World Keeper

Chapter 1146: Miscalculations

Thankfully, the middle of the Standard month came fairly quickly, and I received my next match-up. It looked as if I was being pitted against… Alkahest? It felt almost surreal that I was against him this time, after he was the very first Keeper that I came into contact with.

Unfortunately, I was in the attacker role, however, so I let out a resigned sigh. Since I was about to be promoted to the next rank, that match would undoubtedly be canceled. Furthermore, it was unlikely that I would be able to hold off the promotion long enough for the rest of the month to pass, given Chelsea’s frequent reports.

According to her, the world creation project was coming along at an incredible pace. They had all of the calculations done, the codes were set, all that was needed was to build a new device, which they had already tested in their educational streams. It was likely that they would be finished by the end of the week, at which point the promotion would immediately go through.

While James was overseeing the construction of the New World Generator, Chelsea sat at her desk, furiously typing at her terminal and making detailed plans. She was well aware of the threats that came with an increase in rank, having been a former System Companion herself. Although the more exclusive knowledge that role had given her was lost, her experiences remained.

She knew that there was a need for defenses against threats the likes of which they had never seen, and was doing her best to design those very defenses. The current problem was that she herself was not fully aware of the true scope of an Origin’s power. That was all part of the ‘lost knowledge’ from when she was James’s System Companion.

If we were talking about a god, it would be possible to make them self-destruct under certain conditions. However, would that even be possible when the target was an Origin? Rather than being fueled by their belief in their domain, they theoretically become the domain itself.

Of course, there were benefits to this, as it meant that the powers of an Origin would be more narrowly focused. A God of Fire could control ice under the condition that they design their power as ‘extracting all heat from an area’. They could create fires with different, esoteric effects, too. However, an Origin of Fire would truly govern flames. They should be able to create other types of flames that existed, but not entirely new flames with effects from their imagination.

If we had more detailed information about the types of powers an Origin had, we could plan defenses. However, all that we know right now is that the sheer scale of their power can reach the universal level.

Chelsea’s first idea when it came to defenses was to create habitable planets made of energy, similar to Sanctum. These worlds would be more durable than those made of solid matter, and could even be used to power orbital defenses.

However, she quickly shook her head at that idea. Energy planets wouldn’t even be enough to deal with RagnaRocker’s monsters, let alone an Origin.

Thus, Chelsea turned her attention to the void. It could be assumed that the powers of an Origin were transmitted through the void, so perhaps the best defense against them would be to block those powers there. Maybe an energy scrambler? No, if we do something like that, it will cut off our current means of communication and travel through the void.

Theoretically, we could begin working on the technology to convert all of that through the Underworld instead, as that is a shared realm that does not require the void for traversal. That would require a major technological overhaul, however. Additionally, it would leave us more vulnerable to accumulating void beasts over time, as we wouldn’t be able to easily leave to deal with them, and Fallen Gods would be vastly weakened with the void connections cut.

Chelsea bit her lip, trying to think of other potential solutions. She didn’t think that it was a bad idea to start shifting more common forms of connection to the Underworld instead of the void, but it wasn’t enough to offer any level of defense against an Origin. Is the only way really to get an Origin of our own?

This was a rather serious problem, as the NPC that they used for their educational streams did not have the knowledge on how to create an Origin’s world. That knowledge was far too expensive for them to be able to afford, even with a nearly limitless budget. Trial and error? I doubt Dale could afford the cost of that information from the market, even after the recent invasion.

Chelsea closed her eyes, taking a deep breath and switching the terminal over to her web browser, loading up the streaming site and starting her own educational stream. However, she didn’t announce this stream to the others, not wanting to disturb their current work. Before the stream began, she made sure that the option was available for her to purchase her own assets. While streamers still received the majority of the profits for normal donations from viewers, purchasing their own assets in the stream would send the profits entirely to Olympus.

Chelsea didn’t mind this, as Olympus was where her budget came from. As the stream began, she immediately purchased a large manufacturing facility that they referred to as the Instant Printer. This was similar to the Digital Conversion System, except that it could print from any blueprint, not just one scanned from a real item. They hadn’t quite mastered the manufacturing method of this facility yet, or their world creation project would have already concluded.

She quickly ran to her office within the stream, working on a new blueprint. There has to be something fundamentally different about an Origin’s world compared to normal world creation. It’s not just synchronizing the world with the desired host, it couldn't be that simple. Most likely, there is a fifth, maybe even a sixth energy core.

