People of the world. The Keeper’s voice spoke up in everyone’s minds at once, regardless of their location. For those just going about their day, it was like a thunderclap causing them to stop and look up at the sky. For those in the midst of a life or death crisis, fighting monsters or criminals, they were forced to ignore it for the moment.

There will soon be a small update to the world system. Please check the patch notes on the Darkflame Technologies website at your earliest convenience. This patch will be released in six hours. After saying that, the voice vanished from the peoples’ minds, leaving them dumbstruck.

Those capable of accessing the internet from their location quickly brought up the relevant notes and scanned through them. A change to the world system meant a change to the lives of everyone living under its rules.

Within the research institute, Chelsea clicked her tongue as she read the patch notes. “Looks like there’s not much here that will directly affect us. Well, the copyright thing is nice. It’ll take care of the problem of some stolen tools.”

“I lost one multitool.” James complained, rolling his eyes.

“Two.” Chelsea corrected with a playful smirk. “Anyways, the resource agriculture update will definitely become popular in those worlds. But for the rest… I think we can ignore this update. We just need to focus on the Reality Engine.”

James nodded his head in agreement, glancing around before lowering his voice. “How are you coming along on that other matter?”

Chelsea’s face darkened slightly at that. “I’ve found a few suspicious suspects, but nothing concrete. The ninjas really have upped their game lately. Even researchers are able to avoid detection.”

Chelsea had considered going back to ask Terra for help again, now that the problem of the void monsters was gradually being taken care of on Lorek and Spica. However, the new void shield hadn’t been constructed yet. It was hard to say that the problem had really been taken care of at this point in time.

“Nothing?” James looked at Chelsea, as if he had found that hard to believe. “You are the most paranoid, super-observant, ultra-obsessive person I have ever met, and you haven’t found anything?”

Chelsea’s cheeks puffed out in a small pout. “I’m not that bad.”

“You once made me go through a six hour screening process because you thought that I had been replaced by a sentient spore.” There was a knowing grin on James’s face as he said that.

Chelsea lifted a hand, looking like she was about to retort, before letting out a low groan. “Okay, fine… I’ve got one strong suspect. I’m pretty sure that he’s involved in the group, but I can’t find any connections. It’s a Deckan cop. There was a shift in his schedule almost immediately after the report came in about these people.”

“Yes, I know, there are a lot of people who had their schedules changed around that time. And yes, I checked all of them. This one’s different. He never actively avoided security systems before the change. Afterwards, there is one section of the city where he will always mysteriously vanish from any security cameras before he gets close. I haven’t found out where he’s going in that sector, and none of the ninja businesses around there have shown any signs of receiving him.”

“So, it’s probably a secret meeting point for the runaways?” James furrowed his brow, nodding. After a moment, he blinked. “How many people did you have to check to narrow it down to him?”

“I wrote a void algorithm.” Chelsea answered with a small shrug. “Anyone that had a sudden change in work schedule or career within a one month period was included in the reference. After being identified, the algorithm compared their original lifestyle to their lifestyle after the change. This includes social contacts, their walking stance, and their daily travel. In total… I think there were just over ten billion people, spread across all of the different worlds?”

“That… is a massive invasion of privacy.” James said with a long sigh, Chelsea simply shrugging again.

“If there is a high possibility that someone has been replaced by a face-stealing ninja aiming to overthrow society, I say it calls for extreme measures. Anyways, I haven’t notified anyone about the suspect yet, since he is showing enough training to be able to spot anyone tailing him. I don’t want to alert him and have him ditch this identity.”

“What are you planning to do with him, then?” James couldn’t help but ask.

Chelsea held her chin in thought. “It’d be best if he slipped up and led us to his friends. Unfortunately, from the information provided about this energy, we might not even know if he converted other people during the times where I lost sight of him. In that sense, the longer this goes on, the more dangerous it is.”

“Why not write a forced confession script?” James glanced over. “You could make him reveal the identities of all of his accomplices at once.”

However, Chelsea simply shook her head at that. “Won’t work, already thought of that. If the others in his group realize he’s compromised, they’ll immediately abandon their identities and we will lose our chance.”

“We need something that will let us identify everyone involved at once, and then move in on them when they’re all together. Right now, I’m trying to come up with a void script that will cause him to use a key phrase when he is dealing with other people from his organization. The script will then mark them and spread, repeating the cycle. The problem I’m facing is both narrowing down the target conditions and reducing the mutation chance. I don’t want him turning into a sentient, homicidal statue.”

James shuddered slightly at that, nodding his head. “The neck snappers. I remember those. Took us ages to find a good anti-meme. Well, keep me updated. As for the Reality Engine, we’re still working on converting some of the key components into a programming equivalent. We should have the hardware almost taken care of, it’s just a matter of getting the code right.”

