As promised, I prepared the system according to their wishes, assigning Ashley the rights to manage it with her team. Although I had asked her to pay a portion of the fees herself, I knew just how effective the system would be when helping her. However, if I don’t make the others pay for things they’re wanting, why would I give them points to do so in the first place?

As soon as I had purchased the new system, Aurivy dragged Julia over to come and try it out. At the same time, Ashley smiled warmly at me from the side, crossing her arms in front of herself. “With the Beta Reality system, I can guarantee that World Seed will be ready for public launch by the end of the month.”

I nodded my head, though a thought did occur to me. “If the world is bought fresh, how are you going to create the World Spirit to give it the additional systems that it needs?”

Ashley glanced over at me, giving a small nod of her own. “I already considered that problem. There is a cheap, twenty-point system option to spawn and customize the World Spirit.”

My head practically snapped over to Ashley when she said that. “What about the Martial Spirit?” I asked, somewhat urgently.

Ashley paused, shaking her head. “I don’t know about that one, I hadn’t looked for it.”

“I can answer that, I guess.” Terra walked out of the hall, into the living room with a smile on her face. “Actually, it’s something of a trick done by the system, so you wouldn’t know the reason without either asking me or consulting a large number of other Keepers as a reference.”

“I… suddenly feel a sense of foreboding.” I said as I looked at Terra, gesturing for her to continue. Though, it was nice to see her like this. Since she didn’t allow her incarnations to live in Olympus, my only real chance to see her is when she descends at her temple there, or if I come here. Descending costs a fair bit of her energy, so it’s not really something that she can usually do.

Terra let out a light laugh, shaking her head. “It’s nothing bad. The final forms of the World Spirit and Martial Spirit can be considered as ‘law entities’ by the system. Essentially, every world has the chance to produce one, and their abilities are fairly static unless other systems are added that change how their core energies work.”

“Because of this, their prices aren’t really set in stone like most other things, as they represent different levels of difficulty for different worlds. Law entities like this have their price set based on when the Keeper first unlocks them. For the Complete World Spirit, you first created the one on Earth back when you were just a First Ranked Keeper. Worse, it was in the very early stages of the First Rank. Thus, the ‘difficulty’ level determined by the system for your Complete World Spirit is just twenty points, as Ashley said.”

“This type of difficulty is rather standard among worlds, though there are some variations. For instance, in some cultivation-type worlds, ki is the element that fills nature. For these worlds, the True Martial Spirit is the one with the lowest difficulty level, whereas they have to go to great lengths to sense the existence of natural energy.”

“On the other hand, for you, you achieved the True Martial Spirit during your Fourth Rank. This means that the difficulty was substantially higher, and will be priced as an entity befitting this rank. It costs five thousand points for you to create this law entity in any world.”

My brow twitched when I heard that, but I simply nodded my head. “Then, I suppose we won’t be including a True Martial Spirit in any of our games for quite a while. The only way to do so would be if Scarlet manually descended and created it herself. Even then, it would require the world’s laws to be merged with our others for her to exercise the same power.”

I let out a long sigh, shrugging my shoulders. “Still, as long as the World Spirit is prepared, that’s fine. Is there anything else to take care of?”

Ashley shook her head at that. “Now that we have Beta Reality, I’ll send you a list of the systems we need for the new game within a week.”

Sure enough, Ashley was able to get me everything within only a few days, and it looked like the game would be able to launch smoothly. As the end of the month approached, all that was left was a few last minute tweaks to the AI of the various Sylvan types, and making sure that everything worked properly.

In this time, Balu had contacted me with two other Keeper requests to purchase the use of my Attack Ticket. However, after considering their circumstances, I ultimately decided to uphold my deal with Bellarose. One of the two was just wanting a chance to trade with a different Keeper, and the other was… honestly quite rude about their approach. Bellarose appeared to have a genuine need, while also approaching the topic kindly.

Not to mention, the whole ‘kind old man’ appearance really endeared him to people. Thus, I planned to continue with what was agreed on. One day before the invasion, Ashley reported to me that the game World Seed was ready for launch. The Beta Reality system had a… rather convenient function that she discovered after using it for a few days.

Once she was ready to complete the game, there was an option to ‘compile’, which would automatically purchase all unowned systems for the game and list the game on the market. There were options to start the world out fresh, or save the current game map. I imagined that the latter option was for game worlds with preset maps like Fragments of Acidia.

Additionally, the compile option could only be triggered by the Keeper, as it involved the spending of points. Thus, for the grand total of seven thousand points, the game was listed on the market. Immediately, I looked at Ashley standing next to me, excitement written on her face. “Find someone to deliver the game world to Bellarose. Remember all of the necessary preparations.” I instructed her, looking at the item that had fallen into my hands.

Is this what data storage has evolved into in my world? I felt like an old man seeing a USB drive for the first time. What rested in my hand was a thin, silver strip of crystal with circuit-like patterns etched into it. Looking more closely, these patterns extended far beyond what I could see normally, and the density of the crystal seemed slightly inconsistent in certain areas, as if everything about its construction was used to carry data.

