World Keeper

Chapter 424: Sher Dien

My days of waiting seemed rather slow at first, the urge to return to the world building up now and then. I kept wanting to personally check up on things, experience what was new firsthand, or simply watch the world grow as I sped it up just a bit more. However, I kept those urges down and, after a while, began to enjoy myself.

Aurivy introduced me to several of the new games that were created over the history of my worlds, and there were times that Udona came to join us as well. Like this, I spent another month within the Admin Room… a normal month, not a Standard Month. Even now, Keeper time felt weird. It wasn’t until the thirty-first day of my ‘work vacation’ before I received a system prompt.

Your invasion against Keeper Vanity has ended!

All forces sent to your opponent’s world have been destroyed. You have lost this invasion.

I felt a small tinge of sadness when I heard that the troops I had sent to Vanity’s world had been destroyed. I had… expected that it was a likely outcome, but that did not mean I was happy about it. At least I won’t have to worry about him counter-attacking me. From what I heard, he’s stayed at the first rank for a while now.

As I was thinking that, I heard the clopping of hooves against the wooden floor, and saw a rare sight. Tryval had walked into the living room, glancing around until his eyes settled on me. “Do you have a moment, sire?”

Although confused, I nodded my head, before looking towards Aurivy. “Sorry, but we’ll need to pick this up later.”

“That’s fine.” Aurivy gave a happy smile, waving a hand dismissively. “Tryval doesn’t come up here very often, so I bet he’s got something pretty important to talk about.”

I had a similar thought, so I slowly stood up from my position on the couch, where I had been playing a game of dice with Aurivy. After that, I walked over to follow Tryval as he walked down the hall. “Is this about the world you want to create?” I guessed, seeing the centaur ahead of me nodding his head.

“That’s right. I wish to discuss a world that could be created for my people.” Finally, he turned and opened a doorway along the hall, gesturing me inside. Within, I could see a vast meadow laid out before me, a blue sky overhead. Although I could see the open doorway still behind me, the rest of the scenery looked completely natural.

Is this the first time I’ve been in Tryval’s room? I asked myself, before shaking the thought away. “What ideas did you have in mind?”

“First, I wanted to discuss some possibilities with you, if that is okay.” As he said that, he entered the room, closing the door behind himself. “I had first raised these questions with Terra, but she insisted that you should be experienced enough to come up with an answer yourself by now.”

“Did she?” I raised an eyebrow curiously, fairly certain that I could take that to be some sort of roundabout praise. That, or Terra was just trying to get out of doing extra work. “What kind of questions did you have for me, then?”

Tryval closed his eyes, letting out a long sigh. “First of all, I would like to be able to take Alme with me to live in this world from the beginning. She has expressed an interest in seeing ‘my world’, after learning more about Spica. With her longevity, it should not be a problem for her to live through the entire growth of a world, so long as I can keep her safe.”

Possible issues with her being as strong as she is, but putting that aside for now. I thought to myself, looking up towards Tryval. “And you want to know how we can make that work for your world, having her there from the start?”

“Precisely, my lord.”

After a moment of consideration, I arrived at the answer surprisingly easily. “The Fairy Gate. If we place one on your world from the start and link the two worlds, then you will be able to take Alme with you into your world with Aurivy’s power. We will just need to put the gate in some obscure or underground location to ensure that it is not found before we are ready. When your world has grown, we can move the gate. We’ll put your world in a Time Zone, that way you can still fast forward it even though it is connected.”

Tryval’s eyes briefly widened as he considered my words. “Is there anything that I will need to keep in mind with this?”

I gave a small nod, already thinking of one potential issue. “The Fairy Gate spawns monsters at random intervals. If they are left unchecked, then they could destroy entire nations of lower leveled inhabitants. However, if we set up artillery around the gate like the others we have, the shockwaves of its firing could possibly attract unwanted attention.”

Tryval furrowed his brow as he considered that. “If you place the gate in the plains of a large, uninhabited island, I would be able to arrive there and deal with the monsters instantly, with only a minimal amount of energy.”

“That’s true as well. I can take steps to ensure that the environment around the island deters seafaring travelers, as well.”

“That would be appreciated, though… largely unnecessary, I think.” Tryval cleared his throat. “This brings me to my second question. Would it be possible to shape the world, such that major continents and larger islands have a land bridge connecting them, even if said bridges are narrow?”

Seeing my confusion, Tryval went on to explain. “My kind are physically incapable of vomiting, so many people mistakenly believe that we do not get seasick. In fact, seasickness is worse in centaurs than it is in most other races. The effect it has on us is an excruciating pain that can cripple even a hardened warrior.”

“Without land bridges connecting continents, it is likely that my kind will forever remain on only a single continent, save for a few of the variants capable of flight. Even they would only dare to venture so far away for fear of their stamina depleting.”

This was a harder question. I had never personally attempted to terraform an area with Keeper controls. It was then that my eyes went wide, and I recalled options that had been in my menu since the very beginning, but I had never taken notice of.

Ever since my very first descent upon the world, any time I selected an area, there were five options. Edit Location, Spawn, Kill, Trigger Event, and Descend… I had always made use of Descend, and neglected the others. Spawn and Trigger Event could both be understood as links to the later unlocked Monster Spawner and Calamity Spawner features.

