karami92

Author's Corner: Thank you to Luke Wright for joining the Patreon!

Sorry for the late chapter. Been really under the weather lately, and haven't had the chance to write without feeling like someone was setting off bottle rockets in my brain.

With everything truly urgent taken care of, I once again decided to fast forward the world. I wanted to give the people time to adjust to the new changes that had been made, and fully integrate them into their normal life. Although the economy had been practically turned upside down due to the existence of the tokens of faith, those were still relatively new items as well.

As I was passing the time by… passing the time, I heard the sound of footsteps walking through the hall. When I turned my head, I found Ashley entering the living room with a tired expression, her shoulders slumped. The bottoms of her wings dragged against the floor as she walked over, collapsing in one of the chairs.

“Everything alright?” I couldn’t help but ask, shifting the window I was working on to the side so that I could talk to her.

“Yes. No. Maybe, I don’t know.” She grumbled, shaking her head. “Just don’t make me do something like a system upgrade for a while. That uses… a lot of energy.” She let out a groan as she thought about that.

“Still haven’t recovered from the tokens of faith?” I blinked in confusion, glancing at the time that had passed in the world. By now, it was already five years that I had fast forwarded, and she had still not regained her energy?

Ashley shook her head again. “It was a lot worse than setting up the trade platform. It’s getting a bit better now that things have sped up, but… it’ll take me at least ten more years to really get back to where I was before.”

That surprised me. Even back when she first installed the system, it only took her a few months of ‘world time’ in order to recover to her former level of energy. It seemed that with the most recent update, it had not only exhausted her energy, but overdrafted it. “Got it. I won’t have you do anything like that again for the time being.”

Thankfully, there weren’t any new systems that I could think of us needing to add for the foreseeable future. The world was definitely not in any kind of ‘perfect’ state, but at the very least there was nothing obvious that we needed.

The years passed by silently, the worlds slowly changing with each and every season. Civilization was trying desperately to catch up with the advancements that had been thrust onto it. The tokens of faith, a universal currency that existed in its own special method of circulation. These symbols of devotion became the new standard to measure wealth, as opposed to gold and jewels.

Currency was now being further divided, into a total of fifteen levels. The first three were copper, silver, and gold coins, each produced in their own local styles. The value of these coins were measured by their purity and mass, each world using different designs. After that were the twelve divine coins, from Leowynn to Terra.

Over the years, the urge to quickly spend tokens at the Boundless Caravan gradually faded with people getting over the mindset of this being something new and special. Now, they had begun to accept it as another part of their culture. This allowed them to stockpile more of these tokens, creating a larger supply of them in the global market.

Part of this change happened due to the caravan announcing that the ‘market price’ of the tokens would be higher than that of their currency equivalent. At first, this change seemed unusual, with the caravan itself taking a loss from people who decided to directly sell their tokens.

Later, though, it served to help stabilize the economy. Because Ryone’s coins were no longer being directly exchanged for gold coins, the caravan could simply announce that they were currently not purchasing any more. By that point, it had become common sense to see the tokens of faith to be more valuable than simple currency, so people were no longer as eager to directly convert them.

Thanks to this, the caravan had been able to gradually set a true value for each token. In the end, they divided them based on the uses the tokens had, as well as the popularity of the god or goddess that it came from. Each deity represented a tier, with two tokens being able to exchange for the next tier of token.

Leowynn’s tokens, being used for every physical ‘purchase’, became the most common and lowest tier of the tokens of faith. Meanwhile, Terra’s which had only a single life-saving function were undeniably the most highly valued. With the conversion rate of two-to-one for each tier, that meant that it took over two thousand of Leowynn’s tokens to buy just one of Terra’s.

Once the Boundless Caravan announced this pricing mechanic, the gods seemed to grant their tacit approval. The number of coins appearing from offerings were adjusted for each deity, while the prices of items on the caravan were similarly adjusted to represent the new values.

While the people of the world were happy, seeing this as the gods accepting their ideals, the gods were rejoicing as well. With the adjustment of the coin values, they now had to spend a lower percentage of their divinity to satisfy the market requirements.

As an example, Leowynn’s tokens were changed to contain less of her divinity, requiring more of them to achieve the same effect as before. Although they came in higher supply than they had previously, this still only resulted in her spending forty percent of her earned divinity from offerings, rather than fifty. Terra, on the other hand, had it much better. Her tokens changed to contain a much more pure divine energy, but it took a truly sincere offering to even earn a single token.

While Leowynn was able to go from fifty to forty percent for her spendings, Terra’s dropped as low as ten percent, or even lower depending on the ‘sincerity’ of the offering. This change allowed the balance of religions to shift once again, Leowynn’s church becoming more popular while Terra’s faced a small decline. Only those with a pure faith chose to remain in Terra’s churches, as anyone who had joined half-heartedly for the easy tokens no longer had a reason to stay.

