Chapter 44: Conditionals

  ADMINISTRATOR POV

  Seated at my desk, I contemplated the world spread before me on my monitors. I wasn’t staring with the same intensity as before… distracted as I was by a mixture of excitement and worry.

  The excitement was undeniable. My test had worked. It had shown that, given the proper incentive, the elves I’d created were perfectly willing to explore and seek out the unknown. I didn’t want them to do it too much, but my initial idea – that they’d naturally strike out on their own – had been flawed in hindsight. Their low birth rate and their deep-seated belief that life was precious made them a little too risk-averse to go wandering into danger just for curiosity’s sake.

  Perhaps if the system had worked exactly as I’d intended – if it had accounted for their inability to comprehend large numbers – they might have done a little exploration on their own. But likely not enough, not the kind I’d wanted.

  As I expected, the elves had already begun to grasp the relationship between tier and level, and what those numbers were meant to represent. Even without my full memories of my previous life, my knowledge of modern Earth told me that people often underestimated “primitive” cultures. Many assumed that because they didn’t have math, multiplication, or even writing, they were somehow stupid. But they weren’t. Not at all. They just lacked context. Civilization was built brick by brick, not all at once.

  Still, I found myself wondering… could I just build a culture from the start? Sculpt its knowledge into existence, skipping the slow rise from ignorance to understanding? It was possible, I supposed. But that would cheat them out of the growth and development that made civilization mean something.

  I also worried. My experiment had been a success. Tastka’s clan would start to explore now… probably led by Eyssa, once she was old enough. Even though I was detached from Tastka’s emotions when I was awake in the Sanctuary, I couldn’t help but feel a trace of... something. Concern? Affection?

  Whatever humanity I had left still lingered, even buried beneath this elven body. I’d watched these children grow up. In a way, I considered them my friends. Putting them in danger felt wrong.

  I told myself it had to be done, but of course that wasn’t enough. What helped was realizing that this was ultimately better for them. Yes, it put them in danger, but they’d already discussed when they would leave, and I knew they were training before they set off. I also knew the leaders of the clan wouldn’t send them off as three children alone – or two; I wasn’t sure if Fisk was going or not. They’d wait until they were officially adults. They still seemed like children to me, just because they grew up so quickly, but the clan didn’t want to send them to their deaths either.

  I shook that worry from my head. Ultimately, I didn’t really control them anyway. I had made these people, but they were their people now, and I had to let them make their own decisions… even if I nudged them a little for their own good.

  I hesitantly glanced at some of the other species I’d made, but they were still too young to properly work with. I knew that might give Tastka a glimpse that there were others out there besides elves, but she would learn that soon enough. It wasn’t as if Tastka would ever live long enough to see a dwarf, unless her wanderings carried her much farther than I expected. She already knew other things anyway. My avatar was, in a way, interfering with the development of their culture, but it didn’t seem to hurt the Reality Point generation… not that it amounted to much yet, since the changes hadn’t really taken effect.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Like many of my problems, in hindsight this one was simple. I’d given them too much control over the individual aspect of how classes were chosen and developed. Someone who wanted to explore would get the Scout class, someone who liked to fight would get the Fighter class… or whatever the dragons had decided to call it. They often gave overly poetic names to the classes, and I didn’t know them all. Nor did I care enough to look them up. That was their domain, not mine, and I should only get involved if it became a problem.

  But this… this was a problem. Relying only on people’s personal urges was too strict and too narrow. That was what I was changing now. It was a much subtler change than the tier and level combination I’d added earlier. The people of the world might not even notice it, though some of them probably would.

  It took a lot of setup, but the Reality Point cost was surprisingly low… probably because the modification was subtle, even if it would have far-reaching effects. All I had to do was add a consideration for what classes were needed in a given area. It was tricky to set up, but I’d been working on it for a while, ever since realizing they needed to explore more.

  Now, if there weren’t any scouts – or explorers, or whatever term the dragons preferred – in a community, the system would start offering those classes to people who showed even a mild alignment with them. It would still look for the closest fit, of course. Eyssa had been easy; she already liked to explore, she just hadn’t made it a strong enough part of her identity to trigger an exploration class without me forcing the issue. With this little adjustment, she probably would have on her own… though I didn’t know every elf in the clan, so maybe someone else would have been even more suitable.

  I didn’t stop at exploration, of course. For the most part, communities seemed to fill in the gaps by themselves, but I made a few adjustments so that if certain classes were poorly represented, they would start being offered more often. This would be how I guided civilization… but for now I kept it simple. Mostly, I made sure that communities could feed themselves and manage to either find or build shelter.

  I inwardly cursed myself for not seeing the problem earlier. Not just this one, but the deeper issue of population density. I’d thought I was spreading the elves widely across the region, but the area they occupied was still tiny. Then again, it took a relatively large amount of Reality Points to place living beings. Creating sustainable populations across the entire world of Upside would be an excellent way to burn through my stock in record time.

  I didn’t want to change too much too fast. So far, this seemed to have likely fixed the problem of the low generation and low exploration, but it might need fine-tuning. I didn’t want them to explode outward too swiftly. After all, they needed time to adapt, to form their own cultures, and I had yet to really even explore some of the other cultures. It had been centuries, after all, since I added these elves. Tastka’s clan, I knew, had a different culture than some of the ones farther off, even if they were both Calen elves. But it would take time for my changes to propagate. I would have to wait.

  I was also kind of stuck with Tastka for now. Even with my back door allowing me to work between sessions, I still had to live out her full life. I hadn’t really thought that through when I created the Incarnate. I had gotten far too used to just skipping through time.

  I also didn’t want to rush into anything again after the unexpected bleed-over. While it did give Tastka some information I hadn’t expected, it didn’t seem too harmful. Partially that was because she seemed to be me, and even as a child, she was smart enough not to declare herself a prophet or something. Then again, her clan didn’t seem to have a particularly strong bent toward religion… other than their almost sacred worship of the system itself. I wondered how common that was among the other elves.

  For now, I was satisfied. I’d have to live through the various training and learning how to use things, but I was curious about my magic system to begin with, so perhaps I could learn something from this. They had quite an adventure ahead of them, and if they succeeded, it could really become something mythic.

  I had to admit, I was looking forward to seeing the legends that would develop.

  The Pale Marsh