Walker put his journal down by The Tree of the Gods and stood up, looking the mysterious plant over. He found it had only grown a small amount since the last time he'd analyzed it, and seemed to slow down in growth the taller it was. He would need to work hard to gain some grand rewards and really push the envelope of his upcoming creations. He knew what they were doing next, making monsters, and he was very excited, but he had to solve a large problem first. The bottom of Symphony. He checked his time.

Time remaining until next battle: 57+ hours.

With his remaining time in mind, Walker moved at a trot to his relatively old computer. The combined monitor and desktop seemed dull in their monochrome coloring and boxed shape. He sat down and clicked on the landmass option. While he selected the rectangle shape and maximized its size, he kept an ear on Virgil and Rimi planning the kernel, discussing how to make it physical within the monsters and not impede their internal organs. He created a few boxes in a triangle to represent metal, placed them throughout the shape with his copy ability, and called Virgil to him as he clicked print and heard the chuffing of ink onto paper.

"What are you working on Walker?" The large squirrel asked as he had stopped speaking mid-sentence with the smaller squirrel and made his way over to him. Walker saw Rimi, from the corner of his eye, perform a small shrug, not unlike the kind Virgil likes to do when he's confused by something. The blue squirrel moved back to his screens nonplussed.

Walker felt a small smile tug his face as he said, "I told you before, remember? I'm going to put this at the bottom of Symphony so nothing else can break through. I figure we can drop it in, delete it with the world editor, then place it near the roots so it can gain density over the years. With enough time and magical reinforcement from the leylines, it'll be impossible to break, and we won't have another planetary destruction on our hands."

Virgil tilted his head, "You know I can have no true input on this."

"I know, I just need you to associate the symbol with Steel."

Virgil nodded, "Done."

"Sweet!"

Walker opened up his monitor and focused on the edge of the desert, then realized he didn't know what to do with the paper. He zoomed in the monitor to the edge of the Symphony's dry corner and placed the paper on it. A large silver-gray block appeared, just as he had drawn it, but twice the size of the other landmasses he'd placed before. Without needing to be told, he realized that with each upgrade to the Creation instrument, the scope and size of what it could do would increase as well. It slowly floated through empty space and clicked against the desert with barely a sound. Walker's overlay lit up.

"Fuck, I forgot about that."

He'd received an F on the grade.

"Mmm, yes." Virgil replied.

Rimi walked over and asked, "What happened?"

"Walker made an entirely monotonous landmass and the system punished him for it. It says you lost half of the creation materials you placed into it. That should be half a page out of the printer" He finished, nodding to himself.

"Well, it's already happened, and it needed to be done."

"I agree, and I understand your thought process, I am just a little shocked. It is rare to see F grades in the protocol."

"We all fail sometimes Virgil. Can you complete your work on the atmosphere, we're going to need it soon."

"Indeed."

Virgil walked away so Walker stepped into the world editor and moved to the edge of the desert, removing all of the steel that touched the connection point, before mass deleting the rest of the metal that had detached and started floating out into the depths of space. Thankfully, his range with the World Editor extended a bit beyond the atmosphere allocated to his planet. Walker could visually see the cyan-colored magic interacting with the air as Virgil did his work.

He then clicked on resources and found a huge amount of steel sitting there. He had some ideas of creating a massive statue of Virgil just to throw him off of his game a bit, before shaking it out of his head and zooming into the bedrock of Symphony. The monitor changed views so that it seemed Symphony was transparent, allowing Walker to find where the roots had settled deep in the world. They connected all throughout the land and pulsed with a deep cyan hue. He started to delete a dozen feet below the roots on the edge of the cubed-shaped planet, and added metal after just enough deletion for it to warrant the swap. If he deleted too much, the granite would detach and float into space, so he was very careful with his movements and the volume of his deletions. it took him about an hour to delete the granite and add the stored-up steel, and now his resources showed quite a bit of both, allowing him some options later on when he began shaping Symphony to his whims again.

Walker stepped out of the World Editor, "Hey, shouldn't the granite have been reinforced over fifty years from the roots as well?" He asked Virgil.

Virgil mumbled to himself as he had been pulled out of his work for the second time, before saying, "Yes, but you own the planet Walker, and the World Editor is one of your greatest tools. That early B grade saved you quite a bit more time than you think. It can instantly dematerialize any resources that do not have life. That is why I suggested not adding any grass or vegetation early on."

"Right, if I had made plain old grass with no modifications, we would have been screwed in the first battle." Walker said.

"Mmm, grass monster." Rimi whispered to himself near the evolution chamber.

"Okay." Walker said with a clap, startling the blue squirrel out of his dreams of vegetation domination. "We need something to eat those Muys! What do you think? Another water-based entity, or something amphibious? I don't think we should start with flyers for our first monster system update."

"Damn." Rimi whispered again.

"You're right Walker, a flying entity, if we made an error, would be almost impossible to kill after the fact. Also keep in mind, whatever you make and update to The Monster System, would conceivably be your oldest monsters on Symphony as they will be the first. Without another monster or potential classer killing them, they would become quite powerful if left in a habitat undisturbed."

