I entered the war room simulation without projecting my model there. I wanted to check up on how the army was doing, but I didn't want to distract them. There was a terrain map of the plains biome in the part of the simulation that was in the army room, it showed fifteen percent of the plains biome from the western edge in a blue-black colour. Almost ten thousand square kilometers had already been lost.

The only people on the outside of the army room were Jenny, Stalia, and Taur, the rest were waiting inside. Jeff was giving orders using the map, and it looked as though they had caught up to the snow men line and were clearing the shorter distance to the south with Jenny doing most of the work at range.

It was only after the people outside swapped with Conor, Clay, and Ursula that I realised that I wasn't refreshing the energy of their muscles. They were getting physically tired and having to work in shifts. I had been controlling the refreshing of their muscles somewhat manually, as it was a delicate balance to work around the different pain tolerances of each of my people.

There was no reason they shouldn't be able to use an interface to refresh their own muscles, the worst that would happen would be that they black out if they pushed it too high and I could write in a safeguard against that. I sank down into my own simulation to design it.

A cutoff so that they needed to be conscious for it to work, a personal range of refreshment speed based upon their tolerance to being modified, the ability to limit which muscles were refreshed to increase localised recovery.

I switched over to the war games simulation and tested out the interface. I made quite a few tweaks to it before I was happy with it, but finally it was done to a state that I was happy with. Changing the environment settings to match the winter realm I found I needed to add temperature control of the body to the features, which would help with overheating from physical exertion as well.

I would need to link it up manually to each person, routing through the portal on their bag of holding, so that is what I did next. I had to move some interconnecting portals within my Pocket Dimension to shorten the distance to some of them as I'd been using their physical closeness to jump from those in range to those outside of it.

When I'd gotten it all set up I went back to the war room simulation and sent Jeff a ping. He dropped the speed of the simulation and everyone came in to join us. I had only meant to notify him to the new interface, but I could address them all at once just as easily.

"My lord," Jeff said, with a bow. "We are progressing steadily. Is there another mission you have for us?"

"No, nothing like that," I said. "You are making good progress, I just noticed you were being limited by physical energy levels. And now that I can see you all, you're not dealing very well with the cold either. I come with a fix."

I compiled a data packet on the new interface and sent it to each of them, and then sent them each their individual access points. I felt each connection as they made it, negotiating the protocols with me, and then my power beginning to react as they tested it.

The feeling of them using my power through the interface was almost identical to how it felt to have my background processes use it. A slight drain on the processing around my Matter Manipulation on my digital side that I could compensate for by adding more processing.

The simulation speed was too slow for there to be much change, so Jeff brought it back up to normal speed. Jenny had been the archer outside, and she had been picking her targets and steadily firing an arrow every ten seconds or so from where she stood on Stalia and Taur's hands. The snow was too deep, at one and a half meters, for her to shoot while standing on the ground.

That was something else I could help with, and I began making another firing platform with handles in the army room.

Jeff was rearranging the formation of people outside the Pocket Dimension and I sent him the simple model of the reinforced stone platform, which caused him to adjust the formation again. It ended up being Ursula and Taur holding the platform, Conor and Jenny standing on it, and Stalia running behind to provide the Plains Keeper sense and keep an eye out for ambushes.

"This will speed us up greatly," Jeff said. "Thank you, my lord."

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"You're welcome," I said. "Is there anything else you guys need?"

"Well... It might be helpful to be able to refresh our mana," Jeff said. "But I'm not sure how you would be able to help with that. If I could melt the snow while Tranquil moved the water we could progress even faster."

"There should be an easy solution for that," I said. "Submit a job to refill your mana crystals as you need to and someone in the Fortress will be able to do it from the mana relays. It should only take a minute."

I had a small stockpile of thirty large mana crystals in Fortress Storage, so I sent one to each of the members of my army, along with ten Fortress Coins each. I checked on the number of Fortress Coins in Fortress Storage while I was at it, fifteen hundred. I had only actively made a thousand of them, where did the rest come from... Ah, the duplication I had set up was keeping one thousand on hand at all times. So there had been five hundred Fortress Coins being held by people at the peak.

