World Keeper

Chapter 917: Moving Time

On the surface, our lives hadn’t changed much after coming back from the fifteen year ‘absence’. While there were some innovations that were certainly nice, it was nothing on the scale of completely revolutionizing how we lived in the Sky Citadel. Though, in all honesty, I was getting somewhat… I couldn’t really say bored of the Citadel.

Rather, it was that the Citadel had become outdated in terms of both science and magical advancement. This was somewhat alleviated when Gerard began overseeing the enchantments of the Sky Citadel, but in all reality, it was an ancient relic of the past. In the present day, the Sky Citadel served mostly as an icon, and had lost its novel charm.

Because of this, I called the residents of the Citadel to have an impromptu meeting, sharing my thoughts. I was certain that they would have felt it far more than me. Outside of Gerard, everyone present had spent far more time in the Citadel than myself, with Tsubaki having been there since its inception.

“Sir, are you suggesting that we get rid of the Sky Citadel?” Gerard asked curiously, seated opposite myself at a large table.

“Not ‘get rid of’... I just feel like it should be time to do something new. The Citadel can still remain for the purposes where it is useful, but as a living space, I feel like we need a change of scenery.”

“I don’t know, I kinda like the place.” Lifre grinned, looking around the room. “It gives off that whole medieval godking vibe.”

“That’s probably part of the problem.” Dana nodded towards Lifre. “In a medieval era, something like this would certainly be grand. Nowadays… I can see where the boss is coming from. So, what do you suggest? We could move into a plot of land on Sanctum, and establish that as our new base.”

It was tempting, but I shook my head. “First, I just want to make sure I’m not cutting ahead here. Dana, would you mind explaining what your ‘Sky Chariot’ project is? If it’s something suitable, I’d be more than happy to just wait until you finish it.”

Dana blinked, before letting out a light laugh. “No, the Sky Chariot isn’t meant to be a living space. It’s something that I’m building to be a warship for us. I’m working on designing an interstellar warship that will let you channel any of your domains through its weapons, while having enough firepower and shields on its own to go against gods. That will take a while to work on, though, since I’m still in the planning stage.”

I gave a small nod. I had heard her mention the Sky Chariot with her familiars a few times, but I hadn’t really seen her working on it yet. It wasn’t like I was constantly spying on them. “In that case, does anyone have any suggestions? I’d like something that can be another icon like the Sky Citadel, preferably. Even if we retire the Citadel as our main residence, I want something to serve a similar role. Otherwise, we might as well just live in the Admin Room.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t be opposed.” Dana grinned. “The Admin Room is like a cheat training room, once you get past the non-euclidean architecture.”

“It does not serve the purpose needed, though.” Tsubaki said faintly. “If the Sky Citadel no longer suffices, then perhaps we can establish a world in the same style as Sanctum? A world developed by my Keeper within Nowhere for the exclusive use of those under your command?”

While not really a bad idea, I shook my head to refuse it. “That would let me be a symbol to the gods, but mortals don’t have any method of going to Sanctum, or even knowing where it is. That was the whole purpose of establishing the ‘Nowhere’ system.”

Dana pursed her lips. “One of my familiars is working on getting her own familiar, and it’s a celestial body type. Would that work? It’d be our own, private solar system that we could take anywhere we go.”

“...I think we’re on the right track, but no. In order for the star’s gravity to not disrupt the planetary orbits of any other world, we’d need to put it far enough away that the light might not even reach this planet before we moved somewhere else. Additionally, I’d rather not live on a familiar, just in case it was needed for battle.”

“In that case, why don’t we just make our own Sanctum!” Lifre exclaimed in an excited tone. “A planet has waaay less gravitational influence than a star, and you can just throw it anywhere in a system. A few minutes later, it will be visible to any planets in that system.”

“That doesn’t sound bad.” I nodded my head, intrigued at the concept. At the very least, it sounded better than just grabbing a plot of land on Sanctum. “The only issue would be how to construct it, I suppose.”

Back when Sanctum was created, Aurivy had to spend the divinity of several greater gods in order to accomplish the effect of making a living world. I wasn’t naive enough to think that I would be able to do that all by myself with just the Keeper bonus.

However, Tsubaki’s suggestion surprised me. “Simply create the outer shell, and fill the rest in over time. If you let this new world serve as a core of your divinity, it should fill itself in naturally. Either way, it is not as if we will be performing mining activities. So long as the first hundred meters or so of the outer shell is constructed, I doubt we will run into any problems.”

“So, instead of growing outwards, we grow inwards?” I brought a hand up to caress my chin in thought. “It’s certainly feasible. A planet-sized residence would also attract more eyes than the Sky Citadel, allowing the faith to be built faster. I’ll just need to be careful to prevent it from collapsing in on itself.”