"Good point. Hrmmm....Large frogs? I know I don't want to make any snakes right at the start." He said with a shudder. He had no idea how others viewed them as cute. They were slimy, they were cold-blooded in more ways than one, and they attacked annoyances, in his experience without a lot of provocation. He'd been attacked by a rattlesnake when he was younger and developed, with total justification, whipped archaeologist syndrome. Snakes were one of the few fears he had left.....that and spiders.

"Frogs would do well for our first attempt." Virgil said, breaking Walker from his dark thoughts. "Please go into your entity subsystem and pull up the African Clawed Frog in particular. I believe that will suit your needs."

Walker agreed and clicked Entity, pulling up the frog Virgil mentioned. He clicked on it and watched as the computer screen filled in the details. Looking at it, the frog seemed....small.

"That might not be big enough." Walker said. "It needs to be much larger to catch and eat the Muys. There's no point in making these if they can't even survive in that habitat."

"Yes, I had planned on modifying it. We don't want sixteen feet tall frogs, so I cannot modify it with gigantism as we did with The Mana Trees. Maybe up to four feet tall? Once you put in the classers, this would be an excellent first area for them to train in, and the African Clawed Frog doesn't need to eat as often, so it should balance out the predator and prey cycle."

"Okay, that's a plan." Walker pushed the monitor over to The Crater and zoomed in on one spot. He printed out the page and stuck it to the monitor, watching as the frog materialized on a small beach and ignoring the notification pinging the corner of his vision. He was sure it was a D grade anyways. The frog was less than half a foot in size and had small claws attached to its feet. Walker dug a hole below it and dropped it in with the World Editor, filling in the top after. He didn't even wait for the frog to die before selecting the evolution chamber in his overlay and placing one in there. He did, however, feel a bit bad about it.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

"How long is that thing going to take to die?" He asked Virgil.

"Oh, several minutes. That is a novel way to kill them quickly though, so they do not needlessly suffer."

"I wish I didn't have to kill everything for us to modify it though." Walker said with a sigh.

Walker watched as Virgil aged the frog by two years and then started to...he didn't know how to describe it. Stretch? He was grabbing parts of the frog in the evolution chamber and pulling its skin like rubber. He was doing everything with his screens rather than his hands, and once again Walker realized he was lucky to have an advanced assistant. None of it looked complicated, but he knew that was because of just how competent his friend was at his work. After he stretched the body out to around four feet tall, he did the same to its organs and claws, finishing on the brain which he left just a little bigger than it was previously. There was a small gap near its stomach, like it was waiting for something.

Virgil stopped his work and responded to Walker's previous statement, "The alpha protocol has to first recognize a new entity in your world before you can connect them to the evolution chamber. You could almost say that when you first materialize them, it is like downloading their data to the alpha protocol."

"But, doesn't it already have access to the entity subsystem in my overlay? I mean, every time I click it, I can see a huge list of options, all the way from aardvark to zebra." Walker protested.

"So what do you want to do? Produce everything at once and let it all instantly die?" Virgil asked.

Walker's eyes grew round and Virgil realized his mistake. "No no, that....that.....hrmm."

"We have to kill them anyways, right? And we always get D's which only replenishes our materials. Why not just make EVERYTHING on the list. Just, bam, bam, bam. Click, die, click, die."

"Okay, but how would you kill them?"

"You could put the monitor on a spot in space." Rimi suggested, joining the conversation. Walker remembered the steel and nodded.

"How many creatures are on there?" Walker asked.

"There are over eight thousand just for Frogs, Walker." Virgil said with a head shake. "It would take a very very long time with your current creation instrument."

"Hrmm.....something to think about. Although, when I think about it, I don't think I can do that to another human being, much less a baby."

"What do you suggest as an alternative? Release it into what is essentially a primordial world soon to be filled with four-foot monsters that have metallic claws?"

"Wait, when did its claws become metallic?"

"Focus, Walker. Although Bander Sotfam, the creator of the evolution chamber, went through something similar to what you are now, he still did his duty for his world. Although Bander felt it was unnecessary to drop unmodified entities onto the planet, only to be forced to kill them immediately, he did invent a way to create modified entities that didn't require constant trial and error. Perhaps you will have a chance to find your own way to quote "download" your entities without needing to sacrifice them after."

"Rimi?" Walker asked. "Do you have any ideas?"

"No, Walker. I am sorry." He said with a downcast look.

"Okay, it's fine. If we don't find a better way to do this, then we'll just have to go with what we said before. Make everything at once and not have to wait every moment on this. Let's shelve this for now and focus on our new frogs. I already know what to name them."

"Outstanding." Virgil said. "All we have left is placing the kernel." He showed Walker what he had seen before, a small empty space within the body of the frog, then explained that each monster they created would have to have the same. If they made it too large to start, and it continued to double in size, it would become overly powerful. He also mentioned that with The Monster System built the way that it is, the larger a creature became, the longer it would take to increase in tiers as the magic had to fully fuse to their body in Tier three. Walker felt that was the perfect balance to what they were creating.

