World Keeper

Chapter 600: Shine Brightly

After the Keeper returned to his home, and his vessel returned to the throne to silently ponder over something, Tsubaki was left standing alone within the courtyard. She thought back to the words of the Keeper before the experiment, words that she felt served a greater purpose.

There’s no such thing as an independent space. These words were proven to be true when she learned the secret behind the storage devices. Given her personal knowledge, she had the suspicion that even Earth’s universe was simply a product of space created within the void. Or rather, every world was.

And the second part… This could help you with your research into creating worlds. Those words had been especially impactful to Tsubaki, making her look at this knowledge in a different light. What would it mean for this to affect her research?

First… there was no independent space. That means that the reality marbles were not truly creating an independent world, but were rather segmenting pieces of the great void to create it according to their design. Then, what did it mean to combine those worlds together to create a complete world?

Now, Tsubaki felt as though she was starting to understand the true reason behind the strange mutations in the worlds that she created with Dana. Each of their reality marbles were created with a singular function. That function was to have a dimension filled with energy, constantly producing that energy at its core and using it to expand. Then, by tapping into that created world, they would have an effectively limitless supply of energy.

However, this function also became the reason why the dimensions failed to properly stabilize when brought together. Even the ones that they did not alter had some small defects. Energy could easily grow out of control, and required greater care by the wielder to cast. This was an effect that she hadn’t taken much note of previously, because this was merely a prototype, and the ones that would be entering these worlds possessed the control necessary not to be bothered by the defect.

So, in order to create a truly stable world, they would need to create pillar worlds composed of energy, but not ones that generate that energy. Each world would have to be its own self-contained cycle, at which point it would be able to properly form a combined world. But how should she approach that?

“La-…Leowynn, are you still present?” Tsubaki asked, glancing towards the sky.

Almost caught you that time. What do you need, Tsubaki? Leowynn’s gentle voice sounded in Tsubaki’s mind, causing the kitsune to let out a sigh of relief.

“I’d like your help with an experiment of my own. I’d handle it myself… but I do not believe it’s within my power to do so. I do not have the ability to safely traverse and influence the void as you do.”

Finally asking for help, then? Leowynn sounded pleasantly surprised as she responded. Okay, what can I do to help you?

Tsubaki held out her hand, producing a scepter from one of her numerous storage devices. Like many of her others, this one had a blue marble seated atop it, and served as a backup in case of emergencies. “I would like you to take this gem to the void, and tell me what happens with it.”

After she had made her request, she watched as the blue reality marble vanished from the head of her scepter. It’s there. It started pouring out blue liquid for a moment, but that faded instantly. Now, it’s… shining? It’s just staying in place and shining, and doesn’t seem to have any other discernible change.

Tsubaki gave a small nod, remembering the small specks of light that she had seen in the void. It was unreasonable for such a place to have stars, so she had assumed that each ‘star’ was instead a universe. “Then, if you are able to… please destroy that gem, and tell me what happens with it.”

This time there was a bit of hesitation, either because it was taking a longer time for Leowynn to complete the request, or because she wasn’t sure if she could in the first place. Tsubaki waited patiently, her eyes closing for roughly ten minutes before she heard Leowynn’s voice again. It’s done. When I destroyed the shell of the world, it stopped glowing, and dissolved into the void.

Tsubaki nodded her head gravely. “How much strength did it take for you to destroy it, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Tsubaki and Dana had never attempted to destroy one of their own marbles before, though they had theories about how to cause them to self-destruct by feeding back their own energies in a chaotic state. As such, she wasn’t sure just how durable they were.

The equivalent of two hundred and fifty points in strength, coupled with a fit build. The report surprised Tsubaki. Not because it was a high number. In fact, two hundred and fifty points would take over seven hundred levels as a pure warrior to receive. But nobody had pursued the warrior class that far. Regardless, there were people with that level of strength in the world, Tsubaki herself included.

Rather, what surprised her was because of how low the number was. Leowynn only had to use a mortal’s level of strength to destroy a world within the void. Granted, this was a small, artificially created world. But it was still a world! “O-okay.” She nodded her head. “One last thing. Within our testing facility, there is a stable world formation on the seventh floor, marked as ‘World Thirteen’. Please repeat the previous experiment and destroy the world connected to it.”

This was a dangerous game Tsubaki was playing, and she was fully aware of that. However, it was also very important for her to get her answers. If a mortal’s level of power could destroy an artificial world within the void… what would it take to destroy a naturally generated world like Earth?

