Walker stretched his back, still marveling at how good his middle-aged body felt. Physically he was better than ever, but his emotional state was another thing. It still felt like his innermost feelings had been curb-stomped by an elephant wearing stilettos. In retrospect, call it luck or call it good living, but most of those memories seemed sad with a ting of...goodness. Is goodness a word? Doesn't matter, he just made it one. Walker was always pushing himself to be a better person, better than the day before at least. That was why he wanted to build Symphony to be a planet of persistent growth. Where each day might contain a brighter sunrise. He cracked his neck and looked over at the yellow-eyed woman who seemed to be waiting for him.

"How are you feeling?" Echidna asked with some concern.

"Like a tractor just ran over my emotional balls." Walker said. "Physically I feel better than ever. The protocol had healed my old ankle injury, but this is different. It's like I just drank ten redbulls, only without the shakes and existential dread that normally follows."

"That's generally how it is, and it never truly fades." She said with a smile. "The first stage can be quite painful for those who don't accept themselves as they are."

"What happens then?" Walker couldn't help but ask. It was the great bearded one who answered for him.

"They emotionally implode into a quivering mess of uncertainty. Eventually, they become an invalid."

"Oh.....that's cool I guess." He said, trying not to think of what he could've potentially experienced. Then remembered what Echidna had mentioned before, "Wait, what did you mean I have the makings of a Titan?"

"What color are your eyes?" Zeus questioned him from the side.

"Brown of course, like most people from our world."

"Wrong." Zeus said with a shake of his head. "Your eyes are now a striking green."

"What?"

"Walker." Echidna said, placing a soft hand on the side of his arm. "The first step to gaining soulpower, is to face yourself, and the choices you've made throughout your life. The sooner you set yourself on a path, or a code to live by, the stronger your sense of self becomes. The more you live by this code, the more powerful your soul becomes. It doesn't matter what path you choose, only that you stick to it, and that it is a reflection of the person you are choosing to be."

"Look." Minos stated stepping forward, and uncomfortably pushed his face close to Walker's. His eyes, which Walker had thought were a light shade of brown, were actually a bronze coloring not unlike his armor. He turned his head and looked at Zeus, who obligingly stepped forward, and found that his eyes too were different. What he had thought was a light shade of blue, were in fact white with small streaks of blue around the edges, like lightning held within puffy clouds.

"Physical changes are a part of the process, Walker." Zeus said. "It is like a warning to the rest of the universe, saying This one has power." He finished with a raised fist. "The greater the power, the more the changes as your soul seeks to imprint upon your physical self. No-one can go through the dynamic shift of actively using their soul without changes being apparent."

"Why are you being nicer to me?" Walker asked of the bearded man. "Before, you always gave a vibe that said MORTAL I WILL SMITE YOU. Now you're actually being helpful and I don't quite understand."

"That is a simple enough answer....you are one of us." He said with a grand spread of his muscled arms. "Let me explain this to you. The first step or stage appears as a slight change to the color of an awakened's eyes, representing that a being has experienced the internal stage. The moment you experience said stage, your soul begins to show itself in a physical way, creating changes to how your body and mind work. You'll find yourself stronger, faster, and will age slower as time has less of an effect on you. A great boon to the eternal effect of the soul directly impacting the physical body. The more you pull from your soul, the more you stretch it and strengthen it over time, the greater the physical changes that become apparent."

Walker thought it over, "So you're saying you don't spend twenty hours of every day in the gym, while drinking protein shakes and staring at girls asses as you pretend not to."

"I don't know many of those words." Zeus said, looking at Echidna with confusion.

She redirected Walker with a wave of her arm, "As you progress through the second stage, you will find those physical changes reflected in the strength and speed of your muscles and tendons. The greater the soul's connection to the body, the more control an awakened has over it. We call it the physical stage. As you learn to sheathe your body in the power of your soul, your physical strength and speed will naturally grow. Once your soul has acclimated to its new form, we will continue, if you're willing, with the second stage."

"So that's what I am now? An awakened?"

"Yes, it is a generic term we use for ourselves, although throughout time there have been different words. Gods, angels, djinn, and so on. Those who reach the third stage begin to modify their body further and move away from the standard form of humanity they've grown to understand. I've seen awakened who grow wings, horns, and even plated armor for skin. Our creator tried to replicate these modifications in her monsterology, or study of monsters. She experimented with them, trying to develop those that would be awakened at birth."

Echidna paused for a moment in thought, "Did she ever find a way to do so?" She asked Zeus, who just shook his head. "Either way, she created entities which you would know to be myths and legends, but are standard from her world in the first rendition. Dragons, the minotaurs who were developed to look after Minos here. Entities with unique characteristics and bodies."