He placed the first entity down and his overlay lit up.

.....Scanning.....

- - -

As your entity is modified from its original form, please name it.

Naming it wasn't difficult. Walker had his favorite books and games all wrapped up neatly in his head. He was sure that Virgil would understand.

Entity: Battlefrog is named.

.....Analyzing.....

Entity named Battlefrog analyzed.

Size: Medium.

Entity category: System Monster.

Organism type: Animal.

Modification: High.

Ability to evolve: Yes, system-bound.

Age: 2 Years.

Extra marks earned for being the 1st creator to build a system and use it to create an entity within the 4AA alpha protocol: Grand reward earned.

Grade: B

Rewards calculated.

- - -

Moderate reward for completion of a B-grade entity:

Congratulations Dante! You've earned a second evolution chamber!

Building a better entity in the alpha protocol is about drive and innovation. Use the second evolution chamber to continue your work and build a more diverse world.

Upgradeable.

Grand reward for being the 1st creator to build a system and use it to create an entity within the 4AA alpha protocol:

Congratulations Dante! You've advanced the Tree of the Gods!

It's fruit, unimaginable. It's seed, pure power. You have taken the first step.

Unknown changes occurring.

The Tree of the Gods is maturing!

.....Scanning.....

.....

The Tree of the Gods has borne fruit.

Walker smiled to himself. That was quite a nice surprise. He turned around and three large beings looked back at him. A large muscular man with a flowing beard frowned before saying, "You are the Creator?"

----------------------------------------

Mr. Harrison, as Walker called him, was not his name. But even were someone to call him that, it wouldn't bother him, as one name is as good as any other. They were hats to wear. Clothes. Mislabeling the soul with words that could never express what was truly at the core of someone. His core was blacker than the darkest parts of space. He knew it, and didn't care.

He strolled through broken streets that had once held smiles, cars, and children. Now, they only held the forgotten memories of a society that didn't understand what kind of creature had appeared among them. His over seven-foot frame seemed graceful once viewed, but it was an illusion to the eyes. A passerby might think he was an extraordinarily coordinated giant, maybe a professional basketball player on their best day, but really, his walk was that of a predator.

His target at this moment is a bar on the backside of San Francisco simply named "Johnnys". He pulled his robes inward with the flick of a wrist, so as they wouldn't catch his wide-frame on a too-small door, and bent his way into the entryway. There was a shallow resistance here, one who had fought tooth and nail for several days against waves of unspeakable monsters. Creatures who never snarled, never hissed or growled, but walked quietly and carefully in the night. During the day wasn't much better, as some had said that even viewing these creatures was enough to drive a person mad.

The massive wizard looked at the inhabitants, filthy after only a few days, and a sneer was adopted by his face. He didn't mean to have that reaction but he couldn't help it. They deserved this, with their soft lives and simple world. With their paradise that never knew the strife of where he came from, the constant war and battle its so-called Creator had made. If he could've chosen another he would have, but fate would have its due, and even he couldn't fight the alpha protocol. He spied a small girl in the front, unbowed by the terrors of the recent days, and his sneer transformed into a guileless smile. The tall man bent down and offered something from within the deep confines of his robe.

"A candy dear?" He asked, still twisted at the waist as he waited for her response.

"Oh, thank you mister." She said with a grin.

"Now, what is your name little girl."

"Elsie, like my grandma." She said, unwrapping a large pink lollipop and shoving it into her mouth. The crowd around here stayed silent during the exchange, too numb to react to the strange giant entering their territory, and still in shock from the recent disruption to their standardized living.

"What a wonderful name." He said slowly, savoring the words that dripped from his mouth.

"Thank you." She responded with a smile and a smack as she pulled the lollipop out of her mouth. "What's your name?"

He stood to his full height, and as he did so, one local finally grew some courage, "Who are you!" He screamed. "What do you want!"

"Oh, me?" He asked, placing his hand against his chest, right where his heart should be. He appreciated that at least one person here had some balls, but it was already too late for all of that. "I'm Nobody, and I want everything here to....end."

He stooped down and flicked away a stick that once held a paralyzing agent he'd created on a whim, then picked the little girl up off of the floor where she'd collapsed, yellow pigtails swinging in his arms. Once she was secure, he simply snapped his fingers. Monsters roved, spreading themselves and slipping past his body without even brushing his clothes. They leaked into the bar, like blood seeping into a bandage, and quiet desperation filled the air as screams and the sound of running began and ended quickly. He moved his arms in unnatural patterns, and with a pop, they both disappeared. Deep underwater off of the coast of Ireland, two bodies came into existence. With a snap, he, still holding the girl, was covered in a bubble that kept the water and pressure at bay. He moved toward a set of ruins lying forgotten in the water. As he crossed the threshold, his overlay lit up.

.....

.....Scanning.....

Omega protocol candidate recognized.

Hello Nobody.