Aurivy hummed to herself as she walked through the streets of the meeting room space with Julia, the latter smiling down at her. “What would you like to do next?” She asked curiously.
Aurivy thought about it for a moment, looking around. By now, they had played most of Aurivy’s favorite games that she wanted to share with Julia, so she wasn’t entirely sure what to do with the rest of the meeting.
As she was debating where to go next, a familiar voice called out to her. “Hey, Aurivy!” When she turned to look, she saw a petite girl covered in white fur, a pair of floppy, rabbit ears standing atop her head.
“Oh! Hey, Starkiller!” Aurivy grinned, waving towards Balu.
“I haven’t seen Bihena around, so I was worried you guys had sat this meeting out.” Balu puffed her cheeks out. She had always enjoyed spending time with Bihena, and would try to find her whenever one of these meetings rolled around.
“Hmm…” Aurivy pursed her lips in thought. “She’s probably in a dancing game somewhere. I caught her practicing her dancing a few times over the last couple of weeks.”
Balu’s eyes went wide at that, imagining the typically stoic Bihena dancing to a fast-paced song. “Really? No wonder I haven’t found her. I kept looking around the simulation games.”
Aurivy nodded her head with a smile. “Want to go look for her together?”
“Sure!” Balu agreed excitedly, before looking at Julia. “I’m Starkiller, another Keeper. You’re one of EarthForceOne’s, right?”
“That’s right.” Julia confirmed with a gentle smile, having already been told about the Keeper titles long ago.
“Speaking of… Lifre is one of your group too, right? I remember seeing her with all of you before.” Balu looked at Aurivy, who blinked in confusion.
“Lifre? Yeah, she is. Why, did she get into some trouble or something?”
Balu giggled, shaking her head. “No, she’s doing a live stream at the moment. Some adventure thing. Her stream name was… ah, I can’t remember it now… but yeah! It seemed really fun, and a few people are still watching her.”
Aurivy seemed briefly confused at that, but didn’t press further. She knew that Balu’s memory was not the best in the world. She had an entire wall of her Admin Room devoted to notes that she wanted to remember. It was only natural that Lifre’s stream name wouldn’t have made it to that wall, at least not yet. And without her remembering it on her own, there was no point in trying to push for more.
“Right. I’m sure we’ll find that later. For now, let’s go find some dancing games.” Aurivy grinned, leading Balu and Julia back towards the gaming buildings in the meeting space.
Perhaps the best part of the meeting space, at least in Aurivy’s mind, was how accommodating it was to its guests. If a facility didn’t exist, but people wanted it, it would pop into being. If it did exist, and people were looking for it, it would guide them subconsciously to their destination. Naturally, this wouldn’t guide anyone to a specific person, but if they knew where that person was, that was another matter.
With that in mind, it didn’t take long for the trio to find Bihena. She was indeed at a dancing game, her outfit having changed from when she left. Now, she wore a pair of tight, black pants and a matching shirt, standing on a small platform with her eyes closed as she danced to the music.
Balu’s eyes widened, surprised to see her friend dancing like this. She looked at the score on the machine, which climbed higher by the second, and then at Bihena again. “Wow, she’s actually really good, huh?”
Aurivy snickered, nodding her head. “Yeah, she doesn’t get many chances to cut loose, so I guess she’s been looking forward to this.”
Soon, the song ended, and Bihena smiled, letting out a long breath of relief. Her eyes opened, and she caught sight of the three people watching her. Immediately, her body stiffened, eyes widening. “Uhm… how long were you watching…?”
“Long enough.” Aurivy teased, causing Bihena’s face to go bright red.
“You were so cool, Bihena!” Balu called out, jumping up to stand with Bihena on the platform. “I never knew that you could move like that!”
Bihena’s head dipped, stammering. “T-thanks. It’s just a hobby of mine.”
----------------------------------------
Chelsea lost track of the time that she spent in the Keeper Defense Protocol game. Every round, she would meticulously plan out for every contingency that she could imagine. Until she was confident that she couldn’t come up with anything new. This led to many of the rounds taking quite a while to prepare for, but few problems emerged once she committed.
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That wasn’t to say that she always got everything right on her first try. Once the system began throwing memetic threats and void entities into the mix, that was a whole new layer of complexity that she had to account for. She needed to devote specialized units to creating anti-memes ahead of time, and create information protocols that would limit their spread.
After fifteen rounds, her assets were not limited to just one planet’s resources. At first, she was given a second planet to control, which meant even more micromanaging that she had to do. Then, an entire colonized solar system.
The best part of her meticulous planning began to shine as the scale increased, allowing her to reuse the majority of her earlier plans. If she was missing a key asset, she would alter the plans accordingly, but otherwise she would assign the premade plans to the same organizations, and then create a larger, overarching protocol that connected the various facilities and planets together.
