Andern was an earth-type planet. It was close enough to our Earth, Terminus, Terminus-Earth in the multiverse that historically speaking there were actually more than a few historical similarities. While the nations, cultures, and peoples weren’t all the same, many of the same beats that had happened on earth, had happened and were currently happening here.

For instance, going by the almost permanently overcast sky, burnt-out buildings, below-average temperatures and above-average levels of atmospheric radiation, it would seem the people had recently experienced their first nuclear ice-age.

Something that the people of our earth had narrowly managed to avoid, if only thanks to immense distraction that was the endless night event. A miraculous turn of events how close the world was to nuclear pre-ENE, and the fact more than few nukes actually were sent flying as part of the panicked response initial response to the onset of the ENE.

It also seemed that people of Andern were early-bloomers. They’d had their civilization-ending nuclear event during their first world war, or at least their first modern world war. Learning how to obliterate themselves faster then Terminus-Earth’s people did. Which means they did it with less of a scientific background than most civilizations had when they first meddling with nuclear fission.

I’ll give you three guesses of how they managed to pull that off...Oh, right...Wrong medium. Ah, well...The answer is magic.

The mana in this world was low-tier but very responsive to belief and the people here were quite imaginative. Thus despite having a very limited understanding of how their physical world actually worked they managed to achieve many things, with the hallmark being the destruction of their first world.

The spindle-shaped rod that floated overhead wasn’t just some oddly shaped moon. That was Verander. The once larger, and once much richer, twin sister to Ander. There’d once been a very vibrant, moderately advanced magocracy living on Verander.

Unfortunately, they stayed true to the tropes that generally follow such civilizations around. The gods, or rather the beings that went around calling themselves gods till finally, the cosmos got pissed enough to “reward” them with the powers and obligations thereof, didn’t take kindly to upstarts trying to unseat them.

There was a war between the mages and the gods. Surprisingly enough this was one of those few instances where the gods didn’t win...Or at least they didn’t win cleanly.

The war ended with ninety-percent of the mages dead, most of humanity lost, and two-thirds of the local pantheon, permanently out of commission.

There were three species of Andern served as a reminder of this war. There was the witch-race, who were the survivoring children of the great mages of old and were born with an innate talent for magic. The shapeshifters, who were former humans who were fused with spirits to be used as the witches’ shock-troops. Then there were was the red-clan, or red-kin, a breed of vampires that the gods used as footsoldiers during their war against the witches.

Andern no longer had any vanilla humans. Which was a testament to A) how many people died during the whole stupid conflict, and B) how far the two sides took things.

The last mages and the last of the gods were forced to work together to save what was left as Verandern shook itself apart. A mage-king can’t be king of nothing, and the false-gods were obligated to look after their worshipers lest their souls be shredded to nothing and consigned to oblivion.

Civilization restarted on Anders, rushing from the stone age, to the bronze age, to a little before...now, where they managed to use a mixture of magic and technology to blow a big ass hole in their sky.

Normally, a civilization’s end wouldn’t rate cosmic intervention. The simple fact is that even in a single multiverse you’ll find countless such civilizations. Civilizations of various sizes, varying forms, with varying levels of cultural, technological, and spiritual sophistication. Never mind the cosmos as a whole.

People are sand on a never-ending beach...Having a few million grains get washed out to sea generally doesn’t bother anything...At least in the grand scheme of things. Yet on occasion, people manage to colossally fuck up. Screwing up on such a grand scale that the universe is forced to take notice.

That’s how this world ended up in my case file. What happened was actually kind of common. Roughly thirty percent of the worlds that ended up in my workload had similar issues.

Their nukes had blown a hole in this universe’s time-space continuum. A hole that ruptured another adjacent space. It was the pancosmic equivalent of digging too deeply into your yard and rupturing the septic tank.

The natives called it “theurge”, short for thaumaturgy... As if there weren’t enough names for magic….In truth, the stuff was just hyper-concentrated, hyper-corrupted mana. Nothing more, nothing less.

It was a nasty substance, a corrosive mixture of magic and nothingness that could have a large chunk of the multiverse falling apart at the seams if it wasn’t handled properly.

Now the stuff was flooding this universe and all the universes that Andern’s universe was connected to, because Andern was a cornerstone world.

The mages thought this was some new age of magic, the priests believed it a new age of chaos. They were both right, and after making a few adjustments to keep the flow of extradimensional material relatively “safe” most of the danger was resolved.

I set up a new universal constant that interfaced with a macro that the RRR had attached to the system they’d installed in this world. Then I throttled back the leak of corrupted-mana so that the system could deal with increasing levels of magic and void energy in a steady manner.

Problem solved. Or at least, the main problem was solved.

There was still the issue of the millions of corrupted beasts and ravenous spirits running rampant through the world, but that was a problem for the natives of Andern to resolve. The Office of Crisis Management within the DPAA, and the House of Antipodes above us, had a policy of mostly leaving native problems to the natives to resolve.

Part of it was the usual rigamarole of not interfering with fate and free will. Part of it was the simple fact that the whole point of creating the systems was to let the natives advance and evolve through the resolution of their world’s advancement.

Solving all their problems for them would rob Andern’s people of their chance to collect all that sweet, sweet exp.

As to what I was still doing here if the main issue with the world had been resolved. I was mainly doing clean up. Quietly setting in place a number of safety valves and quick releases that would allow me to cut Andern’s universe from the fabric of existence, if for whatever reason, they managed to fail their ascension.

I didn’t think I’d need to use these safety measures. The people of Andern seemed to be adapting to both the changes to their world and the system that had been introduced with those changes. The world’s will had even gone as far as nominating a few favored “heroes” to lead the charge in suppressing the theurge.

These heroes were anointed “protagonists” who’d been gifted with cheats to help them survive long enough to be the banner-bearers of the new world order. They were meant to be the stars of this world’s new age of legends.

However, as I said, that was a native issue and thus had fuck all to do with me. I was mainly doing my own thing. Setting measures in place to protect the worlds that were connected to this world, in case Andern’s people dropped the ball. While also taking in the local color and taking as much advantage of this job’s fringe benefits as I could.