Neophyte World Builder

Chapter 117: Prevailing Winds

CROWN

It had only been a few hours, but it felt like I’d been gone for days.

I’d dropped Sena off near Chall, but left the house in the middle of nowhere. I’d considered unmaking it, but it’d cost RP to do that – even if it was just a pittance – and it had already cost it to make it. Might as well leave it there with an enchantment to preserve it and secure it, and then keep it as a possible meeting site for Sena or anyone else later. Things were getting weird, so I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t need my Proxy more often.

“Welcome back.”

Duck was waiting for me, of course. She wasn’t dressed up weirdly, and she didn’t throw any barbs my way. She looked distracted, with the same distant look in her eyes that I’d grown to associate with her looking over her own version of the interface.

I didn’t bother to slow down time. If she needed that, she’d ask.

“Working on the new body?” I dropped into a chair while I asked that, exhaling a long sigh. Too many surprises, lately, and I wasn’t sure how to deal with them.

It bothered me that the thought slipped into my mind that deleting Akasha would have saved me a lot of headaches.

Duck answered with a distant mumble. “Yeah. It’s not too bad because I’ve worked with elves so much, but I’ve also got a chat open with Akasha so I can make sure I’m not giving her any features she hates. Nice name choice, by the way.”

“Thanks,” I grunted, staring upward at the world projection arching over me. “I’m pretty sure Orpheus will need to know about this eventually, but can we keep it quiet for a little bit longer? I want to see what she does.”

That made Duck pause. “She as in Akasha, or she as in Orpheus? Because I hate to admit it, but Akasha is dangerous. And I don’t mean in the malicious way. I do think she wants to help.”

I closed my eyes. Here it was.

“Akasha. Yes, I know. She’s eager to help, even, but does so without asking me first.” I frowned deeply as I thought through all the things that could go wrong. “Mostly I worry that she’ll start playing favorites or making random classes. I already thought about making a god for the System, but that sort of possible favoritism was a big reason I never went through with it.”

Duck made a soft noise of thought, but didn’t say anything for a few seconds.

“She seems quite taken with this Reyth girl. I’m not sure why.” Duck’s analysis was filled with a worried mumble at the end. “And are you okay with what she did for Sena?”

I cracked open one eye to find Duck staring at me intently. I sighed again. “I am. A little favoritism is fine. In fact I’m hoping she does a little bit. I’d like to see if her actions generate RP or not. Call it a little experiment.”

My counterpart opened her mouth, then clicked it shut again. “I was about to say that shouldn’t be possible, but she isn’t actually a god. She’s an independent soul that spontaneously formed. You… might be right. Maybe that’s why we’ve been seeing such strange fluctuations.”

“I think that’s from the various Quests and nudges she’s been giving people.” I closed my eyes again while I thought. “I’m starting to realize that a lot of these emergent situations aren’t hurting us at all. Maybe we should ride the wave and prep for when the problems start.”

“Isn’t prep all we’ve been doing?” Duck argued, but she didn’t have much heart in it. She went silent to work on the body more, instead.

Which got me wondering. “So what did you think? Learning you were a mom, I mean?”

I could almost feel Duck pause there. Thinking about it, I probably could, since the whole idea of me using vision to see was a mental filter more than what was actually going on. But Duck answered before my thoughts wandered too far into that rabbit hole.

“I’m still confused as to why she considers me her mother,” Duck finally answered. “I mean… technically, I’m not even female and you’re not even male. We both switch around, or at least can. It makes me wonder where she’s getting her standards from. She definitely has a lot of knowledge, but weird gaps in it, too. I can’t shake the suspicion that there’s something she isn’t telling us… or worse, that she isn’t what we think she is.”

Such a thought wasn’t one that I’d failed to have. Duck was in many ways more pessimistic than I was, so I wasn’t surprised she also had the thought. I didn’t open my eyes, I just shared my own thoughts.

“I’ve wondered how she came to be, as well.” I leaned back, the recliner’s footrest popping up. “I think the belief in the System combined with the fact that I created the System, and the world is supposed to create souls for the beings I design, it led to a spontaneous generation of a living being. I’m not sure how often that’s happened before.”

