Knowledge of the new God of Monsters was… not widely spread. Very few people were made aware of Tower’s ascension, and they were only those trusted by the dungeon cores themselves. Of the spectators that had watched the holy light shooting into the sky, they were unaware of its true nature. After all, there had yet to be a witness to an ascension before that.

Regardless, there were countless speculations. Some people believed that an ascension did indeed take place, but that it was the ascension of the person who challenged the dungeon. They wove stories of reclusive hermits that had long since been at the top of the world’s power structure, secretly challenging the dungeon on a passing whim, only to receive enlightenment about divinity.

Elsewhere, within Desbar there sat a grand tower of metal and tinted glass. Sitting at a hundred and twenty floors, it was the tallest building within the entire world. At the base of the towers was a twenty meter tall stone statue of a female demon, a statue of Ashley herself.

This was the corporate headquarters of Darkflame Technologies, the company which had sparked an age of technological revolution and had eventually released the still-popular virtual reality experience known as Vision Expanse. However, the building had a second title as well, the unofficial supreme church of Ashley.

Ever since it was made public that the first generation CEO and founder of the company was the goddess herself, public opinion had been set on declaring the company’s headquarters as a sort of holy land. Despite Ashley herself insisting against this, the most she had been able to convince the people was to not make such a declaration official.

Even now, it wasn’t too rare for Ashley to descend to her ‘unofficial’ church and suggest a new technological project. After her incarnation had died, she had chosen to continue using her real form to interact with the company, as it was already publicly known. And, despite her suggestions being truly that, her ‘employees’ were almost fanatical about following them.

Worse still, other technology companies kept a careful watch on Darkflame. Whenever they were stirred up into a frenzy to research a new discovery or invention, these companies would all follow suit. Like this, a few words from Ashley became able to send the entire scientific community of a world into a frenzy.

And one day, she had offered another suggestion, more of an idea. “What if we had programs that could think for themselves? Not artificial intelligence… true intelligence in artificial format.”

Naturally, these words showed similar effect. Suddenly, the vast majority of scientific minds were devoted to the research and development of artificial intelligence. And thankfully, they had a few existing examples to look at.

First and foremost, those who worked at Darkflame themselves and had Admin access to Vision Expanse were able to request interviews with the intelligence that governed that world. As far as anyone knew, Vivi could either be a ‘secret’ god such as Leowynn, or an extremely powerful spiritual being. However, either way her existence had been digitized, and they were able to monitor her code while interacting with her.

While not as directly related as Vivi to the project, there was one other individual that other researchers were capable of interviewing. The Head of Practical Studies at the Magical Research Institute of Xanathar, Ana, was a known ‘artificial mind’ created through magical means. Unlike Vivi, who was capable of expressing and feeling emotions, Ana was only capable of mimicking them.

Despite this, the researchers were able to progress almost as quickly by approaching Ana as they were Vivi. That is because Ana did not hide the ‘secret’ of how she was created. She was fully aware of her own magical programming, and shared these insights freely. This all fell under her job of educating the masses on practical applications of magic, so she saw no reason to hide this information.

On one hand, there were people capable of analyzing the actual code of a working intelligence in realtime to monitor its responses, and the other hand was people receiving the magical blueprint to creating a pseudo-intelligence. Both sides had pieces of the puzzle without the full picture, but enough of a start for them to research the subject on their own.

While Sorii was being revitalized, and Desbar was whipped into a research frenzy, there was another world that had finally accomplished the mission of sending settlers to another world.

“Alright, everyone, you know the drill.” A red-haired kitsune smiled back to her crew. They had just finished landing on a new world of their own, Eingard, and were preparing to disembark. “Check your O2 levels, make sure you’re in the green on mana, and keep your protection spells up until the habitat is finished.”

“Understood, captain!” The rest of the kitsune crew smiled and saluted. The world which had been chosen in Deckan’s system was… not as forgiving as Sorii. This world was a bit further away from the local star, but also larger than Deckan itself.

The combination of distance and size ultimately led to a world ravaged by constant storms. The surface of the planet was, at this point, almost entirely covered in thick layers of ice, with violent hail sweeping over the craft. Even now, they could hear the constant thuds of ice colliding with the ship’s energy shields.

“We only have enough reserve fuel for twenty-four hours.” The captain reminded. “By the end of the day, we either establish our base to make contact with home, or we meet up with Sarah to head back home.”

Sarah was the name of the kitsune who had been left behind to man the main body of the ship, while the rest of the crew took the dropship to establish the colony. If all went well, she would be joining them soon. Otherwise, they could simply abandon the mission to go back home.

The crew once again nodded, before the captain stepped into the airlock. In her hands, she held two small devices. One was shaped like a pistol with a tall, yet very narrow barrel, while the other was what appeared to be a handheld scanner.

As soon as she stepped out of the craft, she fired off a shot from her pistol directly into the sky. A blue light sprouted from the barrel, shooting up in a sphere before shattering. As it did, it sent out a wave of energy in all directions, pushing back the storm to give them a temporary area of safety.

Following that, the captain once again began walking forward, sweeping the scanner from left to right. “I’m showing active spiritual energy readings.” She reported back to the crew. “Assume monster presence at all times.”

