ADMINISTRATOR POV
Nothing ever goes as planned.
If my original ideas had worked, I wouldn’t have spent so much time making adjustments and fine-tuning everything. It had taken a while, but I was convinced that over a little time, energy generation – and the spread of the elf species – would pick up dramatically.
I stretched arms over my head with a sigh. All this was nice, but…
“Yeah… ugly little problems,” I muttered to my silent rubbery waterfowl of a companion.
Free will was a pesky thing. The whole mess with how the Aravel handled their women had been a shock to me, and to Tastka and the others. I was surprised they were so calm around Kelas, even if he was diplomatic about it. I doubted Tastka would trust him much.
I briefly ran through some thoughts on how to fix that, but then I took a deep breath and tapped my forehead. “Focus. You can’t just model every society after what you want them to be.”
My ‘cool idea’ for memory inheritance had given them the excuse, but it hadn’t necessitated their customs. I had to step back and give the Aravel agency. For all I knew, trying to fix it would count as interference, though I kind of doubted that. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel guilty at all, but it was a problem I couldn’t afford to think about right now.
Give them time. Let them cook a bit and see if they change on their own. I couldn’t just keep enforcing my Modern Earth ideals on every society while they’re still in the Stone Age. It took humans millennia to work through societal injustices, and they still weren’t even close to getting rid of them all.
That passing thought made me pause and rub my chin. “My emotions are muted, so why do I still feel a sense of justice and fairness? Was that a core part of my personality before?”
The thought made me uneasy. Not because I was ashamed… that was a pretty good trait to have, by all accounts. It just didn’t line up with what little I knew about my old self so far. Orpheus had appeared as an expectation of what I’d felt and had been overly sexualized… even objectified to a point. That didn’t line up with the outrage I felt about this, even muted as it was.
I couldn’t even blame Tastka’s influence. She’d been upset and distrustful, but despite being female herself, she hadn’t felt the level of disgust and anger I’d expected. Was this a result of their culture just taking things as they were, for survival?
Rubbing my forehead with one hand, I shook myself free of this debate. This was beyond me, and maybe not that important. Who I had been might be an interesting fact, but it wasn’t important. Who I was now was what was important.
“Okay, I owe those kids a little something. Let’s see…”
I was sure that after a couple of cycles Orpheus would take note. She’d noticed when something was off with my avatar, so she must be keeping tabs on me. I could, of course, just use the emergency summon button… but I much preferred to have some good numbers under my belt before I talked to her again.
I had questions, and now I suspected she needed someone with good numbers more than she let on. If I could make myself indispensable, maybe I could lean on Orpheus more and get some solid answers from her, instead of Diamon.
But for now, I had something more personal to take care of.
I hadn’t explored much of the reincarnation aspect yet. As I understood it, the settings for soul recycling were kind of an ‘Advanced Mode’ that were easy to screw up, and a lot of options weren’t even available yet. Some didn’t unlock until Rank 10!
Luckily for me, what I wanted for now wasn’t locked out, and had opened up when I hit Rank 5. I had a few things to handle now, and I hoped they wouldn’t be too expensive. A few of them were free though, that was nice.
First I toggled on Manual Exemption for the Reincarnation settings. I tagged all of Tastka’s friends – even Kelas – with that, indicating that they’d have their souls sent to a non-default path upon death. Tastka, being me, couldn’t really have that toggled on. That part was free, but I needed a place for them to go.
Afterlives seemed to vary in cost dependent upon what sort of afterlife, but also volume. Since I was only handling about a dozen souls at most, I didn’t need a large one.
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I selected Static Purgatory and set that to be the destination for Exemptions. Now tagged souls would go to that area and be held, without consciousness, until I figured out what to do with them. All for the low, low cost of a little over 2 Reality Points. Most of that cost was in the initial creation, and I could spare that much.
