World Keeper - Chapter 1274: The Middle of the End

My eyes were wide in surprise, quickly unraveling the meaning behind the invitation. My eyes glanced over to Terra, and she nodded her head in confirmation. There was only one entity that could be responsible for preventing the time freeze at the initiation of the annual meeting.

Hesitantly, I accepted the invitation, preparing for the worst. While the transfer to the annual meeting always took the form of a gilded door, traveling to another Keeper’s Admin Room could take any number of forms, from falling through a portal to being devoured by a land shark. Furthermore, I wasn’t even in my own Admin Room right now, so what was going to happen?

However, my worries proved unfounded. The world around me seemed to flicker like static, and I found myself sitting at a crystal table within a pure white room. Across from me was a blue-haired woman with an abundant figure, her blue eyes almost sparkling as she looked at me. She wore a dress that, as with the rest of herself, was blue, as if she were trying to stick to her own personal color scheme.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Dale.” She said with an amused smile, waving her hand to provide a teacup in front of each of us.

“So, you’re Keeper Zero? Or, as everyone else calls you, the True Keeper?” I asked, and the woman groaned in shame, bringing a hand up to her forehead.

“Gods, no!” She shook her head, as if desperately trying to forget that title. “Why would I want to be worshipped like that?! Also, my ID isn’t even technically 0000, I just used that to contact you because I knew that it would get the message across. You can call me Anima.” She said with a weary smile.

I looked at Anima in confusion. “If you aren’t the True Keeper, then who are you?” I had assumed that the being sitting before me was the creator of the Keeper system, the one responsible for everything. However, that one denial threw me for a loop.

“Like you, I was originally just a normal Keeper.” Anima said with a faint shrug. “I was the first to discover what I refer to as the ‘True Seventh Rank’. The only way to get here is to get all the way to the sixth rank without ever resetting one of your worlds. Which you’d think would be something more people would try to do…”

After saying that, she sighed, shaking her head. “However, most people reset when they face a catastrophe that permanently alters the state of their world. For instance, the situation that your people call V-Day, where apocalyptic monsters forever changed the situation in your universes. Most Keepers would find that level of damage too much to be worth continuing. They’d reset the affected worlds, buy a few companion versions of their favorite people from their last run, and then start fresh with a new outlook.”

“That, or in the early game, before they got attached to their world, they’d try to reset a few times to get a better starting situation. Or worse, pull the stunt your little fox maid did in her Keeper simulation, and just try to farm points in the early game by resetting their universes. I’m still a bit annoyed at her for that, by the way. Though, I know she did it with the ‘best intentions’.”

I couldn’t help but blink as I listened to Anima… venting? This certainly seemed like venting. “You saw all of that?”

“Yup.” She nodded her head in confirmation. “At this rank, you basically become one with the system. Not like a forceful merger, or anything. You can just… how do I put this… Ah! You can view other Keepers like you’d view your own world from your Admin Room. You just can’t directly contact anyone. Which is why I’m glad that there’s finally another Keeper at this level.”

Hearing this, I couldn’t help but have a bad feeling. “What about Terra and the others? They’re not–”

“Oh, no! Don’t worry!” Anima quickly shook her head, dismissing my concerns. “Your realm wasn’t deleted or anything. They’re still just waiting for you to return. My own companions are all in different parts of my Admin Room, or currently helping in the annual meeting. They like to go there to stretch their legs from time to time, but the system won’t let me do so myself.” After she said that, she sent a pouting glare up towards the sky.

I cleared my throat, getting her attention again. “So, why doesn’t anyone know about you? If they did, surely someone would have tried to follow your example by now.”

Anima let out a long sigh, shaking her head again. “Unfortunately, getting this rank wipes everyone’s memory of you. There are only a few vague hints and inconsistencies, but people just chalk that up to system imperfections or quirks. For instance, you’ve already come into contact with a few of my legacies that still remain out in the wild.”

When Anima saw my confused look, she smiled. “Well, the first is the Thousand Arms, Ten Thousand Threads. I was the one that made that technique, wanting to try to improve my mind to be more like that of a companion. Oh, and there’s my real ID number, which has worked its way into the subconscious of nearly every Keeper’s world, 0666. After I got this rank, one of the first changes I asked the system to make was letting everyone choose their own name.”

“Due to the system’s interference, nobody really noticed that my number was missing at the time. However, it created a subconscious gap in people’s minds, one that never quite faded away.”

“You can make changes to the system here?” I questioned, and she grinned happily.

