World Keeper

The following day, after being told where to find their ship, Clover and Lydia arrived at the orbital station. The two of them were more than strong enough to escape from Earth’s orbit without any need for a vessel to carry them, especially now that they had both become gods. When they arrived, they were directed to a large ship with a sleek design.

Clover immediately began to analyze the ship, comparing it to those that he had been in before. The main body off the ship was longer, but also not as tall. In many ways, it looked like an oversized missile. However, it was still large enough to require at least a hundred people to properly crew the ship.

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“You must be the Kyrs?” A man approached them with a smile. Immediately, Clover and Lydia could sense a trace of the void on him, and realized that this man must be a Fallen God. Outwardly, he appeared human, with black hair and dark eyes, having a lean build.

“That’s right. I’m Clover, and this is Lydia.” Clover spoke up, introducing the two of them, each of them shaking the man’s hand after he extended it.

“Sebastian Powel.” The other man said in greeting. “I’m the Fallen God of Command, and I am the captain of the Arbiter. If you need anything, please feel free to ask.”

“A Fallen God is the captain of a vessel?” Lydia asked, surprised. Captains were usually mortals, or at the most someone that had achieved perfection. It was very rare for a deity to take the role. This was not because they were unsuited to the task, but rather because gods were more of an emergency force or an advisor on most vessels.

Sebastian gave a small chuckle. “That’s right, ma’am. Though, I only became one during the recent downtime. From my understanding, the two of you are the same? Exploration and Explosion?”

The two lycan deities nodded their heads, and Sebastian gestured for them to follow him. “Please, come inside, let me show you around.”

Within the void, a small crack could be felt, a tear opening in the emptiness as a black mass appeared. Once in the void, it formed a vortex, drawing the essence of the void into itself to give it a proper body.

The body that it took was similar to that of a muscular humanoid with pure white skin and black, empty eyes. With the void as a backdrop, this creature was particularly eye-catching. Once it was done forming its body, it stood motionless, its eyes roaming over the monsters circling around the various barriers.

This golem was not like a normal void beast, which only had a limited number of rules. Instead, the golem was closer to a program, more akin to an artificial intelligence than an instinct-driven beast. However, it did not have that final ‘spark’ that granted it a true soul.

This was because the process of awakening an artificial intelligence involved awakening a divine spark within the intelligence, and forming the soul around that. Tubrock had been worried that this step would inevitably clash with the void golem’s core, so he took a different approach.

What Tubrock did was create an artificial intelligence that was just on the edge of awakening, and then thrust it into the void. There, it could complete itself by absorbing the information of other beasts.

For now, it was similar to a far more advanced version of Ana. Its head slowly lifted, eyes locking onto what looked to be a field suspended in the void, more than a dozen beasts roaming the field and eating the feed provided to them. The golem felt a sense of danger from this area, as if it would never be able to leave if it entered that pasture.

Instead, it turned to face a void beast swimming through the void, looking like a writhing mass of tentacles covered in a black mist. The golem’s black eyes flashed green as it assessed the information within this beast. Causes shed body parts to turn into amorphous masses that attack their former hosts.

It shook its head at that, deeming this to be a rather poor information sample to absorb. Next was a headless man, two faces growing out of his shoulders. One face looked as if it were laughing, the other crying. Once again, it scanned the void beast to analyze its rules.

Causes sentient beings to understand the truth of a subject through verbal communication, removing any attempts to conceal the truth. After analyzing this rule, the golem’s eyes went from green to red. Its vision zoomed in on the creature that it had identified, and suddenly it was standing right before its target.

The laughing face showed an expression of surprise when it caught sight of the golem, turning as if to run. However, the golem was simply faster. Or rather, it moved faster than opponent could hope to match on instinct. In the moment that it appeared before its target, it increased its personal flow of time by more than a thousand fold.

With this accelerated flow of time, the movements of its prey couldn’t even be registered. Calmly, the golem stretched its arm out, grabbing one of the humanoid beast’s arms and pulling hard. There was a sickening crunch as the arm was pulled from its body, the other following seconds later.

With both arms removed from the humanoid beast, the golem used its fists to crush the two faces, causing the beast to fall still. The golem’s eyes flashed green once again, determining that the beast was truly defeated, its rules starting to dissipate. For the first time, it opened its mouth wide, its jaw reaching down to the center of its chest.

The inside of the golem’s mouth looked to be a black abyss, drawing in the body of the beast that it had just slain. The beast disappeared into the gaping maw, first its severed arms and then the mangled corpse that had been left behind.