"Walker." Virgil said, interrupting for the first time in a while. "You now have two new genetic lines to work from, mythological and primigenial."

"Oh shit." Walker said, slapping a hand to the top of his head. "With all of the crap I just went through I'd completely forgotten about that."

"That is only natural." Virgil replied. "The primigenial genetic lines are directly connected to your new optional tasks from our....visitors...here. While the mythological lines are open for use."

"Good looking out Virgil. Okay. Status check everyone. Rimi, how is our big boy doing?"

"The Battlefrog is eating well, Walker. But, as I watch him, I can't help but feel that he is lonely."

"Noted, we'll give him some friends in a moment. Virgil, how is the ecology system looking? Did you figure out how to get the weather to siphon from Symphony's mana trees?"

"Yes, although it is not perfect. If we tie the weather to magic, and the magical density overwhelms an area, it can have a detrimental effect."

"What would that look like?" Walker asked.

"Tornadoes, hurricanes, and powerful hailstorms can spontaneously manifest with too much magical saturation."

"Sooooo..." Walker said without a clue. He knew, and could tell, that awakening his soul didn't make him smarter. He just felt like things were a little clearer. The problem was nothing of what he'd just heard made sense in his understanding of reality. Virgil helped him out.

"Any large battles that do not already destroy the land through their magical abilities, are likely to also produce deleterious effects on the weather."

"Mmmm, I'll be honest, that also sounds like a positive. It's similar to what we wanted from the territory system, a warning system for anyone still in the area."

Virgil nodded slowly with a paw on his chin, "Yes, I had not thought of that."

"Why do you care for these mortals?" Zeus asked from the side as Walker froze in place. "You are awakened now and will live for at least several hundred years. The welfare of lesser beings is beneath you and those who have come before you. Create your world, place your servants, and gain enough power to control any sector of this universe you choose."

Walker turned his head slowly and looked at him with a steely gaze. He recalled his oath, and after filtering it through the visions and experiences that he had just gone through, he found it fell in line with who he was as a person. Who he was choosing to be. That surety bolstered his soul, and while it didn't tell him the next words to say, he did feel a nudge in his mind, like a mental guideline. He thought that over for a moment, just to make sure something other wasn't controlling him, but he found it was closer to seeing the lights turn on for an airplane approaching the runway. Sure in his purpose, Walker spoke.

"It isn't enough to have power or to live for ages. Not when power is used with ill intent, and life is for nothing but the accumulation of even more power. Calling others mortal, as you seem to enjoy doing so much, shows your hand to the listener. Do you not recall I was only just another mortal not long ago? Based upon what I've learned about the awakened, at some point, so were you. The more you point out your own strength, the more you point out just how much you've come to rely on it to the detriment of everything else, including your understanding of others needs and wants. Remind me, where is your power, your lightning now?"

"You know it is lost." Zeus responded with heat in his voice.

"Yes, I do, but you don't seem to get it. I hold the cards here....brother. I am, technically, still mortal. But, I am also an awakened much like yourself. So as a representative of both worlds, I have to say, fuck you and that superior bullshit." Walker finished.

"He's right you know." Echidna said from the side. "We asked you not too long ago to stop with the ummm."

"Superiority Complex." Minos provided in a small voice.

"Damn, I keep forgetting. Yes, your superiority complex. It has never shown a good side to others. In our time on Earth, you would swoop in on women and charm them with your looks and your powers. Then, after you get the deed done, you start talking down to them. Those same women would get mad and spread rumors about you. Saying you did something strange and horrible, like turn into a bull and molest them."

"Or a swan." Minos helped.

"Or a swan. Right. Or that one time they said you were a horse? You can't do anything like that, but they spread rumors that you're some weird...animal molester. Is that right?" She asked Minos, who shrugged. Echidna continued, "Then your followers left you because they were worried they'd be next, and other immortals lost theirs as well in a vicious cycle of losing power and prestige. Just stop already."

"I never did any of those acts." Zeus said with a red face. "That was all....slander. Yes, it was fully satisfied women slandering my name."

"Not what I heard." Walker said with a smile, happy to see Zeus feeling the squeeze. He decided to join in, "I heard you turned into an eagle to bang another gorgeous and lonely eagle once."

"NEVER!" Zeus yelled with a thunderous voice. Echidna laughed with a full-throated sound, while even Minos tittered. Walker was about to continue poking the King of the Gods when Virgil interrupted with a light cough.

