World Keeper

Chapter 162: A War on Economy

When I got back to my room again, I once again resumed the great fast forward. Now, there shouldn’t be another race that was close to ‘ascending’, so that limited the number of reasons for my alarms to go off. All that was left now was either impending natural disasters, certain technology developments, or the off chance that one species was about to send another towards extinction…

Thankfully, the first alarm that went off was for development, as opposed to destruction. A hundred years after the acceptance of the merkin race, the Zoriark kingdom successfully developed one of the items on my ‘advancement checklist’. This particular invention was the ‘Status Orb’, a gem that was based on centuries of study from the special glasses found in the dungeon.

Much like the item which had been presented at the first Keeper meeting that I attended, this was an orb which displayed the status of whoever held it. This included their name, race, and everything else that appeared on their information window. In essence, what it did was to summon the window, but make it visible to everyone instead of just the person using it.

It seemed like this item could be made from the cores of most monsters mixed with some other materials and enchanted, so Zoriark was already beginning to mass produce them as soon as the first prototype was successful. Thanks to that, I was able to fast forward five years to when the production had really taken shape, and snatch one for myself.

I needed to be aware of the potential risks this would have for me later down the line, so I had to test the orb myself to see how it reacted with my Keeper levels. Thankfully… it seemed like the system still had some consideration, and the orb didn’t reveal any of my Keeper information when I had it sealed. If I unsealed class levels or stats, the information on the orb would reflect it.

And after spending another thirty points to run a quick test, I was relieved to discover that this worked for the World Host as well. Whenever I was possessing a host, the status orb read my name as the name I assigned the host rather than my own. This made me feel much safer for the future, as otherwise I would have had to avoid anyone who used these orbs to test a person’s identity.

With that taken care of, I again allowed the world to continue. Though, this time it only lasted a mere twenty years before the next item on the checklist was completed. To my surprise, the item finished this time was one that I hadn’t expected to be completed until later on. The ki cannon, a defensive fortification which allowed a user to launch projectiles at an enemy target powered by their ki.

This wasn’t like the bow that we found in the dungeon, because it did not produce the projectiles itself. But it was still a decent substitute for a typical siege weapon. And unsurprisingly, it was the humans that developed it. From a quick glance, it seemed that their war with the beastkin was still raging strong.

Shaking my head, I hit the fast forward button once more. The next item that appeared was actually one of the more crucial ones that I had been waiting for, and would offer a great degree of safety in the future. A natural energy disruptor, something that can destabilize the natural energy of the surrounding area.

This item wouldn’t remove the majority of a druid or shaman’s powers, but it would nullify one very important trick of theirs. As long as the device was active, druids wouldn’t be able to establish a stable portal within its area of influence. And once again, this had been developed by humans.

I watched as item after item from the checklist was completed. Some of them were as close as months apart, while others made me wait for over a hundred years to pass. By the end of the two thousand year limit, nearly half of my list had been completed. Thankfully, this included one very important achievement that I had been waiting for.

I was honestly a bit surprised when I received this achievement, because Irena had told me that she thought the Underworld had already mastered the first tier of spiritual energy. It seemed like the system still found their understanding lacking, because the energy from the achievement was instead mana.

Still, this meant that I was one step closer to getting the full tier two information completed. And now, it was time to handle the paperwork and reports. Bihena, you’re up. Progress report on the war?

Nearly two thousand years had passed, so I refused to believe that they were still as hostile as when they first met. Yet, Bihena’s words offered me no comfort. They’re not quite as bad, now. Around five hundred years ago, they came to a sort of mutual understanding. It was by no means a truce, but rather ‘you don’t come near me and I won’t go near you’.

Right now, people from either side that are captured by the other are treated as prisoners of war and slaves for the other. The beastkin were against this idea at first… until they saw their own people with their ears and tails severed in an attempt to make them look more ‘pleasing’ to the eyes of the humans.

I felt a shiver run down my spine as I heard that information. I had seen firsthand how a typically peaceful people like the halflings could become absolutely vicious with the right provocation. The fact that they hadn’t launched a full scale offensive against the humans was already surprising. Have there not been any efforts to establish peace between the two races?

I tried for a few lifetimes, but people wouldn’t hear of it. Any kingdom that was seen being friendly towards the ‘feral tribes’ was deemed an enemy of humanity and attacked by all others. Sorry, Dale, but I think it’ll take a bit longer for these two to get along without divine intervention.

I gave a brief, silent nod at that, closing my eyes and rubbing my forehead. Thankfully, Leowynn was preoccupied at the moment, having run off with Aurivy to play after the meeting. So I was alone in the room for now. Let’s wait until the second tier of magic is complete. If they can’t get along by then, we’ll step in.

