I shuddered as I read through Chel’s surface thoughts as she was writing the letter. To use only a simple, written letter as a weapon of assassination was definitely not one of the things I had in mind for her to do. I thought that she might sneak into the ninja clan’s hidden world, secretly disrupt their operations, and deal the finishing blow when the elder let his guard down. This seemed… almost too simple. At the same time, it was something that the ninjas themselves wouldn’t see coming.
To put it more accurately, they couldn’t see it coming. Even if it was standard procedure to digitize such handwritten notes, the power that Chel left on the envelope itself would stop them from doing so. I could only watch as Chel slipped into a beauty salon with a smile, slipping that letter to the cashier before turning around and leaving.
And with that, the assassination on her part was essentially completed. She could return to work and consider the matter settled until something else happened. I shook my head, realizing that Chel could easily be just as scary as James when provoked.
Thinking it over, I glanced at the Goddesses gathered around. “I think it’s about time for me to head back down again.” I said with a small smile. It had been a while since I properly descended for any extended period, unless it was to deal with something like an invasion.
At the very least, it felt like I could do with some more training, now that the world had grown to this stage. “Just let me know if--”
“If Oldbeard attempts to send a message, we’ll let you know.” Aurivy cut me off with a small grin, Accalia quickly following up.
“Or Sarah, or anyone else.” She poked her tongue out as she said that, and I nodded with a faint chuckle. I smirked, rolling my eyes at their comments while preparing my descent. Soon, I felt the warm glow of blue light wrapping around me, sending me once again to my World Host.
When I opened my eyes again, I was seated atop my throne within the Sky Citadel. Kneeling at the base of the stairs were three familiar figures. Naturally, these were the three ‘Servants’ that I had taken in. I rolled my shoulders, the action catching the attention of the slime girl, Lifre.
Her eyes shot open, and she quickly swatted at Tsubaki’s arm. “He’s here.” She whispered, though a bit too loudly as I was able to hear her. I had checked in on everyone before descending, and knew that Tsubaki was currently communicating with a number of different officials in regards to recent events.
However, as soon as she heard Lifre’s voice, her eyes came to life, her nine tails starting to sway as her head lowered. “Welcome back, my Keeper.” She spoke in a happy tone, causing me to chuckle lightly.
“Thanks. And this must be Lifre.” I looked towards the slime girl, who grinned broadly. “I believe that this is the first time we’re meeting face to face.”
“Well, you could say that.” She answered in a cheeky tone. “I’ve been staring at that face for… oh wow, nevermind, yeah I don’t want to even admit that to myself.”
Dana was the next to awaken, seeming to catch the noise from this avatar as her eyes focused. “Welcome back, boss. Is there a new mission for us?”
I shook my head at her. “No, nothing like that. I simply wanted to descend for a while and spend my time in training. Though, if there are any issues that you currently find troubling, I would be happy to hear them out.”
Tsubaki had a rather troubled look on her face, as if unsure if she should speak up. Knowing what was on her mind, Dana was the one to say it. “Sir, there has been no resolution with the wave shark incident yet. They seem to be growing stronger with every passing day. Currently, all coastal cities are on high alert, and travel on the ocean has been strictly forbidden.”
My eye twitched slightly when I heard Dana’s report. “That situation has been dealt with. Leowynn saw to it herself not long ago. We won’t have to deal with anything like that for some time.”
Tsubaki and Dana were both relieved when they heard that, though Lifre was the next to speak up. “There’s something else, too! A giant pulse of mana swept through all of the known worlds, and is giving people weird powers! But the three of us didn’t get anything!” The way her cheeks puffed out at that, it was hard to tell whether she was more troubled by the pulse, or the fact that she was left out of it.
Dana and Tsubaki only sent pitying glances towards Lifre as I shook my head. “That was my doing. This is a form of evolution that I intended to help those who were unable to step onto the path of perfection. Additionally, the races with naturally weaker physiques will be elevated to the same level as the heroc in the new generation. Is there anything else?”
Lifre fell silent at that, before lifting a hand. “Uhm… what power were slimes given?”
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“Aquakinesis, or the ability to control water.” I responded with a light chuckle. This seemed to be the type of power that a slime could most easily benefit from. However, when Lifre heard that, she appeared relieved.
“Okay, so I’m not missing out on too much. I thought that we might have gotten something awesome like intuitively knowing how to use any kind of weapon or something. Anyways, uhm… I don’t think that there’s anything really ‘troubling’? I found three other large-scale void entities, but I would hardly call them as dangerous as the big shark.”
