The tea and sandwiches were… honestly a bit sweet for my taste. Regardless, both Leowynn and Ryone seemed to be enjoying them, so that was enough. And seeing that Oldbeard was engrossed with her own treats, I did not want to interrupt to talk about business. As if seeing my thoughts, Oldbeard set down her cup after a few moments, crossing her arms on the table again.

“So, what all is it that you want to buy from me? I remember you asking about the level transfer orbs, but is there anything else?” She asked, taking the initiative to shift the conversation back towards business.

“Well, I’d like to hear more about your rock-man race, if possible. They seemed rather interesting, from what I saw.” I admitted, and she stroked her chin in thought, a gesture that didn’t quite look the same on a girl so young.

“I guess there’s no harm in telling you this.” She shrugged. “At one point in my world’s history, I was facing a rather bad mineral shortage. Thanks to the specifics of my world, my people were mining in excess, which eventually left them with nothing left to mine. They hadn’t gotten space travel yet at this point, so they couldn’t go to other planets to expand, which seemed like it would leave them dead in the water.”

“To counteract this, I created the Aurans. They’re a boron-based lifeform that have a special ability allowing them to ingest common rock and create minerals. This is because they have an internal process similar to fission and fusion. Alchemy, in a sense. This process is clean and safe for the environment, and allows common rocks like granite to be turned into iron, gold, or even diamonds.”

I gave a small nod as I listened to Oldbeard’s explanation. “Is there anything that I’ll need to watch out for? Any problems with the race itself that I’d need to prepare against?”

Oldbeard thought about that again for a moment. “Well, as I said, they are a boron-based lifeform. The system’s standard for life is carbon-based, outside of special circumstances or randomly generated alien lifeforms. You’ll need to watch out for unknown diseases, which is practically a guarantee when they come over.”

“At one point in my history, there was an outbreak near an auran camp. A common disease for the aurans had spread to my carbon-based natives, and it was causing their bodies to break down in the most freakish of ways. I’m talking their spinal cords ripping out of their back and trying to crawl away.” Oldbeard shuddered at that.

“If you can, it’d be best to have doctors prepare early by studying xenobiology and the theoretical qualities of boron-based diseases. If you have any aliens with similar structures, that’d be even better. That way, you’ll be prepared in case they bring anything over from this side.”

Oldbeard was being… surprisingly helpful. I had to wonder if this was how most Keepers handled their trades, or if it was because she was more easygoing due to her childish nature. Either way, I was quite glad with how this exchange was going.

“Is there anything else you’re interested in?” Oldbeard asked curiously, causing me to think back to the list that she had shown me.

“No, I think it was just the aurans and the level transfer orbs.” I answered with a shake of my head, causing her to shrug her shoulders.

“Well, anything you’d like to know about that? I know I answered some of your questions before, but that was half a month ago at this point. You might have come up with new ones.”

I thought it over, shaking my head. “Not really… I think you covered my concerns there. But… I did have one question for you. I’m just not sure if it’s appropriate.”

“Then it probably isn’t.” She fired back with a small smirk. “But go ahead?”

“I was just wondering… how did you become a Keeper? I’ve never seen one that looked as young as you are, so I have to admit that I was caught off guard when we met.”

She gave a slight chuckle at that. “Really don’t hold back, do you? I mean, talking about our old worlds isn’t so much a problem, since they don’t typically have anything to do with our current one. It’s just typically a pretty dark part of a Keeper’s past. Most transitions don’t happen peacefully, you know?”

“It’s fine if you don’t want to answer. I was just curious.” I smiled, not wanting to press her any further.

“Nah, it’s alright. For me, it’s not something I want to hide. If anything, I’m rather proud of the guy that came before me.” Oldbeard said with a small, sweet smile, resting her chin in her hands. “You might have guessed, but I use a game system. So did the last Oldbeard. In fact, he went all in on it. Area bosses, random events, instanced zones, he was what the Gilded Branch called a true Game Keeper. For the most part, he even saw people like me as NPCs.”

“Didn’t treat us that bad or anything, but it’s not like he treated us like real people, either. He was a player in a game that he had created, and that’s what he loved about the world. He wanted to be this big protagonist, saving the world from danger again and again, being the hero we all needed.”

“To that end, he would ramp up the difficulty of his event bosses, making them so strong that even the Keeper had to get serious to defeat them. Of course, he was careful not to overdo it, but the only reason this worked was by taking them out of his world assets. If you didn’t know, that’s a thing you can do to get massively powerful creatures in your world, but it costs… well, let’s just say he had been around for a while to afford it. He couldn’t send any of these creatures on invasions or anything, and he couldn’t just smite them, so whenever one appeared, he had to fight them off himself.”

