The patch was still a week away, which meant that my meeting with Balu naturally came first. After roughly two days of waiting, I received a message from Balu, inviting me to go over to her Admin Room That… honestly, it surprised me. She had always been the one coming to me, so I thought that was just how the Gilded Branch operated.
That said, she did make a special note asking me to bring Bihena along with me. It had been a while since the two saw one another, so I didn’t mind taking her over. Once I told Bihena that Balu wanted us to go see her, she quickly changed into a casual outfit with a deep blue, baggy shirt and form-fitting jeans.
As soon as Bihena was ready, I braced myself and chose the option to leave the Admin Room. The room seemed to spin around us, faster and faster while colors and shapes faded away to nothing. Soon, we were left with naught but a white void, numerous doors beginning to form in a circle around us.
“I… have confusion.” I spoke up, Bihena nodding her head quickly in agreement.
“Which door are we supposed to take?” She asked, looking around. There were at least thirty doors positioned evenly around us, each one looking perfectly identical.
“Maybe they’re all the right answer?” I suggested in a hopeful tone. Knowing the system, it wouldn’t be that easy. However, given that there were no distinguishing characteristics on the doors themselves, we could only choose at random.
I walked straight ahead, choosing the door that appeared directly before us. When I opened it, the other side of the door seemed to be completely underwater, the shadowy depths visible behind the frame. I could see something moving in the shadows, and quickly attempted to slam the door shut.
Whatever was on the other side seemed to be just a bit faster, a massive tendril reaching out of the frame and grabbing me. “Wrong door!” I shouted, before being dragged into the water. Whatever was holding me, I felt it growing tighter and tighter, crushing my body.
Eventually, I felt the murky waters give way, air returning to me as I dropped on a stone floor. I let out a shocked gasp, quickly repairing my body and standing. When I looked around, I saw Bihena shivering next to me, a layer of frost covering her body.
“I-I-I picked the wrong door, t-t-too.” She said, her teeth clattering.
“Oh, that one…” Balu’s voice spoke up from not far away. “As a quick note of reference, if you ever get that one again, the best door is directly behind your starting position. That will take you straight to your destination.”
I looked over, seeing the anthropomorphic rabbit waving at us from the side of the platform. “Thanks… I’ll make a note of that for the future. Did you get everything taken care of that you needed?”
Balu blinked at that, before her eyes went wide in recognition. “Oh! Right, yeah. Everything’s sorted now. I’m just letting my world fast forward until it gets to a good point for me to descend and cultivate personally.”
After she said that, she clapped her paws together, the room heating up to melt the frost off of Bihena. “Let’s get the two of you inside, and we can talk business!” She smiled broadly, turning and creating a white door behind herself. My eye twitched at the sight of the door, but we walked through behind her.
On the other side of the room was… a paradise of soft. Everything seemed to be made of thick, pillowy fur. Honestly, I was regretting that I didn’t bring Udona with me. This reminded me so much of her old pillow fort.
“Take a seat.” Balu said, before jumping and landing in a ball of fluff that appeared to be a chair. Bihena and I looked at each other, each going to similar chairs and sitting down. Somehow, it was even softer than it looked, like sitting on a warm cloud. “You were asking about… UpperLevel, right?” She asked for confirmation, glancing off to the side and looking at a menu screen that I couldn’t see. Probably the chat history, in order to remind herself.
“That’s right. I know that he’s a part of the Gamer faction, but that’s about all I know right now.”
“Great!” Balu beamed a wide smile, reaching out and tapping on a table that manifested beneath her paw. “The boss told me that we have three levels of information about him. Apparently, someone managed to get around his ‘privacy policy’ and sold us everything they got from him. The information is only a couple months old, so it shouldn’t be that outdated.”
“The three levels of information are ‘General Knowledge and Noteworthy Systems’, ‘Detailed Information’, and ‘Full Disclosure’. They’re priced at…” Balu glanced off to the side again. “Five, ten, and twenty-five thousand points each. If you’re the one attacking, I’d suggest the Full Disclosure package, since it will help your people blend in with his world.”
I shook my head at that. “I’m on the defending team, this time. I’ll take the ten thousand point package.”
I leaned forward, preparing to shake Balu’s hand to transfer the points to her, before I found something smooth and round in my hand instead. Looking down, I saw an information sphere that Balu had placed in my palm. I glanced up in confusion, wondering why she was giving me this before I paid.
