World Keeper

Chapter 494: What Is Real

“What’s he up to…” I muttered to myself, seeing one of my gods leave Earth. He didn’t proceed through a Fairy Ring, but rather journeyed into the void of space. When I thought that I might have to fast forward to properly see what he was doing, he cut open a hole within the void before him.

Through that black tear, a creature emerged, a black skeletal horse that trotted in front of him and simply waited. When he mounted the horse, it vanished. My eyes went wide, and I hastily looked for him again, only to find that he had traveled over a dozen light years. “He can even make monsters like that?”

“Hmm? What’s going on?” Ryone asked, still laying on the couch with her head in my lap. Since she was curious, I displayed my current mental view of the scene on the television. After I explained what Towers had just done, the elven goddess sank into deep thought.

“We don’t have any monsters like that. But, if I had to guess, the horse he created had a powerful teleportation ability that simply required a set of relative coordinates.” When she had finished saying that, she took in a sharp breath. “That cost him a lot of divinity… what’s he planning?”

“That’s what I want to know.” As the two of us were both watching now, the black horse made a few more jumps. It seemed to be aiming for a particular star, but whenever it either overshot or undershot its mark it would land a considerable distance away. Only after roughly a dozen jumps did Towers seem satisfied with his location, dismissing the horse.

His crystalline body curled in on itself, becoming a large sphere. This sphere then began to radiate a golden glow. “…He’s going to turn his body into a planet.” The idea was… preposterous, in my mind. The amount of divinity needed to create a planet the size of Earth would have to be massive.

“You seem to be forgetting the most important aspect of Aurivy’s little dungeons, Dale…” Ryone muttered, watching the screen. Every time the core that Towers had become pulsed, he grew just a little bit further. “They have a patience that could even put elves to shame.”

I set up a quick program in the Keeper interface, calculating how long it would take Tower to reach the size of Earth… “Fifty-two years, at his current rate of growth. That’s… quite a bit of patience.”

“Only fifty-some years?” Ryone laughed. “That’s nothing. Even for an elf, fifty years could be considered just a long-term plan. For a dungeon… he probably doesn’t see the time as a factor at all. All he knows is that it will eventually happen. And when it does… using his innate abilities to control his own terrain, as well as creating intelligent monsters capable of worshipping him, he’ll be able to set up a divinity farm.”

I thought back to the final stage of the Profound Star Laws at that, the Universe Born… technically, there was no life within that universe. At least, not at its conception. Depending on the domain that the cultivator pursued, it was possible to create life to fill it. For instance, if Jana ever reached that stage, she would be capable of seeding her universe with aquatic life or water elementals.

For me, someone whose universe was built on the foundation of ‘illusions’, I began to wonder what sort of life I could create in it. Theoretically, I could create the illusion of life, using the ‘final conclusion’ that I reached on the illusion path. Each path had numerous final conclusions, none more accurate than the others. For instance again, with water, a water cultivator could reach the conclusion that water was the source of all life. Alternatively, water could also be seen as a patient, destructive force.

The conclusion that I chose was something that I had decided from the moment I began cultivating illusions. ‘What is real is fake, and what is fake is real.’ My path of illusions built towards that goal, the ability to dismiss reality as an illusion, and make an illusion real.

Of course, this would all be pointless if my world host somehow managed to die… but, I couldn’t see that happening easily. Now that it had become a god of two domains, along with the supporting power of Tsubaki, there shouldn’t be anything left in my own world that can threaten me.

Focusing, I sent a mental message down to my host, telling him about my idea. As we were of the same mind, it wouldn’t take much for him to figure out what I wanted and begin experimenting on his own.

“Is it about time, now?” Dana asked Tsubaki, both of them standing outside what they had called the ‘charging chamber’.

Tsubaki gave a small nod, opening the door and stepping inside. Within the room, at the center of the large spell diagram, sat the small marble that the Keeper had helped them create. The two of them allowed it to rest for about a day before checking on it, wanting to see the progress that it had made.

They had initially been concerned that a day would be too long with something such as this, and had measured its growth after one hour. And then again at two. At both readings, the change seemed… negligible at best, if there was any change at all. Enough that they were concerned that a day might not actually be enough.

And so, Tsubaki and Dana walked over to the marble, seeing it glow with the same vibrant energy it had shown before. “Are you ready to start measuring?” She asked, reaching for the marble.

When Dana nodded, Tsubaki lifted it out of the containment of the spell diagram it was held in. And immediately regretted her decision. Within a single second of the marble being lifted out of its containment, there was a torrent of liquified mana that poured into the surroundings, bursting out and filling almost two feet in every direction.

