World Keeper

Chapter 122: When Spirits Abound

I was half expecting to receive class levels in Druid or Spirit Tamer after creating the World Spirit, but surprisingly they never came in. Is creating World Spirits something that is not covered by the classes, and so doesn’t award experience? That was the only option that I could think of. Either way, there was no doubting the accomplishment of creating life.

What… The little fairy questioned again, still looking blankly up at me. My main worry at this time was whether or not the fairy was able to develop mentally, or if I had created the world’s first retarded spirit…

Seeing as it was communicating via spirit energy, which focused on thoughts, I decided to try communicating in the same way. Since mana was also an energy that had a similar focus, I used it to direct my thoughts towards the World Spirit. Can you understand me? Let’s start simple…

Her response was not immediate, but there was a flicker of recognition in her eyes. Her blank gaze slowly focused on me. What am I? It asked, a more complete thought this time.

You are a World Spirit. I told her, before explaining how to summon the status window. It would serve as a much better explanation than anything I could say.

Who would have thought, though, that as soon as the little fairy listened to my instructions, her entire body vanished like a puff of smoke within my palm. I was about to panic, thinking that she might have used all of her energy and died, when suddenly a message appeared in front of my eyes. Although still somewhat alarming, it at least let me know what had happened.

Well, that is definitely something. I knew that there would be something special about World Spirits, given their unique blend of energies, but I hadn’t expected them to be able to create their own worlds like that. Will each World Spirit have their own world, or will they share them? I knew that a size 0 world was tiny, probably no bigger than a single building. As such, there was no way it’d be able to house an entire race, unless they had some way to grow it.

I waited around for a few minutes, considering whether or not I should visit the fairy’s world. Before that decision was reached, however, she suddenly appeared before me again, trembling as she latched onto my hand. No, no, no, no… She repeated the thought over and over, and I could feel a sense of fear coming from her.

What happened? I couldn’t help but ask. Her eyes slowly turned to face my, her arms still wrapping around my wrist like she was afraid she would vanish again.

Empty alone didn’t like. No voice no light didn’t like. Well, clearly she’ll need to learn some proper language eventually. But first, there was something that I could maybe help you with.

What if I could help you create more like you? If she wasn’t alone, maybe that world wouldn’t be so scary for her.

Alone no one like me. No other voice all alone. Though she said that in what sounded like a disagreement, she still looked at me with hopeful eyes. Make more more voices not alone?

When I nodded my head, I could practically feel the happiness radiating off of her. Just hold on tight for a bit. After she was secured, I once again changed locations and began the process of creating another World Spirit.

This time, I had the benefit of experience from when I created the first World Spirit, so the process went much more smoothly. And since the first one was a girl, I decided to make the second look like a boy. Of course, neither of them actually had genitalia, so the difference was purely cosmetic.

When I took a look at the two, I saw them staring at each other. I could vaguely feel a quick exchange of energy, likely meaning that they were communicating, before the two of them flew into the air. Since they weren’t sending me any messages, it was hard to tell what they were thinking, but judging by how they spun around one another I had to guess that they were excited.

Do you think you can do that? I asked the female fairy after I saw her descending. She looked up at me with wide eyes, nodding her head happily.

Yes can do make more make friends! I smiled when I heard her excited, if still broken response. It seemed like I wouldn’t have to worry about the World Spirits being able to reproduce, but first I had to lay some ground rules.

Alright, but you can only take energy from those little things to make more, understand? I motioned towards the various smaller insects and rodents that the Daeva would likely overlook, which is where I had been drawing the power from to make the two spirits. If you take from something bigger, you’ll end up hurting people and have to be punished, okay?

Her eyes went even wider at that, and her body visibly trembled when she heard my words in her mind. The ‘male’ spirit glanced at her, unsure of what we were talking about. Nonetheless, she nodded her head. Okay only small no big. Only small no big!

She repeated the words a few times, before turning to look at the male spirit. Again, they seemed to be sharing information again, and a bit of realization seemed to dawn on his face when he learned about what we were talking about. He hastily nodded his head as well, and the two of them flew off, a trail of green energy flowing behind them. No doubt, they were off to create more World Spirits.

As for me, it was time to create the Martial Spirits… Given that the spiritual energy in this area was either drained dry, or soon to be so with their efforts, I once again moved. This time, it was to the dwarven continent. There was a wide river separating a good chunk of the continent from the rest, so that gave a wide area that nobody had explored yet, perfect for me to use for this.

Unlike the World Spirits, I actually had an idea in mind already for how to create a Martial Spirit. In truth, the process itself shouldn’t be too difficult. It was just that the preparation involved things that were only recently discovered, and largely unknown or unavailable.

