Naturally, I had no intention to decline the message request from Grimor. Although I was surprised, I could guess what had happened. Information like this must be too big for Balu alone, and she passed it along the chain of command to reach him. As for why she didn’t simply tell me about that herself… well, this was Balu we were talking about.
|
EarthForceOne: Didn’t think I’d end up talking with you like this. How’s your reconstruction going? Alkahest: Not bad. I should be able to reach the second rank again soon, at this rate. But, Starkiller told me that you have some important information regarding an older Keeper? Including a major system of his. EarthForceOne: That’s right. Sanction attacked me, and I managed to turn the tables and acquire one of his people as an informant. Alkahest: I see. People at that level usually take precautions against information theft, such as soul destruction techniques. But, it seems you found a way around his. Alkahest: Keepers with systems valued over a million points typically belong to those in the highest ranks. Sometimes, people like Sanction will force a reset in order to gather all of the points they need for it at once, and try to use the advantage it gives them to rush for a higher ranking. Alkahest: For something like this, the knowledge of what system he is using is worth 80,000 points. However, this is a separate transaction from the information on his world itself. The Keeper Meeting is coming up soon, so let’s meet up there. Bring Terra along so that she can confirm the information for the transaction. |
Eighty thousand points… Thinking back, I had earned nearly two thousand points when I sold them the information about those slime monsters. That was when I was still a first ranked Keeper, and this was just for a single system of a high rank.
Grimor didn’t ask me exactly which system he is using, because he was likely waiting until we met up in person. I gave a small nod as I thought about that, and we finished up our conversation.
Once the conversation was over, I leaned back in the couch, letting out a sigh of relief. Udona, can you work on compiling everything we learned from the illusion invader into an information globe? I’d like to have it prepared in advance for when we head to the meeting.
Sure thing. Udona replied a moment later, agreeing to the proposal. We had already gotten quite a bit out of him, and it would no doubt prove to be quite valuable when we arrived at the meeting.
Scarlet gazed sadly as her eyes swept over her ruined kingdom. Less than a tenth of the original number of martial spirits had managed to survive the attack from the invaders, aside from those that were already out of the kingdom due to taking part in an active pact.
She felt a small hand squeezing hers, and looked beside herself to see Dana giving her a reassuring smile. “It’s okay, Scarlet. We’re here with you.”
Scarlet nodded her head, doing her best to put on a smile. Together with her father, they walked into her old palace, which had managed to escape from the damage of the battles before the enemy reached it. “Sit on your throne.” The Keeper told her in a gentle tone. “Dana and I will be on either side of you. We’ll provide the energy you need, and you’ll filter it through yourself to create the new spirits.”
And so, she did just that, moving to sit on her blood red throne. Her father and Dana flanked her on either side, and she focused. Ki was drawn out of her father’s body with no resistance, pulled into her own while Dana opened a gate to the afterlife, allowing Scarlet to retrieve the spiritual energy she needed.
As the ki of her father filtered through her, she took the initiative to filter out any of its divine properties. Although she was not against strengthening her own race, she knew that it would become hard for her to maintain order within her race if every martial spirit was potentially a demigoddess like herself.
And soon, red energy gushed out of Scarlet’s hand, pouring out onto the floor of the room and pooling together. One by one, youthful figures began to appear, rising from the blood-like pools.
The response to Leowynn’s ascension was… interesting, to say the least. With her presence having already been established in Vision Expanse, there were quite a lot of people that had known about her existence, even if they could not directly guess her role in the world. They had seen her as the daughter of the Goddess of Magic and nothing more, with her role in Vision Expanse akin to an easter egg.
Now that she was truly established as her own divinity, people took things far more seriously. Leowynn’s church within Kione began to spread far more actively, though they had to first change many of their tenets. Although Leowynn herself had truly been recognized as a god now, the domains that they attributed to her were no longer valid, for the most part.
For the first few days, there was little change for those who worshipped Leowynn. It was almost as if she had not yet decided to truly take any priests. Only once she did so were they able to grasp the power of Leowynn’s domains, at which point the largest change occurred.
There was a standard blessing which was passed down to every priest of a particular deity, an ability which marked their religion. Priests of Udona were capable of healing, priests of Irena could discern lies, and priests of Ryone had greater understanding of magic.
Everyone was curious what ability would be gained for being a priest of Leowynn. What they found was an ability both more and less potent than many people suggested. With the blessing of Leowynn, one would always know the way to their homeworld.
It turned out that this was applicable to both travel through the stars as well as interplanar magic. So long as one was a recognized priest of Leowynn, they would always know how to return home.
