Ruri spent another one and a half hours attending one more class before logging out.

Course content of that class doesn't really matter, as it was about reviewing previous topics and preparing for end-of-term exams. The other students fell silent and listened to the teacher's lecture seriously. But regarding this matter, Ruri just relaxed with a calm mind.

The moment after she got up from the Capsule Pod, Ruri checked something else in her pod system. Seeing the completion notification on the pod, she just smiled in satisfaction.

What she checked was of course, the VR-Space she promised with the Beastkin siblings.

"Finally the VR-Space is finished. I have to take a look first, so... Link Start!"

Without further ado, Ruri pressed the link button, and allowing her mind to dive into the newly created VR-Space.

The process of creating VR-Space cannot be said to be fast.

For this VR-Space, she allocated 5 PB of data space from her pod and it took her nearly two days to finish the initialization stage. Fortunately, the other stages didn't take much time, and they were all over before she returned from school.

Ruri didn't bother creating a new avatar and simply logged in using her school avatar.

When she opened her eyes, Ruri found herself floating in an pure white space.

This was a vast expanse of pure white space, seemingly almost endless, and with no end in sight. Nothing has been created in this space yet, and as the admin, everything in this space belongs to her, and she has the power to do anything here.

"Let's see... I have to make a place first."

With a simple thought, she opened a control panel window with countless parameters that only an admin could have.

Since the framework used to build this VR-Space was the Executive version, the customization rights are the highest. There are a total of 11,280,000 parameters in the control panel, which can be adjusted to scientifically simulate various environmental factors, such as the depth of gravity, oxygen levels, wind speed, temperature, humidity, and much more.

Normally, manually configuring all those parameters would be sure to drive people crazy, but there was no need to go through all of them, because there are already various preset examples that are ready to be used.

Ruri simply selected one of the preset examples and added a few modifications.

"Ok, I choose you!"

As soon as she pressed the confirm button, countless polygons appeared in the white space and reshaped slowly to match the 3D holographic preview in front of her. It didn't take her long to see the results with her own eyes.

A tubular-shaped space with a height of 1000 km, consisted of a small round island with a size of 800m², an ocean area extending 2 km from the coast of the island, a clear blue painted sky, and life parameters the same as Earth. Outside the space was an inaccessible area, which basically belonged to the data area not allocated to the VR-Space.

While others simply create a room or at most a house, she directly created an island!

This was possible because the allocated data space was quite large, a whooping 5 PB, which equals 5120 TB!

Others allocate around 5 TB at most in their rented server for personal digital workspaces, live streaming, and more, while low and mid-sized organizations or enterprises allocate around 200 TB at most.

Of course, the larger the size, the more computing power needed to run the server. But fortunately, such computing power wasn't a big issue for the Executive-type Capsule Pod.

Ruri smiled with satisfaction.

“As expected, this scene is more amazing than the holographic preview.”

She then turned off the Ghost Mode and allowed herself to fall due to gravity into the grassland area of the island.

"I CAN FLY~!!"

The experience was quite exhilarating.

She enjoyed the sensation of skydiving without a parachute, something that she certainly didn't dare to do in real life. When she fell to the ground, the sound was quite loud and a human loli-shaped crater formed where she fell. Even so, there was no damage or pain, because she still hadn't implemented the related systems in this VR-Space.

"That's quite fun... But I must not forget my goal."

Near the crater, Ruri found a large rock and sat on it, before she opened the control panel window again.

From the Resources tab, she can see how much "data space" each resource uses.

Around 90 GB of data space was used for the core modules, including basic physic law and 3 basic senses (sight, touch and hearing). Whereas all objects ranging from the island, forest, mountain, sea, to the details of pebbles and leaves have used around 1.2 PB of data space.

"I need to install the inventory plugin... Oh, I shouldn't forget the smell and taste plugin either."

With a few taps of her finger, Ruri browsed the Plugin Market via the interface.

She downloaded 3 plugins from the recommended section and loaded them immediately. Normally, the plugins are not free and she has to pay 10,000¥ for each one, but with Executive privileges, she has 100 free plugins to download, so she doesn't have to pay for them.

The inventory plugin takes up 200GB of data space with the function of allowing people to store items in the VR-Space as in many VRMMO games. Meanwhile, the smell and taste plugins take up 30 GB of data space each, they are also essential for completing the 5 basic senses.

About NPCs, Ruri wasn't in a hurry to make them yet.

While it would be nice to have a few birds and other animals to enliven this VR-Space, training the AI would be too much of a hassle. Besides, each NPC also requires some of data space for basic thought calculation.

"Making NPCs must wait until everything else is finished."

It took about 5 minutes for the 3 plugins to be installed successfully.

As soon as the plugins successfully installed, she quickly pressed the Publish button. There was some configuration that needed to be done after that but she got it done quickly.

The name of the VR-Space wasn't a big deal and she doesn't really care since it can be changed anytime. Then, the access options are set to invite only, so that no one other than the people she invites can enter.

Seeing the successful message, Ruri took a deep breath and straightened her expression.

"Okay then... System Call: Generate Object, Label: Apple, Execute!"

The moment she finished her words, an apple appeared in her hand.

She recognized the apple in her hand was the digital version of the commonly known hybrid apple, which was cultivated by the Golden Apple Corp. This apple had a rich taste and was the standard digital apple in many Virtual Worlds.

'Now the only thing left is to prove whether my assumption is correct or not.'

Ruri put the apple into the inventory and logged out.

