World Keeper: Birth of a World

by Justin Miller

  “I could hope, right?” I shook my head, and got on with the other training. Setting my book down, I once again focused on my internal energies. This time, I concentrated primarily on the flowing Ki, sensing it through my body. I could easily tell that it moved along certain paths, weaving around and through my blood vessels. I guess these are probably meridians or something, then?

  Furrowing my brows, I tried to direct the flow of boundless energy into my right hand. This was easier said than done, as it resisted me for several minutes before following my instructions. Once the energy was in my hand, I balled it up into a fist and punched down at the ground. There was a small shockwave, and when I opened my eyes I saw that there was a one-inch deep crater where I had punched. Pretty neat, if I do say so myself.

  Next, I decided to go ahead and try the last spell available to me, with the Druid magic system. Again I closed my eyes, focusing on the Natural Energy hidden in my body. From how Terra described it, I would need to move it out into the room before giving it a command, if I didn’t want to set myself on fire again… Surprisingly, that step went by fairly easy, the energy immediately accepting the transfer. Host privileges, I guess? Anyways, after the energy was outside of my body, I focused intently on it. Burn.

  I heard a small explosion in front of me, followed by a quick “Hey!” that made me open my eyes. Terra was on her hands and knees about twenty feet away, her tail sticking straight up. “Watch it, okay? That was too close!” She said in an angry pout, and I looked towards where she had been. The air just a few feet from her previous location was literally on fire, burning with no apparent fuel or target.

  “Ah… sorry.” I smiled apologetically. From my earlier experiments, I knew that even if there was no real pain, that does not mean fire wasn’t uncomfortably hot. However, she was still pouting after my apology, only relaxing slightly as her tail lowered back down. “Anyways, I think we’re done here for now, ready to go back up?”

  She thought about it for a moment, before nodding. “Yeah.. I need a cat nap.”

  A moment later, the room around us vanished, and we were back in our bedroom. Thankfully, the book came with us, and was now sitting on my computer desk. “Before you do, anything else I should know?”

  Terra simply shrugged noncommittally. “Should be all on the computer.” After saying that, she hopped on the bed, and rolled around a few times before getting comfortable. Guess she’s still annoyed about the fire thing. Not entirely my fault, but understandable. Will see if I can cheer her up later.

  Before investigating what was new on the computer, I decided to check on the status of my people. Not surprisingly, the second kingdom had been set up, though it had a rather suspicious name.

  Beast Kingdom, Terraria

  Glancing back at the bed, I had the feeling that someone wanted to give the beastmen a little boost. The fact that the Felyn were apparently the ruling class of this kingdom only served to reinforce that thought. Not like it really mattered, though. I did give her the right to do stuff like that as the Goddess of Fate, and I could make sure that she wouldn’t take it too far.

  Out of curiosity, I checked out the elven kingdom of Gandor, to see how they were doing. According to the timeline, it had only been roughly twenty years since Gandor was founded. From 12,000 elves, it seems that they have begun expanding a bit. Maybe there was some celebration, or festival, or something else, but they now had nearly fifteen thousand total population.

  As for the other races… they were still little more than nomadic families. It probably wouldn’t be too much longer before they began setting up their own homelands, but for now they were just doing good not to die from the monsters. Thankfully, the monsters on Earth were set up to follow a fairly simple rule. Monsters would not be born that were more than twice as strong as any one sapient. Though, since I had only bought the basic monster package for now(the others are a bit expensive, so sue me), the monsters will cap out at level 100.

  Now, before I go check out other things, let’s see what kind of options are available for culture. Since it seemed like Terra wanted to manage the beastmen for now, I went back to the elves. Naturally, their current culture was set to ‘unaltered’, but there were various options for how I could direct it, if I wanted. And, some of these options were… unique.

  Such as ‘Sexual Paradise’, an option that is described as ‘turns the culture more towards physical pleasure, where ecstasy is both a service and a currency.’ Yeah, no way am I selecting that option. I may be a total pervert, but that does not mean that I want to lose the first game I get in because my planet is full of hedonists.

  Looking at the other options, I note that there is one that actually does not cost any points. And that is ‘Manual Advice’. According to its description, if I choose this option, I will be able to either have one of my goddesses communicate directly with one of their followers, or speak to someone myself and deliver a message. This message would be transmitted directly into the mind of the target, but the effects are uncertain.

  I debated on whether or not to use that option. I mean, if used properly you could guide the entire path of civilization by whispering to the right people. On the other hand, the person might be seen as insane for saying that there was a voice in their head telling them to do things. The trick would be figuring out who to speak with, and deciding what to have the message be.

  I’ll get back to that later, still plenty of time. I went ahead and closed the map of the world, seeing if there was anything else on this computer. Terra did say that everything I needed was here, after all. And I could hope that she was telling the truth, and not just pouting because I almost singed her tail.

