Closing my eyes, I leaned back in my seat within the Admin Room. With the stage the world was in right now, there was not that much for me to personally handle. Rather, there were numerous projects that I could only wait for completion. Unfortunately, most of these projects rested on the shoulders of the former Keeper, making me feel as if I may be working him a bit too hard.
As such, I allowed time to progress rapidly within the world, waiting to see the results of the various changes that had been made in the world. However, before I could even get comfortable, there was already an alarm going off. Startled, I looked forward, summoning the system window.
Congratulations, EarthForceOne! You have now qualified for a promotion!
Your worlds and your strength have been evaluated at Rank 3. You now have unlimited access to the previously restricted Rank 3 system, Directed Evolution.
Congratulations! You have earned an achievement!
For promoting a world to Rank 3, you have earned the Army of Heaven achievement. +50 points, Potential Scouting.
I wasn’t aware that we were that close to a promotion, so this one sort of snuck up on me. Shaking my head, I mentally called out to everyone’s favorite catgirl. Terra… got a minute?
“For you? I’ve got ten.” Her voice responded, appearing behind me. I wasn’t surprised at all, honestly, the slight twitch in my eye was just because I was still reading over the window that appeared.
“Thanks.” I said after a moment, leaning back as her arms wrapped around me from behind. “So… mind explaining these new upgrades, oh mighty helper?”
There was a faint giggle before I felt Terra resting the side of her head against my own. “Well, I suppose it wouldn’t be too much to ask. You’re honestly advancing pretty quickly, I think. It’s been less than five years, and you’re already at the third rank…”
She shook her head lightly, her arms tightening around me. “Now… let’s start with the Directed Evolution, your new big feature. When you reached the first rank, you became able to spawn disasters in order to spur the growth of your people, or to protect them. When you reached the second, you became able to identify champions that would usher the world into a new age. Now, it’s time for a more… direct approach.”
“The Directed Evolution feature allows you to establish a ‘preview’ of what you want a particular race to evolve into in the future. Think of this as similar to purchasing a new race, but with a few key differences. The first, and most important distinction is that the final form of this race won’t appear on the market. This allows a Keeper to establish a ‘hidden weapon’ of a sort. The only thing that the market will show is the base race that was originally purchased.”
“The second distinction is that the system does not immediately spawn the race through rapid evolution. Let’s run a little experiment, shall we?” Terra asked with a playful smile, pulling up two windows in front of me. The window on the left showed the basic racial profile for a human, while the one on the right showed a similar race with drastically increased stats, and a new ‘Psionic Talent’ ability.
“Consider this a ‘before and after’ comparison. You take basic, vanilla humans, and decide that you want to create psychic juggernauts. The system identifies the key traits that need to evolve, and assigns a price based on the level of difficulty for this evolution. For this one, it would be easy, at most ten points. However, the evolution itself could take anywhere between ten and five hundred years.”
“The system will actively manipulate fate such that the evolution proceeds smoothly, but there is still an element of chance. For example, someone exploring deep space might chance upon a strange fluid that stimulates the hidden potential in their genes. This would be an evolution of a single individual, whould then need to spread his seed and aid the rest of the human race in its evolution. On the other hand, perhaps some cosmic anomaly sweeps over a planet, causing subtle changes in the fetus of an unborn human. This change would be on a global scale, but could affect other races, as well.”
After saying that much, Terra shrugged. “It’s really up to chance how it’s carried out, but know that it will be carried out in some way. On the other hand…” The image on the right changed to a crystalline being, only vaguely humanoid. Their stats were far above even the previous psionic juggernauts, and contained numerous defensive and offensive traits.
“If you were to try for an evolution like this, the system would ask for somewhere in the ballpark of five hundred points due to the drastic difference between the current and desired species. Additionally, the evolution could take thousands of years to finish while the system is identifying proper catalysts.”
I gave a small nod after hearing all of this. “So, basically… try not to change so much that it becomes an entirely different species?” I joked, a slight smile appearing on my face. “That shouldn’t be too much of a problem. What about this other one? Potential Scouting?”
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Terra gave another nod, releasing her arms from around me as she stood, lightly stretching. “That one is actually quite a bit more straightforward. Similar to how you can observe someone’s talent aura, you can take a bit of a deeper look now. The talent aura will give you more information, such as specifically what an individual is talented in.”
Well, that sounds useful. I nodded my head at her explanation. “Thanks. So… I can guide evolution, and find more accurate talent information.” It was clear that the third rank of being a Keeper was geared towards a qualitative increase of the Keeper’s forces. More so than simply cultivating gods, this would improve the starting line that people were born at.