“Got it.” Ashley nodded her head quickly, her eyes staring at the data strip in my hand. “Should I go ahead and start preparing the game for our world?” When she asked that, I glanced over, passing her the strip.

“You can get it downloaded, but don’t launch it yet. Wait until we’re back from the meeting. I’d like to have the chance to try it out myself on launch.” Ashley’s smile grew wider at that, and she quickly nodded her head. She took the data strip from my hand, and immediately vanished from the Admin Room.

Given Bellarose’s status, he should be able to decipher the information in the strip. If he can’t, it shouldn’t take long for him to create an interface for it. As I was thinking about that, I saw a message appear in the corner of my eye.

EverLasting has purchased World Seed! You earned 700 points in royalties.

Oldbeard has purchased World Seed! You earned 700 points in royalties.

Aerial has purchased World Seed! You earned 700 points in royalties.

Immediately, three purchases for the game came in, but the notifications went quiet soon after that. Not surprising, since the three were all members of my own guild. Sarah’s usual customers wouldn’t notice a game going live from another producer unless it was advertised to them. Still, immediately earning back thirty percent of my expenditure on the system was rather nice. I opened up the guild chat, curious to see what was going on.

EverLasting: Hey, we’ve finally got it!

Oldbeard: You’ve been staring at the market for the last few hours, haven’t you?

EverLasting: Please, I have people for that.

Oldbeard: Well, at least he didn’t call the AI Wiwi.

EverLasting: I feel personally attacked!

Aerial: Hey, I just got the game, hope it works out well!

EarthForceOne: Thanks. This is my first time doing something like this, so any feedback would be appreciated.

EverLasting: There’s the guy! So, what kind of name is Chiho!? Is there some deeper meaning or something?

EarthForceOne: Not… really. I just wanted a proper name. I had my System Companion search for names from my old world that had to do with seeds and plants. I figured that if it was from my old world, even if someone managed to get something out of the name, there wouldn’t be anything that would trace back to my world.

Oldbeard: Not a bad thought process. Though, getting something from just a name is a… rather hard thing to do. If they had a larger language sample, they could probably get more information, but I don’t really think you have to worry about just a name.

EverLasting: I mean, that’s why I do my naming scheme! They don’t really mean anything, they just sound cute!

Oldbeard: No comment.

EverLasting: Another attack?!

Oldbeard: Regardless, I’m curious to try out this game. I don’t usually buy products from people other than EverLasting, but since you introduced me to her, I decided to give it a shot. I’ll let you know how it goes. According to the description, this world focuses almost purely on natural development, but what does that really mean?

EarthForceOne: I can answer that. Essentially, it means there isn’t any built in industry. Development comes from mutation, monster development, or sources derived from natural energy.

Oldbeard: Hmm… this game might be fairly popular with Monster Keepers, you know?

EarthForceOne: There’s… nothing I can really do about that. Honestly, if I was going to worry about any system that I purchased being popular among enemy Keepers, I wouldn’t be able to purchase anything, would I?

EverLasting: That’s right! A whole lot of Game Keepers buy my products! If I cared about that, I’d be out of business.

Aerial: I’m back. I ran the game down to my world and fast forwarded it by a month. I’m on the attacking side this time, so it gave me some more time to prep for tomorrow’s invasion.

EverLasting: Oh, that’s not a bad idea! Though, doesn’t that mean that you couldn’t play the game yourself in that time?!

Aerial: I was getting it more for my world than myself, anyways. I’ll play it when I have the free time to worry about it.

EarthForceOne: I see… was it received well?

Aerial: There aren’t all that many negative reviews. It’s a new online experience, and the unified player type brought a strange sense of unity in my world, at least as far as the game went. I think I’ve told you before, but I have a lot of wildly different races in my world. Playing this game gave them all a chance to see things from the same perspective, even if it was just in the context of a game.

Aerial: One critique that I am seeing is that there aren’t any quests or anything, but that isn’t too bad for a full sandbox game like this. It just means that the gameplay is more focused on the player actions, as opposed to the open world story. As for the elemental seeds… I’m not seeing much aside from people trying to figure out the conditions to get different seeds to spawn.

EverLasting: …Now you’re making me want to try it.

Oldbeard: Hmm… I have an idea. It might even help EarthForceOne advertise his business.

EarthForceOne: Yes?

Oldbeard: If we enter the meeting wanting to play your World Seed game, perhaps a game station will be created. You all know how the meeting area works. As long as there are people wanting to do something, a venue will be made for them. The more people want it, the more likely it is to appear. We’d even be able to play the game together as a trial run before the meeting ends.

EverLasting: Oh, I like that! And then people will see the game station and get curious, and try it themselves. Though, multiplayer games like this rarely have any point rewards, it would still get the game out in front of your target audience.

EarthForceOne: Would that actually work?

EverLasting: Oh, yeah! I did it with one of my games ages back, since it was finished just before the meeting. I wanted to play it really bad, and a station was made for me. When people saw the station and got curious, they started playing it as well. They won’t know that the game came from another Keeper unless they’re told, but they’re more likely to check the market for it when they get back to their own Administration Room.

EarthForceOne: If that’s the case… I welcome anyone who wants to do so. I plan to abstain until after the meeting, so I can play it fresh at its initial launch.