karami92

Author's Corner: Thank you to Alexander Ogorman  for joining the Patreon

Bihena and I continued watching the beginning of the training exercise, or rather Chel explaining their training exercises to them. However, before they were able to make any progress, there was a faint knocking on the wall. When I turned my head, I saw Ryone standing at the entrance to the hallway with a small smile. “I’m ready.”

I blinked for a moment, taking some time to remember what she was talking about. However, once I did my eyes went wide and I gave a quick nod. Closing my eyes, I sent out a mental broadcast to the rest of the gods and goddesses. We’re about to have a meeting to discuss potential improvements for our worlds. Anyone interested should head to the usual spot.

After saying that, I promptly stood up, making my way to the hall to create our typical meeting room. It was a rather large conference room with ample chairs for everyone to sit at, as well as a custom padded area for Tryval to sit, should he decide to attend. So far, I don’t think that anyone has missed one of our meetings like this, so I was quite excited to see what would happen.

“Mind if I join?” Chel asked, following behind me into the conference room with a small smile. “I do have a little experience when it comes to things like this.”

I glanced back, realizing that I must have sent the message to her as well. I had been so used to simply broadcasting to everyone in the Admin Room that it was more difficult to purposely exclude her. Regardless, there was no reason to deny her access to the meeting. “Sure.” I nodded my head with a small smile, moving ahead to sit at my typical seat.

It did not take long for the others to begin pouring into the room. The first were Ryone and Bihena, as they had been following behind me as well, but the rest were not far behind. Some of them, like Leowynn and Aurivy, had rather excited expressions on their faces. It was hard to tell if that was because they knew what Ryone wanted to suggest for the meeting, or if they simply enjoyed these gatherings.

Either way, I gave time for everyone to make their way in, until only Tubrock was left. Curious, I was just about to message him when the door opened. Tubrock entered the room, his face covered in soot. “Oy, give a fella warnin’ next time, will’ya?” He complained gruffly, moving to sit in a free chair.

From the looks of things, he had been in the middle of an experiment or some such, and the message had been… poorly timed. “Apologies.” I smiled, shaking my head. “Thanks for coming, everyone. Without further ado, I’d like to get us started.”

Leaning forward, I braced my shoulders against the table, looking over the faces of everyone present. “As you all know, our battle against the Keeper Grudge has ended recently. Our reward for victory was in the ballpark of two hundred and fifty thousand points. This is… more than we’ve earned at once in a while, outside of everyone’s combined earnings from a meeting.”

“As such, I asked Ryone if she would look through the market to find ideas for things that we could use to upgrade our world. Whether they were new systems, technologies, or anything else that she felt was fitting.”

After saying that, I gestured towards Ryone, who nodded and produced a small sheet of paper. “Honestly, it wasn’t easy to find anything that looked like it would really help us all that much.” She said with a sheepish smile. “But, I managed to find a few things after the last few days that I would like everyone to look at.”

“First up…” She highlighted a line on the paper with her finger, and a row of text appeared above the table for everyone to see.

“This is a system that I found, and thought it looked interesting. From what I can gather, it allows individuals to set up a realistic simulation based on variables that they are familiar with. Anyone would be able to use this system, and it would allow them to experiment with their abilities without having to worry about the consequences of failure.” She had a slightly proud smile on her face as she finished her explanation.

“Sort of like the game that I use to help Dale train now and then.” Accalia nodded her head in understanding, before Chel spoke up.

“I’d personally suggest not getting this system.” She said with a faint sigh, everyone’s attention moving over to her.

“Why not? Looks fine to me.” Keliope chuckled, noting the price of the system, as well as Ryone’s previous explanation.

“There are some problems with systems like this.” Chel pointed out, shrugging her shoulders. “For instance, the accuracy of the simulation depends on the user’s knowledge. Where the user is lacking, the system fills in with their closest assumptions. Given the price of the system, you can assume that there is at least some level of correction taking place if the user has false information. However, it will ultimately be based on the user’s own knowledge.”

“With that being the case, training would not have a large enough effect in this simulation to warrant the exorbitant pricetag. It would be more cost-efficient to create a full-body VR scanner that imports the user into a simulated world. The only downside to that is that it is something that would require an installation site, rather than an ability that people could simply use.”

Thinking about that, I gave a small nod, looking at Ryone. “Let’s hear about the next one. We’ll come back to this depending on what all there is.”

She nodded her head, tracing her finger over the next line of the page. “This next one took me a little while to find. I thought that it might be useful, but I was a bit wary with the system’s price.”

