The Discarded, Half-Eaten Apple Core New Life

We are based out of the back of Bourke, but she'll be Apples, mate.

Before I address the events following our arrival in Canberra, let me talk a bit about the city inside me. Or my Inner World. Demiplane geometry was ridiculously hard because it involved at least nine dimensions. I needed Vantablack the Pan-Dimensional traveler and multiverse-renowned gourmet to help me explain it, but they were unavailable. Maybe in the comment section below. Back to our programming.

I could've made Speranza a post-scarcity society. Really, with my Dungeon Mana budget, I could have every single one of them living in luxury. But I didn't want to spoil my humans like that. No. They would grow bored and do stupid shit, probably get themselves killed. While this may sound condescending and probably was, it was the truth. Just see how many trust fund babies wrecked their way through life.

People in Speranza had to work their jobs. The 40 credits daily allotment (60 if they worshiped me) was only enough to cover their bare-bones needs. Basic rations and water, basically. If they wanted more credits, they needed to work. Actually, I created a policy that women earned 10 more credits for every child they gave birth to. These credits went to the mother, not the father. That meant each mother had their daily stipend increased from forty (or sixty, depending on allegiance) to one hundred and ten (or 130, yadda yadda). Imagine the windfall of having twins or triplets. The bump in credits was because all children earned their mothers sixty credits because they were automatically considered believers until they Awakened to the System and chose whether to worship me or not.

We still didn't have any child birthed in Speranza reach maturity but the 10 extra credits the mother earned for giving birth wouldn't go away. That removed one of the greatest blockades women had regarding family choices. Financial stability. The flip side of the coin was that parental alienation, the act of abandoning or mistreating a child or denying access to the child's parents was a crime. In Speranza, every parent had a duty to raise and care for their children. Love was optional and I wouldn't enforce feelings but some behavior was not acceptable. Also, fathers paying for child support was not a thing. The mother already earned a stipend from me to care for the child.

Also, nobody paid taxes. All public utilities were supplied by me. Water, electricity, sanitation. Basic housing and a basic tablet PC, so far, were also free. I was intending to set an expansion and put it for sale later on, to keep the high-achievers happy. But the basic lifestyle in Speranza was way better than what lower-class people had before Armageddon.

Crime rates in Speranza were also ridiculously low. Inside my Inner World, I was omniscient. Privacy wards needed to conform to a rule where it was enough to block a cursory glance for me but if I pressed hard enough, I could pierce it and cast my senses inside. People complained but I then explained to Marshall that if they didn't like that rule, they were free to be expelled from my inner world, with their houses and privacy wards intact. Wherever I was at the moment and for the past years, that meant at least five thousand feet above the ground.

Punishment was swift. Marshall had some lawyers write a code of laws, I vetted it, and then the CCTV cameras on every street and public place along with my omniscience made sure people would be caught and prosecuted swiftly. The odds of getting arrested were so high people quickly forgot the idea of breaking the law. Also, convicted criminals lost their stipend for twice the length of their sentences.

Speranza was not a post-scarcity city and was closer to a dystopia than a utopia. But people were happy and free to pursue their goals in life. They were also free to leave but the living conditions on Earth were awful, to say the least.

*

*

I brought out the rangers in their Grilled Tex-Mex power armor to be our bodyguards during peace negotiations. The people who accepted my offer to move to Speranza were the lower caste of this community, those with production, crafting, support, and other lower-rarity jobs who were oppressed by the higher-leveled people. Levels had this effect on most individuals. They suddenly regarded themselves as better, more worthy than their peers.

But there was always a bigger fish. Even for me, I couldn't consider myself above all. I had a bigger jelly... fish (actually more than a dozen) to keep me humble.

We had no vacancies on the Guardians. All 1,000 slots were filled, including those for Rta and the Rangers. Rta was now level 183, surpassing me. Also, the Trait "Valkyrie Profile" was gone now that I picked all her sub-Classes. Rta was her own person... demigoddess.

I sat on my giant Mecha and started reinforcing the city walls. So far, I wouldn't make them Dungeon Walls but they would be the best steel-reinforced stone I could make. I also didn't put weapons on the walls. But I removed the demolished buildings and fertilized the garden plots they had. I also grew a large fruit tree orchard and went out on Blackjack Six to grow the trees to adulthood, saving them twenty years of wait time.

I dug a well and found that the water table underground had no drinkable water. I gifted them a water treatment station that would also recycle their sewage. All in all, the ones remaining in Canberra could enjoy a better life overall.

Because they would soon resent us.

Marshall finished the treaty and they agreed to be bound by the System. Among their demands, they forbade any of my machines anywhere 200 miles or closer to Canberra. They allowed us to settle north of Adelaide.

Thus, we did as agreed and I moved all my machines out. Raindrops blasted its hip-mounted jump jets and flew away, while the shuttle took off vertically after all of our humans boarded the vessel. The sun shield also started to move, using its propellers to go west.

That drew some protests from the people that grew used to the shade and the fake sky but I had to abide by the treaty. I used all my willpower to keep from showing a picture of a hand flipping the bird at them.

*

*

500 miles northwest of Canberra, we found the remains of a settlement once called Broken Hill. It was a mining town on top of a hill, where we would have the higher ground advantage against attackers. Here, at the site of our final stand, I spared no expenses.