  As it turns out, she was! There was actually a second program on the computer, one that I was very familiar with. Though the name was a bit off, I quickly clicked on the button labeled ‘Keepernet Explorer’, wondering what kinds of things they would have on the inter-world internet.

  First, the homepage appeared to be a forum for Keepers, with various topics such as ‘User-Submitted Content’, ‘Known Keeper Worlds’, and ‘Guild Recruitment’. I noticed that I already seemed to be logged in, under the username ‘EarthForceOne’.

  Chat request has been received from Alkahest. Do you wish to accept?

  Blinking in surprise, I decided to accept the message. I hadn’t been on the Keepernet for more than five minutes, but someone was already trying to contact me?

  Alkahest: Hey, man! Long time no see. What happened, you went dark for a while?

  I shook my head in resignation when I saw that message. They were probably friends with one of the previous Keepers.

  EarthForceOne: Think you have the wrong person. Just started this whole Keeper thing a couple days ago.

  Alkahest: Seriously? Damn, though that does explain a few things. Glad to see that Earth wasn’t lost to another keeper or anything, at least. Ah, well, bound to happen sooner or later. Since you’re still new, need any help? Or do you have it taken care of?

  I considered that. I mean, I didn’t really have any reason to trust this guy, but at the same time I didn’t have that much reason not to at least hear him out. In the end, I decided to accept his offer.

  EarthForceOne: Why not.

  Alkahest: That’s the spirit. Now, since you inherited his world, I’ll help you out a bit. First thing you need to keep in mind, try to stay involved. It’s real easy to forget that we were once like the people we’re managing, you know?

  EarthForceOne: I… guess? Not really a lot to get involved with at this point, is there?

  Alkahest: Ah, that’s where you’re wrong! I don’t know what kind of setting you made this Earth, but there’s always something you can do. Whisper a theory to a talented mind, spawn a treasure for a group to find, or a monster that pushes their limits. Some people even go the Merlin route, and find a strong soul that they stay with for years, in order to make him a grand ruler.

  EarthForceOne: That makes sense, I think?

&
nbsp; EarthForceOne: Why are you helping me, anyways? Aren’t all Keepers enemies, or something?

  Alkahest: Wow, you really are a rookie. I mean, I guess you could look at it like that? But everyone needs some friends. And no matter how real the people planetside are, it’s just not the same when you know that you basically control every aspect of their life. Well, since I got ahold of you, how about you join my guild?

  That one didn’t really take much thought. While he did raise some good points, this was still way too early for me to get involved with another group. For all I knew, he was trying to mislead me and none of his advice was really good. And even if it was, he might be using me for some other purpose.

  EarthForceOne: Sorry, but don’t think I’m ready for anything like that yet.

  Alkahest: No worries, option is there anytime.

  With that, I decided to go ahead and search more through the forums. Who knew, maybe there was some other useful information that could be gained from them.

  Chapter 5

  While looking through the forums, my mind naturally drifted towards the ‘User-Submitted Content’. From what the description had said earlier on when I was assigning the magic system for Earth, this was an easy way to earn an income of points, though I doubted how useful it would be. For instance, how many people would assign their worlds an entirely new magic system if their own world had already progressed considerably? Most likely, the point income would come from either new Keepers, or Keepers that are starting new worlds.

  However, there should be other types of content that Keepers can create and submit, such as special minerals or unique technology. This kind of content could be purchased by any Keeper, regardless of how long their world has been running. It would be an easy thing to place a formerly unknown element in a world and have it naturally discovered, or have a new technology created.

  As such, I decided to look at what kinds of content was already there. To my surprise, there really was a lot. Elements like mithril, orichalcum, and a few others I’ve never heard of were present, as were many different systems. The Game System that my world was using was even listed in the User-Submitted Content, as well as several of the classes I was currently using in my world.

  Well, it makes sense that was created by a Keeper. Maybe they wanted to make their world more like the Admin Room, with its video game theme. I nodded my head slightly, and continued looking. Each piece of content had its own price, as well as the ‘royalty’ which the original creator would receive. The royalty generally seemed to be 10% of the content’s actual price.

  Now, what really surprised me was something else altogether. There were actually two pieces of custom content listed as being created by EarthForceOne, the username I was assigned. The first, ‘Random Power Mutation’, was listed as being worth 150 points, and caused people in the world to randomly mutate to gain special powers. However, from the comments on the thread, it did not seem like a popular choice, because of the very flaw that caused the death of the person who submitted it.

