World Keeper

Chapter 1152: Bless You

After Dana left to return to Olympus, Chelsea spent several hours on the isolated planet within the binary star system where she had risen to her new status as an Origin. These hours were spent rapidly accelerating the time within her inner world, allowing for the drones that she acquired from Dana to replicate and build up a small empire of their own.

Or, at least, that was her plan when she started. While she was able to somewhat control the flow of time within her inner world, this control was not as complete as she had hoped. Time was a tricky subject at the best of times. While she could accelerate or slow it down, she was limited in doing so to a factor of one million times. This meant that every second, eleven days passed in her inner world.

When first establishing a new world, the initial time acceleration to get the world stabilized can go as high as one hundred billion times. Thus, while one million times acceleration sounded like a lot, it was a far cry from what she wanted. In the five hours that she was present, almost six hundred years had passed within her inner world.

The drones did indeed have time to spread across dozens of star systems, creating the foundation of an empire. Unfortunately, she didn’t have the opportunity to enlighten a race to fill that empire. That would still take quite a while longer.

Realizing this, Chelsea clicked her tongue, focusing on letting time resume its normal flow. Having the time accelerated required a lot of her focus, otherwise there was a chance that she might inadvertently destroy her inner world.

Chelsea couldn’t help but think back to Dana’s new blessing, realizing the power that it had shown in the previous weeks. In truth, it was because of Dana that they had managed to complete the Origin research as quickly as they did.

For these two weeks, it had been Chelsea’s job to come up with theories or ideas for them to test out. As soon as Chelsea had explained these ideas in enough detail to Dana, she was able to immediately create a spell to carry it out. Just one of those spells, if Chelsea had to design it herself, might have taken weeks to craft.

That really is a cheat-like power. She thought to herself, teleporting back to the research facility. Although she had not found a suitable race to place in charge of her automated empire, the machines had expanded far enough that she could pull quite a few security-related powers from them. Thus, it was not a total loss.

“Yo, how’d it go?” James asked with a grin when Chelsea returned, having been waiting for her outside of the main entrance. Visibly, she didn’t look any different. “You manage to get everything sorted out?”

“Naturally.” She responded, her own lips spreading into a wide grin. “It’ll take some time to really understand my power, but yeah… Origins are a thing now.”

James nodded his head at that, before looking at her with a more serious expression. “How long do you think it will take before other people start trying to advance?”

Chelsea paused, thinking it over. “The higher level researchers from our group might have the knowledge necessary to create the proper world, if the specific requirements of that world were made clear to them. However, we don’t have a good candidate among them, since at this time we only have the ability to make Origins from single-domain individuals.”

“If we are talking about the public, then… I think it would take at least another sixty years before a basic Origin were to appear.” She said, before pausing again. “Maybe twenty, if they use the educational streams to learn about world creation. Still, that is only a very basic Origin. To get one that has a properly specialized inner world, compatible with their new domain… that will be far more difficult.”

James seemed a bit relieved at that. “I see… are you planning on accepting applications for new Origins among trusted individuals?” He asked, but Chelsea quickly shook her head.

“Nope.” She answered without hesitation, surprising Chelsea as she led him back into the lab. “Couldn’t really do it if I wanted to. At least, not one with a specialized inner world. I’d need Dana back for that.”

“Really?” James asked, eyes wide as he followed alongside her. “You wouldn’t be able to make one yourself?”

“I could possibly design the ‘code’ for the inner world, and its framework. However, Dana is able to take that and turn it into a spell, one that also gently maneuvers the target’s energy with the lowest risk of backlash. I looked at the spell she used, and I don’t think I’d be able to customize it with a different world type.”

When James heard that, he nodded his head in understanding. “So, the ability to create new Origins rests solely with Dana now?” He asked, but Chelsea hesitated, shaking her head.

“Not quite. Really, the two of us have to work together. I provide the framework, and she executes it. If they find anyone they want to make an Origin, I’m sure that she’ll come to find us again.” She said, to which James seemed relieved. “Anyways, how is your work coming?”

While Chelsea was busy working on her ascension plan, James and the rest of the team were divided. Some of them were working on debugging Night Code, while others were trying to further understand the creation of new systems. Naturally, James was leading the latter group personally.

“It’s going pretty well, I think.” He said with a grin. “I actually wanted to let you know that we had created a new system that you might want to include in your inner world, if you can still make the modification.”

Chelsea glanced over at him, arching a brow. “It’ll take time, but I should be able to get a new system in. What’s it like?”

“I call it a Soulbound Lock. Essentially, someone can infuse a small trace of their spirit into any form of container or closed door, and a barrier is created around the target. The user can help other people attune to the barrier, but it can only be passed by those that are attuned in this way.”