“Yup! I’ve made quite a lot of changes since reaching this point. The companion account thing that Tsubaki suggested got pushed through because I brought it up to the system. If you paid attention when people were discussing history, you’d notice that all of the changes in the system started with everyone getting names. However, nobody knew how old the Keeper system itself was. That’s because the system remained unchanging until it found someone of an appropriate level to consider its ‘equal’. I had really high hopes for the guilds system I brought in, but then people kept trying to use it to find loopholes and prevent invasions, so I had to patch that…”

I brought my hand up to my head, trying to keep up with the flow of information I was receiving. “Wait… why do we have to face invasions in the first place? Is it really such a bad thing to get rid of those?”

Anima sighed reluctantly. “I get where you’re coming from with that, Dale, I do. However, whether I like it or not, they are necessary. Invasions serve the same purpose, historically, as war. In times of war, people are compelled to improve at a faster rate to prepare for the coming conflict. Additionally, the spoils of this war allow for the victor to integrate new ideas into their world that they likely wouldn’t have come up with otherwise. This all helps the Keeper’s worlds grow more robust, able to handle a wide variety of events that could naturally appear.”

“Right…” While I was not entirely sure about that explanation, I accepted it for the time being. “You mentioned legacies before. Is that what… happened to Meta?”

Anima winced at that name, her head dipping. “Y-Yeah… about that… I helped him come up with his version of the Keeper system, back when I was in like the fourth rank. But, after I got to my current position, the system had two options. Given how deeply my involvement with Meta was, and his implementation of the system in his current realm, the system could either completely reset him, or just make a few small changes to lessen my influence. Naturally, I didn’t wanna kill him!”

“But, because the changes were made, his simulation became less and less consistent. It used to be really good. Like, scary good. It had every one of the ten thousand Keepers, and he could use it to accurately predict the outcomes of battles weeks in advance. He even knew about new Keepers before we did! But now, it’s riddled with holes. People aren’t there that should be, and vice versa. The biggest changes were those centered around my influence. It was a butterfly effect that drove the poor guy mad with paranoia.”

“That’s why!” Anima lifted her head to look at me. “Whenever I see a promising Keeper that looks like they might have what it takes to reach this point, I try to give them a little subtle guidance. Most Keepers consider this as just fortuitous coincidences. For you, I convinced the system to allow two interventions. I’m sure that you can already guess what they were.”

I blinked briefly, thinking back. “Obviously, one of them has to be James, right? From how Terra freaked out when we found him, that was way too much of a coincidence to be natural.” As for the other one… I racked my brain for a few moments before blinking. “The Origin of Fate?”

“Right on both counts!” Anima declared proudly. “I saw that you were building yourself in the direction of an energy-type world. However, you didn’t really have any good experts in that field, and almost killed yourself off just making your first Saint Energy. But then, I saw that your Keeper from two generations ago was an expert himself in energy combinations, so I had the system guide his remnant souls to your world, in an area outside of your direct influence at the time.”

“As for your first Origin, that was a bit trickier. Her incarnation being born an anomaly really was just a stroke of luck. Or maybe she foresaw the anomaly with her fate powers. Either way, that part wasn’t me. The part I got involved with was when they ascended. Originally, the system had them slated for destruction due to the incompatible energies of gods and fallen. I used up my second intervention chance to get that overruled, turning them into an incomplete Origin.”

I gave a small nod, the pieces starting to fall into place now. This must have been why Terra’s restrictions were removed after I was promoted. I had already met the requirement to reach this hidden rank, and it was just a matter of waiting for the next annual meeting.

“Anything else you want to ask, before I bring your friends over? They’re currently freaking out, wondering where you went, and Terra’s trying to figure out how to explain it to them.” My eyes went wide when I heard that, looking over.

“You can go ahead and pull them in. Otherwise…” I trailed off, and Anima chuckled.

“Got it. Don’t want to send the fox into another death spiral. I saw how that went the first time.” After she said that, she lifted her hand, creating numerous circles of light in the air. From each one, a familiar figure emerged.

“My Keeper!” Tsubaki said, immediately running over to me as if to make sure that I was unharmed. The others looked around at the empty, white space, before Lena turned her head to look at Anima.

“You’re the one I met in the forest, right?” She asked, and Anima blinked, before letting out a light laugh.

“Right, you were the overly perceptive one. It’s nice to see you again. I guess that this is our third meeting?” Anima mused, and Lena blinked.

“Third? I only ever saw you the once, didn’t I?”

However, Anima shook her head. “You also sensed me once before, back when you first caught my attention.”

Lena thought back, soon realizing what Anima was talking about. “Ah… so that was you, too. Anyways, what’s up with this place? Are you like the Keeper’s Keeper or something?”

“I’ll explain it again to all of you later.” Anima promised. “Or Dale can do so himself. For now, do you have any final questions, Dale?” She asked, looking at me again. And… yeah, there was one question that I had been wanting to ask.

“What is the system?” I asked, and Anima’s smile grew wider.