The world that Tsubaki had told Leowynn to practice with was one of their most stable, with very few adjustments made to it. If this world was likewise easy to break, then she had an entirely new threat to worry about.

I had to use my divinity this time. Leowynn reported a few minutes later. This world required energy at the divine level to crack, and I only managed to do it because I am the Goddess of the Void. However, like with the other one, it is dissolving now after I cracked it. The progress this time seems to be a lot slower.

“How long will it take for the world to be destroyed?”

I’d give it… two weeks. Going by the rate of decay, I think it will hold out for that long. Tsubaki gave a nod of relief after she heard these reports.

“Thank you, Leowynn. This is a big help to me.” She was being perfectly honest. The idea that a void monster could destroy their world was a huge threat to their safety. But, the fact that it hadn’t happened yet meant that there must be special conditions that needed to be met. With Leowynn’s help, Tsubaki had identified some of these conditions.

First, each world was protected within the void by an innate barrier of light. That was the glow that Leowynn mentioned, as well as the ‘starlight’ she saw in the void. This barrier would become stronger depending on the stability of the world. However, once the barrier was breached, it only took a small amount of damage in order to set the world on the path of destruction.

According to Tsubaki’s theory, this destruction was the energy of the world leaking out and being reclaimed by the void. Once again, the stability of the world in question determined the rate of the leak. If the reality marble took mere minutes, and the world she created with four pillars is estimated to take two weeks, she could guess that it would take years, maybe even decades for a ‘true’ world to break down.

During that time, there would likely be numerous clues, such as energy malfunctioning on a massive scale. It would be easy for anyone with enough knowledge to spot these disastrous signs. So, Tsubaki could confidently say that the Earth would not be attacked in this manner for the foreseeable future.

However, the void was a higher dimension. Entire universes were no more than mere stars within its landscape, and she did not know about the strength of the monsters that dwelled there. But any monster that was able to exist within a higher dimension would possess some strange abilities that were not easily defined by lower-dimensional logic.

Thinking to herself, Tsubaki decided to head back inside. It seemed like she finally had a use for those AI assistants that Blank pushed onto her years ago.

Once I returned to the Admin Room, I ran a quick check through the system to try to identify monsters from the void that might have already broken through to one of my worlds. While the possibility for each storage space being infiltrated was astronomically low, there were a great many of them serving as targets.

As such, I was not entirely surprised when I found one such monster within the edge of my observable territory in Earth’s universe. The creature vaguely resembled a large hound, barely a meter tall at the shoulders, with long, thin tendrils spreading off its back. Its body appeared as if it had been skinned, bare muscle showing as it ran through space.

The distance between this creature and the planet Earth was over a hundred thousand light years, placing it near the edge of the galaxy, but such a thing did not exactly comfort me. The speed the beast was moving at was… insane seemed to be too light of a term. Hundreds of light years could be covered in under a minute of it running, and it seemed to be eating everything it passed.

Comets were erased as it ran by, planets and moons left with thin holes dug through them. It only stopped after I had watched it for roughly fifteen minutes. It stood at the event horizon of a black hole, looking at it greedily. The creature charged forward, directly towards the core of the black hole, seemingly unphased by its massive gravity.

That is… until it arrived at the center and took a bit out of the core mass. The black hole violently erupted, its energy spewing outwards in a hazy blue mass. At first, the hound-shaped beast tried to consume this energy as well, before it found itself unable to properly contain it all. In the end… I gave a silent prayer for the creature for biting off more than it could chew.

“That can’t be the only one.” I muttered to myself, though I did briefly consider another possibility from what I had seen. These creatures existed in a realm that transcended the concept of space as we knew it. A light stroll for them could space thousands of light years. If they did appear in one of my worlds, that world would just seem so incredibly small that they would leave it before realizing what happened.

That is… for every world except for Fyor. Only there would the beasts be trapped. Without using methods similar to how James traversed between connected areas, a void beast would have no choice but to remain in a cage far too small for it. And if that did happen, how long would it take for the creature to get angry? Would anything be able to survive its wrath?

At the very least, I knew what to look out for now, and I knew a way to resolve it. Ryone, I’d like you to work on an alternative to the storage enchantments. Instead of creating an independent storage space, look into space expansion. It’s not likely to be as popular, but it makes it harder for outside forces to invade from the void. If you can make it more enticing for the people, feel free to by all means.

Hmm… I’ll get to work. Sounds like a fun little side project. Her response came back quickly, leaving me relieved that I had her help with the problem.