“Thank every god that has and ever will ascended that’s over,” the entity known as the Creator said as he leaned back in a chair located inside his observation deck.
“That instance did raise some issues, didn’t it?” his assistant asked as she looked over a screen of scrolling data.
“Some issues…?” He stood up and slowly turned to her. “Two premature awakenings, the last of which not only penetrated the inner shielding, but almost destroyed it beyond repair. I’ve had to insert another world in place of the second floor and had to push back every subsequent floor just to ensure they didn’t destroy everything by accident. There shouldn’t have been any awakenings, let alone two in one instance…”
“It is quite impressive to have both space and fire awakenings. For such sought after elements to manifest, despite the laws set out in this pocket realm…” She looked down at the object she held in her hands. “The flame girl…” She quickly scanned the tablet for her name. “Arika. For such power to form around only anger… I have never seen a more terrifying initiate. And to have two much-sought-after elements manifest through your suppression and not destroy themselves in the process is, well, remarkable.”
“Remarkable? If Orion’s awakening had been any more powerful, it would have penetrated the outer shielding! We would now all be enslaved or dead! If I didn’t redirect resources, the shielding would have been overwhelmed tenfold. To make matters worse, it wasn’t even me that saved their powers, it was him!” The creator slumped back in his chair, even the effort of standing draining what little energy remained to him after the last few weeks.
“It was him? What do you mean, sir?”
“He did it, not me. I was too busy making sure not even a tendril of his power leaked out. He manipulated time and reversed most of the damage to their cores. I had nothing to do with it.”
“I retract my statement,” she said, followed by a pregnant pause. “The girl is not the most terrifying initiate I have ever seen.”
“I agree. I knew him to be promising, but this…” He held his neck, willing the ache running up his spine to disappear. “Soul damage is truly miserable. It’s been so long since I felt it, I had almost forgotten what pain felt like.”
His assistant stepped up and put her hand on his shoulder, pouring some of her own power into the muscle fibers. “I have all the faith in you, sir. You knew these initiates would be a handful, the two prodigies in particular. Not only that, but after Orion’s first awakening, you hid the power perfectly with your presence, then redirected resources on the off chance that he would have a more powerful awakening, despite my advising it to be unnecessary. Your planning has been perfectly adequate.”
“Yes, but who could have foreseen a third prodigy—in the same world as one of the others, no less?” He sighed deeply. “I worry that ‘adequate’ will not be enough when it comes to these Earthlings, as they call themselves.”
“I would have thought such a spiritually vacant people to be much more amenable to the changes…”
“And that was my first of two major mistakes,” the Creator admitted as some of his assistant’s power temporarily relieved his aching body. “Their society seemed ripe for testing. A relatively peaceful world, with only a few warring states; a lack of spiritual energy and the subsequent gods that plague other worlds; a focus on intellectualism and science, misguided as it may have been. They seemed the perfect test subjects… yet they were clearly not.”
“As I recall, their levels of psychopathy were incredibly low too, correct?”
“They were. They only have a psychopathy rate of approximately one percent. A rate which I still assert results from their peaceful world.”
“Oh? How so?”
“The genetic trait isn’t inherited by so many when everyone is allowed to procreate, not only the victors of battle. Psychopathy is a beneficial evolutionary trait when your position in society can be derived from your willingness to inflict pain and death upon others.”
“That makes sense…” His assistant appeared thoughtful. “If there is such a small percentage of individuals displaying psychopathic behavior, a percentage which should have been even smaller given the relative immunity of such individuals to suicidality, why were the results of the first floors so riddled with betrayal and violence?”
The Creator stared out at the wall of displays before him, the ten-by-ten field of screens reflecting the results of each instance. He sighed at the sheer depth of his failure.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
“That the same occurred in almost every instance of earthlings, each of which contained a vast number of unique individuals, would make the chance of it being a coincidence a statistical anomaly. We can only assume that it results from their society, then, that they reacted so terribly. An oversight on my part.”
“Is that why the System gave out such barbaric abilities? It handled everything based on their latent potential and soul trajectory, after all. Should we have placed stricter parameters on the System?”
The Creator shook his head.
“The System needed complete freedom, else our most promising initiates may have been given abilities unsuitable to their potential. Given the direness of our situation, such a possibility is anathema to our task.”
“What of the removal of their memories? Should that have been scrapped entirely, or maybe even scaled back?”
He shook his head again.
