Unfortunately, it seemed that the matter of the Void Core wouldn’t be completed just yet. There were still a few major hurdles that had to be overcome before it could be used practically. Still, the fact that we were making progress was a good sign. After all, I fully intended to undergo more skips during this month in order to prepare for the incoming invasion.

“Let’s go.” I nodded towards Dana. There wasn’t anything else that we urgently needed to do in the Admin Room, so it was time to go and see Tsubaki again. At least, that was the idea before a prompt appeared before me.

A System-wide vote has been initiated. Please cast your vote as a Rank 4 Keeper.

Proposal: Expansion of the Keeper’s ability to set up sub-accounts for their Companions, allowing them to purchase items from the system for the areas set as their domains by their respective Keepers. If there is an overlap of World Law, give the Keeper the option to modify the World Law, or spend a small sum to install it as a plug-in for that territory only.

Caveat: Ability disabled during invasions.

Yes | No

I paused, blinking as I read through the contents of the message. “A system vote?” I muttered to myself, Dana’s eyes widening slightly. “I’ve never seen something like this before… is it like when everyone got their Keeper titles?”

“Oh, it finally happened?” Dana asked, causing me to look over at her. “Tsubaki did something during her time as a Keeper. I can’t remember the details from that part fully. However, she came up with the idea and submitted it to the system. Apparently, the system told her that it would put out a vote after the annual meeting.”

“Why is it only happening now, then?” It had been a couple days at this point since the end of the meeting, so a vote should have happened already.

“I thought you’d ask that when I noticed the vote happening.” Terra’s voice spoke up, before I felt her arms draped over my shoulders from behind. “I ran over here just so I could give you that answer…” There was a playful tone in her voice as she hugged me from behind, clearly happy for the contact. Since I spent most of my time in the world, I wasn’t able to spend as much of it with her as either of us would like.

I brought my hand up to gently hold one of her hands. “Hey, Terra. So, about the vote?” I asked, and felt her nodding her head against me from behind.

“The vote trickles down from the top. First, it goes to the Seventh Ranked Keepers. Then, if it passes in that tier, the Sixth Rank. The fact it made it to you means it’s already gone all the way through the fifth, and now it’s our turn.”

“Right…” I nodded, looking at the message again. “So every rank has to confirm it in their own votes?”

“Mmm… almost. At most, two ranks can deny it. If more than two ranks deny the vote, it is canceled. So just vote however you want, and don’t worry. Even Keepers in the middle of an invasion will get the system prompt for this.”

I let out a small sigh. Well… this was a vote that Tsubaki herself asked for. Of course I was going to vote ‘Yes’. As soon as I had pressed the button to confirm my vote, I felt Terra’s arms briefly tighten, before loosening enough to let me go. “See you soon.” She said in a happy tone, as if seeing me off to work. Which… in a way, she was.

“I’ll be back.” I nodded my head, before taking Dana and descending as I had intended. This time, nothing got in the way of the descent, and I was soon back in the body of my host. Unsurprisingly, Tsubaki was standing in front of me, but I could sense… something was different about her.

Or rather, the problem was that I couldn’t sense her at all, even though she was standing right in front of me. Only when I swept my World Sight over her was I able to tell what the cause was. Tsubaki’s body was fundamentally different from the last time that I was here. Her body seemed to be a complete combination of World Sight and two other energies that I had never seen before.

As I scanned her, her eyes lit up, her head lifting. “My Keeper, you have returned.”

“As I promised.” I smiled, glancing just over her head, before my eyes went wide. Her level had massively increased, reaching beyond twelve thousand. Aside from my own Keeper power level, she was easily the highest level entity in my domain, far surpassing James in power. “Just… what type of training have you been doing?”

When I asked that, I suddenly remembered Tsubaki’s legend. Although she had been training for ten years, she had dozens of avatars focusing wholeheartedly on training individual classes for that duration. For Tsubaki, reaching level four hundred, or even five hundred was entirely possible when she spent ten years of intense focus.

“I made a promise to my Keeper that I would become stronger.” Tsubaki said earnestly. “Whether you give me ten years or a hundred, I will fulfill this promise to the best of my abilities. Such is my wish and my obligation.”

I nodded my head slowly. “This has to do with the new energy you obtained from your time as a Keeper, right? Dana wouldn’t tell me what you got, but… the fact that you could grow this strong…”

Tsubaki simply smiled. “That is correct, my Keeper. I intend to use this Contractual Obligation to assist my Keeper to the best of my abilities.”

So that’s the name of it. I let out a small sigh, walking over and gently pulling Tsubaki to her feet. “Just don’t overdo it. It’ll all be for waste if you end up hurt because of your training, right?”

