World Keeper-Chapter 1244: Priorities!
Lifre let out a long sigh of relief, landing back on the ground outside of Olympus, the last of her avatars dismissed. Finally, she was going to have some free time to actually improve herself. After communicating with Thelsa, they arranged for the emergency reports to first go through the SCRU headquarters, and they would only be sent to Olympus if there were too many for them to handle.
This was nice, especially since people were already starting to ask questions. With so many giant monsters arising and destroying colony planets, neither Tsubaki nor Dana had made an appearance. Instead, Lifre had been the only one to assist people from the very beginning.
Lifre had heard that there were forums where people speculated that Tsubaki, Dana, and maybe even Lena all died in secret somewhere, or had been fired from Olympus. Naturally, she thought that both of these options were utterly absurd. If Tsubaki and the others somehow died, Dale would do everything in his power to bring them back in some form. As for being let go? Tsubaki had been with the boss since he first revealed himself to the world!
She let out a little huff, walking into Olympus and heading towards the communal area. As she did, she passed by a golden mirror, a well-dressed man speaking from within the reflection. “Welcome back, Lifre.”
“Thanks, Magic Mirror Man.” Lifre said in a casual tone, before pausing, blinking, and slowly turning to look at the mirror. “You’re new. I wasn’t gone that long.”
Cypher simply smiled, introducing himself to Lifre in a polite tone. “My name is Cypher, and I am the son of Dale and Terra. Tubrock created me while you were busy with your constant deployments, so it is natural that we haven’t had the chance to meet until now.”
“The boss and Terra had a baby? And it turned into a fully grown mirror man overnight?” Lifre asked in confusion. “Huh… even as an Origin, there are still things that can surprise me. Anyways, nice to meetcha, Cypher. If anyone asks for me, I’m going to lock myself in my room and stare into my internal void for the next few hours.” ƒreewebɳovel.com
Cypher blinked, a look of concern on his face. “Are you… alright, Lifre? If you need someone to talk to, you can come to me.”
“Huh?” Lifre paused, before thinking back to what she had just said. “Oh! No, no, I mean literally staring into my internal void. I’m waiting for my inner universe to finish adjusting, and may need to do some tweaking. Once that happens, I’ve got a lot of new power ideas I want to try out.”
Cypher’s eyes widened in realization. “Ah, I see. My apologies for the misunderstanding. I’ll let you know if anything important comes up, then. Otherwise, I’ll be sure to let people know that you’re preoccupied.”
“Thanks, mirror man! You’re the best!” Lifre grinned, before running off towards her room.
“Are you certain?” A kitsune male spoke up, looking intently at the demonic figure across from himself. “They’re really gone?”
The demon nodded his head confidently. “That’s right. I thought that they might have just been in seclusion, since may initial scrying couldn’t detect them. However, when I investigated the void, several resonances had disappeared.”
“Several?” The kitsune asked, his eyes wide. “It was more than just Dana?”
Once again, the demon nodded. “After the recent Origin of Metal was born, I learned that there is always a resonance between existing Origins and their concept within the void. Currently, I can only sense resonance with the concepts of Metal, Security, and Games. This should mean that Dana, Julia, and the Sylvan Philia have all died.”
The kitsune pursed his lips at that. This was certainly not the news that he had been expecting to hear when he came to consult his friend. He thought that there might have been internal problems within Olympus, or maybe they were in seclusion to train. However, if the Origins were not even resonating with the void, what other options were there? All signs pointed to the deaths of several of the world’s strongest figures.
“How many other people know about this?” He asked, and the demon shook his head.
“There’s no way to tell. Only a Fallen God like myself should be able to sense the resonance clearly enough to say with confidence that they’re gone. But, with how many of us there are, there could be millions that have realized it by now, or even more.”
The kitsune bit his lip at this answer. This wasn’t good by any means. He had merely wanted assurance that things were not as bad as they could have been, and yet it somehow turned out even worse. What sort of monster could have taken all of them out at once? If not for Lifre still being active, he might have even thought that the Keeper himself turned against them. After all, what else could have done it?
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“I’ll get in touch with some of my contacts.” He said in a solemn tone. “At the very least, we need to try to make sure that things don’t get too out of hand.”
While some forces were trying to work behind the scenes to calm the populace and prevent full-blown chaos from erupting, there were others attempting to do just the opposite. Some factions who were discontent with the rule of a single, supreme being took the chance to fan the flames, releasing the information to the public as it came in.