“Oh?” I lifted a brow, curious as to the three creatures she had identified.
“Yeah!” Lifre nodded her head with excitement. “For the first one… think of a random number. Any random number, just off the top of your head.”
I blinked in confusion, before shrugging my shoulders. “Three hundred and fourteen.” Lifre’s face could only be described as playful, making me catch on rather fast. “That’s it..?”
“Yep. The first one has the effect where anyone asked to guess a random number that includes three hundred and fourteen in its range will first choose that number, unless they are specifically avoiding it. It really wrecked the lottery of Desbar when the results were three-one-four-three-one-four, since it affects computers as well.”
“The biggest impact from this void effect is targeting random number generators, which have been going haywire for a few weeks now. Because of the ‘unknown glitch’, some of the programmers have removed that number from the results table, and simply made it so that any number above it is lowered by one for the display.”
“The second void effect is just as subtle. Anyone looking at the sunset during the last moments of light every day will remember one fact that they find disturbing. It could be a memory of a certain phobia, or a song that gets stuck in their head. Regardless, it happens to everyone that looks at the final moments of the sunset, regardless of planet. This one took ages to track down, because nobody felt like it was worth reporting…”
My brow twitched as I listened to the second void entity. “And… the third one?”
“The third entity seems to have attached itself to the Carpentry skill in the skill menu. Any time someone uses the skill to create something, the grain of the wood will depict a face somewhere along the finished product. This face is capable of speech, and will often answer personal questions as if it were the person that had created it.”
“The face loses the ability to speak if it is painted over, but still… that’s weird, right?!” Lifre asked, pulling out a wooden plank from a storage space. This plank, sure enough, had the darkened grain outline a humanoid face.
“It’s very weird.” The face on the wooden plank confirmed, speaking in Lifre’s own voice. “I think we need to deal with this one, or there will be problems in the future.”
The fact that the effect of a void entity was trying to convince me to terminate its cause… I could already feel a headache coming along. “Okay… that one at least is annoying enough to have it dealt with.” The other two were minor inconveniences at best, but this one would disturb people enough that they would not want to use any manufactured wooden products. Who would want their staff talking back to them as they’re trying to cast spells?
More importantly, this was a confidentiality issue on the part of the crafters, as the faces could give away private information. I let out a sigh, slowly pushing myself to my feet and stretching out my body. “For now, you can all return to your duties. There are some things that I want to take care of… Oh, and Dana, how is your game coming along?”
Dana smiled happily when she heard that. “Currently, we have around two hundred thousand players online at any given moment. The fact that players can bring their real world skills into the game to train them, with effects showing when they log out, seems to have made the game quite a bit more popular.”
I could imagine, given that a lot of the restrictions on the use of the builder bots in the game was designed to focus around mana… “How is the difficulty compared to your original design of the game?”
At that, Dana made a somewhat troubled face. “Well, the original intention was for people to have to struggle to survive in the early stages. With them bringing their real world powers in, a lot of that struggle has been removed for those who use the newest generation of gaming headsets.“
“To get around that, I’ve set the difficulty to scale with the level of the player, making it so that every player has at least a somewhat challenging starting experience. Still, there are plenty of people that design communication or transport spells with their friends in the real world before logging into the game, that way they can easily meet up even on different planets.” Dana shrugged her shoulders helplessly at that. While it was not quite what she had intended, she seemed happy just having helped make a game that she personally found interesting.
Seeing her happy, I gave a small nod. As long as she was satisfied with her project, there was no reason to worry. With that, I began walking towards the entrance of the throne room, allowing myself to sink into the shadow of the door.
Ever since my power had grown to the point where I could potentially destroy planets, the safest place for me to test my abilities was within the shadow realm created by the World’s Shadow. Here, even if the terrain was damaged, there wouldn’t be a problem. The broken earth could be mended with the proper expenditure of energy.
Once within the World’s Shadow, I began practicing some of the new domains that had appeared within the world. As these were the highest points of power currently available to me, they were the aspects I was most interested in familiarizing myself with.
Of course, I would also practice some of the many skills registered in the skill system as well. While domains were easily the strongest aspect of my current power, the skill system counted as my most comprehensive. I could not afford to be slacking when it came to either of these fields.
A black sword formed in my hand, and I began using it to slash out attacks with fire, water, ice, even lightning domains. I needed to get a proper grasp of the power at my disposal if I wanted to survive a truly high-level encounter.