“It’s fine! You can just pay before you leave. I trust you won’t rip us off! Anyways, you can look over that information while I go play with Bihena!” Clearly, it was the second reason that really explained her actions, Balu jumping to her feet and running over to grab the human Goddess. “Come on, Bihena! I want to show you my room! Oh, not the memory wall, though. That’s private.”
There was unmistakable excitement in her voice as she ran off, like a child seeing a friend again for the first time in ages. I shook my head with a soft chuckle, looking down and focusing on the information orb that Balu provided me. As I did so, I felt the knowledge pouring into my mind.
UpperLevel was, indeed, a Gamer. In fact, from the information provided, he used a similar theme as the Dungeon World that Fyor was based off of, but on a dimensional level. There weren’t many specific details about each individual layer, but I was able to get the gist of things from the information provided.
Each layer served as a training ground, and was its own entire universe. After someone reached a certain level, they unlocked the ability to fight a boss for their current realm. Should they manage to defeat the boss, they are elevated to the next layer. Similarly, people could access their interfaces to move to any layer that they had unlocked.
It was a rather interesting system, and there was a note attached that said this qualified as a ten thousand point world. It even had a detailed list of what systems were required to reproduce it, showing just how much work the Gilded Branch put into their job.
Now, as people climbed higher in these layers, new systems became available to them. The crafting system might improve, their map might become larger, or they might unlock the ability to join and create guilds. According to the Gilded Branch’s information, there were five main guilds that defending Keepers should be wary of, as they possessed the most powerful individuals from that world. It was one of these guilds that had brought them victory in a previous invasion.
Additionally, they had combined the Keeper Compass with the system itself, giving them a way to track a world’s Keeper without being detected. That was something that I would need to watch out for. Especially since the five big guilds all had information specialists to help them quickly adapt to any world they encountered.
Finally, there was information on the divine system that UpperLevel used. Unsurprisingly, this was integrated into his layered dimensions. One of the uppermost layers of his world was known as the Divine Realm. Every creature that lived in this world, whether man or beast, was a god. Divine monsters were spawned through the system to serve as training for these gods to develop their skills further.
If I was going to be facing a serious invasion, it would likely be this information that I needed to concern myself with. Having an entire world of gods meant that they would likely possess domains capable of hiding from whatever powers I use to track them. At the same time, I saw how the people of this world gained new domains after their first. It was… honestly interesting.
After defeating a divine monster, there was a chance for it to drop a shard of divinity. If one gathered enough of these shards, they could exchange them for a domain within the system. Their second domain cost ten shards, and then one hundred, increasing by a factor of ten for every domain they wished to exchange.
This information, simply put, was worrying to know. With the power of the five guilds, they could have entire farming teams dedicated to harvesting divinity for a select few. It was entirely possible that there would be gods possessing as many as nine domains involved in the invasion.
I furrowed my brow in focus, thinking how I could protect my people from something like that. It had already been proven that gods could eradicate entire planets. Sadly, it wasn’t possible for me to isolate my worlds to keep them safe, because they would most likely be spawning on one of those very worlds. Instead, I needed a way to ensure that the worlds themselves would not be caught in the crossfire of the battle.
“They have the Keeper Compass, so their first priority should be on reaching my location. Given their level of technology, it’s likely that there will be gods related to transportation. The battle could be over in as little as ten minutes, or they might bide their time to look for any traps that I might prepare.”
Honestly, the worst case scenario was them simply destroying whatever world they spawned on. I didn’t think they’d resort to such measures, given that the majority of their members would be mortals, but it is possible. Next would be them systematically hunting down the most talented people of my world to reduce my abilities as a Keeper.
If they did this, they would be potentially revealing themselves, but the entire planet where they were staying would effectively be held hostage. That’s why I had to make it look like I was an easy target… while at the same time I had to protect myself.
If I move to another world with Tsubaki and the others, leaving behind the Citadel, their compass will make it look like I had run away from the fight. I thought to myself, before shaking my head. They could see that as me being an easy target, but that would also give them the time to attack my world in my absence. I need a trump card, something that I can use to defeat a horde of gods.
As I thought about that, my eyes went wide. There was a trump card in my world, one that I would just need to claim for myself. Towers’ Final Boss, the Dragon God of Endings. If I could claim his power, then I would be more assured in my fight.
As for the question of whether they would chase me or fight my world in my absence… I would need to rely on Chel again. This was going to be a big project, a very big project.
