Neophyte World Builder

CROWN

“How is the time difference? Causing any problems?”

Akasha looked over at me and frowned. Not that many could tell it was Akasha. Then again, most of the gods here still had no idea who Akasha was, or what she was doing there. That was why I’d had them wait in the Grand Hall while I made sure Akasha was in good shape.

“The word translates into elf, but this feels more like a vaskan, to me,” Akasha complained. She only had a mild annoyance in her voice, thankfully. “I wish I could use my normal elf body… why couldn’t you have made a version for this world? It has plenty of other strange things.”

She twisted back and forth, then grimaced. Once again, she felt at her rear for a tail, grumbling under her breath about failing to find one. She was, of course, a typical fantasy elf… or at least my rendition of one. I’d given them very long ears that swept up to the sides, and the variant Akasha had chosen had pale white skin and only stood a little less than a meter and a half tall. Petite compared to humans, but large for an elf from my first world.

I was surprised to see she’d chosen the pale version. Regalia’s elves were various shades of blue, but the vaskan form she preferred leaned toward the mocha skin tone. Not that I expected Akasha to be racist or something, but she was a creature of habit.

“The time difference?” I prompted gently.

Akasha shrugged and ceased her examination of her willowy body. “It’s strange. Since my consciousness is here it doesn’t really matter, but I can feel the worlds in the background. It’s hard to explain, because I’m not sure words exist for it. Might be a problem if this place keeps running in faster time, but only if I’m back home and something comes up. Otherwise it… doesn’t feel bad?”

“Not bad is good,” I laughed. “No discomfort at all even with your mind here in the other world? That’s a relief. I can’t make you an administrator like I am, but this is definitely something new. At least, I hope it’s something new. No problems handling their System?”

“I am their System, same as I am the System for my original world,” she pointed out. “It’s a little odd but it isn’t hard to adapt. It’s mostly simpler than the one for Regalia, too. That’s good and bad, I guess… a lot more inference happening with every action. But if you’re worried that I’m overloaded or something, don’t be. If anything I feel… bigger. That’s the only way to describe it.”

I scratched at my head. I was in a human form—a true, full human form—for the first time in a long while. I’d chosen something much like my original appearance when I’d been summoned before Orpheus… nondescript human male, lightly bronze complexion, so on and so forth. I’d given myself a very dark walnut shade of hair, but my eyes were green now. No particular reason, just a whim.

“Technically, since you are a purely spiritual being right now, you could appear as an Aravel Elf,” Artemis said from my left. “I wouldn’t recommend it, though. You should try to adjust to different bodies if you are going to different worlds. Orpheus never really liked doing it, but you probably noticed she had little trouble being an elf, even if our original form is nothing like that.”

Artemis had stayed as a human teenager for this trip, which slightly unnerved me. She kept choosing young-looking forms, but it was obvious she had plenty of knowledge and was, if anything, more mature than Orpheus had been. I wasn’t sure what to think of her own habit, nor if it was a good idea to point it out to her.

“The thing that you might want to worry about is energy draw,” Artemis continued, unaware of my thoughts. “How is Akasha staying active in multiple worlds? What’s fueling her power? Are you suffering any sudden increases in maintenance?”

It was a good question, but I shrugged back. “I have Switchboard monitoring that kind of thing, and apparently if she draws any energy, it’s almost impossible to tell. She can spend energy in some ways when she’s performing her duties, but just maintaining Akasha doesn’t really cost me anything beyond the System itself. I’m still not sure where her soul came from, if that’s what you are wondering.”

“I’m not sure even Pleiades understood the full extent of that,” the young Terminal admitted. “Orpheus tended to think Pleiades had all the answers, but without her emotions to cloud my judgement, I’m starting to wonder how much he engineered and how much he just got lucky with and went along with it. Much like what you do, Crown.”

I chuckled, “Yeah, I know. But give me some credit, I usually have a plan going in… it just never really works quite like I expected. Even the dungeon idea had some quirks to iron out, though it was probably my biggest success as weird ideas go.”

Akasha clapped her hands together. “It’s good that I’m not some kind of parasite, at least. Has Switchboard figured out exactly what I am yet?”

Sadly, that question led to me shaking my head. “No, not yet. You’re entwined with both the universes, like a long thread wound around both, and a few strands touching the same threads that the World System uses. I also have some connections to it, which doesn’t seem to be that normal, so it’s still inconclusive.”

Artemis looked up at the ceiling, where a rough map of this universe was displayed like a hologram. “You’re doing an awful lot of tests… is this universe doing what you want yet? I know you’ve managed to accelerate its development, but it hasn’t been that long in your original one. Where does it stand?”