I marked the spot for the re-emergence of the World Tree sapling (it had some green shoot coming out of the dirt, so I guess it counts?) and then exactly 20.25 miles away I set a wall that went three hundred feet down into the ground and seven hundred feet up. It was a mile thick and filled with DM-infused trees and autocannons, to stop any Beelzevoid-filled Wobby Dick that could come cause trouble. The top of the walls had artillery batteries, howitzers, railguns, and lasers. As many as I could fit cram in there. That wall ate 24.4 cubic miles of my Dungeon space allotment.

The ground from the wall to the four-mile exclusive zone for the tree was covered in indirect-fire long-range weapons and missile launchers. Except for one small section of Broken Hill that I renovated for the Guardians. I placed the sun cover hovering above the town and called the Guardians.

All 1,000 of them answered the call, including Marshall, the Rangers, and Rta. Some of them brought their families and we got everyone settled in Broken Hill.

Finally, when everything was ready, I carved a 250-foot deep by eight miles-wide circular hole and brought the seed back to planet Earth, dismissing the Demiplane in an orderly fashion.

> Your knowledge and training improved your Demiplane Control Skill to rank VIII.

Dimensional boundaries (not portals) are (10*Rank)% stronger.

You can modify the passage of time by up to (5*Rank)%

The pesky warning about failing the quest by not returning the seed to Earth vanished. A pulse of Mana from the seed went out, and then it started to suck in massive torrents of Mana from all over Australia. I knew that would also alert the Infernali of our location. Now, all we could do was defend our position for... only 194 more years.

*

*

After that setup, things fell into a routine. The Guardians lived their lives, trained, and went to Canberra to get into a bar brawl (spoiler alert, they were too over-leveled and soon were banished because the bar brawls weren't fun. It was their fault.

To give them something to do, I went into the design mode of my Engineering Skill. All-terrain wheels, engine, battery, armored frame, .50 Cal autocannon, leather seats. A bicycle charger in the trunk along with a mini-fridge stocked with food. They were set.

I named my creation "Croak Dyne! Doom Deed".

> For creating level 130 (Very Rare) Armored Army Buggy "Crocodile Dundee", you gained 2 Experience Points.

Each Guardian got one. Even the Rangers. They went out into the world, driving their buggies, trying to find shit to kill. At least they wouldn't be bored until the novelty ended.

Meanwhile, I kept putting Saturn V rockets in the air. I made a mistake back in Speranza, USA. I thought two rockets were enough. No. There's no kill like overkill. I should've used three or four rockets, and killed the damn Jabberwockys before they could summon the Armagellykulls. No more.

I will make my rockets shoot rockets.

Months passed. Babies were born because I made time in my inner world run 40% faster. I reached the fifth year of the evolution quest. And yet another five levels deferred.

> To evolve your species, you need to rescue 4,000,000 humans and keep them safe from harm for 1 year. No time limit.

> Current tally: 3,244,869 / 4,000,000

Speranza's population was 601,014 people. Somewhere in the world, most probably in North America, 11,913 people were still alive and sheltered inside one of my automated bunkers. They had enough DCSC to run for ten years. I can only imagine these people, surviving the onslaught of the Infernali, the volcanic ashes, hiding in my Dungeon.

I stopped creating rockets in the air and called the Rangers. All sixteen of them. After I explained the situation, I told them my decision.

"I cannot let these people on their own. I'm leaving three Raindrops and twelve Bickering Widows for each one of you. I'll be gone for just a few days. Hold the fort while I'm out."

"I will defend this with my life!" Rta boasted.

"Please don't get yourself killed. Also, get some Einherjar to stay with you."

She transferred a hundred souls from Valhalla to herself. She could summon these but if they died, they needed to go back to Valhalla to be reborn. I had Blackjack Six enter one of the floating Saturn V rockets, pointed it at North America, and blasted off over the pacific.

We soon pierced above the cloud cover and I decided on a whim to keep a set of beacons to the sides absorbing the smoke cover. It was a pittance compared to how much smog was floating over the planet but any amount helped. Also, I was bored.

I left behind a series of blimps, 38 miles away from each other, with a DCSC to keep contact with the main base at the Australian Outback. What I saw was horrible. One of the Armagellykulls was in Hawaii and another was drifting down through Panama. Not to mention the one in Japan. were they intending to detonate and break the planet apart? What if they were searching for me and I was leaving a trail of magical breadcrumbs pointing straight at where they should go?

No. That was me being paranoid. The World Tree seed's Mana signature would soon be spread all over the world. Or... soon didn't mean now. I self-destructed the blimps between here and Australia. Minutes later, I was flying over California. Another Armagellykull was north, along the west coast of Canada.

Then I saw the massive volcano and the split continent. Mount Everest was no longer the tallest mountain in the world and the amount of smoke here was heinous. Everything was covered in dozens of feet of ash and hardened lava. Despite being Winter, temperatures were closer to boiling rather than freezing. One Armagellykull was in Florida and it seemed that something was holding it back. Or it was just blocking the passage. Could it be it was afraid of being devoured by Florida Man? No. Preposterous. It was a primordial demon. I doubt Florida Man subsisted on a diet of primordials.

Finally, I let go of my rocket, putting it on a collision course to crash on the ruins of New York. I finally found the bunker with the survivors. Time to visit Atlanta, once more.