World Keeper - Chapter 1258: Under New Management
Back in the Admin Room, I decided to take a look at the list of Origins that came with Hal Tua’s realm. Given the relative ease to ascend to become an Origin there, it was no surprise that they had several times more than we did.
Most of them were rather normal domains, such as Secrets, Gems, Beasts, or Water. However, there were a few rather interesting ones in the mix, too. For instance, there was an Origin of Songs, and an Origin of Power.
For the Origin of Songs, they were the leader of a guild that wasn’t able to make it into the top twenty, due to their guild master not being very combat oriented. From what I could tell, they were originally a bard that ascended to become an Origin, and never managed to get a solid foothold as their new role.
As for the Origin of Power, they just barely squeezed into the top twenty after the few other Origins were recently eliminated. From what I could tell, their domain was too vague, and they had to create too many powers to properly make use of it. Given the world’s lower understanding of world creation, the only way for them to grow would be to conquer numerous dungeons.
However, in doing so, they would be putting themselves in increasing levels of danger, with no guarantee that they would be able to return safely from any individual dungeon. When I got to that part, I realized something that hadn’t entirely clicked yet. Looking over at Terra, I couldn’t help but ask. “How did Sanction get to Rank Five? I haven’t seen anything about him being able to custom-create his own universes yet.”
Terra simply nodded her head. “Strictly speaking, he doesn’t have anything like that, yeah. However, because his world unlocked a method of becoming an Origin, they were able to use that to fulfill the requirement to rank up instead. After all, Origins are a high-tier power within the Fifth Rank. Additionally, their Celestial Phenomenon system allows them to customize worlds on a small scale, so between the two of those, they created a form of backdoor to get into this rank.”
I nodded at that, understanding what she meant. At first, I thought that maybe they had dungeon gods capable of creating custom dungeons, or maybe there was a system that was able to do it for them. However, when I remembered the price of such systems in the market, I realized just how infeasible that was. Even the Celestial Phenomenon system would have been outrageously expensive. Sanction probably only bought it because it was the only way for his Origins to increase their power after ascending.
Still, if we combined the techniques of both regions, we would be able to see an explosive growth in power. Utilizing Hal Tua’s method of ascension would naturally be easier than the way we currently do it, and would pull a lot of the workload off of Chelsea and the others. However, there was still a substantial risk, both in creating the gate within themselves and the conquering of the dungeon itself.
There was no way that I was going to just hand out blessings to people like I did with Tsubaki, allowing them to easily replicate the process. At most, I would have Chelsea create a device that was able to handle that stage of the process for them. Additionally, I would not be releasing the map that Tsubaki had used to complete the dungeon within mere seconds. That map was the single greatest security risk imaginable, allowing any hostile power to immediately lock onto my location during an invasion.
Giving that out to people aiming to become the highest tier of power in the realm would be absolutely suicidal. Instead, I would let them handle the dungeons on their own, whether they pass or fail. Though, that thought made me think of another question. “If every Origin in Hal Tua’s realm has mastered the ability to create dungeon portals, why don’t they just do that themselves to farm dungeons for increased profits?”
Terra maintained a calm smile as she explained. “There are regulations in Hal Tua. Only certain regions are allowed to be reserved for manual dungeon creation, and the price to do so is rather high. Additionally, the system to generate dungeons was excluded from all other universes aside from Hal Tua itself, so they weren’t able to do so in their own worlds.”
“In order to register for a generated dungeon run, a guild has to apply with the ruling power of Hal Tua, the Administration Tower. There used to be a small number of individuals working there that managed the day-to-day operations of the world, before Tsubaki and Lena went through in the invasion.’
“Anyways, it was the tower that allowed them to reserve lots for generating dungeons. Most guilds didn’t find it very profitable to do so, because the price to reserve the lot was about a third of the profit that they would be able to get from clearing the dungeon. Given that there was no guarantee of success, and that they might not end up selling the dungeon if they did win, most guilds simply settled for participating in naturally generated dungeons.”
That made sense. If every guild could just freely farm dungeons, then there was no reason that the top guilds wouldn’t just send their ace members in every time their quota was renewed. “So, who’s managing the tower now?” I couldn’t help but ask, and Tsubaki smiled meaningfully.
“What? Another dungeon request? Approve it, we’ve got three lots free.” A voice echoed out within the otherwise empty tower. “Someone’s applying for a guild war? Rejected! We don’t have time for all of that right now.”
In the center of the tower sat a lone kitsune girl with blonde hair faded into purple tips, her expression haggard as she went through all of the reports that flashed across her screen. After learning how important the tower was to the operation of Hal Tua, Lena decided to personally take over its functions. Thankfully, she had removed all of her avatars from Dale’s realm prior to the invasion, so she had a lot of extra capacity to split herself into various roles. Still, this was a lot more than she was expecting when she signed up for this job.
