When Lifre eventually reported back to me and told me the identity of the ‘boss’ monster of the fifty-seventh floor, I couldn’t help feeling surprised. This was the second time that we had encountered a creature of James’s race. Given the fact that it was buried so deeply in the mountain, it had likely been hibernating for centuries, if not longer.
Thankfully, none of them made it to a lower floor, or else they would be able to destroy most of the cities on that floor… I had no doubt that Lifre was the weakest of the servants of Olympus, aside from perhaps Gerard. I had never seen Gerard fight to see his capabilities in full.
Even so, Lifre would undoubtedly be stronger than most gods out there, having received the acknowledgement of most of my people. Just by virtue of being a servant of Olympus, her status skyrocketed.
After listening to Lifre’s report, I resumed my training, deep within the vacuum of space. For two weeks, I did nothing but punch out at asteroids, unleashing my Martial Will in an attempt to crush everything in front of me. Thus, I finally managed to achieve my Martial Intent for my fist, awakening the ‘crushing’ intent.
With that out of the way, I told everyone my plans to fast forward the world again. To my surprise, this time Tsubaki did not suggest staying behind. Perhaps she felt that she had prepared as much as she could, but she joined me in the Admin Room. As I returned to the Admin Room, I found a rather surprising prompt waiting for me.
The vote has passed with a final score of 6:1. The update to the Companion Account system shall take effect immediately.
Congratulations! You have earned an achievement!
For causing a successful vote and changing the system, you have earned the Innovator achievement! Preview perk, 500 points.
The vote passing wasn’t something for me to be surprised about. The fact that it credited me with the achievement, and gave me a special perk on the other hand… I gestured for Tsubaki and the others to wait for me as I walked to my room, finding Terra lounging on the bed, hugging an oversized pillow.
When she saw me, she gave a small smile. “You want an explanation of the perk, I assume?” She asked, to which I nodded my head. “It’s nothing big. Basically, if you activate the perk, you can spend five percent of a system’s cost on the market to try it in advance for one Standard day. So, for instance, if you wanted to use it on a two hundred point party system, you would spend ten points and unlock the party system on a world for one day.”
I felt… somewhat disappointed with this perk, nodding my head. The fact that it allowed me to try a system early wasn’t particularly bad, but it also wasn’t all that helpful, either. At most, I would be able to determine if there would be any conflicts of laws from the introduction of a new system, but in doing so I would have to cause said conflicts.
“I don’t think that’s a perk that I will be using.” I said with a shake of my head.
Terra, however, simply chuckled. “There is certainly one extremely practical use for it, if it is done properly.” To that, I couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. “No, you can’t use it to get information from the system, and then just copy that information. Systems only.”
“However… if you know of a system that can protect you during an invasion, you can cheaply get it right before the invasion begins, and have it for the first day of the invasion.”
My eyes widened at her suggestion, before a pensive look appeared on my face. “If I previewed a system that would allow me to mass produce Fallen Gods, what would happen to them after the time period ended?”
Terra easily saw through my plan, shaking her head. “Anything reliant on the power of the previewed system would disappear after the system was removed. In the case of deities or the fallen without another domain, this means that the source of their existence would vanish. If they had undergone the three steps of perfection, they would be able to save themselves, but they would be crippled. Otherwise, they would simply die.”
“Okay, not doing that then.” I shook my head, grimacing. I couldn’t think of a system to preview that would save me from RagnaRocker’s invasion. I doubt the system would be so kind as to offer a system to protect my worlds from void incursions. Instead, it would need to be a technology, which I wasn’t able to use for the preview.
With a long groan, I checked the logs to see if I had missed anything else. I hadn’t been back to the Admin Room for a couple of weeks now, so I was surprised to see that I had sold more than fifty copies of World Seed. It looked like the advertisement from Sarah and the others had shown some results.
Thinking it over, I set up official Companion Accounts for everyone to oversee their own worlds, and deposited their previous balances in them. As for Ashley, I made a small adjustment to her account to give her half of the royalties from World Seed. That could be used to work on future games.
Speaking of which… “I just had a thought.” I looked over at Terra, who blinked in curiosity. “If Sarah broke through to the Fifth Rank, that means that she can completely code her own worlds. Then… how much would a game she makes cost if she produced everything in-house, without spending any points on the market?”
“Ahh, that?” Terra chuckled, shaking her head. “Now that she’s hit that point, the system will calculate the price of the world based on the level it is at. So, if she made an unranked world like Vision Expanse again, it would probably be cheaper than when she first released the game. The stronger the world is on its own, the higher the value it will have in the system.”
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That made sense, and it was something to look forward to when we hit that point as well. Still, that did get me thinking, and I opened up the market to search for void defense technology. Normally, I would focus on letting my world develop this technology themselves. However, given the situation, I thought that I should at least look at the technology on the market.
My brow twitched when I saw the price, over five hundred thousand points for comprehensive void defense. Okay… so maybe I won’t be buying that. Even with all of the royalties we had saved up, that was… a considerable expense. If I had enough, I’d consider getting it, but right now, that wasn’t particularly an option.