"Walker, please look at your time remaining until the next battle." Virgil said.

Walker looked at his overlay.

 

Time remaining until next battle: 38 hours.

 

"Oh crap we're running out." He said in shock. "How long was I in my mind."

"Quite a long time, Walker." Virgil replied. "That is why I felt it was prudent to remind you. We can use some of our chronological resources, but we're running a little low. The protocol will help with that after the next battle."

"Okay, so, what do you need for the weather system to go online." Walker asked, getting back to business.

"We need more mana trees, but I hesitate, due to the forthcoming Territory System and the Tier five requirements, to add more for each landmass. That means we will need to add more as we go."

"Yeah, okay. I'm gonna add some more Battlefrogs so our buddy is a little happier, then we'll add some landmass with the mana trees included and move from there."

"That sounds good."

Echidna waved at Walker for his attention, "We'll be by the Tree of the Gods while you work. Please call on us if you need help or advice. Minos and I will speak with Zeus about how to counter his thousand-year-old problem."

"You got it, and thank you." He said, as the three walked over and started to look at the branches and leaves on the large green prison.

Walker pulled up his monitor and inspected the Battlefrog.

 

 

He noticed that evolution was gone, and in its place, it showed that the Battlefrog was only Tier one. He tried zooming into the body of the Battlefrog so he could view the Kernel, which showed a light blue coloring. Walker called Virgil over, asking "How long until it hits tier two do you think?"

"It is difficult to tell as this is an entirely new frontier for the Alpha Protocol. I think, and this is a guess, that it will take about a month to gain Tier two for each monster. But, as you add more monsters to the area and the attuned magic is depleted, it will likely take longer. The greater the population, the less there is to go around, at least until we add more Mana Trees."

"Okay, that's in line with what I was hoping. Rimi, how many friends should I give it?" Walker asked.

"I would suggest no more than five at a time."

"Why just five?"

"Because they will reproduce on their own when given enough time."

"Okay, sounds good." Walker said as he walked over to his creation instrument. He pulled up his overlay and looked at the battlefrog, which was in a new category labeled Monster System entities. Walker clicked it and saw the diagram appear on the computer screen. There was an option at the bottom he hadn't noticed before, which gave him the option of choosing the frog's gender.

"Did you just assume my gender?" He said to the screen with a chuckle. "Do you two know if we should limit genders at all?" Walker asked.

"For this entity, I would suggest starting out with four males and two females overall. They weren't known, before we modified them, to be territorial with each other." Virgil said.

"Yep, I agree." Rimi pipped in.

"Okay then, here we go." Walker said, as he moved his monitor over to The Crater, printed out the images, and dropped in two females and three more males. They materialized one at a time and just stood still, viewing their surroundings. He held his breath as the original Battlefrog noticed their appearance and hopped over. The slightly older frog looked at his colleagues with squinted eyes and just sat there for a moment. Suddenly, a tapping sound, deep in its throat, came out of it. Walker was sure, at its size, it would sound like beating drums were he nearby. The other four looked at it and made a similar sound, then hopped around a few times while looking at each other. Walker breathed a sigh of relief.

"Alright, that seemed to go well." He said.

"I agree." Responded Virgil.

"I think I'm going to make some landmasses and drop them in. This way, we can finish the ecology task and get the weather system online at the same time. What do you think?"

"Sounds good." Rimi said with a thumbs up, looking at his screen.

"What are you going to do?" Walker asked the larger squirrel.

"I am going to look through the new mythological genetic line again, and see if we are able to seed one without destroying Symphony before the next battle. You know what happens if we lose."

"That I do. This may take me a while."

"I will be here if you need me." Virgil said, staring at his screen.

Walker looked at the smaller blue squirrel staring at his screen, then at the larger brown one doing the same. "Just like my old classroom," He said with a sigh before changing the creation instruments option from entity to landmass. He'd had an idea about what he should do, and he was determined to not make any more large mistakes. Walker knew when he first designed Symphony that he hadn't been thinking big enough. One landmass centralized with four points wouldn't work for an entire world. He had to change his plans moving forward. The idea had come to him not long after his transformative soul experience. His thoughts were clearer and he felt that he could just....see better. Although it wasn't a physical thing, his improved perspective felt like the clouds parting on a sunny day. He had been going about all of this just....wrong. The best way forward wasn't to create one large mass that connected to everything, but a hundred, a thousand, individual locations interconnected throughout Symphony. Where the sand of the desert can be a step away from an ancient forest. Where each portion and its mana trees were free to change over time as the citizens of Symphony interacted with them. He selected the shapes option and chose the almighty hexagon. A hexagon provides six sides and would let him place the pieces of land in any connection he chose, allowing greater creative freedom over time and always syncing with each other by shape.