Once I arrived on the shoreline, the farthest place from the nearest dwarven habitation, I got started on the creation of a new type of spirit! The first thing that I did was to pull out my spellforged sword, and grip the blade with my hand until I could see blood starting to flow down the blade. In truth, it hurt slightly, but I had no doubt that I would heal soon. And if I had only tried to prick my finger instead, it would have healed too fast, and I’d need to repeat the process too much…

Anyways, the first step was to create something known as ‘essence blood’. This was blood that had a high concentration of ki held within it. In order to create essence blood, roughly a thousand points of ki had to be infused into a single drop of blood. If I were not using my Keeper stats, even my full ki pull could not create a single drop of essence blood.

However, as things were, I could just focus my ki onto my hand, and dozens of drops began to fall from the blade, forming small circular blobs that retained their shape after hitting the ground. In total… I count sixty five drops. That should be enough for the first ‘generation’, maybe, but if not then I’ll just make more.

But first, there was one more thing that I needed to create, and it required me to focus a much greater quantity of ki. This time, after investing roughly half of my ki into my hand, three larger red spheres, each as thick as my thumb, dropped down to land next to the essence blood. These were essence orbs, far more powerful than essence blood but also far more difficult to make. Each one required fifteen thousand ki to produce, which was a number you were unlikely to reach under normal circumstances unless you specialized in such things.

Essence blood and essence orbs shared many of the same uses, judging from the manual that I had purchased from the market. They could each be used in a normal crafting process to create something that seemed to share many similarities to Tubrock’s spellforged items. But, as it was essentially blood with a high concentration of ki, it should also serve the purpose of creating Martial Spirits.

The essence orbs were too valuable to waste on testing, since I wasn’t sure I could easily create more without proper rest given my current ki levels. Instead, I simply placed my sword back into the bag, and reached down to pick up one of the drops of essence blood. For now, I left my cut hand unattended, reminding myself to learn a proper healing spell when I get back to the Admin Room.

With the single drop of essence blood in hand, I moved to face the ocean. In truth, even with Bihena and Irena working together, there should be far more lingering spiritual energy in the water than on land. The oceans were so deep and so full of wildlife both big and small, it was far worse than the insects and rodents of the land.

Reaching out, I began grasping that lingering spiritual energy, bringing it to the surface. Under my focused eyes, I could see a dense grey smoke rising up from the water, slowly flowing its way towards me. As with the previous spirit creation process, I gathered it all into a single mass in front of me.

I held my right hand up, the essence blood resting atop my palm, and began to gather the raw spiritual energy towards it. As it came closer, I began to slowly infuse the spiritual energy into that drop of essence blood, until it seemed to reach a saturation point. At that point, I had expected the drop of blood to either pop like a balloon, or to change into something else.

What I had not expected was for it to suddenly start drawing in the gathered spiritual energy, faster and faster. The single drop of blood began to expand, gradually taking shape into a blood-red figure. The figure had four legs, standing tall like a wolf. Or, it would be if it was more than six inches tall…

“Okay, that’s one down…” I said, shaking my head. At the same time, another notification appeared in front of me.

Huh… For the most part, it appeared to be the same as the World Spirit achievement, but the reward was a bit different, including a boost to both spiritual energy and ki. Though, I wasn’t about to complain about having extra buffs.

I could hear a snarl coming from my side, where the Martial Spirit had jumped off my hand to land on the ground, staring up at me. Focusing on it revealed something rather interesting, though, as it was not only level one, but also classified as a ‘Rank One Martial Spirit’. Though, that did fall in line with my theories that more essence blood could produce better results.

I wasn’t sure how these things reproduced, so I went ahead and created three more of the small blood-red wolves through the same process. Strangely enough, they all appeared to take the same general shape. It might have been something to do with my blood, or maybe the spiritual energy used, or some other factors I wasn’t sure. Hopefully, they could either breed or reproduce like slimes. Either way, after I had created four of them, I let my ki flare up to scare them off, causing the four of them to run off into the distance.

Next, I repeated the process with two drops of essence blood in my palm. Like this, I should either be able to create two rank one spirits, or hopefully a rank two spirit. This was why I had prepared so much essence blood, not knowing what the upper limit would be.

Once again, as soon as the two drops had reached a saturation point, they began madly absorbing the remaining spiritual energy. Nearly a third of it had been used to create the four rank one spirits, but now that much was being used just for a single Martial Spirit! I smiled, knowing that this should mean I was on the right track for creating a rank two spirit.

Sure enough, the spirit this time was much larger than the little wolves, forming into a one-foot tall bird, its wings expanding out as a shrill cry escaped its lips. Unfortunately, it still seemed to possess little intelligence of its own, as it did not even attempt to communicate, immediately taking flight the moment it was ‘born’.

Like I did before, I created three more rank two spirits, after identifying that is indeed what it was. Then, I proceeded on with the rank three spirits, and the rank four spirits, and the rank five spirits, each one forming into their own unique shapes. Though, I had to replenish the spiritual energy several times during the process.

A rank three spirit appeared in the form of a two foot lion, which issued a loud roar at me when it fell to the ground. It had greedily eyed the essence blood on the ground while I went through the process of creating its ‘companions’, and I ended up having to scare them off like I had the first set. Though, that did make me wonder if the blood would be useful to help them grow, or if it was just being greedy seeing that I was using it.