I also couldn’t stop coming back to the point where she’d said she wanted to be an Administrator. Akasha didn’t seem to really understand fully what I was, but she definitely had more understanding than a mortal should. I’d waved off Duck’s concerns verbally, but inside I kept coming back to that.

What would it mean to have a creature of the world also have a connection outside of it? This was the unintended Soulkeeper problem all over again, but with much more severe consequences. It still wasn’t clear exactly how much influence she had. Akasha knew I could delete her – though I wasn’t so sure about that, myself – and that fear kept her from being too rebellious. But she could block me from seeing things, and do things I couldn’t.

Or, to be more specific, she could do things that would harm energy generation if I did them.

It would be interesting to watch how she affected RP generation. And despite my concerns, I was also curious how she’d adapt to having a persona. Giving her a body was possibly a bad idea, but if she could hijack any of my Proxy Avatar bodies, might as well give her one of her own.

I drifted off for a little while, letting my thoughts circle around a few of the ongoing – and upcoming – projects I was working on. It was the same trick I’d used to get through that long stretch where I’d still held debt, so I wouldn’t be tempted to poke around and spend RP when I couldn’t afford it. Zone out for a while, peek in to fix problems and course correct, then zone out again.

“Body’s done. Give it an approval to create and I guess we just tell Akasha about it.”

Duck’s voice broke into my reverie, and I started guiltily as I realized she hadn’t stopped working. Was she my more workaholic side?

Or perhaps… I was thinking about this all wrong and she’d been growing and evolving ever since we’d split apart. Could she do that as a piece of me?

I brought up my interface and looked over the slender Aravel on display, then nodded. I didn’t see anything worrying here, and Duck generally did good work. There was a reason she had designed the body instead of me. She had a greater familiarity with elven bodies, since her elf memories were more ‘fresh’ in her mind.

“Looks good.” I mentally approved it, and then closed the interface. I opened chat and sent a message to Akasha that her body was done, and received an enthusiastic thanks in return. It felt kind of nice to sense that excitement. Even if all of the beings in my world were technically my creations, Akasha felt closer. Maybe it was because she was so unique.

Maybe that was why I kept shoving away the idea of getting rid of her.

Ruthlessness was necessary for my position, yet I still fought against it whenever I could.

My thoughts were interrupted again by another notification that rapidly went from pleasant surprise to growing alarm.

I sat up sharply as I read over the notification. At the same time, Duck was staring into space in front of herself.

“Uh… boss, did you get a weird notification?” She looked over toward me scrambling up to my feet. “Guess so. Is that even a valid Rank?”

“I never heard of it,” I replied to Duck with a mumble. I was busy reading the new feature I’d unlocked, and trying to puzzle out exactly what it meant. After a moment of staring at the screen, it clicked.

I turned to Duck. “If I’m reading this right, I can do things like… add a faerie realm parallel to the physical world or something, and define ways in which they interact.”

“That’s what I think it is, too.” Duck twitched an ear as she read the words, agreeing with my guess. “This would have been a lot more useful when you were making the dream realm, but I guess you can try to adjust now if you want.”

Pulling up my interface to check the new options, I flinched. “Significantly more expensive, they said. Yeah… tens of thousands of Reality Points. We can’t afford that yet. Maybe next world.”

My eye twitched.

“Wait a minute,” I heard from the elf next to me. “Aren’t these descriptions specific to you? Um, filtered through your – our experience to give them context? So how is this one…”

As she trailed off, I rubbed the bridge of my nose and stared at the notification, as if I could will it to correct itself. “Is this maybe what happens if I unlock an ability before I’m mature enough? Rank is supposed to be descriptive of what I am able to handle, right? Maybe this is something I don’t have the ability to conceptualize.”

Duck looked at me doubtfully. I shrugged back to her and closed the notification. We both stayed quiet for a long while.

Finally, I sighed.

“I guess we need to call Orpheus now.”