Following this discovery, small temples of Leowynn were constructed within almost every major interstellar vessel. There were too many ways for navigation to fail, or for the ship to be flung into unknown territory. With the ability to always find their way home, this was something especially valuable to these explorers.
“Looks like we weren’t needed, after all.” The kitsune captain said within her quarters on the Emergence, letting out a sigh of relief as she looked at the image of the queen on the screen.
“That’s right.” Queen Bria agreed, clearly relieved as well. “I’m sorry for having you all rush back here. Don’t worry, we’ll take the initiative to resupply you with a new Journey Home deck. And as promised, you will maintain your position. If you have any crew that wish to disembark, they’ll be welcomed back and we will supply you with new personnel.”
The captain’s gaze softened a bit as she heard that, nodding her head. Although this was all stuff that the queen had previously promised, the fact that she was truly carrying it out after the situation passed spoke a great deal to her character. “Thanks. We’ll need some materials as well, though we can purchase those. Seems to be a need for renovations.”
“You mean to construct the shrine?” Bria questioned, to which the captain nodded her head.
“You got it. We’ve already got a temple for Aurivy here, so we might as well add the statue of the new goddess there. Just need to have one properly built.” Just as with Leowynn, Aurivy offered a convenient ability for explorers in the form of a passive speed boost. Furthermore, its effects stacked whenever multiple priests were riding in a single vehicle.
“Do you need an architect, or do you have someone able to handle the job on the Emergence?” Bria asked, looking towards a stack of documents on her desk.
The captain thought about it for a moment. “We do have someone, but… I’ll have to trouble you for this. You’ve probably got people more suited for the job.”
In truth, this aid wasn’t needed. The statue for a god did not need to be strictly accurate in order to receive the god’s blessing. As long as the sculptor performed to the best of their own abilities, they would be able to capture the core of a deity within a statue. This was true no matter the materials used. In fact, there were some children who would create ‘statues’ of certain deities out of sticks and toys.
However, accepting this aid was the same as allowing herself to owe Bria a favor. While under normal circumstances, the captain did not like to owe anyone favors, she felt it was worth it to establish a connection with this queen.
Seeming to see through her intentions, Bria offered a small smile. “Very well, I’ll make the arrangements.” On Bria’s end, she already considered the Emergence as its own sovereign territory. Had they chosen not to respond to the call of Udona, there would be nothing that they could have truly done to restrict them, aside from perhaps cutting off the emergency portal to transfer goods in time of need.
Even that, though, functioned more like a foreign nation than a controlled facility. The emergency portal had to be opened from both sides or it would not work at all, meaning that they could not take advantage of it to send in troops. Aside from the fact that they had originally launched from Deckan, they were in every way their own governing body.
As such, their act of responding to the call of Bria and Udona was more akin to an act of one nation sending aid to another. It was only natural to her to respond in kind, and do everything she could to help the Emergence get back to its mission.
At the same time, the second generation vessel of similar design to the Emergence was almost done. Unlike the Emergence, this one would be primarily used to defend the territories of Deckan and its allied worlds. That was why, this generation had been codenamed Reliance.
“Well, this is troublesome.” Vivi muttered to herself as the news reached her regarding the ascension of Leowynn. She had no problems with the Keeper’s daughter ascending in and of itself. Rather, what she found troublesome was that the information used to create Leowynn within the setting of Vision Expanse was no longer valid.
Vivi closed her eyes, trying to simulate a number of possibilities. It was no longer an option for her to simply patch in the information, as it had become an intrinsic part of multiple cultures. Similarly, she could not rollback the servers, as they had now been this way for far too long. Rolling the servers back to alter the information about Leowynn would result in years of progress being lost.
The way Vivi saw it, she had three options in order to resolve this problem. The first, she could simply allow the inconsistency to continue to exist, and change nothing. This option was the worst for her, as such a large detail would surely snowball into a bigger issue the longer it continued.
The second possibility was to simply create a second Leowynn-style deity to embody her true domains. Like this, she could still properly be represented within the game, though in a slightly altered form. Even that, however, would be somewhat annoying to Vivi.
The third and final option was, perhaps, the only one that was truly acceptable to her. She could create an event for the players, which ultimately led to the Leowynn within the game separating from the cultures she was currently bound to, altering her domains to become a stellar goddess.
“That could potentially work.” Vivi mused to herself with a faint nod. Not only would it resolve the overall problem of Leowynn’s domains, but it would also allow for player participation, giving them new story events to partake in.