A rank four spirit came out much better, forming into a five-foot long snake. Unlike the others, the snake slithered over to me, obediently wrapping itself around my waist and watching me create the other three. Only when I told it to leave with them did it seem to understand my meaning, having more intelligence than the others I had created so far.

Naturally, the fifth rank spirits were the best so far. Because of a slight surplus, I ended up making five of them. Each of the rank five Martial Spirits took on the form of a four foot tall, bipedal creature. This time there seemed to be more variation between them, as one had canine characteristics, one had feline characteristics, one had an extra pair of arms, and the last two looked like horned humans.

There appeared to be a bit of rivalry between the five of them, but I did not feel like putting up with that at the moment, and sent them all away like I had the snakes. Finally, I went to collect the essence orbs, planning to use them to create three more spirits. By this point, I had used up all of the remnant spiritual energy in this area, so I began running along the coast until I felt that there was more for me to access.

After the process of gathering the spiritual energy and purifying it, I lifted the essence orb up and started anew. In truth, there was very little difference between this and the process of making any of the others. The real difference was in the amount of energy absorbed… It took most of the spiritual energy that I had gathered just to reach the saturation point.

When that point was reached, however, the world seemed to become veiled in white within my vision. Like a black hole, the Martial Spirit began absorbing spiritual energy from everywhere. The sea, the ground, even the sky seemed to turn grey for a few moments.

As my vision cleared, I saw a small girl standing in front of me, a frosty expression on her face. Unlike the other spirits, her skin was pale like a human’s, the only red on her being her eyes and a blood red dress. Even her hair was as white as snow. “Father.” She said the word, looking up at me.

Uhm… why can she speak? Why can she speak a language I understand? And why does she know what a father is?! Questions began flooding my mind, before Leowynn’s thoughts were transmitted to my own.

Interesting… maybe she inherited some information from your blood? She suggested, which seemed to be the only possible answer. Genetic memories? I mean, I had heard of that being a thing before, but never this… literal. “You can understand me?” I asked, looking down at the young girl.

“Un.” She answered, nodding her head slightly. Above her head, I could see her rank, which was able to resolve a few of my questions.

Okay, so it goes up to nine ranks before needing the essence orbs… I thought to myself, before turning to look at her again. “Okay, well… would you mind standing at the side for a few moments?” I asked, motioning for her to move aside.

Thankfully, she listened quite well, moving a few meters away before turning around to watch me. “Doing, what?” She asked, tilting her head slightly to the side in confusion. Okay, at least her information isn’t perfect. The last thing I wanted was for these spirits to have knowledge of the old Earth, and use that to influence this one.

“I’m making more of you.” I answered, reaching out to grasp at some of the energy that she hadn’t absorbed to kick-start the process again. Her face tensed up when she felt the essence orb begin to absorb spiritual energy wildly, this one having to draw from further and further away which made the process take far longer.

To… no real surprise, another childlike figure appeared. This one a boy with black hair, though his outfit still appeared to be a blood red dress. Maybe that’s just something they are ‘born’ with? And just like the first, the first thing it did was to call out “Father.”

“Yes, yes, please go stand at the side.” I said with a sigh, motioning for him to join the other. Unlike with Leowynn, I really couldn’t see these as my children. Even if they literally had my blood flowing through whatever it is they considered veins, the process of creating them felt far too artificial for me to be able to look at them like children.

When the third one came out, and turned into another human-looking boy, I sighed slightly, finally turning to face them. “Okay, you three, come over here.” There was some hesitation from them, but they did eventually walk up to stand before me. “Now, I need to cover some ground rules with you. I’m not sure how much you know…”

“World, big… Words. All.” The first of them, I guess I could call the eldest sister, said with a slight nod. Okay, but that doesn’t really answer much. I’ll probably have to ask one of the goddesses to keep an eye on them, just in case.

“Anyways… You’re allowed to play however you want, just try not to hurt people if you can avoid it. I’m not sure what powers you all have, but you should be able to become quite strong.” When they heard that, their red eyes practically sparkled at the idea of becoming strong. “I’ll be keeping an eye on you, so don’t be bad, okay?”

The three of them looked between one another, but finally nodded their heads. “Good.” I sighed slightly, feeling like I could finally go back and rest. Which I promptly did. Although it may seem like it hadn’t taken a while, I knew just from all the running I did that I had spent at least twenty hours almost constantly in motion.

Of course, before I passed out on my bed from exhaustion, I summoned out Leowynn again and sent a mental message to Aurivy. The… twenty eight creatures I just made, could you disperse them around the world? Try to keep at least two of each type together please, and put them somewhere that a level one creature has a chance to grow.

I had a feeling that the rank ten, and maybe even the rank five spirits might be able to gain other class levels, as should the World Spirits. However, for the rank one through four spirits, they seemed to be far too simple, so it was unlikely that the system would recognize them for that. I would see what it looked like when I woke up later, at least.