After finalizing the plan, Talon said her goodbyes and went back to her own Admin Room via a giant worm that emerged from the floor beneath her that devoured her whole. When I saw that, I couldn’t help but twitch. “She… has really bad luck with travel options.” I commented, the others around me all nodding their heads.

“Okay, so… Leowynn, you’ll be in charge of training a Fallen God of Starlight. Someone let Udona know the plan, since she’s the best one to train a Fallen God of Immunity. Once everyone’s up to speed, we’ll do a fast forward of… let’s say ten years. That should give plenty of time for each of you to find and train suitable people.”

Leowynn thought about it for a moment, before nodding her head in agreement. Ten years wasn’t all that long, but so long as they found already talented individuals worthy of the task, they would be able to meet the deadline. “Also…” I added on, looking around again. “Try to make sure that Aurivy and Leowynn can fully recover their powers. They’re still not at their peaks from the Guardian and Sanctum, right?” The two dipped their heads slightly at that.

“How should we go about speeding the process up?” Scarlet asked curiously.

“Once the System Stones are able to be mass produced, arrange for them to be distributed to the Metong worlds, with the priority being the establishment of the Boundless Caravan. Once we have people on each of those worlds that are part of the system, they will be able to access the caravan. This will drastically speed up Leowynn’s recovery, and Aurivy’s travel options have always been a popular choice, so it should work for her as well.”

Given the sheer number of worlds within the Metong’s Network, this could increase the recovery of their powers by over a hundred fold. It will also cause the religions to spread, and temples to the Greater Pantheon will begin forming there. At least, that was my hope. There would obviously be some races that were already religious and had no interest in worshiping new gods.

After hearing my explanation, the others all nodded their heads and departed from the meeting room. While waiting for the signal that Udona had been brought up to speed, I closed my eyes and focused. Tsubaki, I have a message for you.

What is it, my Keeper? She asked, her response as prompt as ever.

I’ll be fast forwarding the world again soon, and I just wanted to notify you that I wouldn’t be around for a while. We just learned about our next opponent for the invasions, and they are an enemy that we need to try to defeat, so we’re taking this time to raise champions to fight against them.

When she heard my explanation, there was a brief pause. Do you require my aid to fight as well, my Keeper?

Absolutely not. I replied, my mental voice somewhat stern. I could feel her recoil slightly from my tone, before I took a sigh and explained. This isn’t like the defenses we’ve done, Tsubaki, I’m sorry. This is a one way ticket. Whether the battle is won or not, the people that we send will never have the chance to return. The opponent is a plague world, and we are going to attack with a universe-scale void script. We can’t risk that bleeding back into our worlds, and I can’t send you on a suicide mission like that. I refuse to send you on a mission that will guarantee your death.

There was another brief silence, followed by a much more gentle voice. I would gladly die for you, my Keeper. But… I am thankful that you value me so. Is there any way that I can help with the training of the new champions?

I’m not sure. I answered honestly. We’re going to be training two individuals to become Fallen Gods. One will be the Fallen God of Starlight, so you might be able to assist Leowynn in their practical training, once they have finished ascending.

I understand. She responded, and there was a moment’s pause before she spoke again. How long will this absence be?

Ten years to the day. Normally, I’d avoid fast forwarding this long again, but this is a special circumstance. The enemy Keeper this time hurt a friend of mine, and has shown that they are more than willing to eliminate Keepers that they are paired against. Please… pass my apologies to Dana and Lifre. Let them know that I’ll descend as soon as the time is over.

This seemed to cheer Tsubaki up. Although she knew that it would be a decade before I appeared, knowing exactly when I would return made her quite happy. I will do so, my Keeper.

After she said that, Aurivy alerted me that Udona had been fully brought up to speed. Once I had received that message, I sent one final thought to Tsubaki before accelerating the world.

I’ll see you soon, Tsubaki. The message rang in Tsubaki’s mind, causing a small smile to form on her face. Compared to the time that she had served the Keeper thus far, a decade was barely worth mentioning. The fact that she knew the exact date that he would descend again let her know how much the Keeper really cared for her and the others.

Tsubaki flicked her wrist, causing the daggers of light to shatter and return to her body. She had been in the midst of training when the Keeper spoke to her, so now it was time for her to go and find Dana and Lifre. Thankfully, she didn’t have to search for very long, as Dana was working within her workshop, as usual.

“What’s up?” Dana asked as soon as she heard the door open, before turning her head and seeing the expression on Tsubaki’s face. “Okay, seriously, what’s up?”

“The Keeper just informed me that he will not be able to descend for some time, as he must prepare to fight against a powerful foe.” Tsubaki explained, though that only made Dana even more confused.

“Yeah… but why do you look happy? You usually get all pouty when the Keeper isn’t around for a long time.”

“I do not.” Tsubaki puffed her cheeks out indignantly, causing Dana to grin. “And… he assured me that he would descend again as soon as he was able to. Ten years from now, exactly to the day.”

Dana blinked, before giving a slight chuckle and nodding her head. “Got it. Did you mark the date yet?”

Surprisingly, Tsubaki shook her head. “He asked me to let you and Lifre know before anything else.”

Dana gave another nod. “I’ll tell Lifre. I was just finishing up this project, anyways.”

