World Keeper

Chapter 224: The First Step

It was hard to tell just how long I had spent in my training this time. Every now and then, whenever I was taking a break between attempts at creating world sight, Terra would send me a message to update me on the happenings of the world. I learned that it took Tsubaki six full years to complete her training in Hell, but Terra wouldn’t tell me what level she had grown to.

She also let me know that Anna had been doing well over the ten year break, and that the world was very slowly starting to adapt to the knowledge that the residents of the Citadel were relaying back to them. More importantly… it seemed like the first group from Deckan and Desbar had made themselves a home on the large island where the Fairy Gate was placed, turning it into their own nation.

Thankfully, it seemed like she was able to restrict any of the others from being able to peek in on my training. Which was an especially good thing, because… I succeeded. It took a few tries, but I managed to put the formula to work, and found a method to properly condense world sight!

Naturally, I didn’t stop at just once. I needed to make sure that I could do this easily, without so much as a single speck of energy out of place. After all, once I went down to the world to do this for real, I only had one shot. If I failed, then even with all of my levels and stat buffs, there was a strong chance that I could get myself killed.

So, I performed the fusion again. And again, and again, slowly cutting down the small errors that would sometimes occur during the process. I lost track of how many times it blew up in my face, or how many times it worked only for me to discard it and start all over.

Each time I successfully created the world sight energy, I was able to slightly reduce the amount of time it took to do so. I did not want to rush the process, but this was simply the result of me becoming more practiced.

Only after I was completely confident in my ability to create this energy did I finally stop my training. At that point, I let out a deep breath, cleaning my ragged clothes and replacing them with ones that had not been torn to shreds. Closing my eyes, I transferred myself back to my room, feeling my body collapsing against the bed.

I half expected one of the goddesses to already be there when I arrived, but none were present. It was only a few moments later when I received a mental message from Terra. Oh? Finally decided that you were done training, did you? She asked in an amused tone.

Was I gone that long? I couldn’t help but wonder when I received that sort of welcome.

Probably best if you check for yourself. Or are you going to take a nap first?

As much as a nap sounded good… I wanted to get this over with, to put my training to use before the finer details started to slip from the back of my mind. Nap can wait.

After saying that, I pulled myself back up to my feet, and moved over towards my computer. I saw that I had a communication request from Balu… several dozen of them, in fact. But that wasn’t the big thing. In order to see how long I was gone, I went to look at how long was left until my match with the dragon Keeper.

…

I just stared at that number for a long moment before it processed. I spent nearly fifty days alone doing that?! Why didn’t you let me know? I called back to Terra, who responded with a simple laugh.

Because you were doing well. If I called you and let you know how much time had passed, you would have become distracted and stopped halfway. At no point did you instruct me that you wanted to stop after a certain amount of time, nor have you ever implied that there was a time limit, aside from the match against Jugularnaut.

I wanted to argue against her reasoning, but the more I thought about it, she really was right. There was nothing in particular that I needed to do to prepare for my match against the dragon. I already decided not to try to hurt him, so I just needed to make sure that I was ready for the next round, which was another hundred days later.

Alright… so, what do I need to do to block out the others long enough for me to do this? I asked Terra, taking a deep breath to calm myself down.

Just go into the permissions setting, and disable all of their permissions on Earth until you’re done.

I gave a small nod of my head, before sending a message out towards all of the gods. Everyone, I’m going to be doing something on Earth in a few minutes, and it requires me to temporarily cut off everyone’s access. This is step one of a trump card that I’m preparing for the future, and if anyone, even one of you, knows about it then it will cause problems in the system. Any questions?

Can you tell us what it is, at least? Ryone asked, suddenly sounding incredibly curious.

I can’t. I shook my head briefly as I considered. It’s something big enough that just having one other person knowing about it could push us into being a second rank world. And we just aren’t ready for that. Hell, our worlds were only arguably ready to face first rank challenges.

Surprisingly, the next message actually came from Bihena. Give us five minutes, so that we can send a warning down to our people that we will have our attentions diverted briefly. The last thing we want is a large scale panic if people realize that we aren’t ‘with them’ anymore.

Bihena’s concern did make sense, and I soon heard the other gods and goddesses chiming their agreement with what she wanted. So, as requested, I gave them five minutes before I called back Leowynn. When she arrived, she glanced briefly at me, speaking up as she merged into my spiritual realm again. “Irena said that you’re doing something really secretive now?”

