karami92

Author's Corner: I bet you all thought I forgot, huh? Well... nope! Happy Chrismahanukwanzakah to all! I delayed the chapter till today both for that, and because it makes the chapter dates line up for fanmail in just over a week! If you have any last-minute entries, be sure to send them in, as the clock is ticking. Entries will officially close at New Years.

When Leowynn opened her eyes again, there was clear exhaustion in them. Even without checking the system, I could tell that she had used an enormous amount of energy to both destroy the shark and create her own entity. “Are you alright?” I asked with concern, earning a weak smile from her.

“I made sure to reserve enough for the Boundless Caravan to be able to operate normally. The income that I get from that will gradually restore my power, along with the natural faith that people send me. I don’t know how long it will take me to hit the same level, but… I’d say it was worth it.”

I gave a small nod at that, suddenly curious. “How strong did you make that void entity?” Having heard the rules that she recited, I knew that the creature would not simply grow stronger as it destroyed other void monsters. The only benefit received there was the barrier around the connected worlds, while the only way for it to grow stronger was for the ‘positive karma’ of the world to increase.

“At its initial level… about a quarter of my previous strength.” Leowynn answered proudly. “It’ll get stronger or weaker with time, depending on how many powerful creatures it encounters, and the flow of karma in the world.”

Nodding my head again, I was rather curious. “Will it really work, having it set to grow with the overall level of positive karma in the world? As far as I was aware, the balance of karma stayed fairly even. There wasn’t much room for it to grow or decline, so I’m not sure how that will turn out.”

“That’s not entirely true.” Accalia smiled, shaking her head. “If Irena were here, she could explain it better. Right now, she’s currently enjoying her time as an incarnation, so I’ll take over. See, karma is a tricky thing. There’s not truly a ‘balance’ like you said.”

“With how the mechanic works, it actually leans towards generating positive karma more often than negative. That is because of the different methods for karma to form and spread. First, if you help someone with good karma, you receive a measure of good karma yourself relative to the amount they possess, as well as the significance of your aid. If you help someone with bad karma, the reverse happens.”

“Similarly, if you hurt someone with bad karma, you also receive good karma based on the amount of bad karma they had, and the damage inflicted. Again, the reverse is true for good karma. Now, this means that two people with bad karma hurting each other would actually cause them to generate good karma to a certain degree. At the same time, two people with good karma helping each other would both generate good karma.”

“In theory, this means that there are four potential relationships that each produce positive and negative karma. But, if we look at those relationships, you’ll see that the most likely ones will result in the production of positive karma. That is, good people helping one another, bad people hurting one another, and good people punishing bad people.”

“Naturally, bad people hurting good people is also common. But at the end of the day, their dark karma gets turned into someone else’s positive karma when they’re brought to justice. The other relationships are by no means unlikely to occur, but they are just not as common as the ones which produce positive karma. Especially after the priests of Irena became capable of measuring a person’s karma, exposing sins that they themselves might not have realized.”

I gave a small nod at Accalia’s explanation. “So, in other words, as long as that trend remains, the Void Angel will have a slow and steady growth of power?”

The lycan goddess nodded her head with a smile. “That’s right. The only question is whether the growth is able to keep up with the monsters it will have to fight against.”

Leowynn grunted, shaking her head. “Not if they’re as strong as that shark. If it encountered more of those right away, it could maybe defeat two of them before running out of power. That thing was even stronger than we expected. If it were not limited by its rules, it would have probably destroyed numerous worlds already.”

That wasn’t particularly surprising. After all, the creature was strong enough that it was able to influence all of the water within a dimension. If I were to estimate its strength, it had to be in the upper echelon of void monsters that we had encountered. Thinking back, that reminded me of the entity which had formed a contract with Julius.

From what I recalled, that creature seemed to become stronger simply by people making legal deals with one another. It likely formed a pact with Julius to more directly harvest energy. Had he been allowed to release his game… it could have very well turned into a creature on the same level as the shark.

“We’ll need to keep an eye on it. In the meantime…” I looked at Leowynn. “Do you know if there have been any issues with the void bases we got from Sanction’s raid?”

Leowynn blinked at that question, thinking it over. Given that those bases were not independent worlds, and were simply constructed within the void themselves, it would not be unheard of for them to be frequently attacked by void monsters. Despite this, she shook her head. “They have rather durable shielding. Sanction was supposedly a pretty high ranking Keeper that reset to get that system, so I bet that he has defenses in place to protect those bases. Whether those defenses are the walls of the base being reinforced by the system, or some device inside the base itself, I couldn’t tell you.”

“That’s fine. I’m sure James has probably figured it out by now, so I can ask him when he finishes recovering. Speaking of, though, what ended up happening to the rest of the bases? We gave some to James for his work…” I had delegated the task of appointing recipients of the bases to the others, as they knew more talented people within the world than I did. As such, I hadn’t really kept track of things.