“Have you begun the construction, yet?” Chelsea asked, looking over at James, who shook his head.

“Not yet. The sisters picked out a location for it, though. Once we’ve finalized the plan, we can begin construction.” Chelsea let out a soft sigh when she heard that answer, nodding in satisfaction.

“In that case, we can focus on getting everything set for both of our projects.” Chelsea smiled, glancing at the screen once again.

Thankfully, it didn’t take very long for Ashley to complete the copyright system that I had asked for, so the patch was able to be implemented smoothly. At the same time, I passed along the information that I had gotten from Sarah, letting Ashley know what steps would need to be taken at the end of the development period.

She asked me if I had gotten any hints for designing the NPCs from Sarah, but I hadn’t asked for anything like that. In fact, I had considered it, but that was too much of an iconic aspect for her games, so I didn’t want to ask for the real secrets of her trade. I would leave the matters of creating NPCs up to Ashley’s team. That, or they make it a sandbox game without any NPC guidance.

On that subject, they were still debating what sort of game they wanted to create. This was our first real ‘game world’ that we were designing like this for the market, so they didn’t want to be too ambitious. At the same time, there had to be enough for it to let the product catch the eyes of the other Keepers.

At the moment, one of their ideas for the game was primarily focused on catching, training, and fusing various monsters to create a fighting force. They even had a rough outline of the system to handle the monster fusion process.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t really a consensus on whether or not to implement this plan yet, due to the possible ramifications when dealing with a Monster Keeper. After all, what would we do if our game provided inspiration for a powerful new breed of monster that was turned against other Keepers? Was that something that we really needed to concern ourselves with?

In my opinion, that wasn’t something that we should be worried about. If we were afraid of providing people with inspiration that could be used poorly, we would never be able to complete a game in the first place. Just take Fragments of Acidia, for instance. Some of the technology in that game could inspire world-ending weapons with just a bit of imagination.

Because of this, I was personally in favor of the monster raising game, as it was something that we could handle without the need to create an overarching story. We could throw in a crafting system, and some convenient quality of life system, and allow the players to develop the world as they wanted.

The primary competitor of the monster raising game was… substantially more complex. It was best described as a post-apocalyptic game about discovering an ancient civilization ravaged by an interstellar threat. While we wouldn’t need NPCs for this game due to the civilization being destroyed, we would need to have the civilization’s ruins built.

At present, the only feasible way to handle this was to have the AI Spirit of the game procedurally generate the ruins, and leave the matter of creating an ancient story up to that spirit after giving it a rough outline. I had seen from Fifi that it was entirely possible for these spirits to change the culture of the world that they governed.

Shaking my head, I leaned back at my desk, closing my eyes. What sort of game would I find most interesting? I asked myself, thinking both as a player and a Keeper. As a Keeper, there were two main reasons to purchase a game world off the market. The first reason was like when we purchased Vision Expanse, we received some much needed advancements from it in the form of space travel technology.

The second reason was purely recreational. This would target those Keepers that were already familiar with the market, and had enough points to spend on adding another game to their collection. Because of that, I thought that it was better to focus on the first reason, providing something that could help the customer develop in some way.

It would be nice to include the Elemental Seed system to help with this. Aurivy has already proven that the Elemental Seeds can be replicated in real life even without the system. With that in mind, that could be a method of development.

When I thought about that, I began pursuing that line of thought. A method of development focused on nature. That could be in line with the monster raising game. If we created a modified version of the Sylvans, they could even apply their racial abilities.

My brow furrowed, shaking my head. I wasn’t really interested in creating an entire NPC race like that. I had a similar opinion to Sarah when it came to NPC souls. But… what if we set it so that the players were the Sylvans?

Now, that was an idea… If we made players the equivalent of a golden Sylvan, but modified them to exclude the demigod aspect, they could gain the Sylvan’s natural affinity with nature. We can set the ‘Mother Trees’ to be something that is created through the cooperation of multiple Sylvans, as opposed to something that gives birth to the golden ones. This can let them set up their own bases in the game.

While this would be exposing the Sylvan race in some way to the world, it was not doing so in a dangerous method. For instance, the alterations to the race would make them different enough that other Keepers wouldn’t have the knowledge necessary to prepare countermeasures against the ‘true’ Sylvan race.

Still… before I went through with this idea and suggested it to Ashley’s team, I felt the need to get permission from someone first. This game wouldn’t only be released to the other Keepers, but also to our world. For that reason, I felt it was only right to speak with someone that could represent the Sylvan race. If they saw this game and thought that I was making a mockery of their race, then that would only create discord among the people.

As for who could represent the entire race? Well… there was really only one person that held such a position of authority, as the first Sylvan goddess.