“In a way, he was digging his own grave with that, right? But that’s what he wanted, the thrill of a true fight. Knowing that he saved the world in a way that only he could. When armies and gods fell, only the Keeper stood strong.” Oldbeard let out a small sigh, before scrunching up her nose. “Of course, when I found out that the bosses were all created because of him, I wanted to kick him in the jewels for days, but still.”

“Anyways… like I said, these bosses would crop up from time to time with nearly Keeper level strength. One day, one of them appeared near the city where I lived, and went on a rampage. Within five minutes, there were no buildings left in the city taller than three stories. Within ten minutes, half of the city’s population had been destroyed.”

“At fifteen minutes, the boss had found me, hiding against the rubble of my home, where my parents had been crushed while trying to get me out. That’s when the Keeper showed up. He fought a battle that could only be described as epic, the shockwaves sweeping me off my feet and pushing me back against a nearby wall.”

“Naturally, the battle was going in the Keeper’s favor, as the boss was designed to be weaker than him. But this boss didn’t want to go out without one last final move, one great middle finger to its creator. The boss gathered all of its strength, directing a final, self-destructive attack against the city itself.”

“Having been rather low-level at the time, I wasn’t even able to move under the pressure of these two behemoths. When this final attack was launched, I was in the direct path of its destruction. The Keeper saw me, crying against the wall, one of my arms broken from the shockwaves of their battle, and… I don’t know, maybe something flipped inside of him.”

“Maybe he realized that I wasn’t just an NPC. Maybe he began to see me as a person. Or, maybe he just couldn’t stand the thought of there not being an audience to tell his story, I don’t know. Either way, he threw himself in front of the attack, using his own body to shield me.”

Oldbeard brought a hand up, her finger wiping at her eyes. “As the world went grey, I saw him smiling at me, like he didn’t have any regrets with how he had gone out. In the end, he lost at the game that he created, but he had a true hero’s death. That’s why I can be so proud of him.”

“Anyways… given that the event boss was not one of his own assets, and he had jumped in front of the attack because of me, the system determined it as if I had been the one that killed him. That… never really sat well with me, but it is what it is. If I wasn’t there, he might have survived, and I’ve come to accept that.”

“He may have treated us like simple characters in his game, but he gave his life for me at the end of it all. What more could I want from a Keeper? I’ll always remember the words he whispered to me, under the sounds of destruction around us, while his body was being shattered by a chaotic blast. He said… ‘It’s your turn, now’.”

That was… surprisingly touching. Looking to either side of myself, I could see Leowynn and Ryone wiping at their own eyes. Curse those onion ninjas and their wiley ways… “That was… unexpected. And a lot more dramatic than I thought.”

“Oh? What happened with you?” Oldbeard asked curiously, and I cleared my throat, seeing Ryone grinning at me out of the corner of my eye.

“My last Keeper was… rather lazy. He made a tech-based world, but stopped it well before it was ready to enter the game, going down to just live in the world and slack off. I was a regular driver, and accidentally ran into him with my vehicle. Dead on impact.”

Oldbeard blinked at me, as if waiting to hear more of the story. When I stopped, she paused for a long moment. “That’s it? You just ran into him and he died?”

“That’s it…” I nodded my head, as it was truly a far less dramatic story than what happened with Oldbeard.

“...You’re last Keeper was lame. Like… I’ve never heard of a Keeper being taken out in… such a stupid way. I’ve even heard of Keepers suffering from the pressure of their job and offing themselves, which I do not condone at all, but that? That guy barely qualifies as a Keeper in the first place.”

I let out a long sigh, finding myself agreeing with her statement. “Quite. So, I’ve been trying to play catch-up this whole time. The last guy for my world was an epic-level shut-in, so even the old friends of EarthForceOne basically forgot about me, or were replaced.”

“Ugh, I can get that.” Oldbeard nodded her head. “When I first ascended, I had all these guys welcoming me in to their big ‘game’, saying that I had finally become a player. I flipped on that so hard, and had to go solo until I ran up against this little rabbit girl called Starkiller. The name scared me out of my wits until we met in person, and she asked me why I had reset.”

“Told her I never reset, and that I was new to all of this. Which was apparently the right answer, given that she was preparing to rally her armies to attack me if I was still the guy before me…”

I gave a small chuckle at that, nodding. “Balu. She’s a pretty good friend that I’ve come to know.”

“Right?!” Oldbeard nodded quickly. “She’s really cool and fluffy, and if you pet her ears, she’ll get all cute and mad and then forget about it in like ten seconds. She introduced me to the Gilded Branch when she realized that I wasn’t following the same path as the last Oldbeard. That’s how I got to know of the side of Keepers that weren’t total jerks to their people. They’ve been teaching me a lot.” Oldbeard suddenly gave a soft smile. “It’s because of them that I realized that I could bring my parents back from the old world as companions. That’s one of the first things that they suggested I do when they realized how young I was.”