chapter 192: the perfect trap

“So, where’s Bihena at?” Balu asked as she brought her hands down from her head, her ears perking up. “She was… resting, right? I think you mentioned that.”

I gave a brief nod at that. “I planned to see if she was free to come out and meet you once we were done.” Given that everyone was resting after expending so much of their divine power, I didn’t want to bother them quite yet. I was even pretty sure that Leowynn wouldn’t be able to get much help from Irena for right now.

“Okay!” Balu energetically nodded her head, her ears flopping back and forth. “You wanted a consultation, right? Well, show me whatever you want to, and I’ll give my opinion.” She beamed a smile at me, her furred cheeks puffing up slightly.

I had no intention of showing her everything. The races in the world, as well as their current path of advancement would be kept secret. That way, even if something happened, the information leaked would be within a manageable level. Nothing more than what could be observed through the meetings if someone watched closely.

As such, I created a piece of paper, a list of the systems that I had purchased. The biggest thing that I needed to check required her to only have this much information. Whether there was a flaw in one of the systems, or if there was another system that was drastically needed in order to make things work more smoothly.

“Oooh!” Balu grabbed the paper in her paws, bringing it up and holding it in front of her face. “Uh huh… looks good. Ooh, I’ve never seen that one before.” She lowered the paper, her ears twitching as she looked at me. “The legacy classes, and the quest contracts, those were your creations right?”

When I nodded, she tilted her head. “Well, obviously I can’t tell you the secrets of something that you created yourself. I’d have to study those two systems on my own to come up with an answer. But I can tell you about the rest!”

“Have you ever managed a world with a game system before?” I couldn’t help but ask that, since I knew that she had been around a while.

“Mmm, yeah. It was one of my first. I think I still have the template for it written down somewhere back home. I’ve had a few since then to test things out, but I typically stick to cultivation worlds now. Those are the best for my job, I think!” As she said that, she flipped the paper over, where I had listed the various classes that were in the world.

As she read through the list, she occasionally nodded her head, humming lightly to herself. Only when she reached the end did her ears shoot up in alarm, her fur starting to stand on end. “No, no… wrong… very wrong. Bad.. why is it bad?”

“Balu..?” I saw her clenching the paper in her paws, a look of focus on her face.

“Perfect… No, trap. Trap! Trap class!” She finally seemed to catch her trail of thought, before suddenly looking up at me. “You can’t train the Perfect Self class! Absolutely, positively can’t!”

“Uhm.. okay? Why not?” Seeing how drastic of a reaction she was having, I knew that it had to be something pretty major.

“Think, think…” She began to mutter again, bringing one paw up and balling it into a fist, rubbing it against her own head. “Why why… Right! I remember now!” Lifting her head up, Balu showed another bright smile. “The Perfect Self class, it’s a trap!”

Before I could ask another question, she rapidly began to explain. “It’s a trap designed to make Keepers kill themselves. Nobody knows who came up with it, and it might not have even meant to be that way in the first place. But we don’t know a single Keeper that has survived practicing this class!”

“In order to form the ‘perfect self’, you need the ‘body of perfection’. That’s the only way to properly fuse ki, mana, and spiritual energy all together in the ratio needed for the class. To do this, you have to first begin to merge your spiritual energy with your ki, and with your mana. Then, you have to destroy your own body, using the spiritual energy to construct a new one!”

“However, in the process of doing this, the world recognizes you as dead the moment you destroy your own body. Our guess is that the system doesn’t wait for you to try to piece together a new body. Keepers only get one life, and that is the ironclad rule of the system. So as soon as you destroy your own body, the system considers you dead, and begins selecting the next Keeper.”

I felt chills going down my back as I heard that. I had never seen anyone practicing the class, as it had not yet been unlocked by anyone in my world. “Is there a way to do the fusion without destroying your body?” She ran a cultivation style world, so I assumed that meant she had experience fusing energies.

“Yup!” Balu gave a happy nod. “Just not the way that class wants. The Perfect Self class is great for your people, as it is actually really powerful… but a Keeper absolutely must never train it themselves!”

Balu looked down to the desk in front of me, and at the piece of paper again. “Uhm… do you have anything that I can use to write?”

I nodded, and created a pencil and another sheet of paper, passing both to her. She fumbled around with the pencil a bit, before her paw began to shift, elongating to look more like a hand. Once she was able to properly grasp the pencil, she leaned forward and began writing.

“With the class list you have, I can guess that you use the four basic energies. I don’t know how they are configured in your world, though, so I can’t give you any specifics. I can give you a few energy combinations to try out, though.”

I gave another nod as I heard that, though it did help me come up with a question. “If there are so many energy combinations, why did everyone just use ki or mana at the fighting tournaments in the meeting?”

“Hmm?” Balu looked up at me, and then tilted her head. “I dunno! Never been to those fights.” She shrugged her shoulders as she finished writing, before sliding the paper across the table at me. I took a moment to pick it up, reading through the list.

I couldn’t help but be surprised when I saw the list, as there were multiple energies here that required all four types to be fused. “Okay… but why do you have the same energy listed multiple times on the same line?”

“That’s for the different steps.” Balu answered as she leaned back in the couch, kicking her feet lightly in front of herself. “The configuration for the energies vary from world to world, so I can’t tell you what steps to take to combine them. However, the formula itself never changes.”