The more the system scaled her assets, the more her old plans could be put into use. Where most players would begin to panic, overwhelmed by the units at their disposal, Chelsea handled it with a smile. There were contingencies that she created in the first five levels that weren’t activated until she was past level twenty.
“It’d be nice if the Keeper had any sort of combat ability.” She muttered to herself, crossing her arms as she looked at the scenario playing out. In this round, a void monster broke through the world barrier with its main body, beginning to devour entire solar systems with every moment. “Honestly, it’s a bit unrealistic for a Keeper at this scale to be unable to fight.”
She had tried, but she couldn’t give the Keeper any abilities, whether through magical training or scientific weaponry. The only thing that she could have the Keeper do was communicate with designated people, or move to places where she had set up her protocols. If any enemy reached the Keeper, the round immediately ended.
Chelsea watched as the Apocalypse Protocol that she created kicked in. The residents of her planets immediately fled to another universe, while three Fallen Gods emerged in the void with a giant weapon. They aimed it at the damaged universe, where the void monster was still rampaging, and fired a single blast that shattered the sphere.
With that, the void monster was destroyed, together with the universe that it had intended to devour from the inside.
Chelsea began to wonder what sort of assets she would have to play with in the next round, when a prompt appeared in front of her. Chelsea read over it, her eyes widening slightly. “There’s only one round left? Then…” She hesitated, thinking what sort of monster the system would throw at her to finish things off.
It has to be an Origin, right? She thought. The problem, however, was determining what sort of Origin would appear. If she failed in the first attempt, the second would likely not be the same type. She had to create plans for as many types of Origins as she could.
“Let’s start with the Keeper placement.” She muttered, looking at the list of assets. Sure enough, there were devices tagged as being able to create custom worlds. “To prevent the Keeper from being instantly killed by something akin to an Origin of Death, let’s put him inside a total null zone. No, that won’t be enough to stop an Origin… we’ll need to layer it with multiple world barriers. Every other barrier will be a null field to weaken the Origin’s power. And if the universe is destroyed, it should be set to automatically transport to another one.”
Chelsea’s tongue poked out of the side of her mouth as she began to create a new addition to her protocols, specifically targeting Origins. She didn’t have an Origin of her own in her assets, so she had to find a way to defeat one through other means.
Granted, just because she was confident that the opponent would be an Origin, that did not make her scrap her other contingencies. She wanted to be truly prepared for anything, whether her theory was right or wrong.
Eventually, when Chelsea was confident that she had created an impregnable fortress around the Keeper, and ways to neutralize more than a dozen different types of Origins, she submitted her protocols. She pursed her lips, waiting to see what would happen. Whenever an enemy appeared, there would always be a red ping to draw her attention.
And soon, such a ping appeared. And another… and another. Chelsea’s eyes widened as she saw tens… hundreds of pings appear from all directions. Her opponent wasn’t an Origin, as she had guessed, but it was arguably something worse. The system threw every enemy at her that she had faced in every previous level en masse. Insectoid monsters that originally attacked an isolated facility were now galactic threats. Memetic monsters warped the minds and bodies of countless citizens.
One by one, her protocols began to activate, neutralizing the weaker threats first so that they could focus on the bigger foes. However, Chelsea knew exactly what was going to happen. She had created these plans, after all. Even the Apocalypse Protocol wouldn’t be able to handle the monsters attacking multiple dimensions at once.
She closed her eyes, letting out a deep sigh as an isolated facility began to assemble a new weapon, per her orders. If all of creation was on the verge of destruction, the Final Protocol would activate.
The time within the simulation was accelerated dramatically in accordance with the simulation’s scale. Years passed in minutes, but soon, a Fallen God vanished from the isolated facility, appearing within the void. It held a small, black sphere with a single button, which it pressed with a solemn expression.
The Final Protocol activated, the machine letting out a pulse of chaotic information that distorted the void, and then a second pulse, designed to counter the first and create a ripple effect. These pulses would continuously repeat, shaking the very fabric of the void. The first to be destroyed was the Fallen God holding the machine, and then the nearest void beasts. Soon, entire universes began to collapse, torn apart by the chaotic ripples.
Eventually, there was nothing left in the void, nothing except for a single, miniscule speck. An artificially created world that kept jumping from place to place, reforming its barrier as soon as one was destroyed.
“The only one that needs to survive an invasion is the Keeper.” Chelsea said, crossing her arms. “If the Keeper lives, there is hope for everything to be restored. If the Keeper dies, everything is lost.” She knew that it was a cynical thought, but this final level had proven that she wasn’t wrong. Without creating an Origin of their own, through methods that Chelsea did not yet know, the only way that she could imagine dealing with such an overwhelming invasion was through the total destruction of everything other than the Keeper.