World Keeper - Chapter 1257: Pecking Order

Pierce stood on the observation deck of a station in orbit around a remote planet. This planet, chosen for colonization due to the rare fact that it was still in a habitable state even after the events of V-Day, now had a bustling economy down on its surface. Due to the overall lack of higher life forms on this planet, it had been minimally affected during that particular invasion.

Of course, there had been memetic entities spawning naturally since then, but those weren’t much of a pain to clean up. Once that was taken care of, and the memetic barrier had been established, there was nothing more to truly worry about with this system.

The reason that Pierce chose to come here was rather simple. He wanted to look for a place to settle down. Not immediately, of course, he was still enjoying his travels. Especially given that there were so many new realms to explore. However, he wanted to find a home for himself once he felt his travels coming to an end.

In recent weeks, Pierce had felt the need for his intervention lessening by the day. Every now and then, he would send in an anonymous tip about another monster attack that looked like it was going to slip through their systems, but aside from that? There weren’t really any criminal organizations that rose to great enough power to threaten entire planets, let alone universes.

Things may change in the future. But, for now, maybe it’s reasonable to take a break from interfering for a while? He thought to himself, a small smile on his face. While it did leave him feeling somewhat hollow that his help wasn’t needed as much anymore, he considered this a good thing. After all, not being needed meant that things were peaceful. What more could he want?

“Mister Laplace?” An attendant called out for Pierce. “Your shuttle is ready to take you down to the surface.”

Pierce nodded his head, turning towards the attendant. “Thank you very much.” He said, moving to follow behind her. Of course, even if he did retire, he would still keep an eye on things. He didn’t plan to just completely remove himself from society, as Jonas had originally done.

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“…What am I looking at?” I asked after appearing in Olympus once again. Tsubaki had sent me a message, informing me that the new representative of the Myriad Beasts had been prepared. Admittedly, I was surprised, since it had barely been a couple hours since my last visit, only just giving me enough time to watch a movie with Terra and the others.

However, I had initially assumed that Lyrica just had several people prepared that met Tsubaki’s criteria, allowing the process to be completed quickly. What I was not expecting was to see Lyrica herself wearing a modified maid uniform, a sleeveless one with a rather short skirt to allow her to move more easily.

“Yo, boss!” Lyrica said with a grin, before looking at Tsubaki. “Or should I call him Master? Or just Keeper? Not really used to this kinda role.”

Tsubaki shook her head slightly. “My Keeper is often not particular about how we call him.” After she said that, she turned to address me. “As for your question, my Keeper. This is the result of the discussion that I had with Lyrica. It would, perhaps, be best if she explained it herself.”

With that, Tsubaki gestured for Lyrica to speak, and she nodded her head obediently. Her tail was even wagging when she looked at Tsubaki, which I found quite confusing. “Here’s how it is, boss. In my culture, the weak obey the strong. Miss Tsubaki here and I were talkin’ about what sort of traits you’d like in a representative when I brought this up, worried that sendin’ someone might result in them causin’ trouble for you all here.”

“She had some choice words to that, which got me all fired up to test her out. I hadn’t really been able to get a good judge of her strength in that last battle, ya know?” Lyrica asked with a shrug. “Anyways, we got in one of those educational streams where we could go all out, and she totally wiped the floor with me. I know she pulled out her strongest skill and all, but even without it, that Oblivion energy of hers would probably be able to kill me before I dealt any meaningful damage to her.”

Oblivion energy? I thought inwardly, adding it to the list of things to ask Tsubaki about later. I knew the three Saint Energies that she had mastered, and knew that there wasn’t one called that.

As I was thinking about that, Lyrica continued. “Since she handed me my ass on a silver platter, that makes her the top dog, at least when it comes to me. She had even commented that she’d be more than happy with me bein’ the servant here if I was willin’, so that just sealed the deal!” Lyrica had a proud grin on her face as she explained that. “Lookin’ forward to workin’ with ya, boss!”

Just by the way she was talking, I could tell that Lyrica was far more relaxed than any of the previous times I had seen her. Perhaps, being in the submissive position of such a relationship allowed her to speak her mind more easily? Given that she was the leader of an entire race that spanned across multiple universes, especially one mistreated as a minority by others, the burden on her shoulders must have previously been immense.

“While I’m not expressly against Lyrica being the representative of her people here, is she able to handle the workload?” I asked curiously, gesturing to Lyrica’s paws. “I don’t mean to sound insulting, but the lack of opposable thumbs is likely a serious inconvenience when it comes to mundane tasks.”

Lyrica blinked, looking down at her paws, before chuckling. “Yeah, I can see how that’d be a concern. But no worries! I already got that all worked out with Miss Tsubaki.”

