who could drive people to hold up the doctrines of the church that Rudra had casually made for manipulation .

　　New and new incidences of church members standing up for each other came out every single day and overtime even the selfish members of the church started to form their own ideals where they would never harm another beleiver if not helping them actively.

　　The followers of Hades started to wear a scythe pendant on their necks to signify their relegion , and the church of death started to make a killing by selling those.

　　Costing only 1 silver to make , it was given to devotees for 25 silver for an insane profit margin and every single day , the church sold hundereds of thousands of these.

　　Rudra taking advantage of the cash flow started to bribe his way into opening new and new locations for the church in different countries as he would pay ridiculous amounts of money to the NPC kings to let him open one in their territory.

　　The result of this expansion was that NPC and players who were otherwise too far away from the Church , now got the access required to join this brotherhood as this further feulled the faster growth of followers.

　　Finally 9 months after the announcement was made and 3 months before Rudra 's planned timeline to accomplish the goal of 100 million followers. He hit the 90 million mark and was expected to gain the last 10 million in the next 20-22 days.

　　Accomplishing his goal a full 60-70 days before his initial estimates. However while the situation inside Omega progressed smoothly , the situation inside the real world broke down completely.

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　　( The real world )

　　Just as Rudra anticipated , the food shortage finally hit Japan and the army lost control of the streets once the government was unable to supply rations.

　　Global trade had already became close to 0 , as no agriculturally rich countries wanted to export their products anymore as they hoarded grains and supplies even if they did not need them at the moment for self preservation.

　　The moment the food stopped coming the streets turned violent and the already established gangs ran rampant.

　　The army had been given retreating orders and the higher class citizens that were better connected had been evacuated into special economic zones that had an abundance of food and security.　　Battle lines were seperated in Tokyo , and while the upside was within the special economic zone and hence still safe for the moment , every single day the government threatened to raid it's supplies to ease the burden on the population mass.

　　However Ethan Grey was also not someone that could be suppressed so easily , having dirt on every single goverment official as well as some key military officials he was able to fend off the threat of the government to share food.

　　The elites and Ethan Grey were also high value assets for Japan and keeping a look at the future they did not want to offend these big names , as the gamers of Omega were the best bet for the future of the country and the elites were at the forefront at the moment.

　　However, some people still found the idea of not sharing food to be extremely selfish and detested the uber rich of the upside who dared to be selfish at even such trying times.

　　In reality , Ethan Grey had submitted a proposal to the government 6 months ago about the possible food shortage crisis that may occur , and they had ample time to implement measures to get one crop cycle rotated, however the beurocracy was too slow to implement these measures and selected many unqualified people for the job which resulted in the produce not being sufficient.

　　While the commoners struggled day to day on the streets , life at upside was basically the same however all of that changed when one of Ethan Grey 's employees at the Grey international took matters into his own hands.

　　Apparently he had a girlfriend In the chaotic streets of Tokyo and he was so smitten in love with her that to help her he was willing to even open the gates of the upside for her group to storm in and raid some food.

　　He had planned everything out from how he was going to access the server room and disable drone security to how he was going to manually disable the door safe-fail after pretending to be the mentainance guy.

　　The upside was one of the safest havens in the world , but it was designed to deal with external threats and built on the assumption that everyone inside was glad and privilaged to be there.

　　This was a mistake that Ethan Grey had made in his security implementation and it was a mistake that was going to cost him dearly.

　　As the internal employee coordinated an attack with his girlfriend, a whopping total of 230,000 humans stormed the special economic zone and started to fight with the army from the entry point nearest to the upside.

　　Although many were killed in the open fire , the ability users started to gain the upper hand very quickly over the army , as it was for the first time that the world properly got to see a fight where the ability users started to outclass modern weapons.

　　Moves like the windslash and just some other advanced sword attacks could easily slice the metal off normal cars while the the even stronger attacks could slice through even tanks!

　　The time for the traditional weapons working as a deterrent was over from this day forward , as many cultivators who had their muscles and skins strengthened were barely scratched by the .45 callibre bullets , while some others could catch them with their bare hands.

　　At the end of a long and bloody fight , the only call that was relayed by the routed army to the command station was " All units lost ... I repeat all units lost. The upside is compromised! ".

　　/// Congratulations for hitting the GT target you all , it took us quite a long time to get it , but we finally have!

　　Bonus soon! ///