"What about... the people on the base?" I dreaded the answer as I asked Róta.
"I collected their souls and teleported back to Valhalla, my Lord. They were split between Valhalla and Fólkvangr. We were recovering from the shock of being disconnected from the remote piloting system when the monster struck. It was camouflaged."
We became too confident. The monsters that retreated were bait, they kited us like a good bunch of battle-craze berserks. One Armagellykull snuck in from the south and blew up. The people living in Canberra were lost.
The Island of land, what was left of Indonesia, plummeted into the magma below. I fired my jump jets and flew up. We lost the Guardians and their families. The former and the senior Rangers became Einherjar.
Alone in the cockpit of my giant robot, I soared up. One mile. Two miles. I screamed in 14.4 Modem language. They sacrificed an entire army to lure us. I disrespected the rules of engagement and suffered for that.
What now? I stared down at the smoke-covered world. The two glowing holes in the north and south of Australia were swallowing up the oceans, melting the ice caps, and sending huge plumes of vapor up. Volcanoes erupted everywhere. This time, the oceans would boil and most of the water would escape the atmosphere into outer space. Without its water coverage, Earth would dry and die.
We failed the planet. Once. I had to make sure I wouldn't fail again.
I changed the center of mass on the Saturn V rockets. Turned them sideways and fired the rockets. Off they went, into all corners of the world. With half a million of Materialization speed, I left small blimps behind.
Hours passed, days passed, months passed. The rockets went on and on until their fuel was spent, leaving the qDCSC balloons behind. My link range had increased to 190 miles. With 135 blimps, I covered the whole equator. Then 140 from pole to pole. And more covering every meridian, until I had sight of the whole planet.
Beacons shone down on the volcanoes. I shut them down with massive slabs of Tungsten. The heaviest metal on Earth had a melting point of 6,150F (3,400C), way higher than the temperatures lava could reach. I closed the holes left in North America and Oceania. Then I covered the Tungsten with a layer of bedrock.
Two years passed.
I rescued a few survivors who remained trapped in their underground shelters. Aside from the British Islands and Scandinavia, surrounded by Jormungandr's corpse, no other human being remained on Earth.
The Manasphere itself was damaged. The planet's Core, the magical one, was wounded. Mana storms and strange phenomena happened everywhere.
Pipes of Dungeon Walls connected the dirigibles. Then from these pipes, panels filled in the gaps between the pipes. Any Infernali still on the surface was brutally bombarded into oblivion. No World Bosses remained. Without people to feed on, they had retreated to their home dimension.
Finally, Earth became covered in a sphere of steel. To cover the entire planet with my volume budget, The sphere was only two inches thick. I shrank the space inside to make it twenty inches tall and planted grass and small shrubs. I now had a whole planet's worth of plains surface to give me Mana.
I had lost track of time. I also became a Kardashev Type I Dungeon.
I cleared the volcanic ash and smoke. I shone artificial sunlight down on the planet, following a day and night cycle. I spent months burning all the DM I could to make ozone above the cover. Then fixing the land below. I Replicated water and filled the oceans. My beacons would clean up the ground, remove the dry, burnt, and sterile land, and replace it with fertile soil.
> > Your knowledge and training improved your Landscaping Skill to rank X — Restoration of damaged ecosystems is 80% cheaper.
Which meant I worked five times faster, half a million DM per minute.
Like a massive Noah's Ark, I spawned animals and plants. Using Perks I had long forgotten, a semblance of equilibrium was restored.
1. Genetic Diversity: Animals you spawn have improved mutation rates. These mutations increase genetic diversity and are usually not harmful.
2. Helpful Bugs & BIodiversity Completion: When creating animals and plants, you may spawn, at no additional cost, other animals and insects that have helpful ecological synergies. They appear randomly in the vicinity and provide no benefits but biomass.
3. Dungeon Mana Cashback: When relinquishing control of an animal you spawned and allowed to move out of your Domain, you receive 75% of the resources used to spawn it back. This animal is no longer a spawned creature and is worth no resources to you if you kill or absorb its corpse.