My eyes went wide as I saw the name of the system. “Isn’t this what Sanction used to get his people so powerful?” I thought back to the information that I had learned from that invader, before furrowing my brow. “Wasn’t that a million point system?”

Ryone gave a small nod. “This is likely a smaller, component system. Sanction’s system was tied in to have a lot of different aspects, such as classes, skill points, dungeons, and even void bases. From what I can tell, this system is either just one piece of what he had, or it is an unrelated skill system.”

“To summarize my findings, this system does not have a preset batch of skills, nor does it allow for skill ‘trading’ in the same manner as his system. Instead, its purpose seems rather straightforward, but still quite powerful. The user is able to register skills through their own actions, and the system saves those skills.”

“After the skill has been saved, the system monitors future actions that the user associates with that skill. If the user improves with the skill, the proficiency increases. However, as long as the user trains somewhat regularly in it, the system will ensure that the skill operates at its peak.”

Accalia let out a low whistle when she heard that description. “That’s… really strong. If there isn’t anything wrong with this system, I could see it being a favorite for any Keepers with game worlds.”

Chel thought about it for a moment, nodding her head. “There are two potential problems with a system like this, so I’ll address them one by one and let you decide if the risk is worth it. First is skill degradation, as that was something it seemed to address. There’s no mention of how fast or slow the skills degrade, and it may even be something you get to set yourself. If it is fast enough, the system wouldn’t be worth the expenditure.”

“The second potential power is in the phrase ‘ensuring that the skill operates at its peak’.” She let out a sigh as she said that. “There are two possibilities there. Either the skill operates at full power with every usage, or it operates at full control. This is a big distinction.”

“If it is the former, the skill will always use the greatest amount of energy, and people will lose the ability to hold themselves back. If it’s the latter, things will be much better, as it means that the user will have full control of the power of their skills.”

Terra smiled, her eyes curved upwards slightly as she looked to the formed System Companion. “And which way do you think it goes with this one?” She asked in a playful tone, propping her chin on her hands.

Chel crossed her arms over her chest, mulling it over. “The price of one hundred thousand shouldn’t be overlooked. That implies that the system either holds a great deal of power, or requires a lot of alterations in a standard world to make it fit. If the system focused on power rather than control, it would be worth around five thousand. The fact that it is this much means that it likely emphasizes skill control. But… for it to be that expensive, there have to be hidden features of the system that aren’t listed in its description.”

Ryone nodded her head, seemingly in agreement. “That’s why I was worried about the price of the skill. It’s higher than anything we have so far, and we have two world groups that we would need to buy it for. Even with the discount for repeatedly purchasing the same system, that is a lot of points.”

“Let’s list this one as a strong maybe. Do you have anything else to present?” I asked, looking over at our elven Goddess, who offered a small nod.

“There is one other, though it’s not as big as either of the other two. I just thought that it might be helpful.” As she said that, she traced her finger over the last line on the paper.

That was… certainly a lot cheaper than either of the systems that Ryone had presented so far. Looking at her, I waited for her to start her presentation of the system. “It’s fairly simple, I think. It records your surroundings based on your own perception, and presents it as a map that can be accessed mentally.”

“There were two versions of this system that I took notice of. The other one was only five hundred points. When I did a bit of digging, I found out that the difference between them was that the cheaper one only recorded a small area at a time, while this one is able to record anywhere the user travels.”

Chel’s eyes lit up at that, as did Aurivy’s. “Get it!” The two of them shouted at the same time, looking at each other with knowing smiles. Seeing them so excited, I furrowed my brow in focus, thinking about the implications that they had picked up on.

If the system did not have a storage limit, and it based its mapping power on the user’s perception… ah. There were three things that popped to mind. First, it might be possible for this system to aid in interdimensional mapping, for those that manually travel between worlds. Second, and far more likely, it would be useful for mapping during space travel.

Finally, it would be immensely useful for worlds like Fyor, where the world itself is only going to get bigger and bigger as time passes. Petra’s year-long trip through the jungle would be shortened to just flying for a few days and scouting from overhead. Furthermore, with its low price, it seemed like there was no real reason not to get it.

Shaking my head, I looked at Terra. “Is there a way to tie a particular system like this to a class? That way, we could set this to be a system whose strength is tied to the Scout Class?” If there wasn’t, I was worried that the Scout class would become redundant with this new system.

Terra gave a small nod, tapping the table as she spoke. “It only costs a couple hundred points. The ‘Class Restriction’ system lets you tie systems to classes like that.”

I smiled, thanking her as I thought about what I wanted to do with these systems. Ryone hadn’t found as many new additions as I had expected, but there were certainly a couple of gems in them.