“The Masters want to come together to form a council? Finally!” She shouted, lifting her arms in the air. “I was wondering how long it would take them.” Granted, even if the Masters formed the council that had been advised to them, it would not completely eliminate her responsibility. The main focus of the council would just be the protection of the various universes, not the basic functions of Hal Tua itself.
In other words, no matter what, she would need to leave several of her avatars behind to manage the tower in the long term. For now, she was mainly sticking around herself in order to figure out what all was needed from the task. She wanted to prepare her avatars with as much information as possible before she ran back home.
Of course, she did still have her other body that went back home ahead of her, but that just meant that this half of her was saddled with the main workload. As she was thinking about that, another prompt flashed before her eyes, catching her attention. “A collaborative security request from the Master of Beasts?” She asked, tilting her head curiously and opening the file.
In truth, the main universe of Hal Tua was fairly unique in that it did not have many extra colonized worlds within its universe. There was just the single planet of Hal Tua, which had a massive city covering its entire surface. Aside from that, most extra occupied land was within the various other guild universes connected to Hal Tua. Granted, there were a scarce few planets dotted around in nearby solar systems from smaller guilds, but they were offered no protection from the main planet.
This naturally meant that there was an absolutely insane degree of security around the main planet of Hal Tua, enough to push back even immense, cosmic beasts. This was something that Lena had been quite curious about when she took over her current role, and she had been investigating the tower’s systems ever since entering to try to find the answer.
When she eventually found it, she was left rather dumbfounded. In the end, she found that there was a single object buried beneath the tower. This object, classified within the tower’s records as the Dungeon Core, was what allowed dungeons to appear on Hal Tua. However, the range of this core would only extend as far as the planet’s atmosphere.
“Sanction was such a control freak that he didn’t want to risk dungeons even being able to form on other planets within the same universe?” Lena thought aloud, eyes wide. Granted, this would prevent other planets from being constantly overrun by dungeon breaks, but still. Because of this core, other planets had absolutely no value to the residents of Hal Tua, as the only thing that they needed was a single dungeon to get as much land and resources as they wanted.
Shaking her head, she saved the file and sent it to Chelsea. Maybe if Chelsea saw it, she’d be able to replicate the device. Or, at the very least, they could scan it with the Digital Conversion System. Sanction had been controlling his economy by having only a single core like this. If people had been able to create dungeons on other planets as much as they wanted, the world’s economy would have boomed, and there would have been no need for people to concern themselves with a lack of resources.
Lyrica waited patiently outside the Administration Tower, until a small ping caught her attention. Looking at the system window, she gave a small grin. Her application to offer her services to the guilds of Hal Tua had been approved by the tower.
Lyrica didn’t know yet that the current manager of the tower was none other than another servant of the Keeper. As far as she was aware, the tower was operated by an independant system, not a specific group of entities.
With the tower’s approval, certain systems were unlocked for her. Namely, she could contact the leaders of any guild, regardless of whether she had their personal contact information. That was the entire reason that she needed to register with the tower in the first place, as doing so would allow people to unlock system restrictions. It was even possible for the tower itself to negate the privacy field around individual universes, if there was a compelling enough reason to do so.
Now that she had this communication privilege, Lyrica began sending out her offer, starting with the lowest ranked guilds and moving her way up. Her offer was simple, she would plant a pedestal within their universe to help her protect their realm against cosmic monsters for no charge.
At the same time, she explained the current threats posed by these monsters, as well as the limitations in her protection. Any monster that did not qualify as a ‘beast’ would not be affected, and they would still need to work on their own protective mechanisms. However, Chelsea had already begun to trade defensive structures to various guilds to help with that, so the information Lyrica was providing was already largely known.
The fact that they could directly eliminate a significant portion of the monsters that were threatening their worlds was a huge boon, but many were suspicious about whether or not Lyrica had any ulterior motives behind this offer. She had not listed any price for her protection, aside from the inevitable removal of their privacy field. This opened them up to spying and invasions from numerous sources.
However, another surprise came when Lyrica informed them that she was no longer operating with the rest of the Masters of Hal Tua, and had instead become a direct servant of the new Administrator. Several people already knew that the Myriad Beasts Guild had already gone to the other side, but they didn’t know that Lyrica had already obtained such a high position with the other party.
In the end, a few of the guilds immediately accepted the offer, while others refused for the moment. Lyrica didn’t mind, and told those that refused that she would always be willing to offer the same protection again at no cost. She knew that, right now, they were just being paranoid. If she was in their position, it was likely that she wouldn’t just open up her borders for another Master either, regardless of whether or not their were benefits to be obtained from doing so.
Thinking of that, Lyrica paused, unable to stop the small grin that appeared on her face. The people of Miss Tsubaki’s realm are a lot more trusting in that regard, huh?
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