Aurivy gave a light chuckle, getting up and moving to sit in Leowynn’s lap. Leowynn herself seemed surprised, but still held onto the halfling while Aurivy explained. “One of them went to the ninjas. It was a reward for their service in that particular invasion. Since then, they’ve used it as a springboard to research planar travel.”

“As for the others… one went to a top gaming group that passed a trial given by Udona and Blank. Another five went to other research teams. The rest were distributed to powerful adventurers, letting them place their friends and families somewhere safe.”

That wasn’t… too unreasonable of a distribution, so I didn’t really have a problem with it. “What’s going on with the ninjas, by the way? They’ve gotten quite a bit more brazen in recent years.”

Aurivy’s cheeks puffed out at that, crossing her arms in front of herself. “It’s that elder. Ever since they found a world full of high-level monsters to use as their personal territory, Elder Wanke has begun to lose his grasp on what the clans were established to do. Stay in the shadows, watch over the light, and protect the innocent. Now, he’s more concerned about treating the clan as its own nation, with all of their hidden businesses being repurposed to gather information on people that could pose a threat to them.”

I couldn’t help but raise a brow at that. “And you’re letting him get away with that? I don’t mean acting directly, but… surely you have ways of removing him from power?”

Aurivy let out a sigh of defeat. “He has three gods protecting him at all times, his Elite Guard. If I don’t go over with my true self or direct incarnation, those three are able to deal with practically anything I throw at them. Tsubaki could probably break through and get rid of him, but that would be a risky assassination even if she had the coordinates or their home plane.”

I blinked in surprise, glancing towards the screen. “What about Chel? She seemed to have plans to get rid of him… is she going to need to prepare a new incarnation again?” And naturally, if Chel got hurt… James would not sit idle.

“Chel? Pfft, nah, she could take care of it.” Aurivy waved her hand as if it was not an issue, confusing me even more.

“...You said that it would be risky if even Tsubaki went, but Chel could take care of it easily?” In my mind, Tsubaki was easily in the top three strongest entities within my worlds. The only reason she wasn’t at the very top was because of James himself.

“Oh, yeah. Chel has way too many special methods from her time being James’s Terra. I took a peek at her ‘Disaster Diary’ once that her incarnation was writing. She’s pretty much figured out how to find the world supporting the ninjas already. As for killing gods…” Aurivy shuddered. “I never knew that they could be so fragile, until I read some of the methods she wrote for killing different types of deities. Like… she has an entire chapter devoted to ways for making a deity disbelieve their own domain and making them disappear. Give her the time to scout the area and formulate a plan, she could probably wipe out the entire clan if she wanted.”

I felt a chill run down my spine when she said that. “And I thought James was scary…”

“James is strong because he has the energy to do a lot of things, as well as basically an eidetic memory. Being from a more advanced world, and having access to the Metong’s energy database, he has a lot of tools at his disposal.” Aurivy shook her head as she explained.

“Chel, on the other hand, is… let’s say more creative. She tackles problems using the least amount of force possible, while planning for any potential contingency. She might not have the brute force to match someone like James, but she probably has at least one or two different ways to defeat someone like him. After all, he found his way through Fyor’s dimensional gaps, so why couldn’t someone else from his race? That’s the kind of stuff she plans around.”

Aurivy gave a small grin, looking towards the screen. “Once the chaos around the psychic song settles down, I bet that she’ll make her move. She might even be preparing for it already.”

When I heard that, I couldn’t help but change the channel, suddenly curious.

Chel sat at her desk, drawing diagrams on a notepad. Her hands were unnaturally steady, only looking up every now and then to check her terminal for missed messages. In truth, it was fairly easy to create a countermeasure against the misuse of these psionic powers.

Due to the risk of people using magic for theft and the like, most businesses had a few standard devices or wards in place to suppress certain activities. For instance, when entering most stores, a person’s storage items would be automatically sealed to prevent them from simply pocketing the goods. Mana was similarly suppressed from gathering outside of the body with a dispersal ward, ensuring that someone couldn’t just teleport items out or turn them invisible.

Spiritual energy was trickier to ward against, but many businesses had similar preventative measures to handle that as well. Adding psionic powers to the list of restricted abilities would be as simple as tweaking the mana suppression ward. For police use, they could create mana blockers. These were little chips that could be attached to the neck of an inmate, and would prevent them from using any form of mana-related power.

The real trick was how to handle police-issue gear to target energy beings using these abilities. While such would not immediately be the case, their mana would remember the frequency of their ability after they took that step. Unfortunately, those who had already achieved Perfection would be unable to gain free access to this power, while those that did so now would still be able to retain it.

Currently, Chel was working on a spell to give to the various government bodies. This spell, if it worked as intended, would forcibly suppress the mana of a target individual. This suppression was to such a degree that Chel personally believed that it would render most targets unconscious, even if they were energy beings. The problem was that it required a large amount of mana and was difficult to quickly generate the diagram.

Thus, she had to create a weapon capable of holding this ‘Mana Lock’ spell. For that, she was basing the overall design of the weapon on the magic guns of Deckan, modified to only fire a specific spell. If this worked as intended, and she would have to test it first, then she could move onto other matters.