  The second piece of content was ‘Warp Drive Connection’, a technology tree which allowed tech-themed worlds to connect to each other by means of faster than light travel. This one actually seemed more popular, even though it cost a whole 300 points. The price on that confused me, until I thought about it more deeply. The destination when using warp technology in scifi stories was not always fixed. More often than not, you would emerge at uninhabited worlds, or even completely empty space.

  So, the high cost is actually an investment to get potentially unlimited extra worlds to start with. There was even a level of the tech tree which allowed you to choose whether or not discovered worlds were inhabited, and if so to assign them races. It didn’t say anything about what level of technology the new world would have, so I didn’t bother looking too deep. Even if I assume that I get 10% off as being technically the ‘creator’ of the content, which would normally be the royalty I receive when it is purchased, I am nowhere near able to afford that system.

  Well, at least I’ll be able to get some income every now and then from people buying this. Though, maybe I should create my own content. It’s been long enough that anyone that wanted to buy the Warp Drive Connection could have done so during the previous Keeper’s reign. So again, I would probably need to wait a while before getting anything back for it.

  Tilting my head back in thought, I first decided to check what other content had been published. If I see what isn’t an option for me to create, I can get hints on what would be. To my surprise, I found multiple systems that looked like they should have been considered magic systems. The first, and most obvious example, was a ritual system. By offering up certain items during a ceremony, it was possible to receive magical effects. How is that not a magic system!?

  As I was wondering that, I caught sight of a tag at the bottom. It actually was a magic system, but was tagged as ‘Advanced’, whatever that meant. Maybe only magic systems that can be used quickly were listed at the start when you create a world?

  There was another system that was somewhat similar to that, listed by a LordSlow. This system was a skill-based system which awarded magical effects based on how well you performed certain skills, such as sculpting or music. I shuddered as I imagined how terrifying it would be to go to a death metal concert, and have that system suddenly activate.

  Though… there was another piece of content submitted by the same person that caught my eye. This was a race template, meant to guide people to create races that would not destroy the balance of their world. This particular race was known as the Demon race. They had the unique trait of ‘Meritocracy Evolution’, meaning that they would evolve into different forms based on their own work. Their starting form was simply an imp with the lowest level of stats, but if that imp worked hard enough, and continued evolving, it could eventually become a demon king.

  The Demon race content had a note attached to it, suggesting for users with already-developed worlds to wait until they received a new world in order to place the demons in. Then, connect the worlds through whatever means the Keeper wanted. That way, the demons would be able to develop without dying out as their weakest form.

  I was tempted to buy that race immediately, as my world was still undeveloped for the most part. However, their cost was 50 points, and I couldn’t justify that kind of expense just yet. I’d wait until I had enough points, and if need be I would simply add them to the next world I received. That made me chuckle, as I planned for the next world to be a tech world. High tech demons would certainly be fun to play with.

  For now, I at least had an idea of some things I could create. Fortunately, the last Keeper of Earth was a lazy slob, but he focused on cultural development so that he could get his entertainment. And that same entertainment industry, from books to television shows, could serve as the starting point for my new content.

  The first thing that I submitted was a race of my own, named ‘The Forgotten’. They had a high intelligence and comprehension rating, though low physical abilities. Where they really shined were there unique traits. First was ‘Automated Memory Deletion’, a trait I defined as ‘Any living creature, the moment they look away from the possessor of this trait, completely forgets their existence’. Then came ‘Post-Hypnotic Suggestion’, an ability that already existed in the system to implant ideas in targets, and ‘Bioelectric Field’ to give them the power to generate and manipulate electric currents.

  All hail the Doctor. I thought with a small grin, as I submitted the race. Not only would the Forgotten be a good race to develop in a new world alongside another race, it would also be very useful for invasions. If you throw in a few dozen, or even a few hundred, of them during an invasion, you could potentially make the Keeper’s own people assassinate him.

  I wasn’t surprised when the race had the starting cost of 75 points, being a fairly expensive sapient species. What did surprise me, was that someone almost instantly bought it. Within five minutes, I was notified of the sa
le, and saw that I had two notifications waiting for me on the computer.

  Congratulations, you have earned two new achievements!

  For submitting your own custom content, you earned the Creator achievement. +20 points.

  For selling your first custom content, you earned the Salesman achievement. +15 points.

  Well, that was an easy 35… no, make that 42 points. It seemed that the system rounded down the royalties, though maybe that would mean it would give me 8 points the next time someone bought the Forgotten. I’d find out eventually. As for the other message…

  Drillot has purchased the Forgotten! You earned 7 points in royalties.

  To be honest, I had expected it to take a few weeks for someone to buy the new race, but maybe I got lucky and that guy was browsing just as I posted it? Either way, that brought my total up to 212 points. And, looking back at the bed, I saw that Terra was finally starting to wake up from her nap.

  With a small smile, I turned to her and asked. “Still mad at me?”