I looked up as well. It wasn’t a complete map… it was intended to help my subterminals—the “gods” of this universe—keep track of their different aspects and where their worshippers were. It had a lot of information embedded within it, but not even the gods needed to know everything. I hadn’t yet given them proper souls anyway, so they didn’t do much thinking for themselves.

“A few bubbles have reached the metal-smithing stage, or equivalent. There’s one that uses crystal or resin or something,” I replied. “Magical research is getting kind of advanced in some, but that’s good. I’m going to try leaving hints on how they can travel, soon. But that’s not the real question.”

Looking down at my hands, I sighed. “I still need to test things like how souls transfer between universes… but I’m reluctant to even ask that. Then we have to test if I can transfer them between the cluster members, if it can be forced, and so on. It’s all kind of messy and I hate it. I know the people in these other universes outside the cluster are wildly different from what I know, but they’re still people, and they may suffer from this.”

“Orpheus would have told you not to concern yourself with it because that’s how it works,” Artemis said with a smile. “I won’t tell you that, because I know you don’t think that way. But this is a battle for our survival. You don’t need to destroy their universes… you just need to tell them not to bother us here.”

“I have a lot more in mind than just that,” I muttered softly. “I wonder if Sara would be willing to world hop again? She sounded pretty grumpy last I heard her, but I admit I haven’t been keeping track of her life. Is she miserable or something? I could offer her a place where she can be human, at least.”

Akasha giggled. “I don’t think that’s why she’s grumpy with you, father. She’s a complicated person, just like most people. I don’t think she’s mad that you gave her a second chance, I think she just isn’t the adventurous sort. At least not with exploring new lands and stuff like Wanderer does.”

I shuddered. “Wanderer would be a great test of it, too… but I’m a little worried he’d end up singlehandedly creating all the half-blooded species. If I were still human I’d probably be jealous of that bird. Or whatever he is at the moment.”

“Still a mushroom,” Akasha offered. “But it sounds like this place isn’t ready yet, anyway. I’m just glad that I can operate in two different universes without trouble. I was a little scared… but I guess I’m closer to whatever you are than to a mortal of Regalia.”

“Some mortal souls are well-suited for that sort of thing anyway,” Artemis pointed out. “That’s why some of our new administrators just failed. Their souls just weren’t ready enough to work on a full universe.”

The comment from Akasha was a lot more interesting to me than what Artemis said. I’d figured out some of what the Terminal noted, but Akasha had me squinting at her. “I’m pretty sure you were never anything close to a mortal. Just because I can’t make you an administrator doesn’t mean you aren’t some being on the same or similar level.”

“Mmm,” Akasha replied noncommittally. She frowned and drummed her fingers on her thigh. “You already have a promotion queue here? It looks a little cleaner than the one I set up. Did you get that idea from me?”

I turned my attention back to my remote interface as I smiled at her. “Yeah, I did. It’s a good idea! I haven’t had a chance to sort out many souls lately… most of the civilizations here are still pretty early on, and small in size. A few worlds are even extinct… I’ll have to see what went wrong and replace them with a new seed population next cycle, but for this world cycles are currently hundreds of years. I won’t have the energy until then.”

“You throw around so much energy casually now,” Artemis laughed. “Every time you whine about a budget or worries I think about how many other administrators don’t make nearly as much per cycle. Even Ember makes more than most and she’s lagging well behind you.”

The comparison was more worrying than flattering. Diamon had once walked me through how best to use avatars for energy generation, so it seemed like he had a good grasp on how to generate energy. The idea that I was outperforming him was worrying… though he was also one of the more senior administrators in the cluster. It’s possible that he is above the curve that Artemis referred to when she said that.

“If you see any interesting souls for gods, let me know,” I said aloud to Akasha. “It’s good to see both you and Artemis can manifest here, though. I think the universe needs a little more time to cook, relatively speaking, before we can start to test the soul migration and such. I know it’ll hurt my development and I’m already running a deficit on this universe, but I do have to prepare them.”

I felt another flash of guilt for raising up these souls to be my warriors. Wasn’t this basically like child soldiers? The thought nearly made me abandon the plan right then and there, but I recentered myself by reminding myself of all the differences. Maybe I was splitting hairs or trying to justify my inhumanity…

“You should talk to Sena. And Sara.”

Akasha snapped me out of my distracted spiral. “What?”

The pale elf gestured to me. “You were having some doubts about what you’re doing. Talk to them. Don’t you want the mortal perspective? I’m not sure exactly what is bothering you, but I think you should get it over with and speak to someone with a different perspective.”

I glanced at Artemis, who merely shrugged. No help there.

“Yeah. Yeah I should,” I finally agreed.