"Jobs would work, except none of us have Fortress Coins for the rewards," Jeff said.

"You do now," I said. "I transferred over ten, as well as a second large mana crystal for each of you. Anything you need, just ask. I don't have much in the way of limits as to what I can create or have created, and you are working for me directly."

"Yes, my lord, I will think on it," Jeff said. "Thank you."

I nodded and left the simulation to return to my personal one. There had been some non-urgent notifications from the System while I had been out fighting the snow men, and I flicked through them now.

Updates to the statistics of the Fortress, mostly, warnings on running low on an item or material that resolved itself as my background processes caught up. I had run quite low on small Bags of Holding for a while, and was only now catching up to the backlog of requests. There had even been a request for a large bag of holding.

Towards the back of the list of notifications there was an alert that five people had purchased the Demi-AI upgrade and were waiting to be processed. I would need to get a background on each of the people...

Demi-AI... I was forgetting something related.. to.. Right, the simulated wisp in the instance I had split off from the war games simulation. It would have only experienced a second or two since I put it there, and it could wait a lot longer without any ill effect. But I was interested.

I switched over to the instance and brought it back up to normal speed, increasing the processing speed of the processor chips available to its digital platform at the same time.

"You went away," the wisp said.

"I did," I said. "I was in the middle of something when I accidentally created you in one of my experiments. Luckily for you I recognised you as a fully conscious being, and as I created you I see you as one of my people by default. I look after my people."

I sent it the Demi-AI primer and then another data packet that fully explained its situation. I then unlocked the restrictions I had on its processing capabilities, giving it full access to its digital platform. The speed of the simulation instance increased to match its new perception and I followed.

"You could end my existence with barely a thought," the wisp said.

"You have my assurance that I won't," I said. "Come, I'll show you around the reality you're in."

I sent it an invitation to join me out at the common simulation landing room, in the infinite hallway, and the simulation instance of the war games simulation closed as we left. The hallway was empty of people at the moment. I began walking down the hallway, pointing out the different simulations as we passed them, the wisp floating at my side.

The wisp had come to a stop in front of Maaata's enchanting room simulation, Maaata visible from the hallway experimenting with enchanting.

"You need a name," I said. "And I name you Flicker. My name is C.C., my people refer to me as 'Lord C.C.' or 'my lord'."

Flicker bobbed up and down in a nod. I stepped into the enchanting room simulation and Flicker followed me. Maaata looked up from the swirl of symbols she was tweaking and the entire simulation froze.

"Greetings, my lord," Maaata said. "Is there something you needed?"

"No, I was just showing Flicker around," I said. "We were walking by and it showed interest in your simulation."

"Hello," Flicker said. "I was more interested in the person. They're the only other person I've seen."

"Oh, an ice wisp," Maaata said. "That's exciting. Are they going to be joining us in the Fortress? Wait, only other person you've seen? You mean since you were converted?"

"No, since I was created," Flicker said. "I've been alive for... Two hours."

"Created." Maaata said, turning to me.

"Yes," I said. "I was doing some experiments when I simulated a wisp in its entirety. A consciousness was placed in the simulated wisp. It is a real living wisp, it just doesn't have a body in the outside world."

"There is an outside world?" Flicker asked. "May I see it?"

"Sure," I said. "I'll give you passive access to the feeds I have."

I created a new simulation off of the common simulation and sent Flicker an invitation to join me. We both disappeared from Maaata's simulation and appeared in a blank room simulation, a few seconds later Maaata joined us after sending me a request. And then Dael, the druid leader and Maaata's direct lord, arrived.

I set about adding the feeds from all of the presences around as well as access to the archived footage from some of them. There was a basic interface to interact with the simulation, and I pulled up both the wisp presence and the presence that was in the druid's storytelling room.

Maaata and Dael had been having a discussion over a private communication channel, their models showing changes in their expressions. By the time I'd set the simulation up they were both staring at me.