World Keeper

Chapter 17: The Knowledge of the Ages

“Well… now that the afterlife thing is taken care of…. Not really a lot I can do at this point?” I glanced to my point balance, where I saw to my dismay, I had only a single point left currently.

Terra still leaned into my hand petting her back, shrugging her shoulders. “You could go down and make achievements, though there probably won’t be many you can earn right now. Their construction methods are still in the most primitive stage, and they don’t have proper tools yet.”

I smiled bitterly at that. “Yeah… but I don’t know how to make those tools myself. I mean, ‘Stone Age Crafting’ is not a required class in school these days. Or, well, wasn’t when I was in school.”

“Well, I could teach you?” She offered, making me look at her in surprise. “Remember, knowledge of three Earths in my head? Pretty easy to come up with some simple crafting basics. Though, it’ll have to be dumbed down pretty far to be applicable here. Let’s start with the dwarves, shall we?”

I nodded my head, and the room around us began to twist and distort. The walls darkened, expanding outwards, the furniture fading into the ground. Soon, we were sitting on a wide stone floor, the basement that we had used for training before.

Terra slowly stood up, dusting off the jeans she was wearing and walked around. “Now, until this point your inhabitants have been taking the shortcuts of using magic or brute force, where previous Earths have used tools. Thanks to this, they can just barely be considered as having entered the Stone Age in terms of technology.”

“On the other hand, they are in the late Archaic Age for magic, thanks to you helping the elves learn how to create their own spells.” Seeing the confused look on my face, Terra smiled and explained. “Technology has its own specific ages, so why can’t magic? For Technology, it is divided into the Stone, Metal, Industry, Exploration, Information, and Stellar ages. Each one can be further divided, depending on the world in question. For instance, the last Earth had the Copper, Bronze, and Iron ages.”

“Now, with magic, there is the Archaic age, where magic is first discovered. When it is expanded, and people begin to explore its possibilities, you enter the Arcanum Age. After that comes the Enhancement, Exploration, Development, and Planar ages. Though, keep in mind that these are general terms. It’s possible to go in different orders, depending on the world.” Terra nodded as she finished the explanation of the ages.

“Back on track. The dwarves are the closest to developing proper stone tools, and then we can focus on sharing the information with the other races. But, if you want points rewarded, you had to understand it yourself.”

I nodded in response, and the scenery around us shifted. From an underground basement, we now stood atop a large mountain. Grassy plains could be seen in the distance, and the sounds of animals filled my ears. “This is a recreation of the area surrounding the dwarven mountain. We’ll start here.”

After that began my lessons of how to create rope, use it to bind tools together, and various techniques to create stone axes, hammers, spears, even bows and arrows. I imagine that, if I had been descended during these lessons, I probably would have earned a new class or two. Instead, I spent two full days in that landscape, learning everything I needed to.

When I was finally done, I felt as if I had lost all of my energy. Terra had kept me there until I proved that I could make each item she wanted with whatever materials were at my disposal. Why do I feel like I was just punished for something? I complained internally while going towards the room with the goddesses.

Although we had agreed that the dwarves needed this the most… I first sent the information to the human goddess Bihena, earning me another 20 points. Then, I did the same thing to Ryone, the elven goddess, and Udona the kitsune goddess. Those two each earned me 10 and 5 points respectively. Guess it would be a bit much to hope for the full value with each one?

Finally, with my 36 points… time to buy a new god! This time, I wanted to make a dwarven god, so that I could send the information to the dwarves. So, another 25 points when down the drain, and I began picturing the dwarven god I wanted to make.

Now, you may be wondering. Dale, why are you making a god? Isn’t your dream to have a harem of sexy goddesses?! Yes, yes it is. But… I just can’t find dwarves that appealing. Nothing against short people, but dwarves… just aren’t my cup of tea. So, I would rather make a male dwarf that can eventually become a friend I can share my troubles with!

As such, I made a robust, muscular dwarf, with a long and thick beard. Most of his body weight had to have been muscle, and I had no doubt he could easily lift me with one arm. Once I was done, and satisfied with his appearance, I granted him the name Tubrock, God of the Forge. To be honest, I almost mistyped and made him God of the Force… but thankfully I caught myself.

Once that was taken care of, I sadly watched the points fade away to bring him to life, and then once again had him transmit the information to the dwarves. Each tribe received the knowledge of tools, ropes, and basic weapons. However, this had only given me four points… I had been hoping that with seven tribes, I would get seven rewards, but that was not the case. So now, I was down to 15 points… not enough to make the next goddess to enlighten the halflings.

Before I left, I instructed Tubrock to try to lead the dwarves away from the volcano, warning them of the impending dangers. To my surprise, that actually netted me another three points. I guess that it is possible to earn points by avoiding disasters, as well? Either way, I made my way back up to the bedroom, and fell down into the bed, not even bothering to see if Terra was in it at the time or not.

Across the globe, the various sapient tribes all received a revelation. Whether it was the humans, the dwarves, the elves, or the beastkin, members began speaking up about new knowledge entering their minds. Perhaps, the only ones excluded from this were the halflings. But they had no reason to despair. They were completely unaware of the happenings on the other parts of the planet.

When I woke up, I checked the time on the computer, cursing inwardly when I found that only two hours had passed. I mean, I know that I don’t really need sleep, but it’s still nice to be able to! Well… no use just sitting around, might as well keep myself busy.

Due to my constant shortage of points thus far, I again opened up the forums. This time, my goal was to find a listing of early achievements. I mean, there had to be some kind of list, right? Even if it wasn’t a detailed one, or had stuff I couldn’t do right now, knowing was better than not knowing.

And, sure enough, I did find a list of common beginner achievements, as well as a guide on how to acquire them. There were… actually, quite a lot. And some, I never expected to be an achievement. I mean, one of the achievements was ‘Demigod’s Descent’. To complete it, you had to be a god, and have sex with one of your world’s inhabitants. According to the explanation, that was an almost guaranteed way to create a child with powerful talents. It may even have extra powers, depending on the domain you possess.

I dismissed that one for two reasons. First, because I was not a god of this world, and had no desire to appoint myself as one. Second… Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Especially two goddesses, one of which is in charge of Hell itself… Sorry, but I think I’ll avoid that achievement for now. Maybe I’ll have Tubrock go down and procreate, after I give him a personality.

Anyways… let’s see… achievements that I can do at this time… Already did the enlightenment one. Can’t do the Kingmaker ones. Let’s narrow this down to ones that I can actually do through the system.

Aha! Found one. This one is actually very easy, and I am almost at the level of being able to get it. ‘Submit 5 pieces of custom content’. Let’s see… Daeva, Forgotten, Community Afterlife, and World Host… I only need to submit one more thing, and it will be good. Well, that’s easy enough, and explains why there are so many random things in the User-Submitted Content section.

Thinking about it for a while, I couldn’t really come up with anything unique. I mean, everything has been done before. It just hasn’t necessarily been done by the Keepers. Yes, they have had a lot more time to create things than Earth had, but they had less than ten thousand people working on it. There’s bound to be a difference! As such, I started wracking my head for more ideas I could ‘borrow’ from the culture of the previous Earth.

After about a half hour of referencing random ideas with items that already existed, I finally found one that would work! Although a different version of it existed in the system already, it would be an inferior one to the one I was about to create. Again, I opened up the notepad program on the computer and began listing out the details of this item.