Tsubaki paused, before nodding her head, her tails swaying behind her. “I will do as you say, my Keeper.”

I gave another nod, looking Tsubaki over again. “How did you manage to obtain a Saint Body? Were you able to do the energies out of order, after all?”

Tsubaki’s eyes twitched for a moment, and she cleared her throat. “Hard work and determination.” Though she said that, I could tell that she was tightly controlling her thoughts, as if not wanting me to hear something from her.

My brow arched, and I lightly flicked her forehead, causing her eyes to widen as she brought both hands up to cover her forehead, looking aggrieved at me.

“If it’s bad enough that you’re purposely masking your thoughts, that tells me all I need to know.” After I said that, I reached up and gently stroked through Tsubaki’s hair, causing her tails to stiffen. “Really, I don’t want to find out that you hurt yourself for my sake, okay?”

“I… I understand, my Keeper.” Tsubaki nodded her head softly.

“Onto a different subject, I saw that vote you inspired.” I smirked, Tsubaki’s head shooting up to look at me in interest.

“You did? Did it pass?” She seemed excited to hear the results of the vote, but I simply shrugged.

“I don’t know yet. Apparently, the votes go from the top down. So we’ve got to wait for the rest of the Keepers to vote. We’ll find out the results in a couple days, I assume.”

“If it doesn’t pass, you can try to be the one to put it on the market as a purchasable system. When I was in the activity, the system priced that at fifty-thousand points.”

My eyes widened at that, before I let out a sigh. “I doubt I’d be the one to get to it first, but we’ll see what happens. I don’t expect that the vote will fail to begin with. After all, there’s not really a downside to passing it. The only ones who would say no are those who have no interest in letting Companions govern their territory to begin with.”

Tsubaki hesitated, before nodding her head. “I agree. Looking back, I obtained a lot of points by relying on the royalties from this system. Even if I consider that only those who could afford it had the chance to purchase, that was a large portion of Keepers.”

“I know I would if I saw it on the market.” I admitted with a grin. “Anyways, what is this other energy you have? I understand World Sight and your contract one, but I don’t recognize the third.”

“That is an energy that I obtained from James.” Tsubaki admitted readily. “It relies on the strength of karma to enhance attacks. I believe that I have accumulated quite a lot of karma, so it should be especially useful in my hands.”

I gave a small nod of agreement. “So you went for a trinity again… was there any special effect that happened when you did?”

Tsubaki hesitated, before shaking her head. “I have not noticed any particular benefit to possessing multiple energies in a Saint Body, no. Furthermore, they did not destabilize as the numbers increased, like domains did.”

“If you had asked, I would have taught you my Ki of Beginning.” I told her with a grin, to which Tsubaki shook her head.

“I have enough understanding of that energy, my Keeper. Although I considered it as an option, I wanted to pair energies with my respective domains. Your Ki of Beginning, while powerful, does not particularly fit any of my domains.”

My eyes widened slightly when I heard her words. Is she… aiming for the path of an Origin?

To become an Origin, the highest level of power that I was aware of, one had to master an equal number of Divine Domains, Fallen Domains, and Saint Bodies. Currently, Tsubaki has fulfilled two of the three conditions. If she managed to obtain three Fallen Domains without her body collapsing, she could very easily become a true Origin, unlike the pseudo-Origin created by Terra’s incarnations.

I just couldn’t tell if Tsubaki was purposely aiming for the Origin, or if she wanted to keep the trinities for its symbolism. Either way, I was certain that she would eventually seek out Chelsea and Terra to look for methods of training void powers that wouldn’t cause her to collapse. However, that was likely to be quite a ways in the future before it came to fruition. After all, there was a reason that the Origin was something that should only begin appearing near the end of the Fifth Rank.

Speaking of which… Dana herself was also two thirds of the way to the Origin. She was a Fallen Goddess who had a Saint Body. If she became a true Goddess as well, she would be able to take that step. As for Lifre… Well, Lifre doesn’t seem interested in that. I could more easily imagine her trying to go for nine divine domains, seeing it as a personal challenge that she had to overcome.

The fact that two of the servants of Olympus were so close to achieving the rank of Origin certainly filled me with hope for the upcoming invasion. “Is something the matter, my Keeper?” Tsubaki asked, staring up at me in confusion. “I have grown accustomed to hearing the thoughts of others… now that I look at you making such a face, and cannot understand your thoughts, it is… mildly frustrating.”

I gave a light laugh when I heard her words, seeing her cheeks puffed out indignantly. “I was admiring how much more powerful everyone is than I had imagined. It makes me proud to be your Keeper.”

Tsubaki’s eyes widened, her cheeks going slightly flushed from the praise, while her tails began to wave so fast that they actually kicked up a breeze behind her.