In the real world, she checked whether there was any change in her inventory. She wondered whether if the inventory system of the VR-Space she just made will also appear in her real world inventory system. Unfortunately, she found no changes to her inventory system.

"Too bad, I can't cheat and produce items myself."

Regarding this, Ruri wasn't too disappointed.

After all, it was just another failure of her attempts to understand her own abilities. She had visited many games and there was no game other than Ascension that she could bring items into real life.

'Is there some secrets in Ascension? For example, another world disguised as a VRMMO game?'

She had seen many Ascension World R&D documentaries, and she believed that it was just a simulated world under a super quantum computer.

However, right now she was not too sure.

'There's no use thinking about this now. Instead of getting dizzy, I'd rather just play.'

'Decorating my VR-Space can wait until later.'

Ruri decided to stop thinking and quickly logged into the game.

♠♠♠

 

[Ascension]

[Ruins of Archades City]

Hecate appeared once again in the ruined palace.

Without the spiders, now the atmosphere around has undergone a drastic change. The air was calm and there was no more suffocating feeling. It was a sign that the dungeon had been conquered, or at the very least, the upper part of the dungeon.

Previously, the place had been covered in a strange fog and there was no way to enter except from the dungeon entrance. Now, without the fog, she could see the familiar valley beyond the palace from the broken window, which she had walked through before entering the ruins of this palace.

She jumped out through the window and inspected the surroundings.

This place should have been a city before, but was destroyed and devoured by nature as time flowed.

Judging from the sculptural decorations on the buildings and the relic items that she had previously obtained, it could be judged that the civilization in this place was not inferior or perhaps even more advanced than the Rosenweil Kingdom. 

As for why this kind of civilization was destroyed, Hecate didn't think too much of it.

After all, it's only natural for a fantasy-type game to have one or more ruins of an advanced civilization.

"And this place is my Territory from now on."

What does Territory mean to Players?

This means that designated areas now belong to specific Players and can be managed according to their needs. This was similar to owning a house and land, but on a much larger scale. If the area of land ownership exceeds a certain scale, then the land owner can choose to build a settlement, starting from the village and rule over that land.

With the scale of the ruined city, it was as if Hecate had taken the city directly.

'I can still remember the moment Leon-sama got the Brynhildr Fort.'

Hecate couldn't help but reminisced about the past.

The leader of the Genesis Guild, Leon who quickly rose to prominence in the eyes of the Natives of the Rosenweil Kingdom for completing various A-grade quests. One of the rewards from the Templar promotion quest that Leon successfully completed was a Territory Permit that grants the ownership of Brynhild Fort, which he then manages to this day.

The profit that Leon gets from shops, taxes, and other projects at Brynhildr Fort can be said to be quite fantastic. With sufficient funds, he was able to strengthen the Genesis Guild to its current scale.

"Hmm, this is...!?"

But soon Hecate realized that her situation wasn't that simple.

In her Game UI, she found there was a new section tab named Territory Management. This tab contains some information and instructions related to area management, such as instructions for deploying Area Barriers, Teleportation Gate, etc.

In addition, there was also a special section that shows the status of the territory in real time, such as total population, military, economy, satisfaction, and many more. Currently, none of them had appeared as the territory was still unnamed. And under territory status there are information on requirements to upgrade territory level to the next level.

But that wasn't the point.

Territory recognition from the system was fundamentally different from the Territory Permit issued by Native royalties. The former means that the area belongs solely to the owner. Meanwhile for the latter, basically the area remains state property, and the permit owner only manages it as a state subject.

In other words, the territory that Hecate owned was not the subject of anyone or any kingdom.

When the total population and military reach a certain number, she can choose to become a Warlord and carry out diplomacy or declare war on other territories. And when she gains recognition of 2 or more other territories, she can choose to upgrade her territory to a Kingdom and immediately ascend as Queen!

"Uhh...."

Seeing the requirements to became a Warlord and Queen, Hecate's expression became complicated.

In the first place, she had no intention of opening up her territory to the public. She knew herself best that she was just a selfish introverted loli and not very good leader material.

Let alone Queen, she herself didn't know if she could make a good study group leader.

Moreover, if the Genesis Guild found out about this, they would definitely resort to moral kidnapping, forcing her to share this territory as the guild's assets!

"That's definitely not the situation I want."

Hecate definitely didn't want to share her hard-earned cakes with others so easily.

But even though she knew that Genesis Guild could definitely make her cake bigger and would compensate her with various benefits, she still didn't want to share this cake.

She knew that with her guild's strength, they would be able to rebuild the city, turn it into a Kingdom and make it prosperous in no time. But at that time, the one sitting on the throne would be Leon, not her.

Thinking that other people would be more successful than her made her heart feel extremely uncomfortable!

"Rather than rebuild the city, I should make this place as my personal workshop!"

After giving up the option of creating a Kingdom and becoming Queen, she immediately made another choice.

There was no need to insist on making a city. Rather than that, turning the place into a workshop was more attractive to Hecate. With the scale of the city, she can create a giant workshop that can help her manufacture items on a large scale.

Coincidentally, just this morning she got various machine Blueprints from her school, one of which was a metal engraving machine. But still, it would take some research to adapt the machine to suit the environment here.

While thinking about the Blueprint, Hecate suddenly remembered what Rena had said before.

"Ah, yes... Looks like Astrid wants to talk to me about something? I have to visit the guild now."

Hecate immediately changed the Cloak of the Fallen she was wearing back to the Lunar Cape and activated the Return Base skill, disappearing from the place.