After giving Isabelle the authority to recall the two kids whenever she wanted, Nakama and La-Ti wasted absolutely no time in getting out of the place. Vanishing in motes of light, Gaius confirmed their arrival on the surface of the expanding Celestia, before leaning back. The core of Celestia was Cybral, and he intended to keep it that way. By retaining the original administration and laws of —

Lightning fell from the sky.

“Huh.” Gaius clicked his teeth. “That was annoyingly fast. Should I completely erase the newcomers’ memories? It seems that they’re still retaining some of their basest instincts. I’ve already sealed away the memories that generate the most emotions, but...”

“You want to eradicate all their memories?” Isabelle asked. “I’m not sure what to think of that, though. It’s true that erasing their memories will overcome all past animosities, but isn’t it inefficient? They’ll find it hard to survive.”

“Yeah.” Gaius folded his arms. “Modifying the soul is not something I can easily do. The circle of reincarnation is specialised in wiping slates. I’m not. If I want to wipe away their memories, I’ll have to muster up even more power.”

Three lightning bolts fell, and Gaius felt his lips twitch. The newcomers had been situated around the immediate locale of the civilised areas — Cybral at large — and these lightning bolts had indeed fallen on these areas. It didn’t make sense, though. The first arrivals were people who would do anything for a new life; why would they kill other people on sight?

“What were they doing?” Isabelle asked. “And why would they try to harm each other at first sight?”

Gaius sat on Isabelle’s lap — she was more than strong enough to support his weight — and fiddled with the fake computer. As he added some monitoring tools, Isabelle’s chin rested on his shoulder, and Gaius had to forcibly resist some of his other, non-work-related thoughts.

“Alright,” said Gaius. “We can now do some close-up monitoring. Just press the button here, and voila.”

A vast prairie appeared all around them. Three men, who were lying down on the ground, began to stir feebly, and before long, they got up. It took them around one minute to digest the tutorial, at which point they looked around at the others.

Power surged out of Gaius, creating a blindfold around Isabelle’s eyes.

“Hey!”

“They’re all naked,” Gaius replied placidly. “That’s just going to pollute your eyes — it’s not like they’re the epitome of male beauty either.”

“You’re just being possessive.” Isabelle chuckled. “Sure, though. On the condition that you close your eyes if you see naked women or something.”

“Okay.” Gaius rubbed his forehead. “It seems that I screwed something up in the process of transition. My original intent was to clothe them in the robes their innermost mental image was wearing, but something must have gone wrong there. Still, did they not read the tutorial? They could easily create clothes for themselves, so why did they start calling each other perverts and start a fight?”

“Maybe they found each other superior to their own?”

Isabelle didn’t specify the object of comparison in question, but Gaius instinctively understood. After fighting down the urge to laugh, he shook his head. “Maybe everyone has an inferiority complex, one way or another. When all are made equal, these complexes shine through...alright, enough of me being philosophical. I’m going to make some adjustments…”

Grey divinity coiled around his finger.

“They won’t die from the lightning, right?” Isabelle asked.

“No, they won’t,” Gaius replied, somewhat absently. “Oh. The reason why my automated clothing function isn’t up is quite simple. Celestia hasn’t fully developed yet. I suppose I’ll have to make do with a warning…something like this.”

A blue screen appeared in front of him.

“It’s like a Status, see?” Gaius pointed at the blue screen. “For some reason, this function was embedded a hundred and ten thousand years ago. It’s actually not something the great gods made.”

“Eh?”

“Yeah. Coloured me surprised.” Gaius frowned as he traced back the source. “An alternation of natural law. Foreign in source. So, this status thing is actually quite…huh. Never mind.”

With a wave of his hand, Gaius dismissed the changes he made.

“Why did you stop?” Isabelle asked.

“This Status thing isn’t of our world,” Gaius replied. “I would rather not expose the people here to unknown risks. Best to get rid of it.”

Letting out a small groan, Gaius forced it out of Celestia. Directly pitting his divinity against such an esoteric law shouldn’t have been an issue, but the damn alternation was so sticky that he had to expend quite the effort to actually shove the thing away from Celestia. Snorting lightly, he followed up by crafting an impromptu law that forbade external influences on the level of natural law from affecting minds and souls, before leaning back.

“You made it sound simple, so why do you feel so tired?” Isabelle asked, worried. “Or is the strain of making a new world getting to you?”

“That Status thing was a lot harder to deal with than I thought,” Gaius replied. “It’s a remnant law with no divinity backing it up, so how can it be so pervasive?”

Cuddling up to him, Isabelle said, “Maybe it’s just well-made?”

“Well-made?” Gaius tilted his head. There were a lot of things that could follow the words ‘well-made’, but natural laws? This was a rather novel concept to him, but he couldn’t quite dismiss it offhand. Something about those words had triggered his instincts.

“Artificial?” Gaius thought about that word for a moment. Like Isabelle’s suggestion, this particular word was hanging around for more than was necessary, which was a hint from his subconscious. If that was the case, it was quite possible that this Status thing was artificially produced from a different world and sent down to Orb.

“Huh?”

“No, nothing.” Gaius shook his head, suppressing the small chill running down his spine. This wasn’t the time to distract himself with pointless issues. “Anyway, I’m going to just grant all newcomers a tutorial via an illusion, instead of a disembodied voice.”

“I suppose that’s for the best…and how long are you going to keep me blindfolded?”

“Whoops.” Gaius swallowed once, and then took off her blindfold. Forcing himself to focus on work-related issues once more, Gaius made a couple of adjustments and started monitoring the newcomers all the way until night fell.