Kill… I had never seen anyone that I hated so much that I wanted to test that particular option on. Focusing, I brought up the map in front of me, moving to an isolated area of Fyor’s twenty-second floor, far away from where anyone had explored. There, I selected an eight-meter tall deer with sharp points at the tips of its antlers and tested the ‘Kill’ command.

As expected, the giant deer simply collapsed. However, no spirit escaped its body. The Kill command apparently destroyed a creature’s very essence, ensuring that they were well and truly dead. Good to know for future events.

Finally, there was the ‘Edit Location’ command. Selecting that at the same area, I saw options to shift the ground level, add water, or adjust the mineral distribution for the area. Satisfied, I closed the map, nodding to Tryval. “I can make the land bridges for you.”

At the same time as I said that, I was also silently debating the possibility of arranging a natural landscape in such a way that it served as a focus for geometric magic. Something like that, formed by the world itself, would carry an astonishing amount of power. And it did not have to be anything offensive. Perhaps a massive healing spell, spread out through a giant area to serve as a passive regeneration effect.

Thinking about it again, I shook my head. I’d only be able to create first tier spells like that, unless I was able to modify ore veins beneath the initial layer to form the secondary spell diagrams. Either way, I wouldn’t be able to get the kind of amazing effect that would make that worthwhile.

“Excellent.” Tryval let out a relieved sigh, obviously happy that his ideas could be implemented without any undue worry. “In that case, I would like a size six world. Rather than Earth’s geometric magic, I would prefer Fyor’s rune magic. Likewise, the game system used in the rest of the worlds would be suitable here.”

“For races, I believe that my own race already has quite a bit of variation in it. Naturally, I will not ask you to rescind your previous rulings. Aside from these things… there is nothing else that I wish for my own world. I do not require any special systems not already in place, nor do I require any special minerals. Merely the land to roam, and my daughter to roam it with.”

I smiled softly as I heard that request, opening up the menu. “Okay, then let’s get this started.” I said, creating an orb of stone in front of myself. “Do you have a name for the world?”

Tryval closed his eyes in thought, before a small smile appeared on his face. “Sher Dien. The name of Alme’s mother.”

I could feel the love contained in those words. It was obvious that even after all this time, his heart still belonged to the memory of Alme’s mother. The centaur that had been an utter playboy when he was first created had been thoroughly tamed by a mortal, such that he remains faithful centuries after her death.

After entering that name, I pulled up the map of this freshly created world and overlaid it on the stone sphere. The rough stone became smoother, large chunks of green and splashes of blue appearing within it.

Sher Dien was a world that was fifty percent land, compared to Earth’s roughly thirty or so percent. However, the continents did not dominate as much as one might expect from that ratio. Instead of a few massive continents, there were hundreds, maybe even thousands of large islands with thick waterways between them.

There was only one true ocean, located in a patch of the world where the islands didn’t touch. Everything else, however thick, could only be described as numerous rivers or a few scattered lakes. Even so, these rivers ranged anywhere from one mile to a hundred miles thick.

I looked at this model, furrowing my brows. Connecting the different landmasses via land bridges would not be hard at all. However, there was the geography of the world to consider. If I blocked these rivers, turning the bridges into dams, then the entire surface of the world would change.

I couldn’t create arches covering the rivers from one side to the other, either. Tectonic drift would eventually ensure that those arches crumbled into nothing, possibly before they were even used.

Thinking about how I could preserve the landscape of the world while also fulfilling Tryval’s wishes, an idea struck me. Without hesitation, I began to get to work. For each island connection, I checked the high and low tides, building the land bridge such that it settled in between those two levels.

Then, I created holes that ran through the bottom of the land bridge such that water could still pass through without turning it into a dam. After I was done with the first one, I fast forwarded time a bit. During the rainy season, when the tides were highest, the bridge was entirely invisible, hidden beneath the water.

However, when the tide lowered, the bridge became apparent. Although it still looked like a dam, I adjusted the underground waterways enough to allow plenty of water through without removing the stability of the bridge.

Similarly, in order to ensure that the structure did not collapse easily to earthquakes or tectonic shifts, I carefully plotted the connections. It was impossible for every island to have a connection to every other island. For those islands that remained on the same tectonic plate, I allowed them to connect to all of their neighbors. For the islands which were divided by a plate, I only made one connection between the two islands nearest each other.

This connection was also much thicker than the others I had been creating to attempt to ensure sturdiness. Like this, I made sure that only one island existed that had absolutely no connections to any other island… and that island I moved to the center of the vast ocean. “This is where I’ll be placing the gate.” I explained, before opening another menu, the Calamity Spawner…

My plan to help deter travelers from approaching this island was quite simple. I only had to create a massive, perpetual storm with the island in the eye of it. Normally, such a thing would be impossible, but this menu made it a far easier matter. At first, I considered setting a deactivation method, such as the successful use of the Fairy Gate. But, with it activating to spawn monsters, that would not work.

Instead, I simply created the storm, and watched as it quickly took shape around the island. A wall of wind and lightning obscured the island from vision, causing me to nod my head. Only once that was done did I actually purchase the centaurs and the various systems for this world.

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