Chelsea rapidly typed on the keyboard, loading up the foundation for a standard world with no special laws. An Origin is meant to be the joining of all paths as one. So, someone who was already a god should have to create an energy core that contains the essence of a Fallen God. And someone that is already a Fallen God should have to create an energy core that represents the divine domain that they want.

Chelsea was incredibly familiar with void scripts at this point, and was confident that she could make an energy core similar to the domain of a Fallen God. As for a divine domain, that would require use of the divine script, which had already largely been deciphered. Is this enough? She asked herself, furiously typing away at the keyboard.

Lines of code flew past the screen at a blinding pace, but Chelsea didn’t stop. While she had her inspiration, she needed to see it through to the end. I need to create a void script that replicates the core of a Fallen God, and contain that within an energy core to use as the foundation for the world’s creation.

However, when that thought occurred to her, her hands froze. But… how would that power stabilize itself? The four primary energy cores form a perfect balance, which is what creates the universal barrier that protects that universe from the void.

She ran through the lessons that the NPC had taught, using the calculations learned there to simulate what would happen in her mind. If a world was created in the void with a fifth energy core, she could not imagine a way for the barrier to form. It would either immediately collapse, or fundamentally alter how reality worked within its confines.

How… how can we overcome this? She bit her lip once again, closing her eyes and piecing together everything that she had learned about Origins. Why… why do Origins need to undergo the three steps of perfect, and obtain a Saint body…?

Chelsea could understand the qualitative jump in energy when one underwent the steps of perfection. Perhaps that would allow them to absorb the world, and house it within themselves. However… why was the Saint body needed?

A Saint body was created when someone who had undergone the three steps of perfection completely fused their body with a saint-level energy. Doing this granted them enhanced control over this energy, comparable to a divine domain. But in the context of creating an Origin’s world, this saint-level energy should only become a hindrance, making it more difficult to absorb the world.

What if… the Origin’s world isn’t created in the void in the first place? Chelsea theorized, looking at the screen blankly as thoughts flashed through her mind. If the Origin’s world is created within their own body, and the final energy core is used as an outer layer rather than part of the foundation, it could harmonize with the saint-level energy and the divine domain possessed by the new Origin. There would be no reason to worry about the world barrier in the void, because the Origin themselves would become that barrier.

Of course, this posed a problem for those that had more than a single domain, such as Tsubaki. If this theory from Chelsea was right, it would mean that either three worlds would need to be created at the same time, or a single world with three additional energy cores. No, a single world shouldn’t be able to bear that much additional stream…

Chelsea felt like she had made a breakthrough in the development of an Origin, but there was a major problem that came with this. This was similar to the creation of the Perfection Chamber, requiring extremely detailed control of the target’s energy in order to create the world within their body. From a practical standpoint, this is infinitely more difficult than having the person create the world themselves. However, the person doing so would need to have detailed knowledge on world creation, and the ability to simulate it with their own energy cores.

There were only two people that Chelsea knew of who had in-depth knowledge of world creation, possessed either a divine or fallen domain, and were extremely skilled at manipulating their own energies. Naturally, one of these people was Chelsea herself. Tsubaki is good at energy control, but she always struggled when it came to manipulating void energies for practical use. But, Dana…

Dana was part of the duo that performed the very first world creation experiment, known as the reality marbles. She had been keeping up to date with Chelsea’s research, possessed the fallen domain of Darkness, a Saint body with the World’s Shadow, and was phenomenal at controlling her own energies. If Chelsea was the ideal subject to become the first Origin from a standard god, then Dana was the ideal subject to become the first from a Fallen God.

More importantly, Chelsea needed the energy readings from both types of Origin promotion. Only with those detailed readings would she be able to create a simulation to better perfect the process of Origin creation, and eventually a device to automate the process.

With a sigh, Chelsea stared at her terminal, and the lines of code that had long halted. It had been her intention to try to create a prototype for an Origin’s world in this stream, using the Instant Printer to make the device necessary to create the world within the void. However, now, that idea itself seemed to have collapsed, as the method for becoming an Origin that she theorized now required manual transformation rather than technology.

So, instead, Chelsea closed her eyes, leaning back in her seat. She disabled notifications from the chat, pinning a comment that said she was trying to practice Origin ascension. As she was a pioneer in this field, she expected to fail numerous times, and didn’t want anyone distracting her in halfway through.