By that time, it would be close enough to the time to install the gates that us stepping in wouldn’t cause as much of an impact. Besides, as much as I hated to admit it, war does stimulate growth. Over half of the new advancements in technology were first pioneered by either the humans or beastkin over the last two thousand years.

Opening up the map, I found that the other races had also begun to move. The beastkin had made contact with the dwarves, and although they had a brief conflict, they managed to establish themselves as peaceful neighbors. However, since the beginning of the human war, it seemed like the beastkin didn’t send out any new voyages to meet up with their people in the elven and dwarven lands. They were too busy fighting the humans to devote their strongest fighters to escort ships again.

On the other hand, the elves and dwarves had actually managed to meet, their continents fairly close to each other. As both sides had made friends with the beastkin already, it became a simple matter for them to form their own alliance. And with the short distance between their continents, it only took them finding two islands between them to use as relay points for druids to connect them.

For the halflings and centaurs, they had yet to leave their conjoined continents. This made it so that the only race that had not met any of the others so far were the heroc, as even the merkin had met seafaring travelers from time to time. I could practically see the day on the horizon when the four beastkin goddesses would unlock their next domain by meeting the last two races.

Alright, Terra… bring in the paperwork. I sent out while a groan escaped my lips. They had been developing their system ideas for nearly two thousand years, more if they borrowed Deckan to accelerate time even further. I could only dread how many system ideas were about to appear in front of me.

As soon as the message was sent out, a thick book appeared on my desk. ‘New(ish) system ideas’ was the title printed on its dark cover, written in shining golden ink. It was… a lot less than what I had expected, seeing as my room was filled with neither filing cabinets, stacks of paper, sticky notes, or a never-ending series of computer files.

Shaking my head, I realized that most of their ideas must have been rejected as having already appeared in the market. So I opened the book to begin looking through what was next, bracing myself for the possibility that the book was ‘bigger on the inside’.

To my relief, there was no explosion of pages filling up the room. Terra had not taken the opportunity to pull a prank on me, and had rather given a professionally organized report that actually made me think she got Irena to help her. There was even a table of contents on the first page, giving the names for every system idea that appeared within the book.

“Spiritual Wanderer class, soul binding method, card capture gun…” I read over the list, which was offered in no discernable order. There were a few dozen systems in total, though most of them weren’t anything that would fetch too much in royalties.

In general, most of the ideas didn’t seem like something that I would be interested in adding to Earth, simply because they didn’t fit my idea for it. But other Keepers could have different opinions, so I planned to put them all on the market anyways. There were, however, a few things that grabbed my attention.

The first was something offered by Ashley. She labeled it as the Class Transfer system. It came as both an object and as a system in two different entries, but both did generally the same thing. They allowed someone to get rid of their own levels, storing their accumulated experience either in an object or a system window, and then pass that experience on to someone else.

There was already an object for game worlds that restricted someone to a single class, enabling them to change classes, so instead she came up with something to let people transfer their classes among themselves. One downside I could see was that the memories would be taken with the experience, just like when someone ate a reset fruit. Then those memories would be given to the recipient, and they would gradually lose their sense of self.

In extreme cases, it could even be possible to completely swap minds with someone, by having both parties store all of their classes and switching. This would cause a complete exchange of knowledge and memories. And that would be a rather… dangerous effect to put into play. For this one, I decided to wait until I could come up with safeguards to prevent such things as that.

Next up was Aurivy, though this one caught my mind less because it was practical, and more because of just how much it fit her. A Cuteness Trait for world evolution. All creatures that evolved would be created with an aesthetic pleasing to the Keeper that created them. Such things as extremely soft, rainbow-colored sheep to snakes that looked like slinkies. I doubted that anyone would actually purchase this trait, but it was indeed an amusing one to see.

When I came to Ryone’s, I was surprised to find a new magic system outlined. This one was clearly developed with a technological world in mind. A system of magic that caused programming code to be able to influence the real world. Or at the very least, created a new programming language that could be used through machines to cast magic.

I briefly considered whether I should add this to Desbar, but ultimately decided against it. I didn’t want to have to spend the additional points to help them research enough to catch up to the other two worlds, so giving them this programming magic would instead cripple them. I did put the idea aside for a future world, though.

Once I was finished looking through the entire book, I began the process of submitting each item to the market, one at a time. With any luck, some of them would become popular and we could meet our goal. If not… well, if not, we’ll just have to wait longer. After all, if need be we could simply pause all three worlds and wait for the royalties to come in more.