Chelsea blinked, but soon shook her head. “Sounds like a basic locking spell. Why would this be anything special?”

“It was based on a locking spell.” James began. “However, the barrier is reinforced by the system. Its durability is similar to the durability of the universal shell itself.”

Now that got Chelsea interested, making her grin. “Okay, that I can get behind. You can probably pass through the barrier by imitating the spirit of the owner, but if they don’t know to expect that, they won’t understand the method to get through.”

“That’s what I was thinking.” James agreed, chuckling. “I’ll send the files to you later. Are there any other systems that you’d like my team to try to work on?”

Naturally, the vast majority of the systems designed by James and his team would never be implemented in the real world system. Ashley had taken great pains to protect the system as a whole from direct tampering, so it wouldn’t be easy for them to do so if they wanted to. Instead, they would be kept as tools for research, or possible ideas to implement in new games or worlds created.

“Hmm…” Chelsea thought about that for a moment. “If you can make a safehouse system, that would be great. Basically, a system where someone can create a door leading to an isolated area outside of normal space, and the entrance disappears after they enter. Then, they can create an exit from the inside, leading to either the same location or somewhere entirely new.”

There were several reasons why this type of system wouldn’t be advisable to use in the main world, but it was perfect for use as an Origin, as it would let her manifest that effect in the real world. When James heard the request, he stroked his chin. “I’ll pass the request on to my team. No promises on how long it’ll take, but we should be able to scrap something together if we pull code from the inventory system.”

After receiving her own blessing, Lifre dived back into her live streaming. Like Dana, she had been given a total affinity for mana. Her increased aptitude for runic magic could have put her on par with Dana’s geometric buff. However… she did not seem to be showcasing that new talent.

This was because her live stream didn’t even have runic magic as a system. As Lifre typically did with her new streams, she created a completely blank world, and invited her viewers to give it the systems that they wanted to see her adventure in.

Still, even without runic magic, her mana affinity played a large role in her streams. Enough so that she had to actively avoid playing a pure magic character, because she thought it would be less fun. Instead, she went the route of a magic archer.

Lifre walked through the halls of a giant castle, bow in hand. Her eyes were focused, looking for any trace of movement. Glancing off to the side, she plucked at the bowstring three times, firing three thin beams of light that struck the wall opposite to her. 

“I bet you all wanna know what that was for, huh?” She teased, her voice soft so as not to alert anyone. “But I’m not going to tell you~. I know that if I do, you’ll just donate to get around it.” She stuck her tongue out, before quickly ducking into the next door that she came to.

Currently, she was in the castle of an evil necromancer, one that had unleashed armies of the dead upon an entire nation. Her quest, quite simply, was to slay the necromancer and bring peace to the land. “I bet you’re all thinking that those arrows were meant to be traps, right? That they’d launch a big attack the next time a patrol comes through?”

“Or, maybe I did it to misdirect you? Maybe they don’t do anything?” She couldn’t help but grin, actually taking a moment to open the stream’s chat up. There were a lot of people speculating about what she was doing, and many were surprised to see that she took the time out of her ‘mission’ to interact with her viewers. “Do you really want to know? Huh?”

As she spoke, she walked to the far wall of the room, which seemed to be an armory, and began knocking on the walls. “Well, you see… it wasn’t a trap at all! I see you guys donating to change the patrol route and avoid that hall. I’m onto you. It wasn’t a trap… it was just a bomb~.”

As she said that, she abruptly turned, firing four more arrows. Two struck the ceiling above her, and two struck the floor beneath her feet, creating a wall of force. Just in time, there was a deafening explosion from just outside the room, debris crashing against her barrier. Large chunks flew past, crashing through the wall behind her, and causing entire sections of the wall to collapse.

Lifre waited with a smile on her face, until the debris had finally stopped coming. Then, she ran over to the collapsed section of the wall, seeing the scattered skeletons and death knights of the necromancer sprawled out on the ground. The necromancer himself sat on a throne of bones, looking at her in shock before rising to his feet. “How dare you damage my castle! I’ll flay the skin from your bones, and add you to my collection!”

“See? No need for a trap for any patrols! I memorized the castle layout on the way in.” Lifre continued, lifting her bow as the undead minions began to rise from the floor.

“Who are you speaking to?!” The necromancer shouted, looking around as if expecting another ambush.

“The audience, duh! Also, I don’t have any bones. Slime perks, and all that. Pretty sure you can’t make a slime undead, though it’d be fun to try!” She said, charging up a bright red arrow and jumping to the side. “Now, let’s dance!”