This led to a slowly growing sense of unrest among the population, with many fearing that an unknown danger was lurking, one capable of quietly annihilating extremely powerful figures. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much that I could do to assure people at this time.
Should I tell them that we were launching an active invasion against the forces that eliminated the Kione universe nearly a century ago? That would spark even more chaos, leading people to believe that there was a full-blown war about to blow up.
Aside from that, I really had no way to explain the lack of resonance within the void. If I said that they were just in isolation within a special region to block that resonance, people would press for them to make an appearance and put the public at ease. I naturally had no way of making that happen. Even if I created the illusion of them, that would not solve the resonance.
At the current moment, the best solution that I could come up with was to maintain silence. Once the invasion ended, Tsubaki and the others would be back, and this problem would naturally resolve itself. Thankfully, I had learned from Sarah that my next match was nothing to worry about, so I wasn’t going to need to prepare any form of army for that.
Now, we just need to hope that things don’t get too blown out of proportion before they return. I thought to myself, shaking my head. At that point, there would be chaos for an entirely different reason, with the appearance of so many new universes within the void. In the worst case scenario, the tree may even attack the closest of those universes as they don’t share a common system with us.
I’ll need to have Chelsea set an emergency shutoff for that defense mechanism. I thought to myself. Win or lose, this was going to be a huge headache.
Staaaaare…. Lifre peered at her inner world, urging it to assimilate the void script that she had implanted into it previously. It was almost done, and she could feel that there were just a few remnants left to be assimilated. She had already begun to analyze the code for the bits that were already converted, cross-referencing them with Chelsea’s database to see if there were any ways to improve the efficiency.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t too easy, and ultimately there wasn’t anything that she found that she could change. At least, not before she got the ‘full code’ of this void script.
The moment that the last remnants of the void script faded away, converted into permanent laws of her inner universe, Lifre’s eyes lit up. Immediately, she set to work checking the code once again, seeing how everything clicked into place.
The first thing that she did was to isolate the new power to only affect one planet within her inner universe. This was a basic law function that Chelsea had detailed in her instruction guide, so Lifre had long since been prepared for it.
Next, she began to apply the code to other story-related functions. The original power only allowed her to manifest a landscape from a story. Now, she wanted to be able to manifest items, heroes, even entire armies! As long as she had a written work of fiction that she could use as the medium, she wanted to be able to create anything from within it.
Of course, there were some downsides. The original power wasn’t as focused as she would like. When manifesting the landscape of a story, it manifested the entire landscape of the story. Every location that was visited, from the beginning to end, all of it appeared as soon as a single book was activated.
When this was translated to other subjects, such as items or characters, it would create even more problems. Thus, until Lifre created a more focused filter for her power, she had to do things a bit unusually. Namely, she had to create short mini-stories that only focused on a single landscape, a single hero, or a single special item. Then, as her powers progressed, she would be able to set it so that speaking the name of a character, place, or item contained within a book would allow that subject to manifest.
Still, even without all of that, just being able to do as much as she was now was taking a major step in the right direction. This was the first time that she had been able to properly flex her powers as an Origin, aside from just the constantly-replenishing energy that she was already taking advantage of prior to ascending via the root of the World Tree.
Now, as long as she created a story with the right item in it, she was confident that she would be able to easily fight against the monsters that had previously caused her problems. Or, if she created a turret, she could blast them before they became an issue in the first place. Ooh, what if I use one of these books to create a super-advanced spaceship.
It needs to be a work of fiction, so it can’t be something that strictly exists already. However, I can take a few liberties and reference some existing ships for the technology, and just give them nonsensical improvements! Like… what if I set the energy source to be the core of a dead god, and I could even turn all of the ship’s weapons into divine artifacts! I could really get crazy with it!
A wide grin spread across Lifre’s face, having been unable to really enjoy her writing hobby for some time. Sure, her digital avatar was still streaming, but that was different from being able to personally write her own story. Now that she had an excuse, she could flex her creative muscles and get as wild with the details as she wanted. Especially now that she had these powers set up to let her create whatever she wrote.
But first… I wanna be a slime again! She thought to herself, quickly writing a simple character summary. She didn’t want to get rid of her own Origin abilities, merely… reflavor her physical body, altering what appeared in the physical world from the incarnation of a void barrier to a slime. Of course, if the slime body was destroyed, she would still revert to being her standard Origin self, but this was still better than nothing!