Although she said that, she was inwardly surprised. On Sorii, monsters only began spawning a year after the team had arrived. The fact that there was active spiritual energy meant that the monsters had not only already spawned, but there had been recent deaths in the area.

Soon, three more kitsune walked out of the dropship, each of them carrying a pistol similar to the one that the captain used. One of the kitsune walked out a bit further from the ship while measuring the distance, before kneeling down to the frozen ground. “This should be a good enough starting point.”

Saying that, she retrieved a card from her back pocket, and placed it against the ground. “Construct!” She commanded, a shout which caused dozens of other cards to begin flying out of her pockets.

Carefully, she stood up, making sure to dodge through the flying cards so as not to get in their way. Once she rejoined with the others, she gave a faint nod. “It should take about six hours for the blueprint to be finished, as long as we can prevent anything from disrupting the process.”

“Ground team, come in.” Sarah’s voice called in over the radio, earning a raised eyebrow from the captain before she responded.

“Sarah, we read you.”

“There’s been a shift in the storm.” Up in a geosynchronous orbit above the landing site, a silver-haired kitsune was staring out of the window with wide eyes.

She could faintly see the small dot through the clouds where the storm had been cleared to make way for the camp, but that was not the focus of her vision. Rather, it was the rest of the storm itself, which almost seemed to… pause after the appearance of that dot. The slowly rotating storm clouds ceased all movement, all across the planet at once.

Following that, Sarah saw the hole in the storm open up wider while the main force of the storm seemed to converge around it. In under a minute, the entire structure of the storm had changed to place the landing site directly at the center of the storm’s eye. Sarah was left trembling in realization at what this meant, her hand shakily clutching the radio.

“Gather… gather ice samples from the storm. Put them into card form, quickly. The storm… it’s alive.”

Down with the ground team, the captain’s confused expression froze. She noticed the retreating clouds as well, but thought that it was simply a side effect of her weather stabilizer spell. Hearing the sheer panic in Sarah’s voice, she looked to the side to address the other members of the crew. “Gather ice samples, hurry! We need to know what we’re dealing with here!”

Hearing their new orders, the members of the crew hurriedly began moving to the edge of the ship’s energy shield to collect fallen ice and snow. Some of it, when converted, became simply that. Other pieces, however, yielded a different result.

Shattered egg of the Frozen Maelstrom

Along with the ‘eggs’, some of the ice similarly gave magic cards. These cards ranged everywhere from rank one to the incredibly valuable rank four, showing that the ‘monsters’ that they were dealing with held similar rankings.

“Sarah, contact home. We need immediate reinforcements. Or immediate evac.” The information that they had gathered with the cards was enough for the captain to make a few deductions. The storm was not a monster. The storm was a swarm of monsters. Most likely, they were elemental type monsters that joined together to essentially create one single being.

However, this also made the situation more dangerous. If they were only dealing with a single being, even if it was a storm large enough to encompass the entire planet, there were more ways of dealing with it. The situation changed when it came to swarms, though.

The captain’s eyes looked out towards the slowly constructing base. The spell she had cast was meant to provide twelve hours of stable natural energy. But, that was only the case if there was nothing actively fighting it. If there was, it may not even last a single hour.

Thinking that far, she pulled out a card from her back pocket, one meant to be used in emergencies. This certainly qualified, so she began chanting. “I am the unsung traveler, the guide to the stars. Oh lady of the unseen world, hidden within the clouds, I call on you now.”

The card, which simply depicted an empty circle on its artwork, began glowing. Slowly, the captain could see a figure appearing within the circle, slowly walking closer. She held the card in front of her, and then firmly swiped it to the side. As she did, she could see the same figure now appearing atop the ice, continuing to walk in her direction.

The woman was a kitsune with flowing green hair, and a gentle smile playing at her lips. She seemed entirely unfazed by the storm that she could clearly feel ravaging the world, and simply continued to approach the captain. Without opening her mouth, her words flowed steadily into the captain’s ear.

You have invoked one of my pacts. You may ask one favor of me, as per the agreement. After her words ended, the card held within the captain’s hand shattered into specks of light.

Naturally, the captain was well aware of the value of the card she had just used. Such things were very rarely bestowed upon the world as gifts from the world spirit herself. She had only been granted one to use in the case of an emergency which could threaten the entire mission. Yet even with such a powerful favor, there was no guarantee of safety, which was why she had sent the request for reinforcements before even using the pact.

“My name is Ester Thames, and I ask for your help. Please, protect this area from the monstrous storm that enshrouds this world until our sanctuary has been completed.” Ester knew to word her request very carefully. While it may seem cruel, the world spirit valued the word of the request over its intention. If she had simply asked for her crew to be saved, the world spirit would likely transport them all back to Deckan with a wave of her hand.

The pacts she bestowed upon the world were her gifts to them, so she saw no harm in following them as she deemed fit. In all actuality, she was not bound to follow them at all, and only did so because it was a form of entertainment for her.

As such, the world spirit took a moment to process the request, no doubt seeing if there were any too-obvious loopholes. Only when she was satisfied did she nod her head. Very well. I shall ensure that the storm does not touch the surrounding area until you have completed your sanctuary.