Rajesh was debating adding flaws to his system - he'd come up with three related concepts of the Pinochio who everyone would learn the tell of, the wolf crier who had a reputation for lying and the Cassandra who would be disbelived no matter what. He was wondering if there was a better way to do this when he realised it didn't really align with his goals, if there were flaws then there were perks and he didn't want those gifted to the populace whether they be player character or not, assuming he was right about the whole simulation thing though he'd seen no evidence of outside influences beyond himself.
He was considering how he wanted to handle guilds of players if such a thing showed up, he felt the fairest way was to have it work the same no matter the status of the founder in that regard. He was also thinking about disincentivevising killing, his first idea was to punish the entire guild with no experience for a week but that would mean he'd need to implement a method to track that and it went against the design philosophy he had of only using reflections of demonstrated skills and classes purely reflecting the best combinations.
Checking the back end of the system while he thought about these and other topics, he spotted that others had been awarded achievements but Rajesh was the only one here so who were Thomas and Riley?
He returned to his gravity manipulation practice while he contemplated the bug. The name Riley seemed familiar, he'd recently read a book featuring a character called that, did it also have a Thomas? He tried summoning the text. Two separate series arrived - one was indeed narrated by Riley but the other was about someone who was born Thomas and now known by another name. Could it be the fictional characters in question? Cross-referencing the events in the story with the acts required to earn the achievements in question showed that yes, it was the respective protagonists.
Next he looked at the criteria for divine manifestation, he was unsure whether at will or in command was better but the default seemed to be both these cases. He'd leave that alone for now and revisit if it became a problem.
Rajesh had six concepts for dungeon themes but nowhere to plant dungeons yet, that required at least enough space to hold another core, so he just set them as the default options.
His next priority was to create a star of some sort. He thought that could be achieved by simply gathering enough hydrogen in one place but again that required there to be places. He returned to his practice. Currently he was trying to summon hydrogen and helium at the same time as the next step towards creating air for an atmosphere.
Rajesh was making progress, slow though it was, and several years later had reached not only that goal but several related ones and could now summon all four classical elements, though not in large enough quantities to make creating an entire universe by hand practical. It would get there eventually but for now he was contemplating what other materials he could diversify into. It was also not time to try for lifeforms yet but he was on the path that would lead to future cores.
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Returning to the primary grind Rajesh found his skills for individual elements had already reached Uranium but there were more to go, at least two hundred which was sixty more than his memories of Earth suggested there should be, they were trying to reach number one hundred and twenty five last time he checked up on the experiments like the one at Berkley that discovered Calafornium.
His skills now included multiple magic categories reflecting not only his mastery of elements but also of physical properties. The ones relating to creating a system were also improving and he had additional ones for maintaining it.
Rajesh was just now realising he hadn't really been at this for years from an outside perspective. Time didn't exist yet and once it did he would get to define what it was. He was still planning to go with the classic hours, minutes and seconds, since that's what his mind was used to but he didn't have to if he didn't want to.
Rajesh was starting to wonder how he could be so forgetful to have not reflected his personal ethics and morals in the system. He checked on the process to show caste and lock it so that everyone got the same standardised results. It was a tenant of his old Sikh faith that all were equal in this regard but he'd abandoned the religion when he started to view himself as a god. Still he wanted to keep that aspect for his worshippers, so just having a priest caste instead of the more delineated roles that had been present in India back in the day was in line with how he wanted the new outlook to be.
Rajesh found himself working on the components of atoms again, proton, neutrons, electrons, the six flavours of quarks and both nuclear forces something he needed to create with his magic. It should be possible to make these permanent enough to make the molecules needed for more advanced materials. Why was he spending years at a time grinding disparate tasks on autopilot. It would be better to focus on those needed for the immediate goal in turn. He still wasn't sure how to create a big bang analogue or if it would do anything if he did. He needed to switch to working out how he could control time like the mythical Saturn.
With that thought, it was at this point Rajesh made a mistake he would later come to regret. He tried peering into possible futures. It was vague, starting out as a Morris dancer fighting a giant ant before transforming into a ballerina against a bee, a disco dancer and a wasp, a harpist and a termite, always someone who might be a minstrel against a giant insect. After rotating through a number of these alternatives including combinations such as the same harpist against that wasp and the ballerina against the ant, it started repeating scenes finally settled on a flautist and a moth.