Thinking of this, I immediately got to work. There had been quite a few imbalances in the different races that were created under my watch. The first of which were the heroc, who were so much stronger than everyone else in my world that it seemed almost broken. The latest example was even worse, and that was the sylvan race. Naturally born as demigods, capable of utilizing a hivemind that existed over a vast forest, their potential was far above anyone else within the world.
As such, I wanted to level the playing field a little bit. I pulled up each of the different races, increasing their stats similar to the heroc and giving each of them a unique ability, stemming from the idea of psionics that Terra mentioned previously. Each of these abilities would be a new way for the race to naturally utilize mana, even if they were not trained as a mage.
For the halflings, I gave them the power of invisibility. For dwarves, the ability to control fire to help in their forges. Kitsune received a ‘calming presence’, which would help them prevent fights from breaking out. Perhaps the most significant of these was the upgrade I gave to the centaurs, unlocking their mana.
Since the dawn of their creation, most centaurs had been utterly incapable of wielding mana. Only those lucky enough to be born as specific variants within the race had the potential to learn magic. Most, meanwhile, were only capable of learning how to wield ki. This upgrade would not bring the average centaur to the level of a unicorn, but it would at least open up the potential for them to learn magic.
Of course, since I was doing all of this with the other races, I naturally had to give some love to sylvans as well. While they have an incredible starting line, their numbers are too few, and too incapable of growth. Thus, I reworked the life cycle of the mother trees. With this change, the trees would have an indefinite lifespan, and their normal spawning cycle would repeat itself every thousand years.
While this would not increase the lifespan of the lower-ranked sylvans, it would ensure that a grove did not die out as soon as the ancestor tree passed away. With this, they would be able to gradually grow and increase their numbers over time.
The reason that I elected to change every race was in the hope that some large-scale event would occur, similar to what Terra mentioned before. If the evolutionary path was already established for each race, that meant that the system would take measures to ensure that any large scale effects would not inadvertantly damage unspecified races.
Once I was done assining every race their changes, I looked over the amount of points that it would cost me. In total… I would be spending fifty points, due to the fact that I wasn’t creating any truly mind-boggling changes. Most of what I had designated would be something easily achievable simply by having the child inherit a portion of their parents’ stats. The only true challenge would be the new abilities, and the change made to the sylvans.
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Tsubaki, as the representative of the Keeper when the person himself was not around, had naturally created her own palace on the planet Sanctum. Originally, she wished to move the entire Sky Citadel there, but realized that doing such a thing would be against the initial intention behind having the citadel in the first place. Not only that, but Dana was not a divine being. It was questionable how well she would be able to survive within that planet’s special system.
Thus, she instead chose to create a replica of the Sky Citadel, a floating palace of light that hovered high above a mountain. There, she left a single avatar that could be used as a point of contact, should any of the gods need to deliver a message to her.
After coordinating with Ashley, she had chosen to place her palace on the opposite side of the globe from Night City. Thus, while Ashley commanded a domain of eternal night, Tsubaki’s palace created a domain of eternal light. Granted, she did not erect a city around her palace, but its mere presence had proven enough to attract a few gods to reside in the surrounding areas.
While her avatar remained within the Palace of Light, her true body was in Deckan, studying under the tutelage of her sworn enemy, the petter of all things nine-tailed. To spite him, she had dispersed one of her light tails, leaving her with only eight. At first, James had not realized this change, but the face that she saw when he noticed made the entire process worth it.
Now, she and Dana were learning from James how to use special energy waves to tap into the void, drawing its special energy into a confined container and converting it into usable power. The first steps of this process had confounded them for months, before Dana seemed to receive a sudden burst of inspiration.
After her enlightenment, she began to tackle the matter from a magical angle. Having experience with creating even a Saint-level energy through the use of magic fomrulas, it was easy to reproduce the effect needed to draw on the void once she understood the core mechanic.
Even James himself was surprised by her ingenuity when it came to arranging geometric spells, as he had hardly any contact with true magic in his time as a Keeper. When he watched Dana first extract a stable void particle and contain it within a spell diagram, he felt almost proud to have taught her the basics.
Tsubaki, though she may not have been as gifted as Dana when it came to magic, was incredibly sensitive to energies. Whereas Dana was able to construct a spell diagram to automate the process of extracting energy from the void, Tsubaki used the manipulation of her own energies to achieve a similar effect.
Unfortunately, Tsubaki’s method could not be employed on a large scale like Dana’s automated procedure. Instead, James began teaching her in another direction, instructing her how to change the void energy into different types of physical matter. If she was able to master that, she would be able to create items from nothing. Although this would not enable her to mass-produce energy like Dana, Dana’s method was similarly unable to be used on such a small, controlled scale.