Aside from the tokens of faith, the pilot class had similarly caused a significant change over the years. Due to the power of the pilot’s essence, the class had become mandatory for anyone seeking to enroll in the military for a combat profession. The ability to operate machinery even when their own power sources had been depleted was extremely valuable.

Deckan’s armored mechs became the first of many, with each world similarly researching how to produce their own humanoid weapons to best take advantage of this new class. Although they wouldn’t have the same convenient storage power of Deckan’s cards, each world found its own unique way to handle things.

Soldiers of Earth, for instance, created smaller machines that acted as a suit of armor surrounding the user. This armor would feed on the explosive waste produced with the pilot’s essence to great effect, and could be summoned by binding it with a specific geometric spell. Meanwhile, Fyor’s mechs were larger than those of Earth, and designed to suppress the effects of extreme gravity.

Speaking of Fyor… the expedition into solii territory had been met with mild resistance. The physically stronger race was divided over how they should treat the unusual beings which emerged from the black wall. Some saw them as messengers from the gods, while others believed them to be monsters seeking to steal their wealth and knowledge.

Neither side directly engaged with the people of the lower floors, who could easily retreat should the situation prove hazardous. Instead, they fought with each other, waging a civil war amongst themselves to decide which viewpoint was ‘correct’.

This mindset left the diplomats from the lower floors speechless, questioning how either side winning would change the intentions that they came to the floor with. They even tried to support those who seemed to be fighting to ally themselves with the beings of the lower floors, only to have their support blatantly rejected.

The twenty-fourth layer of Fyor was far larger than even Earth, with only Lorek proving to be larger. Even then, it would only be a few more layers before Fyor became the largest of all worlds. Thankfully, this particular layer was already explored fully by its inhabiting race, which allowed a few clever explorers to find the location of the other gate.

Once the second gate was discovered, the twenty-fifth floor was unlocked. For the time being, the people of Fyor decided to leave the solii to their own devices, unwilling to get caught up in a battle that they were not welcomed for. If the results of the battle were to tip in the scales of those that saw the outsiders as ‘evil’? Well… they would just ignore that floor in the future. With the power of Aurivy’s priests, as well as her tokens of faith, it was a simple matter to ignore one already explored floor. 

The twenty-fifth floor, however, had far more headaches than the twenty-fourth. This floor seemed quite similar to the nineteenth in the fact that it opened out into a giant ocean. It was hard to tell at first whether the gate itself was just inconveniently placed on a small island or if the entire floor was another oceanic layer.

Countless vessels set out over sea and air alike to explore this new layer, a whole new world of possibility and danger.

“You doing alright up there?” A voice spoke out over the radio for a young halfling piloting what appeared to be a small plane. This was the transformed version of his personal mech, designed for long-distance exploration.

“Yeah, the energy consumption isn’t too heavy yet.” He answered with a smile, speaking to a speeding boat vaguely below him. In order to scout the area, he would fly to the edge of the horizon, and then return to the boat on a regular basis to recover his energy when it started to run low.

“Be careful, we haven’t seen what kind of monsters are waiting for us here.” The voice on the other end of the radio called out, causing the halfling to nod.

“I think it should be you guys that are careful. If there are going to be monsters this far out, they’d have to be underwater, right?” He asked in jest, having just set off for another trip to the horizon. His armor was made to be able to accept mana to power the thrusters, but would similarly accept the explosive waste energy as well. Thanks to that, it took quite a while for him to really be drained of energy.

As he flew out, he only noticed after a few minutes that his joke hadn’t been responded to. Not the slightest jab or scolding, which made him question if the communications system had been interfered with. It wouldn’t be the first time, as the nineteenth layer had a mineral that was able to stop most mana-based transmissions.

Shaking his head, he decided to turn his plane around and flew back to where he had left his friends, following the navigation system. Through the party interface, he could tell that everyone was still alive, so that wasn’t a problem at least. They had taken some damage, but that could easily be explained by a common brawl between friends, and didn’t seem to be anything life-threatening.

When he returned to where he had left them, however, he hovered in place for several long moments. No matter where he looked, there was only an endless, calm sea. No signs of their ship, or even any wreckage that would indicate that they had been attacked.

Just as he was beginning to wonder if they had been mysteriously teleported away somewhere, he saw a massive shadow rising up beneath the surface of the water. When it surfaced, its body was revealed to be long and smooth, with six holes on its back, each roughly three meters wide. The creature contracted briefly, and the halfling saw the lives of its party members vanishing simultaneously. Then, one by one, the holes on its back erupted.

What emerged from the six holes was mostly water, but he could identify other things as well. Wood, metal, and… blood. A lot of blood. Immediately, the halfling controlled his vehicle to ascend in a panic, rising to the highest point he could manage, until he was practically scraping the ceiling. Only then did he rest, using several spikes to cause the craft to stick to the ceiling and allow him the time he needed to think and recover his energy in peace.

At least, that was the plan before he heard something clicking against the outside of his plane, seeing insects bigger than his body crawling along the top of the floor...