Neophyte World Builder

Chapter 141: Birth of a New Age

CROWN

“This is going to be a lot closer than I’d like,” I grumbled to my companions.

Diamon was deeply invested in his own interface, somehow using it to double-check my own work. The comment did draw one of his ears to move, and the mammoth-like Administrator gave a twitch of one trunk that I recognized as agreement.

“In time, or energy?” Orpheus asked the question from where she was standing several meters away, carefully making folding motions over the shimmering and ephemeral representation of my universe in front of her. Duck was standing next to her, giving an approval for each adjustment that would pass its way down to me for final approval.

If that sounded cumbersome, it wasn’t… if only because I was busy making adjustments of my own, deep inside my own interface. Between Diamon and Orpheus, I had enough expertise to thread some existing ideas into the new ‘topology’ trick that I’d gotten, and they’d broken with their usual standards to give me much more advice than normal.

A hint at how dire things were right now.

Compressing multiple realms into the same physical space was tricky and expensive, as I’d already learned, but apparently there were ways to make it easier and cheaper. It was… still expensive, though.

“Both,” I answered Orpheus. “I think we’ll get it in time, but this is going to tap me out for at least another cycle or two. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“When did not knowing that ever stop you?” Orpheus shot back. “It isn’t commonly done, but it has been done before. Layering in a major change while stopping an incursion can counter it with what you want. The risk is that they immediately try something to take advantage of the social flux this causes your inhabitants, but I believe that the attackers are still somewhat blind. They found a vulnerability but are still not sure what they are exploiting.”

“We hope,” Diamon muttered grimly. “Check my adjustments to see if they will cause any problems with your plan, Crown.”

I did so, glad for the strange Administrator’s aid. He’d seemed pretty aloof to me last time we talked, but when it came down to the wire he threw himself into helping me. His expertise on how souls and consciousness navigated different layers of reality made my changes so much easier to implement.

“I still don’t like how easy it is for my fae to touch the dream realm, but the alternative is worse I suppose,” I grumbled. “If I’d been able to do this ages ago I wouldn’t have needed the fae.”

“If we had a dozen cycles to test and prepare, perhaps we could give you the result you wanted.” Diamon waved a trunk in a dismissive manner. “I understand your frustration, but those who desire results now must be satisfied with what they can implement.”

I chuckled. “My old world had a much cleaner version of that. I get it.”

Beggars can’t be choosers.

| AKASHA: Dad, are you ready? They’re about done. ​

| CROWN: I am making the final adjustments now. No need to delay. ​

| AKASHA: Good luck. ​

| CROWN: You too. See you in a while.

I let out a long breath, stepped back, and started the process that would change how the universe worked.

First came the faeries. The Spirits, as the vaskan called them. Right now, they only existed in Downside, but that had been a mistake. The two halves of the world were physically very different, but divergent mechanics would only cause problems later on. I wanted my worlds to interact a little before they truly met. Not directly just… mysteriously.

Now they would.

The first two layers were the Fae and Dream, as I called them. Two places where the physical laws were replaced with the flows of mana, bent to the will of the beings within. Dream was where mortal minds went when they slept, and operated mostly like the moon’s dream bubbles. In some ways I took that structure and spread it through my world, like filling a…

Filling a donut.

That was awkward.

The Fae realm also existed alongside the real, but was where the Spirits went when they weren’t causing trouble in the physical realm. My hope was that this would let them interact more with one another, and also peek into the real world more often. That way they’d have more ideas from which to spin their minor quests. It would also give them a place to stay where random mortals couldn’t siphon off their mana.

Apparently, that had become a real problem lately.

Doing just one of these would have nearly bankrupted me, I’d thought. Orpheus and Diamon had showed me how I could make it easier by using existing systems, leaning on belief to do them, and get a further ‘discount’ by doing multiple at once. That’s what I was trying to do here. This would be more fantastical than my previous world, but the people there would have to discover it first.

It was also a gift to my daughter, though she didn’t know that yet. I’d let her find out about that on her own.

Neither of these were easy for mortals to reach without their specific conditions, but it would be possible… one day. I’d likely have to tune some of the entry conditions later, but I hadn’t been given the time to do it. It could wait.

The next step was handling an afterlife. Diamon had been intrigued by my plans, and had agreed to help. Apparently the existing definition of an afterlife had been slightly different from my own, but compatible. I’d already created a small one for meeting souls between lives, and I simply expanded that into a ‘thin’ layer around the world, which was less energy for me to maintain and able to handle substantially more souls at once.