The pressure was intense enough that it took a full five seconds for Tsubaki to wrestle the marble back into the containment, her eyes wide with shock. Dana had been blasted back by the pressure, sliding along the now wet ground to rest several feet away. “T-Tsuba?” She spoke up in a hesitant voice.

“Okay, new plan.” Tsubaki nodded her head decisively. “We’re going to make a new spell array that draws out only the amount of mana needed from the internal world.” Her hand was still numb from the pressure of the liquified mana, the blue liquid spreading over the entire floor of the room and reaching halfway to her knees.

“And then we’re going to attach it as a seal directly to that marble.” She said, pointing accusingly at the offending object. She had run the numbers previously, and knew that the marble would eventually erupt in productivity. She just hadn’t expected the eruption to be quite so literal, quite so soon…

“Uh huh…” Dana nodded her head, her eyes still focusing on that marble. When Tsubaki called for her to get her attention, she snapped out of her little daze. She was calculating in her head just how much that internal world must have expanded to be producing so rapidly.

From the initial burst, she expected it had to be at least a dozen or so kilometers wide now. As opposed to the mere fifty meters it had started as. Once her mind was back on task, though, she quickly changed her focus to designing the seal that Tsubaki had asked for.

Tsubaki, meanwhile, held out her hand. Within it, a small flask appeared. “We should make sure to contain the mana before it evaporates, or else we’re going to have the king of all mana siphons on our heads.”

Dana’s face went absolutely pale when she considered that, watching as the liquified mana surged up from the floor to pour into Tsubaki’s flask. The flask itself was naturally a magic item, a simple storage device that she had prepared for special occasions. Not something that she expected to need to use in this type of situation.

Once the rampant fluids had been sucked up, Tsubaki caused one of her fingers to let out a brilliant light, which she then used to engrave the word ‘Mana’ on the side of the flask. Neither of them had any way of telling what the value of the mana within the flask was, only that it was the strongest source of energy that either of them had ever felt.

The two girls exchanged a glance, and immediately left the room, closing and locking the door behind them. Before they were ready to deal with that marble again, they absolutely had to prepare the proper seals.

Fafnir laid lazily across a mountain within the island of Rokindrol, his eyes gazing over the surroundings. Finding food had no longer become a challenge, and he was able to properly fill his stomach whenever he needed. Whether they were above or below the water did not matter anymore.

He could feel the presence of his master, but it was so faint. So far away, beyond a wall he couldn’t cross. Fafnir knew what that meant, that the Keeper was within another of the worlds. However, he did not speak of this to either Tsubaki or Dana. If he wished to make himself known, he would have, and otherwise it was none of their business.

As he thought about that, his eyes began to drift upwards, towards one of the many stars in the sky. The great dragon wasn’t sure why, but he felt as if… there was something out there, calling for him. He briefly thought about whether or not he should answer the call, before quickly shaking his head.

He had yet to achieve perfection of the flesh, though Tsubaki was helping him understand the process. Before that, he knew that he would not be able to survive outside of this world’s atmosphere. Mostly because he had tried once already, testing how high he could fly.

Maybe once he had achieved his perfection, he would answer the call that seemed to speak directly to his soul. For the time being, however, he lowered his head, peering out into the distance. There was another presence, much nearer, that was drawing his attention as well.

Was it a human? There seemed to be more and more people that rose to power in recent years, so it couldn’t be sure. Fafnir had even begun to feel as if it might no longer ‘deserve’ to be the tamed monster of the Keeper. Maybe that problem would resolve itself with this ‘perfection’ as well.

Fafnir’s heavy-lidded eyes closed as he gazed in the direction of the rising power, feeling the negativity that seemed to be directed at Fafnir himself. Though, he wasn’t sure why that would be the case. Maybe a trick of the mind, he thought to himself as he began to drift off.

“Couldn’t give me an easy job, could you?” A lone figure asked, sitting atop a lonely mountain peak. The area around him seemed to ripple and distort in hazy ribbons. His eyes were closed, his mental gaze focused inwards.

What he saw was a sprawling void dotted with countless stars and nebulas, a cosmos within himself. Each star seemed to flicker in and out of existence in a seemingly random pattern, while the cosmic gases swirled around without a true sense of gravity. As if they were simply dancing to decorate the scenery.

His view narrowed, focusing in further and further on one of his worlds. “Let’s see if this is even possible…”