“That, too, was a necessity. The removal of their memories allowed their brains to create new, healthier neural pathways that would have been stunted, if not entirely impossible to create, had they been cognizant of their previous lives, and most importantly, their previous deaths. Thankfully, the newly forged pathways, along with responsibilities and tangible goals, seem to have been enough to drag most of them through the muck of their returned memories.”
She looked away from her tablet and directly at the Creator, his words seeming to drive her towards a conclusion.
“The only other quantifiable variable we could have changed then was the incentive structure. Do you agree?”
He smiled kindly.
“An astute observation, assistant.”
The barest smile crossed her face at the praise.
“That was my second mistake,” the Creator continued. “Implementing the logic and incentive structure of what they call ‘video games’ seems to have exacerbated their condition. It was my intent to use something familiar to them in order to make the transition as smooth as possible. I had intended to give their frontal lobes something familiar to latch onto, but it worked all too well. Initially, a larger number than I’d like to admit truly viewed it as a game, something completely removed from reality, and therefore, lacked empathy for their fellow humans.”
“Most of that behavior seemed to have been curtailed by the premature return of memories…”
“Yet, a minority remained, blood thirsty and willing to sacrifice other lives for the barest gain in power—tangible or perceived.”
“What exactly would you have changed, given the opportunity?”
“Let me ask you, assistant. Given the results, and given our task at hand, what would you have changed?”
She thought for but a moment, an insignificant amount of time given the scope of the question.
“Nothing. Perhaps maybe even more defensive shielding, but we lacked the time for that. In a vacuum, each variable was fine, but combined, they became… problematic. Yet, if I were given the ability to go back in time and do it all over, I would have changed absolutely nothing, lest I alter the results achieved.”
The Creator barked a laugh that ended in a wracking cough.
“I reached the same conclusion. We sit atop a throne of bones and spent lives, decrying the fate of the miserable souls beneath us, yet we would change nothing to spare such misery and death. That is the depth of our task’s importance, assistant.” He looked her in the eyes. “Do not forget it. Allow not our path to stray, despite the blood on our hands. For even if a trillion souls were on the line, the road before us and the task at hand takes precedent.”
She nodded, his sobering words and sharp gaze chilling her to the bone.
He let out a deep, weary sigh.
“That doesn’t make it any easier though, does it?”
Wordlessly, she shook her head.
“Between the preemptive return of memories, the creation and insertion of worlds, the manual defense of our defensive shielding, and the weight of our transgressions, I find myself exhausted. Would you help me to the roof, assistant? I wish to look upon our work.”
She stepped up and grabbed his arm, taking his insignificant weight upon her as she led him towards the elevating platform that traversed floors. As they slowly moved, she wondered how the presence of her master was so great despite his adolescent stature. Such was the weight of the man’s soul and conviction.
The platform silently raised as she pressed the controls, and constructs beyond her comprehension whirred into motion. The roof opened above them, revealing the empty, black sky of the pocket realm. She knew that beyond the dark, in every direction, lay the multitude of shielding constructs that her master had implemented in this place, and yet, she felt exposed out there—like she was beneath the gazes of their countless enemies, completely at their mercy.
She helped him walk over to a chair on the otherwise-empty roof of their vessel. He sat down and plastered on a smile she knew to be forced.
“Thank you. I would like some time alone to ponder our subjects. Would you mind leaving me for a while?”
“Of course, Master.”
He grunted in disapproval. “What did I say about calling me that?”
“That I am to call you Master only when the company and situation require it.” She rolled her eyes, showing him exactly what she thought of the matter.
He laughed.
“That’s right.” He exaggeratedly waved her away. “Now shoo. Your great and benevolent Master has matters of universal importance to ponder.”
She smiled at his words as she turned and left. The closing of the roof slats behind him let him know she had departed, and he was alone.
He looked out at the sea of black surrounding him. Pinpricks of light bounced back from the hundreds of worlds that surrounded their vessel, so far away as to appear as stars in a night sky. To some, the artificial sun their vessel hid inside of would be a marvel—an unimaginably complex construct that allowed them to see out of unobstructed; to him, it was simply another cog in this machine of misery he had created. The weight of every soul upon the worlds pressed down on him, and finally, finding himself alone, he lowered his emotional defenses. The magnitude of suffering experienced across hundreds-of-thousands of souls washed over him, worming its way deep into his core, and his bottom lip trembled.
For every soul snuffed out because of his actions, and for every soul yet burning brightly, he wept.