“That’s right. Once we get down there, I’ll need you to go elsewhere for a little while. Even you can’t know about it.” After I said that, I felt Leowynn’s cheeks puffing up slightly, but she still nodded her consent.

That said, I took away the permissions from every god and goddess on Earth, aside from Terra. There was no harm in her knowing, since she already knew anyways. She just had to keep it a secret the same as me. Next… I had honestly planned to do this in my training room at the Citadel, but there was the chance that Tsubaki would discover me there.

Instead, I once again looked through the map, finding the most isolated island, over five hundred miles from the nearest inhabited settlement. At that distance, even if they somehow managed to sense me, it wouldn’t matter. There wouldn’t be any chance of them being able to see what I was doing.

Closing my eyes, I finalized my choices and selected the option to descend with the staff that I had used to create the world spirit queen. I could feel the warm light encompassing me before I was silently deposited on a large, unexplored island. The moment I had finished descending, Leowynn walked out from my spiritual realm, turning to regard me.

“You know, isolated places like this are going to become pretty rare eventually.” She pointed out, causing me to nod.

“I know… I’m thinking about that. I’ll have to come up with something for the future, a private training area that others won’t be able to intrude on.” Of course, how I’d get that to work with the system I wasn’t sure yet. Maybe buying another world without any inhabitants, and linking it to the Fairy Gate system, but don’t give anyone the key.

Unfortunately, pretty sure the system wouldn’t just let me use that as a safe haven during invasions, and if I tried it would just spawn the invading army on that world, so I would be there alone with no reinforcements.

Leowynn silently considered my answer, before smiling. “Alright, well, I’ll go see what I can find to do around here. Any idea how long it will take you?”

“Ten minutes? Maybe fifteen.” I responded quickly, estimating how long it had taken me in my last practice run. “I’ll call you when I’m done so we can go back.”

Leowynn gave a brief nod at that, before turning and rushing off into the woods. I could feel her presence moving further and further away, showing that she really did intend to give me my privacy for this.

Letting out a relieved sigh, I tapped my staff against the ground once I had confirmed that she was far enough away for me to begin. “Let’s get this over with…” I began to inject my mana into the staff as I looked up, my eyes focusing on the sky. “I am the one who stands above the heavens.”

Immediately, a dense natural aura rushed around me in response to my words. Taking a deep breath, I began to release my ki out into the surroundings. Then, my mana along with it, presenting well over a quarter of each.

“My gaze shall cover the world. My sight shall transcend all borders and boundaries. By the strength of my command, I make the world my own.” I recited the script that I had rehearsed ahead of time, practiced through countless iterations. This was what was missing, the key component that I lacked in my previous attempts at creating world sight. I had simply been trying to control the energy on my own, instead of letting it work naturally.

And as I spoke, the natural energy began to rush at both the mana and the ki. However, it did not try to devour them, rather… it fed itself to them. And as it did, the two mixed energies began to grow closer and closer to one another, slowly beginning their own merger. This was the moment of truth, the moment that would determine whether or not it succeeded.

It was also the moment I most prepared for. “Become my sight. Become my gaze. Reveal to me all the secrets of the world.” As soon as I saw the three energies fully merged into one, I stretched my hand out. Mana surged, condensing to become a visible blue cloud that wrapped around the trembling energy.

When I clenched my fist, the mana began to slowly rotate, shrinking down as it merged once again. “My gaze is steady and firm, and shall remain unbroken.” With these words, and the work of the mana, the mass shrank down once again. From before, when it was as large as myself, it turned into a tiny purple gem no larger than a grain of rice.

Good, now the last step! I had expected the final result to be larger, but it seemed like this was the most that I was able to create with the energies that I had available to me. I dropped my staff, and instead placed my hands together while I focused.

My spiritual energy stretched out from my body, causing me to wince in pain as it felt as if my muscles were being pulled in the wrong direction. This was the consequence of manipulating spiritual energy as a living being. But, under my careful control, the spiritual energy wrapped around the small gem, lifting it up before it could fall. The gem began to brighten as more and more spiritual energy slowly pushed into it, while it was being pulled towards my body.

The moment when the gem had turned a pure white, it merged inside of my body. I could feel it entering my spiritual realm, becoming a new shining star in Leowynn’s sky. And with a sigh of relief, I allowed myself to fall flat on my rear, my head lifting up towards the sky and laughing. It’s done.