After the hexagon appeared, he looked a little closer at all of the options that he hadn't seen when making the giant piece of steel. He didn't know why he hadn't looked over his options before, but he figured it was better late than never. Scanning through, he found an option to rotate the landmass's shape so he could see every side, including the top and bottom. He rotated it back and continued to look around the screen. There was also a terraforming button, which after clicking it, let him depress the ground or raise it up as he chose. That provided some new options that he would get to work with as he gained further mastery over the system.

He placed soil on top of the hexagon and copied it over the entire surface. Pushing the terraforming button, Walker built a few hills into different locations, then placed the rock icon on them, copying that to each as well. He dug a winding trench through the soil and replaced it with the water icon, so he could connect it to Symphony's primary river. Logically he knew that having one water source for his whole world was a bad plan, but this was just the beginning of the planet. The further he expanded, the more sources he would add.

He clicked the rotation tool and put granite on the bottom so he'd have a uniform design throughout the world. He wanted to add the steel early, so it wouldn't be an issue, but he wasn't sure exactly where to line it up with the future Mana Tree roots, so it was a moot point. Walker looked it over and nodded to himself, then printed out the landmass, pulled up the monitor, and put it near the swamp corner. Again, the landmass was larger than his previous additions, and it slotted in with a click. The hexagon was perfect for his landmasses, one side facing the current symphony, and another against the mountains of The Crater. This allowed four other connection areas for later expansion. Walker's overlay lit up and gave him a C+, giving him a little more paper to work with in the future, so he went again, this time adding to the water at the bottom with small islands holding sand, small rocky areas, and a little bit of soil for future vegetation. He did it a second time to really expand the surface area of Symphony with water. Both gave him C's, which he was fine with.

After placing the three new landmasses, he called Virgil over for advice. Following a quick discussion on which would work best in a given area, Walker started placing trees and grass throughout the world. As he worked, Symphony changed from the drab browns and greys of old, to a world full of life. C grades abounded, as trees exploded in space, and new forms of magic-deficient vegetation spread across the world. There was a slight delay as they had to place them in the evolution chamber each time to apply the deficiency modification, but it was worth it, and they had two now anyway.

Walker never stopped, placing plant after plant until there was a clear and definitive line between each sphere of nature. Sand met water, water met trees, and across Walker's world, he finally added grass. His Battlefrogs began tapping wildly as each new tree and bush dropped into place within their habitat. The structure of Symphony was a little catty-wompus as the saying goes. He had added one landmass next to the swamp in the top left of the world, and another two greatly expanding the bottom left. Eventually, he'd have to talk to Virgil to see what it would take to create a real salt-filled ocean. He knew from his earliest memories that the salinity of the ocean was vitally important to a planet's climate.

Looking at his time, he found a little over thirty-three hours remaining. but he also felt like he finally had enough focus to really do what he should've been doing all along. Building a world that can change, and evolve, with time. He nodded once at the now green planet, then explained to Virgil what he was doing next. Walker pulled up his entity subsystem and started to mass-drop small fuzzy and feathered animals into space. Eventually, pieces of them were floating in all directions as the vacuum took its due.

"Wow." Zeus said from near the Tree of the Gods, where he and the other two had been sitting all this time. "Even I do not treat my people in such a way."

"Yah yah, I get it." Walker said. "Butttt, we still haven't figured out how to get the alpha protocol to download everything we want to make, so this is the fastest and most merciful way to go about putting them in the evolution chamber. We've already substantially changed Symphony with all of the vegetation, now we're putting in basic, unevolvable, animals. Speaking of which, no task update huh?" He asked Virgil.

"No, we only added the mana-deficiency, which as they're originally from Earth, they never had mana in the first place. The modification isn't large enough to consider a new entity."

"Fuck me."

"For what purpose did you just murder all of those innocent creatures?" Echidna asked as she stood up and placed her hands on her hips.

"Simple." Walker said, "And please don't be angry. We need things for our monsters, and eventually people, to eat. I don't want every rabbit in the world to have a chance to drain the magic in Symphony, as it's not limitless. So we have to kill each genus once, so they can't evolve independently. Once the protocol has downloaded them, then we modify them to disallow evolution entirely. Oh, that reminds me."