I checked Preserve Memories During Holding and then nodded to myself. Pretty cheap, and while it wasn’t a long-term solution, it would do for now. It might prove useful later, too.
I briefly imagined myself speaking to a recently-deceased, offering them a special reincarnation or something. That was… not really within my current abilities, but I was pretty sure it was possible. I felt my ears flick in amusement at the thought, but then chided myself at the idea of playing around with mortal souls that way.
It was funny, but there really wasn’t likely to be any situation that it was worth doing.
That taken care of, I checked on all the things that had happened lately while I was distracted. Realistically, nothing major with the world would happen in the few days that had passed in the universe while I was doing things as Tastka, but it couldn’t hurt to check.
To my surprise, in the brief period after the encounter, the Quest system already had another quest issued. Those dragons were a lot quicker to pounce on it than I’d thought. Kesseken had seemed pretty lazy… I guess they did stuff in their sleep. Aside from naming all the dumb stuff my world got up to inventing, that is.
After a little more pondering, I looked over the notes about possible future species, tinkered with a few plans, and finally settled into my bed.
We were only a few years away from a cycle, and I was curious to see how much of an effect the quest would have. Doing something for the first time – even as a species rather than the true first time – supposedly gave a lot more energy, but would it be measurable? I glanced at my information.
Time to find out if all this trouble was worth it.
It took over two more years of local time before the cycle changed over. In that time, the expedition still hadn’t returned. In-universe, Tastka was getting a little worried, but she was able to pick up on my knowledge that her friends were still out there, still exploring, and it was just taking a long time to get back.
I knew this because my little purgatory was still mostly empty. It had one soul in it, so someone had obviously died, but I didn’t want to peek in and find out who, yet. Hopefully the good news I would get would make it easier to mask this fact.
If the news was good.
“Okay, Duck, moment of truth…” I took a breath, but my erstwhile rubbery companion, Duck, made no comment. Perhaps it understood the gravity of the moment.
I twitched an ear, before both quivered in that thoughtful expression that made an elf version of a frown. Not an unhappy frown, but a perplexed one.
This couldn’t be right… could it?
I’d expected a jump, maybe from 12 to 18 or 20, but to go all the way up to tripling my energy generation? That was strange, to me. The elves were a tiny species… the younger core-eaters were already out-breeding them, though stuck on Downside. The expedition hadn’t even finished yet!
It was true I’d made this world with the intention of generating a lot of energy, so I should be happy. What made me nervous was that it was way outside of my predictions. I’d been living as Tastka and things had changed a little in her clan, but those changes were still on the generational scale. I hadn’t noticed any major innovations yet.
In fact I’d overlooked some earlier. I’d thought they didn’t have fire, but it turns out they just usually used mana. Explorers and scouts often had ways to start fires manually, it had just been so rare I hadn’t seen it from my god’s eye view when I looked before.
I took another look at what was going on. Nothing much different on Downside – it was still in turmoil and settling, so that was good for energy but not for predictability. As for Upside, and the elves…
They weren’t expanding rapidly, despite the ‘message’ they’d gotten. That wasn’t a surprise… their breeding rate was a fair bit slower than humans, and it had only been a decade or so. Thus, expansion couldn’t be the reason the energy generation shot up.
Exploration maybe? But would that account for so much? I’d have to ask Orpheus if there was a way to break down what had given me Reality Points and how much.
“This is really worrying me, Duck,” I grumbled. I scratched behind one ear and stared at the interface a little longer. I should be happy for this, but a lot of income meant a lot of struggle, and I hadn’t scaled up yet. Also that maintenance jump was significant, even if it was still tiny compared to everything else.
I forced myself to put the worry out of my head for now. I’d just have to keep tabs on things and watch for a while, as I progressed toward the next cycle. Nothing appeared to be immediately in danger, so if this was due to a problem, I’d just have to see what starts failing.
Not the ideal way to handle it, but I just couldn’t see a problem.
What Have You Done?