Hearing that, I turned to look at Tsubaki for an explanation. “I expressed a concern for the problem myself, which is what took so long to contact you after the decision was made. Given the fact that they have proper clothing and tools among their people, they no doubt had their own ways to handle such tasks.”

“According to Lyrica, these types of tasks are typically left either to those that have yet to hit puberty, or those that have taken on the traits of another creature with opposable thumbs. Normally, a woman like Lyrica would be wholly unsuited for any form of delicate task, and her identity as a Wolf-Blooded would have her in a more combat oriented role, whether as a hunter or a soldier.”

“However, given her insistence on accepting the role, we found a compromise. Although it is possible for her to alter her physical body by simply reshaping her energy, shedding her bestial traits is seen as a serious dishonor among her people. It would be the equivalent of castration among humans, at least in terms of how it is perceived.”

“Instead, we simply helped her to learn a new skill through ki control. After spending a few skill coins on it, she can now effectively create appendages made of ki with full manual dexterity. As far as doing any form of manual labor, Lyrica is entirely qualified, and is a surprisingly fast learner.”

I gave a small nod of my head, pleased to hear this. At the same time, Lyrica’s tail was wagging happily at the praise from Tsubaki, who continued to speak. “Next, when it comes to matters outside of Olympus, Lyrica is even more qualified. As the Master of Beasts, she has a high level of recognition among Hal Tua’s common residents, surpassing even the recognition of the Greater Pantheon.”

“Due to her special abilities as the Master of Beasts, she came up with a plan that would allow us to curry favor with the new universes among Sanction’s former realm.” After saying that, Tsubaki gestured for Lyrica to speak again.

“It’s pretty simple, really!” She said with a toothy grin. “They’re all gettin’ troubled by those beasts roamin’ about, eatin’ their planets. Most of the other Masters don’t have any special skills to take care of them in bulk, and that’s a pretty niche thing for an Extreme God to be able to do, so there won’t be many of those.”

“Me, on the other hand, I can easily use my authority as the Master of Beasts to subjugate any monster roamin’ around. Only requirement is that they need to not have that pesky privacy barrier for me to be able to sense into their universe in the first place.”

Hearing that made me think of a rather important question. “What exactly is the definition of a beast when it comes to your powers. How do your powers differentiate beasts from regular people?”

Lyrica blinked at that, before shrugging her shoulders. “It doesn’t! Technically, nothin’s stoppin’ me from usin’ my powers to control people, ‘side from me finding it rather distasteful. From what I’ve found, anythin’ that’s born or evolved from an animal counts as a beast, even if it is a higher form of existence like an energy being.”

“‘Course, this means I can’t do a thing against plant monsters, or elementals. If it doesn’t have the ancestry of a beast, it’s outside my control. Oh, and before you ask, I don’t even know what you are. Can’t sense a hint of beast from you or my old Administrator. Guessing it’s something special about Keepers, and how they can just come and go from that upper realm or whatever.”

Tsubaki cleared her throat, getting the conversation back on track. “Regardless, my plan was to offer this protection service to the smaller guilds of Hal Tua, those that are unlikely to have their own Extreme Gods able to defend their universes, and that the upper-ranked guilds wouldn’t go out of their way to defend.”

“They may be reluctant to lower their privacy barrier to allow Lyrica to protect them, but that is a small price to pay when the alternative is the destruction of countless planets.” Tsubaki finished, looking at me for my opinion.

“I don’t really see a problem with this, other than… is Lyrica able to handle actively scanning that many places at once? It seems like it would make even Dana exhausted.”

When I pointed that out, Lyrica grinned broadly. “No need to worry there, boss! One of the tricks I’ve got is a super beast sensor! It’s a gadget that I made in my early days to help me find powerful pets more easily. I just plop it down in a universe, and it will constantly operate to locate any beast above the level I set. I’ll need to do some tweaking to get it to work in your universes, but it’ll be perfectly fine for any of Hal Tua’s universes.”

“Once that’s down, I barely have to pay any attention to it at all, and just use a little bit of focus whenever there’s a ping to drag the beast into my internal universe. Easy as that!”

Hearing Lyrica explain it so easily both left me feeling assured and worried. After all, with such a foolproof method of protecting the realm, would the system begin to exploit her inability to target non-beast type monsters? Realistically speaking, monsters should be born based on their environment, so there will still be plenty of roaming monsters born in space with no animal relation at all.

However, at the same time, I couldn’t just ignore the number of lives that this would be able to save. Thus, I nodded my head. “Alright, you’ve got my approval to initiate your plan. As for Lyrica… Tsubaki, I’ll leave you in charge of introducing her to everyone, and making sure that there isn’t any trouble. Is there anything else to discuss while I’m here?”

Tsubaki shook her head at that. “No, my Keeper. Chelsea is still optimizing the code of Hal Tua, together with Ashley’s team. I will make sure that you are informed when they have finished their work.”

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