As I had expected, I found Terra waiting for me upon my return to the Admin Room, sitting at the kitchen table with a series of books laid out before her. “I got you a selection to choose from.” She said with a playful grin, nudging the books forward.
I didn’t bother to open and read them, as they were each literally someone’s life story. It would take me forever to fully read through even a single book, and I simply didn’t have that long to spend before Tsubaki and Dana noticed my absence. I’d count Lifre, but… I’m not sure she’s learned how to tell the difference yet. The same could be said with Gerard.
“Can you give me the cliff notes versions?” I asked with a knowing smirk, and she nodded her head in response.
“Right. So, you told Ashley that you are giving her ten of these. Each of these are personality profiles built on hard-working and innovative programmers. However, their individual traits and specialties are different for each. One is an expert at analyzing code for debugging, but isn’t as great at coming up with new code himself, as an example.”
I gave a small nod at that, looking at the books. “Can you give me a list of their strengths and weaknesses? Normally, I’d ask Ashley to do this, since it’s her own team and she has more managing experience. But after seeing just how worn out she is… I thought it’d be nice to not put any extra work on her plate.”
Terra nodded her head in agreement, seeming all too pleased by the turn of events. “Honestly, she’s not the only one that could do with some backup. Tubrock likes to play it tough, but he’s been struggling lately to keep up in his forge. There are too many things that he wants to build, and he can’t just make golems for all of it.”
“Aside from him, I think everyone could benefit to varying degrees, but most people would need to have some form of divine power to get their work done. The companions up here wouldn’t be able to help Aurivy manage travel requests if they can’t interact with the world, as an example.”
I nodded my head again, thinking how I could set something up to help. Once again, I was reminded of Sarah’s control room. “Is it possible to create a control terminal in the Admin Room that has a certain amount of power in the world below?” I asked curiously, Terra’s eyes seeming to flash in delight at the question. After all, though I had seen it myself, I didn’t know if they were just using that as an interface for their own manual control.
“There is.” She confirmed easily. “On the market, it is called the Administration Terminal. You have to buy each one separately for ten points. Each terminal can be configured much like a god’s domains, or they can be programmed for a wider range of abilities. Additionally, you can set access restrictions for the terminals, controlling who can use each one and which worlds they can view.”
I felt a smile spreading across my face when I heard that, before I paused. “Wait, would that cause any problems with Ashley’s current work? I don’t want to change anything about the local world’s game system before she has finished with her modification to the inventory system.”
Terra thought about it briefly, before shaking her head. “There is absolutely no way for this to have an impact on the local game system. To do so would imply that someone modifying the game system would have a backdoor to tap into the Admin Room, and the system won’t allow anything like that. Any Admin Room systems are kept entirely isolated from a game system managing your world.”
I let out a sigh of relief when Terra said that, not wanting to ruin Ashley’s work again. Honestly, an inventory system sounded like something that would greatly benefit our worlds, so I was really hoping that she’d be able to get it working like she wanted. “Alright. In that case, can you list the special traits of each of the profiles you’ve selected? Good and the bad, please.”
Terra nodded her head, creating a sheet of paper and passing it to me. On the paper was a list of names, followed by a very brief description of their traits. Although I had asked for ten, it looked like she had prepared over twenty to give me plenty of choice. “Just checking, but were these profiles pulled from any particular world or point in history, or are they all new?”
“All brand new.” Terra confirmed with a smile. “If you’d rather, I can make you some recycled profiles. But, since there wasn’t anyone with a personal connection to you, Ashley, or even James that fit the bill, I opted to make them all from scratch.”
“Probably a good choice.” Being made entirely new did give them a bit more room in terms of customization. “…Why do you have one here that’s listed as a slacker?”
“A prodigy slacker!” Terra corrected, lifting a finger. “The old trope where a genius doesn’t want to work, but once he gets started he is able to surprise everyone with his skill. I know that it’s kind of a niche thing, but I thought I’d throw it in there.”
I shook my head, mentally crossing off that name. We needed people that would diligently work. It was fine even if their skills were not the absolute best, as they could still learn and grow over time. In the end, I picked ten names I liked from the list, an even split of male and female, and passed the list back to Terra.
When she saw my selected names, she clicked her tongue. “You went with the boring ones.” She groaned, though I was already standing to work on the next phase of this plan. Since we were getting workers, we needed an office for them, as well as individual rooms. And since they weren’t part of the ‘Greater Pantheon’, I decided to make it a proper second ‘building’ within the Admin Room.
With that said, I moved towards an empty wall of the living room, waving to Scarlet as I passed. She blinked in surprise, standing up to follow me. “What are you up to, dad?”