“World Sight is popular because it lets you spread your energy throughout the world, sensing everything within your reach. It is an energy specialized entirely in detection, with no other abilities that I have found. I listed it first because it would help you complete the others more easily.”

“The four later aren’t all that popular, but that’s just because of how difficult they are. Perfect Soul is like the spiritual version of Perfect Self, but without actually killing you. I think there’s a class for it in the game system, even. The three Divine ones I listed are energies that help uplift a mortal to godly power.”

Balu let out a groan as she said that, shaking her head. “If someone masters Divine Will, then everything pauses. The Keeper has the choice to either block their progress, or to grant them a domain and turn them into a false god. Of course, if the Keeper themselves gets the Divine Will, then they are able to choose their own domain.”

I couldn’t help but raise my eyebrow curiously as I heard that. “What’s the difference between that method and just making myself a god?”

Balu grinned knowingly at that, as if she had expected my question. She crossed her arms in front of her and leaned forward in the chair. “Well, for one, a false god doesn’t have to listen to prayers. All those annoying voices that can drive you mad are never there. More importantly, a false god will stay at their full power, even when descended.”

“Of course, either way you are still technically a mortal.” She shrugged, putting her hands down on the couch beside her and swinging her legs again. “That’s why it’s only called a false god, because they can still be killed. But you do become able to generate your own divine energy, on a scale far greater than that of any other mortal.”

Nodding my head, I thought back to when I was looking through the more powerful classes. Their had indeed been a False Divinity class that sounded a lot like what Balu was saying. Of course, I’d do my own research on any of these energy types, just to make sure I wasn’t being tricked. “Well, did you have any other ideas about my world, aside from warning me about the Perfect Self class?”

“Hmm… I wouldn’t be able to say too much without looking at it myself. But from the list you gave me… I think you need a spell recorder.” She answered with a confident nod.

“A… spell recorder?”

“Yeah! Something to record spells! I’m sure that you saw it in that match Bihena and I had, right? The spell her mage used was super strong, but totally impractical to use in a fight. If my guy hadn’t been distracted trying to make her fighter into a puppet, then she would have never gotten the chance to cast that spell.”

As Balu explained, she reached down for the pencil, snatching the paper back from my hands and drawing on it again. “You see, the mentality of a normal person just isn’t meant to think of spells that complex on the fly. It’s the flaw of the geometric system. She probably practiced that spell for most of her life, and it still took her nearly a full minute to cast.”

“Of course, each system has its own flaw. With runic, you have to train yourself to think in a different language, but only some of the time. With the imaginary system, you don’t really require any training, but the mana costs are enormous!” Though she said that, she had a small grin on her face. “Now!”

Rapidly, she lifted the paper up, giving me less than a second to look at it, before slamming the paper face down on the table again. “Casting that spell would have been like you trying to recreate the image on the paper after that brief glimpse, without being able to peek again.”

I had barely seen the image to begin with, just enough to know that it was complicated, and surrounded by a circle. “Okay… I see your point. But you say that a device to record spells would fix the issue?”

“Yup! In most worlds, third and fourth tier magic can’t even be used by just one caster. You would need dozens of trained mages focusing on a single spell. In cases like that, each caster would take over a part of the spell, so the recording process would be less crucial, and you’d instead need a reliable mana source.”

“But for a game type world, mana can be gained just by gaining levels, so mages can cast those spells themselves! But that also means that they have to cast the entire spell themselves.” Balu proudly crossed her arms in front of herself again as she said that.

Though, now I was beginning to understand why Trinity’s Sin was a full fifty points, despite just being a grimoire. Looks like I might have a need for it after all. Unless Tubrock is able to come up with something better. I recalled him creating a grimoire as one of the godly relics.

“Okay… then is there anything else you think I need to worry about?” I asked, sighing as I leaned back in my chair. Honestly, if everything that she’s said so far was true, then this was completely worth the five hundred points. Just the formulae for reaching the False Divinity class would have been enough for that.

“Hmm…” Balu looked back down at the list of systems and classes, likely to jog her memory on what was there. “You covered a lot of your bases. Maybe even went a bit overboard on some things.” It was hard to imagine the seriously thinking rabbit girl as the same energetic and childlike person we met at the meeting. “Maybe Grimor could tell you something, but it’s been a while since I ran a game world. Maybe I should start one up again…”

“If I had to suggest anything, it would be more a warning. Don’t get that one world transfer system that turns one world into a game for the other world. That would just be really bad for you. If an invading force destroys the ‘server’ that the world is connected to, it is the same as destroying that world. Depending on the forces they bring in, they might even be able to hack the server and mess with it themselves.”

A groan quickly escaped my lips as I heard that. “Another trap?”

However, Balu simply shrugged. “Dunno. The Keeper who made it died before I got the job. Can’t say why it happened like that.”

Saying that, Balu quickly hopped to her feet. “So, all done now? Can we see if Bihena’s ready to play?” Seeing her wide grin, I had to wonder if she forgot all about the matter of me paying her for her advice… Well, I wasn’t going to bring it up if she didn’t. There’s a difference between refusing to pay and the person forgetting to ask for payment, after all.