In the back of my mind, I was already creating a plan. I could use the domains of Illusion, Transformation, and Earth as the foundation for the planet. Aside from the outer layer, everything else is just a connected illusion, barely sustained through a thinly spread divinity to provide stability and gravity. As the divinity increases, the Transformation domain turns the illusion real.

If I wanted to, I could throw in other domains, and make it a nine-domain project like Sanctum. However, doing something like creating an atmosphere would consume far more divinity that it was probably worth. With that in mind, it was better to let the others find a way to handle that. “Okay, I’ll start preparing the planet itself.” I said with a nod towards the group. “For the environment on the surface, I’ll leave it to all of you. And for the construction of the house once we get there--”

“Oi, lad, ye haven’t forgotten about me already, have ye?” A gruff voice suddenly spoke up from the side, causing me to look over in surprise, seeing Tubrock with his arms crossed over his chest.

I couldn’t help but blink at his sudden appearance, about to ask what he meant. However, he beat me to it. “I made yer Sky Citadel, so I’ll be the one to make whatever replaces ‘er.”

“...Alright.” I had to admit that Tubrock was incredibly skilled in this regard. The Sky Citadel itself was hundreds of years ahead of its time when he initially created it. If he was able to pull off a similar standard of workmanship now, I would certainly have no complaints. Tubrock gave a deep snort, vanishing from the room once he had the agreement he was looking for.

“It’s about time that the lad was ready to move on.” Tubrock muttered to himself once he got back to his workshop. The Sky Citadel was too old at this point. Most of its enchantments had degraded through the years and had to be replaced by Tsubaki and Dana, with the physical structure itself having suffered from the passage of time.

In fact, Tubrock had been prepared to make Dale a new home more than a century ago, but it was just that the man never seemed interested. Now that he found out that he was looking to retire the Sky Citadel, Tubrock was able to finally work on the project that he had assigned himself long ago.

He walked over towards one of the display stands in his workshop, where a small model could be seen. The model seemed to consist of several metal structures, all linked together by a unified base. As he walked towards it, his body began rapidly shrinking, becoming no larger than a grain of rice as he entered the model.

With the issue of our lodging taken care of, I turned my attention back to Dana. It had been almost two weeks now since she had received the information for the hyperlane network. “How has your research gone? Have you made any progress?”

“Yep!” Dana nodded quickly, looking away from the corner where Tubrock had just stood. “I’ve got the basic plan set up, I’m just running some final simulations to determine one last material. While I’ve been waiting, I’ve started leaking the material requirements towards various mining corporations, and they’re working out plans for how to secure those materials on a large scale. Once I have the final plans, I’ll publicize them for everyone.”

“Even though the mining corporations are getting a head start, it will likely take them a few years before they’re able to reliably supply the materials themselves. Until then, the only way to get them will be to purchase them off the Boundless Caravan.”

“Why not have gods with mineral-related domains directly handle the mining, and sell those themselves on the market?” I asked, but Dana shook her head.

“Currently, the Boundless Caravan is still under the control of the churches of Ryone and Leowynn. In order for a plan like what you said to be feasible, people would need to be able to list their wares from anywhere. Right now, the main issue isn’t mining the materials themselves, but how to safely transport a worker from the Boundless Caravan to said materials. For this, they need reliable space convoys with multiple transport vessels and one ‘command ship’.”

“More importantly, asteroid mining hasn’t been much of a big deal outside of the game worlds, so the infrastructure just isn’t there. Aside from the asteroids in the primary systems, we have to do deep scans to discover specific materials that we need. That’s why I had to give the miners a head start, so that they could commission survey ships to go find resource deposits.”

I couldn’t help but let out a long groan when I heard that explanation. “Just as long as I don’t need to make any auto-renewing materials.” Every time I made such a respawning resource, I was worried that it would crash the economy. Mage Heart and Blood Heart were fine, since they were used to solve such a crash, and are primarily used as power sources or to replace an individual’s energy.

“It should be fine with what we currently have.” Dana shook her head, smiling. “It’s not that the materials are unavailable, just that they are a bit out of reach for the moment. In a worst case scenario, they’ll buy the required material at the cost of divine coins until they can make up for it with their own production.”

Well, that seemed reasonable. There was no rush to immediately construct the hyperlanes. Although it would increase the security of ships regularly moving between worlds, those ships themselves were a minority. “Have you finished studying the enchantment I gave you, then?”

Dana blinked, having to think about that for a moment. “Ah! The one for Fyor? I’ve just about got that taken care of! I was researching it while waiting for my simulations to run. Thankfully, the information you gave me was fairly detailed, so all I had to do was study it and create the device according to the instructions. I should be able to have that working by tomorrow, and then pass it along to Thelsa.”

That’s right, I hadn’t seen Thelsa since I asked Ashley to help her ascend. I was confident that there weren’t any issues, I was just curious how her shadow world had developed after gaining her domain. It would be an interesting point of reference when developing my own and Dana’s.