“Expansion.” I answered simply, placing my hand on the wall and focusing. A door began to form from the wall, though that was not what took such a great deal of focus. I had made and dismissed doors hundreds of times, so that was nothing. Instead, it was what was beyond the door.
When I opened the door, I could see a blue sky over my head, and a paved stone path leading away from my feet. This path continued down a large hill, where it met a road. And across that road was a small office building, adjacent to an apartment complex.
There were times in the past that I had created an outdoor environment in the Admin Room, but it was always its own isolated space. This was the first time that I was truly expanding the Admin Room itself, creating an exterior to the space that had been my celestial home since this whole thing began.
Scarlet looked at the buildings across the street, tilting her head slightly as if she didn’t understand their purpose. I reached down, patting her head and walking down the path, Scarlet following behind me quickly. Keep the personality profiles I picked ready. I messaged back to Terra, wanting to set their offices up first and foremost.
It didn’t take us long to get to the office building, which was currently only a hollow shell with an entirely vacant interior. I had to take another deep breath as I opened the door to create the basic layout of an office building floor, numerous workstations set up at various positions. This’ll be good for the first floor…
After thinking that, I went ahead and bought eleven Administration Terminals. When I bought them, I realized that they had appeared in the form of blue crystal spheres, much like when I purchased any information from the system. However, upon interacting with them, I discovered that this appearance could be changed however I wanted, and it was just a basic placeholder assigned by the system.
As such, I turned ten of the terminals into computers, following the built-in instructions to configure them. These ten would be the workstations of Ashley’s team, able to execute limited authority with the Games domain, and also serve as a programming terminal. That way, she would be able to get some additional help if she needed it. On a basic level, they could read the current world’s systems and modify a locally saved copy, but could not implement any changes without Ashley’s approval.
Finally, the eleventh terminal I turned into a phone, placing it on the wall of the office. This phone was able to be used by any of the upcoming ten companions, and served only one purpose, which was to allow them a direct line of communication to Ashley herself. I planned to set it so that there was no reason for the auxiliary companions to go to the main house, keeping them from interfering with everyone’s daily lives.
As more and more companions were added like this, I was sure that this could eventually turn into a small city. Having all of those people crowding together in the house did not in any way sound appealing, so I was trying to plan for the future.
Next, I left the office building with Scarlet and made my way to the apartments. I was by no means heartless. Since I wasn’t giving them a reason to go to the main house, I wanted to make sure that they would have everything that they needed in their basic apartments. That meant that each one was as large as a full sized house, with all the comforts one could expect in a home.
Much like the main house, there was a TV to allow them to either watch movies from the current or past worlds, or to watch the current events of the world. Once Ashley was done with the inventory system, I would make somewhere for them to relax and ‘play’ the Heavenly Game system, as well. That one wasn’t entirely an Admin Room system, so I didn’t want to take the risk with it, otherwise I’d go ahead and buy it like I did with the terminals.
Aside from the TV, there was also a well-stocked kitchen, where I set an area rule to allow custom companions to create any food items they wanted. Thanks to Chel’s comments over time, I had learned that these sorts of settings were possible, which was how you set up a proper privacy area. Something that most of us hadn’t known how to do before she appeared.
So while their abilities to modify the Admin Room would be somewhat restricted in most areas, they would have more freedom within their own apartments, allowing them to modify the layouts as they wanted. Additionally, a companion without their own apartment would be able to ‘register’ one based on the template that I had just finished creating.
Finally, now that I was done setting up both the offices and the apartments, I called Terra to have her bring me the personality profiles. Scarlet watched from beside me, having caught on to what I was doing, though she still seemed surprised that I was actually going through with it.
As soon as Terra appeared, she passed me the stacks of books, and I offered her a thankful smile. “Ah, right, this is your first time seeing this process, isn’t it?” I asked towards Scarlet, who nodded her head quickly.
“That’s right. I haven’t been here all that long myself. I wonder… am I going to need helpers, too?” She asked with a tilt of her head, though I honestly didn’t know what helpers for her would even do. The Crimson Goddess of Ki and Blood… if there were a lot of ki related problems going around, I could see a need for them, but I couldn’t imagine it at the present moment.
“Not for a while.” I said with a shake of my head. “Though, if you can think of any reason why you need them, I’ll try to get you some, okay?” She nodded quickly when she heard that. In truth, the one that needs this the most, aside from Ashley herself, was likely to be Ryone. I doubted that she would need the team for her magic domain, but her other two domains would be able to help monitor the world’s economic state and serve as an early warning system to prevent any similar problems from happening like the recent crisis.
Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and purchased the ten companions to match the books in my hands. Though, not before checking to make sure that they were really the ten that I had chosen.