“What are you working on?” Tsubaki asked curiously, as Dana often didn’t share the details of her little projects until they were nearing completion, or if she needed someone to help her with a bottleneck.

“Magical Intelligence.” Dana answered with a small grin. “There are already some people that have created a fourth-tier intelligence through magic comparable to an AI, so I wanted to try doing the same. It was Ryone’s assignment for me last time she was here.”

Tsubaki gave a small nod at that. “Do you have a specific plan for it?” To her question, Dana’s grin grew wider, and she nodded her head.

It only took a few minutes for the notification to arrive that the promised ten years had passed. As soon as it did, I selected the option to descend once more to the Sky Citadel. I had a promise to keep, after all. Thus, I closed my eyes as a warm light appeared around me, and felt the cool air of the Sky Citadel brushing over my body.

“Welcome back.” A number of voices called out at once, but my brows furrowed slightly. There was something different mixed in. When I opened my eyes, I saw not three, but four figures kneeling beneath the steps leading to my throne.

Naturally, the first three were the servants of the citadel. The final one, however, was an androgynous human with soft blue hair and matching eyes. They seemed to lean vaguely closer to male than female, but were clearly an unusual entity. Sweeping over them with my senses, I found that they were a construct made almost entirely of magic, with just a hint of a soul at their core.

“This is your first official meeting, so allow me to introduce Gerard.” Dana said with a smile, standing together with the magical entity. “He is a living spell that I created nearly ten years ago now. Capable of self-modification and improvement, he has been helping us manage things around here.”

“It is an honor to finally meet you, Keeper.” Gerard said with a solemn bow. “I have heard much of you since my birth.”

I blinked as I registered the new character’s appearance. Sure, I knew that magical intelligences were a hot topic for research, but I didn’t expect to find one waiting here for me when I descended. “A pleasure to meet you, as well.” I greeted him back, before looking at the others. “How has everything been in my absence? I haven’t had the time to look over everything before coming back down.”

The four looked at each other, but it was ultimately Tsubaki that spoke. “Currently, we are in something of a recession, my Keeper.” She answered honestly, catching me by surprise. “As of late, the demand for energy crystals has outweighed the supply, forcing people to largely turn to the Boundless Caravan to make up the difference.”

“That’s right!” Lifre nodded her head. “Thankfully, faith is an abundant resource still, but… the process of getting tokens has slowed down.”

“How so?” That surprised me, so I looked at Lifre for an explanation.

“Well, tokens are gained by sacrificing something with emotional significance, right?” Lifre asked, to which I nodded my head. “After a while… people start to run out of things that they can offer up, and are willing to part with. Hunters can still offer up the extra meat that they gain from their hunts, but doing so keeps that meat out of the stomachs of hungry families, which would additionally keep those families from being able to recover their ki and take care of their needs. Only the mortal gods and really devout priests and clerics are able to receive tokens without making an offering. The church has been spreading the tokens into the economy to try to make things easier.”

I rubbed my forehead, not having expected to run into such issues the moment that I descended. From what they described it as, the economy was on the verge of a full depression. “Are there any plans in place to resolve the issue?”

It seemed that it was Dana’s turn to speak, and she nodded her head. “The main problems are the mass-production of System Stones, Level Stones, and increase in the average household’s energy expenditure. The first two caused the existing market to dry up before the researcher was able to optimize the design enough to stabilize things, but the last problem has only been getting worse over time.”

“At the moment, research has moved to focus on more efficient energy sources. The researcher has begun to begin experimenting with drawing energy from the void again, and hopes that a large-scale void refinery will be able to alleviate the problems.”

“Wasn’t it decided that that was inefficient for our world?” I couldn’t help but ask, to which Gerard answered.

“That was in a time before we had the proper technology to interact with the void on this scale, and prevent it from negatively impacting us. At the current moment, the technology needed to achieve this has already been created, and merely needs to be utilized for the specific purpose.” Okay, it seemed like more void research had been conducted during the ten years… “According to the researcher’s timeline, he plans to perform a large-scale test later this month.”

I took a deep breath, closing my eyes and thinking. If the void energy plan worked, that would be great. However, Dana said that this was only to alleviate the problem, not remove it. Ultimately, this issue came down to a resource shortage. The question was what could I do to take care of it from my end? It would be simple to make resources like iron and gold able to respawn, but the resources that we were in short supply of was energy, particularly ki and mana.

Maybe I should buy ores that have naturally occurring ki and mana, and then set those to automatically respawn? I mused, knowing that it was definitely possible. Doing so would take care of the primary issue, and it was just a question of whether those systems would have any inherent downsides.

“What about importing energy from Lorek and Spica?” I asked curiously, looking at the group. In those worlds, mana and ki came from the stars, and should be considered almost limitless. However, Dana shook her head.

“Under Ashley’s directive, atmospheric refineries were established on both planets four years ago, or eighty years ago according to their local time. This helped with the problem, but the amount that they are able to bring in after isolating the energies just isn’t enough to meet the demand.”

I gave a small nod when I heard that, having realized things wouldn’t be that easy. If it was, there wouldn’t be a problem in the first place. “Got it. I think I know what to do, then.” I said with a small smile. Thankfully, this idea shouldn’t cost too much to implement.