A ‘paradise’ was subjective, so it functioned a little bit like the Dream in how it molded to the individual’s desires. It also gave my various ‘gods’ a place to stay and interact with their most faithful worshippers, if that was how they desired to spend their afterlife. Eventually, once they had felt satisfied, they would be recycled into the world as normal. It was a long stopover at a resort, instead of eternal bliss.

I didn’t believe in a dedicated hell of punishment. Few deserved eternal damnation, was my philosophy. Instead I had a sort of purgatory, where those who had not earned a paradise would wait. Later, I could put a god in charge of this to determine which souls needed to confront their pasts and be punished… but most would simply wait there, with their memories fading slowly instead of getting automatically scrubbed. That saved me energy, and it also allowed for the development of magic that could speak with the recently departed.

None of this worked quite like it did in the books I’d read in my old life, but they were good for inspiration. A cycle of souls moving ever onwards, growing and maturing. At least, they would do that once I got around to adding someone who could manage them in that way. That was going to be a bit of a challenge, since it was a volunteer position.

Sena would have known who to ask.

My head shook quickly to remove the thought. Now wasn’t the time. I resisted the urge to check in on her soul. Not because I felt I didn’t have the right… but because I didn’t have the time. It would be a distraction. As comforting as the insightful mortal’s advice would have been, I didn’t need it right now. This wasn’t a problem that would arise immediately, and I could afford to wait to find the proper guide.

I couldn’t afford to distract myself.

The barriers between the realms were not completely impenetrable, I saw to that. Each one sat within my universe, yet apart from the physical world. It would be difficult, but each was one more opportunity for my world’s inhabitants to discover and perform something wondrous.

I struggled to hold everything together, and that’s when I felt Duck’s presence. Firmly, she took hold of the framework and simply kept it in place while I attempted to make the final adjustments. Already, the results of Cayla’s raid on the Dungeon of Infinities were rippling outward, making everyone aware that something had changed.

Now I needed to prove it.

I didn’t have much time left, but one change remained to do to the overall structure. The Duskwall, as the elves called it now. Sun’s Nest. Lightbirth, as it had come to be known by the vaskan. The name didn’t matter, but it remained a barrier between the worlds, even in these alternate realms. The physical mountains might not be there, but the conceptual barrier remained.

I weakened it. Not all the way – I didn’t want the two sides interacting easily yet, just getting hints of one another. In dreams or in odd spells, in half-remembered fragments of previous lives meeting strangers in the afterlife. In whimsical, distorted stories told by those Spirits that might wander to Upside and back. My hope was that legends would build, without my interference in telling them.

The dragons of each side still needed a ‘place’ in the Dream for their grand gatherings, and that was the last location I added to the Dream. A dual set of halls, so that they could choose to interact with one another… or not. It would not be a great effort, but I had a feeling it would be a long while before the Downside dragons sought out their counterparts, or allowed the Upside to speak to them.

Maybe I was wrong, but if so that would be another story to tell, wouldn’t it?

Everything was finished, but I had a little time left. Not much, but just enough for my last gift to my daughter, to make up for the pain I’d caused her with the incursions. She needed to know some of the world’s functions beyond what she did now. I gave the System the ability to reach into my various realms, if only in a limited way for most. Dead souls didn’t need stats and abilities, and didn’t have the mana circuits to support them anyway.

But Akasha would need to know more about things outside of the System itself, if she were to know how to be an Administrator. Hopefully when she did finally take up that mantle, she would be more prepared than I had been.

I applied the changes, and felt fatigue wash through me in a wave as I spent more than ten thousand Reality Points in a single moment.

In my interface, the red incursion point winked out, and the entire ring of my universe flared with a greenish light… before settling, showing a gentle gleam to indicate there were multiple layers to view and manipulate.

I suddenly felt very, very tired.

That’s when the notifications started.

I’d been warned about this. I wasn’t sure what the point was, since it wouldn’t change anything about how the world worked. What was the point?

This, I wasn’t sure about happening… but it was worse than I’d feared. Last time the notification had been incomplete, but readable. This one just spat out errors and gave up. For an interface that was supposed to bridge my capabilities and mind, that was concerning. Even Orpheus had a coherent interface, and hers was handling the entire cluster. I didn’t even know what I could do now.

Then the final notification popped up. I only had enough time to whisper, “Oh no…”

Everything went black.