After the beast disappeared in its entirety, the golem went still once again, its eyes turning blue while it digested the information that it had devoured.

Terra let out a small sigh within the Admin Room, laying on the bed with her legs draped off the side. Her eyes were closed, focusing her sights on the golem within the void. Her feline ears twitched as the door to the room opened, and Keliope walked in. “Yo, sis! How’s it going?”

Terra gave a small chuckle at Keliope’s intrusion. She often came in to check on Terra, as Terra was the only one not fully capable of descending into her incarnation for prolonged periods. “Hey, Kelly.” She said as she sat up. “Just keeping an eye on Tubrock’s newest creation.”

“Oh? What’d the mad lad make this time? Let me guess, it’s some kind of sentient gemstone that can harness the power of emotions.” Keliope asked, walking over to drop herself onto the bed next to Terra, who laughed lightly.

“No, though that would be interesting. No, he made a void golem, and released it into the void to hunt void beasts.” Keliope’s eyes widened when she heard that.

“You serious? That crazy dwarf… We’ve got enough to worry about with void beasts already, don’t we?”

“If things go well, this golem should be able to clear out some of the older ones.” Terra said with a small smile, though Keliope looked confused.

“It’s not the older ones I’m worried about, it’s these new ones with all those twisted rules. You know, I heard that someone found a void beast that had a rule to turn people into whatever they ate? It was apparently trying to work its way into Spica when it was found.”

Terra smiled slightly, shaking her head. “Those are the old ones. Remember, Kelly, the void has been around forever. The longer a void beast exists, the more time it has to adapt and add to its rules. New beasts with particularly tricky rules can be dangerous, but the really bad ones are those that have had time to evolve.”

Keliope hesitated, before nodding her head in agreement. “Where do they come from, anyways? I mean, they don’t exist inside of a system-generated world, so they shouldn’t follow normal monster spawning rules. And last I checked, Dale never set up rules for spawning in the void.”

“Monkeys and typewriters.” Terra said, causing Keliope to look at her in confusion. Terra let out a long sigh. “It’s a saying from Dale’s old world. Basically, if you put a monkey in a room with a typewriter, eventually it will create coherent sentences, or even write out famous works of literature.”

“I’ll take your entire stock of typewriting monkeys.” Keliope deadpanned, causing Terra to giggle in amusement.

“Not like that… it’s not a fast process. This is an ‘eventually’ theory. Basically, even if you hit random keys on a keyboard, you will eventually make words. Void beasts work in a similar way. Throughout the entire void, the information within it is constantly crashing against itself. Every now and then, this information smashes together just right to form a coherent rule. Once that rule is formed, the leftover information is used to construct the body.”

“I think I get it…” Keliope nodded slowly, before blinking. “Does that mean that it’s possible for an entire world to be spontaneously born, in the same way as a void beast?”

Terra blinked, but nodded in agreement. “It’s… theoretically possible. However, the sheer amount of coincidences that would need to come together for that to happen… even if I used my Fate domain to stir up the odds, it could take a billion years. More if you want the world to actually be stable.”

“Right, sorry.” Keliope nodded. “So after they’re born, these void beasts are just drawn to other sources of information, like an animal?”

“That’s right.” Terra confirmed readily. “They’re made from this random information, but they aren’t ‘complete’ entities. They yearn to complete themselves by growing and gathering more information. In the end, they can become like that Void God that they fought in the invasion.”

“It’s… a good thing that we’ve never had anyone get that far.” Keliope muttered, though Terra shook her head.

“Actually, we had one that was pretty close at one point.” When she said that, Keliope turned to face her with wide eyes. “It was a while back, a void beast that created contracts. This allowed it to fly under the radar for a while, until it decided to turn its focus to a game designer, planning to use his platform to infect the world. When I noticed this, I sent the twins to lead him to Leowynn, so she could deal with it. That was the most intelligent void beast we’ve ever had, and it could have very easily turned into a Void God if it was allowed to complete its plot.”

Keliope’s brow twitched slightly. “I think I remember hearing about that case. Though, I don’t remember it being described nearly as severe as that.”

Terra simply gave a small shrug, grinning. “Rules are rules. Dale didn’t even know what Void Gods were back then, or had any concept like that. The most he knew or had evidence of was just really powerful void beasts. So, given that that was technically not wrong, that is how the contract beast was described.”

“You cheeky cat.” Keliope let out a light laugh, but reached over to hug Terra’s waist. Although Terra played it off with a playful tone, Keliope knew that she didn’t like to keep information like that from Dale, and only did because of the system forcing her to do so.