Walker added his water-adapted Mana Trees to the islands in the sea, one on each corner, then another two to his new forest with his original version. Stepping into the World Editor, he took his leftover steel, and had just enough left to fill in the gaps he was cutting into the granite. He had eyeballed where the old roots were so he could line them up as precisely as possible. This used to be a large problem for him, but since his soul adventure, his hand was as steady as a rock. After looking it over and making sure that everything was as it should be, he started to add rabbits, birds, foxes, and an assortment of other animals to the world. Walker blew up a few fruit bushes and trees, as well as standard fare for prey animals, and placed them as well.

He wiped his dry hands on each other, the slip slap of his skin meeting a conclusion to his work for the day. Walker looked at his clock and found another five hours gone, leaving him with only twenty-eight remaining.

"Okay, I feel like this is, finally, a habitable world." Walker said.

"I agree, you've made more progress in the last ten hours than you have since first entering the protocol." Virgil said.

"Is that pride in your voice?" Walker asked.

"Certainly not." The assistant said. "I just approve of efficiency."

"So do I." Walker said with a smile. "Now, let's get to really pumping out some monsters."

---

 

Joliva had taken a different route with The Slicer....ignoring it. Was it the best plan? No. Was it an actual plan? No again. But she felt it was the only path remaining to her. She'd dropped acid on it, burned it, electrocuted it, tried to cut it in half, and once she'd even given it a bath, not understanding that The Slicer thoroughly enjoyed the water. Joliva became so enraged at the fact that she couldn't kill the Universal Terror, that she even tried asking in the chatroom about what to do in this type of situation. The only thing response she received was laughter and ridicule. They lacked the understanding of what this creature and all of its power was to them.

It was the end of their time in the alpha protocol.

Identifying the monster only returned the name and Universal Terror title, as it had so many evolutions, the alpha protocol had entirely given up on attempting to quantify it.

At this current moment, she is focusing on working with her entities. She had massively expanded her landmass, not unlike Walker himself, and now the cage and its relatively remote area...directly in the center of her world....was a forgotten monument to her failure as a Creator. She didn't know what else to do and only felt relief that her work could continue uninterrupted.

"I need to somehow find a way to....combine these two if I want a chance at the next battle." She said to herself, the countdown in her overlay a constant reminder of how little time she had remaining. When you were counting every minute, your mind found things moving both too quickly and not quickly enough. It bothered her. "Maybe the trick is to just make them larger." She said, pulling out a small notebook her guide had given her. Joliva reflected on how helpful her guide was at the start of everything. As she knew they were an entity taken from the image of her future world, it spelled out just how great Dilania would be in the end. The guide explained everything, from top to bottom, of what to expect in the tutorial. The notebook even held ideas and suppositions of what the battles would be like, and how she could best prepare her world based upon their own memories. The myths and legends that had continued into the future. She couldn't imagine how others, with less helpful guides, could succeed without these notes.

"Now, lets see here." She said, as he activated her mental console and projected the image in front of her. She made slight changes to them, as anything too drastic could have unforeseen consequences. Small change, seed the entity. Small change, seed the entity. Slow and steady was the best way to move forward according to her secret journal. Joliva looked at her assistant, a pole with a totem on top, smiling at her, and was about to ask it about the first rendition again. She had done so multiple times in the past, to understand what the original creators had invented in their renditions, when a loud crashing noise came from her world.

The Slicer was out.

It undulated from the cage, which she knew from experience should be impervious.

Apparently, that information was wrong.

"FUCK" She screamed at it, clicking on her broadcast ability. "YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT. LEAVE DILANIA ALONE."

The Slicer hissed at her once, then arced its back and flung its head forward, spitting something onto the ground. The soil bubbled and boiled as the Universal Terror moved its pincers back and forth. Then she heard something that chilled her to her metal-sheathed bones.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAA, I'M FINALLY FREE!". The Slicer said, its words rebounding inside her mind.

"You can talk?" She asked it, flabbergasted.

"Oh yessssss. When you fail the next battle, asss you've talked of ssso ssso often, remember me." And with that, The Slicer began zipping around Jolivia's world at a blistering speed, cutting every entity it found to pieces. It didn't outright destroy her planet, but did leave a trail of acid anytime it could, boiling the world. The atmosphere grew cloudy as the fumes rose, and Joliva had trouble seeing what was happening. When every last entity on the planet was dead, hundreds of lives sliced apart, it zoomed out of the atmosphere and stopped right in front of her tiny planet. The Slicer moved its tail in a wave, laughed again, and flew out into the reaches of space.

"FUCK YOU DANTE!" She screamed at the night sky, looking at the shambles she was left with. She immediately turned to the chatroom to let everyone know how big of a piece of shit he was.