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Creatures I would forget like bugs, small mammals, crustaceans, and krill were all spawned along with the larger animals. The third Perk allowed me to save some energy now that I could spend more DM per minute than my inner world generated.
Time, for a Dungeon, was meaningless. I filled the oceans, corrected the salinity, and restored whole continents. The ruins of civilization, I left these as they were. Let the future inhabitants of the planet learn from their history.
*
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*
Then, something happened in Britain. Jormungandr's corpse started to stir and shake. I prepared myself, in case it was some new giant monster I would have to fight. The shriveled carcass split and a massive wyrm came out of it.
Casting my senses on the creature, I could feel its Divinity. It was stronger than mine, purer than mine.
That explained the pure bloodline. This creature was Loki's grandson.
I had no skin in this game. I had repaired Earth out of a sense of guilt. But I was capable of creating a whole planet in my inner world. I didn't even need Earth. Fighting for it was pointless.
I started to dissolve my Dungeon.
*
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*
The dimensional boundaries broke around the planet. I saw Earth, or Midgard, floating inside a dew drop, and eight other spheres with other worlds. They were brought together. Asgard and Alfenheim fused together, the land adjusting to fit together and the dew drops growing in size. Niflheim, Muspelheim, and Hel fused too, with the dimension of the dead as a buffer area between the hot and cold Realms. Finally, Midgard, Vanaheim, Jotunnheim, and Nidavellir fused, forming one super-massive planet.
It took the magic of Four out of Nine Realms to fix Earth's damaged Core. The wounds were left behind by three monsters only. Some elves, dwarves, giants, and other creatures now called Midgard home.
The Lord of Midgard dove into the new planet's Core and fused with it. The nature of the world's magic changed.
> > You have been disconnected from the System. Your Personal System Core (PSC) has taken over management of your Status. You lost the Daydream power.
>
> > "Gray Alien": That's it, buddy. I've been reassigned to another position. This world is under new management. I'm sorry it didn't work out. Best of luck. Perhaps we'll see each other again somewhere in this multiverse. I left a parting gift. Check your Status.
It was an instant catastrophe. The people in my Inner World lost all System powers and abilities. Some accidents happened and a few fatalities, like a guy that was carrying twenty tons overhead. He was suddenly crushed when his body became that of an ordinary mortal again.
People started asking what happened, and panic was settling in.
I opened my Status to see what this parting Gift was.
> > You have one Open Sub-Class slot. Do not ignore this message.
I'd forgotten. I pulled the list of available Classes and sorted them by rarity. The first one, above even the (Mythic) choices, was this.
> > System Core (NA / Core).
>
> > Installs the required modules to upgrade your PSC and provide System abilities to people in your Inner World. Does not grant any benefits to you aside from Administrative rights. No levels, no Attributes, no Skills, no Traits, and no Perks. All people under your System Core's purview will be limited to level 100.
I selected it. My PSC grew, metaphysically speaking, and connected to the people in my inner world. Though it wouldn't save those who were killed during the outage, it reinstated the Status of every people but those above level 100 were nerfed. It was inevitable. From what I understood, my upgraded PSC couldn't handle System profiles greater than level 100 and still provide service for everyone.
Unsurprisingly enough, high-level people demanded much more energy from the System than lower-leveled ones. It was almost a quadratic relationship. It was one of the reasons later sub-Classes gave fewer benefits.
I had no place in Midgard anymore. With a new System in place, my very presence would clash with it. So, I set a new rule for my Dungeon. "No Mana shall leak past my Dungeon Walls."
Then I fired my jump jets again. My Galaxy Defender soared up into the sky. Ten seconds later, another burst. Up. Up. And ahead.
I left the new planet's biosphere. Like Superman, I spent a moment staring at the blue sphere beneath me. I didn't recognize it. None of the continents remained the same. Some parts were recognizable but they were in the wrong place. I focused up, into outer space. Then I fired the jump jets again.
My Mecha left the biosphere and I started paying the hefty cost of maintaining the Mana inside of it, instead of letting it leak to the outside. I had enough Mana stockpiled and more was being created in my Mana Crystal factories. Just like that dragon Goddess, I was now another vagrant deity floating aimlessly at the cosmos.
So long, and thanks for all the fish.