With a small sigh, I set the world to fast forward again, this time until the successful creation of the Void Core generator. I wasn’t sure how long it would take to get everything set up for that, but it seemed like a good benchmark to stop and see how things were developing.
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It was not an easy feat to get the Void Core operational. Each time they failed, they completely lost the facilities that they were using, which cost a massive sum of resources. Just the mana gem alone required dozens of mages to fully invest in it.
What was worse was something that they discovered after their third failure. Every world that they connected to had slightly different laws, which impacted how the Void Core operated. For instance, if there was a slight adjustment to the way mana functioned, the core exploded either upon construction or activation.
To solve this, they had to isolate the core from the outside world’s laws, overriding it with the laws of Earth. Only once the entire facility was operating under these physical and supernatural laws could they begin the construction of the more sensitive components.
Like this, they conducted the activation experiment fifteen times, each time having to tweak various settings before they lost the realm that they had tested in. Only on the sixteenth try did they manage to create a stable mana generation world without causing visible damage to the world it was hosted in.
Seeing hope, they let that generator continue to operate under Chelsea’s supervision from the Admin Room, and created ten more for ten different generators on ten different worlds, each with slightly adjusted settings to try and find the optimal configuration. Afterwards, they allowed these eleven generators to produce mana for one year each.
After the original was finished with its one year of service, the mana generated was measured, and a team was sent to inspect the durability of its world barrier. To their dismay, they found that it had been weakened significantly, enough so that it was likely to collapse if a void beast struck at the wrong spot.
Thankfully, the world had not yet been destroyed, so they were able to transplant the Void Core to a new world and modify its settings, before trying again. Afterwards, one by one, the other experiments concluded. Some of them caused cracks to form in the world barrier over time, and others softened it like the first. Of them, two showed no substantial change to the world barrier, and one… one even managed to increase the durability of the world barrier.
When James discovered this phenomenon, he was shocked, going over the information on this experiment to understand the cause. A portion of the mana produced by this generator was redirected to maintain the world’s barrier, leading to a long-term improvement.
Seeing potential for a possible exploit, he established five of these modified Void Cores in a single realm, letting them run in tandem. The results could be measured in real time from the void, where the barrier became thicker and thicker by the day. Unfortunately, this also caused the mana obtained by the generators to drop drastically.
Then, over six months after the five generators were activated, the universe that they had been placed in collapsed in on itself. From James’s initial findings, the world barrier had become too dense, triggering an adverse reaction. However, this gave him hope for another potential exploit.
This time, he arranged four Void Cores on a world. Two of them were the ‘strengthening’ cores, while two were normal. His goal was for the facilities to balance one another out.
In the end… he found that there was no change to the density of the world barrier, but it did sharply reduce its durability, making it incredibly fragile after several months.
With a reluctant sigh, James gave up on the idea of using the Void Core to strengthen the barrier, and began focusing more on the two versions that showed no substantial changes. These two had been allowed to run for roughly two years at this point, and the barrier had yet to show any sign of damage.
With one last attempt to increase productivity, James moved both of these facilities to the same world, hoping that their minimal impact on the barrier would not cause any harm, even when stacked. Unsurprisingly, his hopes were dashed when the world collapsed after another two months.
It did not appear to be possible to maintain multiple Void Cores in the same realm without adverse effects. That doesn’t make sense, though… James thought to himself in frustration. Tsubaki and Dana created hundreds of these with their method.
James began to review the differences between the two methods of construction, aside from one being based in technology and the other in magic. Primarily, James created a stable connection to preset coordinates, while the old method merely created a physical manifestation of the world locally.
Would we be able to get better results if we changed our method to producing physical manifestations like that? He wondered to himself. Doing so would require far more void shielding, as they would have to set up an automatic construction array. Worse, the worlds had the potential to grow over time, so they weren’t able to be placed close together within the void. That was the ultimate downfall of Tsubaki’s method, as the worlds had grown into one another so much that they were beginning to destabilize.
The only way to prevent the world from growing was by fully utilizing the excess mana it produced, but he was well aware of how much power that was. Once it reached a certain size, they would find it difficult to channel the energy out all at once.
In the long run, Tsubaki and Dana’s method would produce more energy, but also far more substantial risks. My method is more stable, even if the output is lower. If I can’t make up the amount by building additional generators in one world, maybe I can create the generators in independent worlds.
When that thought occurred to him, James recalled the old remnants from a past invasion, in which the invaders crafted multiple bases within the void. Those bases still existed to this day, though most of them had been handed to larger guilds and corporations. James himself only had access to two of these bases.
I can use those for now, and set up an automatic delivery service. If I can talk Dale into getting a system or tech that will let me make more of these spaces, maybe I will be able to safely mass produce energy. James had already cast aside the idea of making the Void Core directly in any occupied world, as damage to the world barrier would cause irreversible harm to that world.