After two weeks of being back in the citadel, I was given a report on the workings of the new crystal veins. The details of this report came from both Bloodhaven and Fyor, so I was confident that this was accurate information. I sat at my desk, reading through the report on the terminal to make sure that I understood what was going on.

According to this, there was no truly definable reason why the crystals respawned. There was no special energy core at the heart of the vein, or a unique gem that acted as a catalyst. Instead, the very instant that exactly one hundred and sixty-eight hours had passed from when mining began, there was a shimmer of red or blue light. The color depended on which vein was being referenced, but in both cases the light seemed to make the crystals appear from nothing.

In one report, a machine was left inside the crystal at Fyor as an experiment, and that machine was thrown out of the area by the force of the crystal regrowing itself. Gerard apparently tested the vein of a lower floor, personally mining out its entire structure in this most recent week. Even without a single scrap of the material left, it was immediately regrown once seven days had passed.

“I guess that is what happens when it’s a special effect of the system.” I muttered, shaking my head. If the material itself was capable of self-regeneration, then it would be a more constant growth, or some unique core that regrew the structure after a set period of time.

On the bright side, the crystals did still act like a sponge for their respective energy types, even if it wasn’t that absorption that led to their inevitable regrowth. This somewhat shortened the daylight period of each floor of Fyor, but only by a few minutes. In the future, I expected that there would need to be some level of mining operation done on every floor, just in case these crystals absorbed too much energy. We didn’t need them exploding like a bomb right beneath the central pillars.

As I finished up the report, there was a shift in the darkness next to me, Ashley appearing with a wide grin on her face. “I did it.” She said in a proud voice, holding up a blue egg shining with abstract patterns.

“Did… what?” I asked, before blinking. “You made a new system?”

Ashley nodded her head, a tired look in her eyes. “That’s right. I’ve gotten a working inventory system set up, and it is ready to install. Finding the places I needed to modify each different system to fit it in took forever, but it was worth it.”

When she mentioned that, there was a somewhat guilty look on my face. “Have you taken into account the newest addition to the system…?” I asked hesitantly, causing Ashley to blink in confusion.

“Newest… addition?”

“Yeah. We were having an economic crisis here, so I made two new veins of resources, and set up an auto-respawn system for them.” I answered, seeing her red face losing its color. “It doesn’t interact with much, and it’s not even all resources, so it should be fine..?”

“No, no…” Ashley shook her head, before groaning. “Everything is interconnected, Dale. That minimap system you set up? It has dependencies in the guild system. Why? Why would there be dependencies there? Those two systems have nothing to do with each other!” She brought her free hand up to her head, letting out a long sigh.

“I’m fine… I’m fine. This will be easy. I did it before, so I’ve just got to do it again.” Ashley said with a long sigh, still shaking her head.

“Sorry… if it wasn’t for the economic crisis, I would have waited for your results.” I apologized honestly, Ashley sending me a grateful smile in return.

“No, you did the right thing, Dale. I can just put a few more hours in to get this working. How bad did it get, though…?”

It was my turn to sigh, leaning back in my chair. “The energy supply wasn’t able to keep up with the demand, making people invest heavily in the Boundless Caravan. But because they were spending their ‘faith’ on that, they had less ability to purchase materials that they could form connections with to use as tributes to gain more tokens. When I heard the report, it felt like something was going to break if it wasn’t dealt with soon.”

Ashley listened to that, nodding slightly. “In that case, you probably made the right decision. The world is becoming more and more dependent on energy, but we don’t have a truly perpetual source of it. There were the spheres that Tsubaki and Dana made, but those were scrapped due to the dangers they posed. Without an alternative, our growth will eventually exceed our ability to supply what we need to sustain it.”

I gave a nod at that, looking at the egg-shaped item in Ashley’s hand. “I’m not an expert programmer or anything, but if the system really is that convoluted, wouldn’t it be easier to just write a new one from scratch? In the long run, I mean.”

Ashley let out another groan, but sadly seemed to agree with me. “Unfortunately, yes. For the short term, I can handle doing it like this. I set up different programs to help me debug and find the dependencies in various systems. Once I get the inventory set up again with this new addition, I’ll see if it is feasible to rewrite the system in a more modular fashion. I’ll need a backup database to transfer everyone’s current levels, achievements, guilds, kingdoms, and minimap progress.” As she listed off the items that needed to be transferred, it was clear that she was looking forward to this less and less.

“...Would it help if you had some backup?” I asked, since it seemed she was definitely being overworked. I remembered back in our old world, she would have that same look on her face whenever her bosses were being unreasonable with scheduling demands.

“It’d help, but there’s nobody to send over.” She shook her head, groaning. “The world is cut off from all the others to prevent any potential bugs from leaking out if I mess up. And none of the other companions know as much about coding. Well, Aurivy seems to have been brushing up, but that’s just for her own hobby.”

“No, I meant actual help.” I said seriously. “If you want, I could make you a team to help with your work, that way you aren’t doing it all by yourself.”

Ashley paused at that, looking at me with wide eyes. “You’re serious… really? You’ve never made any other companions before, unless it was someone that you’ve helped ascend like Leowynn and Scarlet.”

“There wasn’t as big of a need before.” I told her, reaching out to pat her shoulder. “They don’t have to be full gods or anything, and can do their work from the Admin Room. Once they’re done, they can just save their code for you, right?”

Tubrock was the perfect example of work being done in the Admin Room, which could then be brought into the main world. If he could do it, then there was no reason that I couldn’t set up a team of workers for Ashley to do the same. If it was bad enough that she wasn’t even able to keep track of major problems in the main world, she definitely needed reinforcements.

Ashley realized this too, lowering her head in thought. “How many would you be able to give me..?” She asked hesitantly, though I simply smiled in response.

“How many do you need, Ash? Be honest with me.”

Hearing that, she nodded her head. “Fifteen… no, ten. I can do it with ten, five if we really stretch it thin.”

“Ten it is.” I chuckled, and smiled wider when I saw her eyes light up. Terra, can you make me ten personality profiles for expert, hardworking programmers? They need to be able to follow instructions.

I knew that people like Sarah had entire teams dedicated to the crafting and management of her worlds, but I had never really expanded my group. Until now, they had been able to manage everything pretty well on their own. However, once it was clear that Ashley was pushing herself too hard, I was naturally fine with giving her some people.

“Ah… but what are we going to pay them?” Ashley asked, suddenly entering business mode and panicking as she paced back and forth in my room. “If they’re in the Admin Room, we can’t really give them anything that they can’t make themselves, and we can’t ask them to work for free.”

“The Heavenly Game system.” I told her, causing her to look at me in confusion. “Any companion is able to use that, so we’ll have that as their reward. Work with Terra, and you can set it up so that those who perform exceptionally get better starting conditions. That way, when they are not working, they can simply focus on living among the mortals.”

Ashley nodded her head, seeming to think that that was a good idea. “Yeah, yeah that could work. They’re not gods, so the Heavenly Game is the only way for them to interact with the rest of the world. We’ll need to set up rules so that they don’t reveal their origins, though.”

I blinked, having not thought of that. It was true that some things would get more complicated if people revealed that they were from the Admin Room, and about how the world itself worked. For starters, that would be a sort of ‘hidden pantheon’, even if they don’t have divinity themselves. “When I buy the companions, I’ll see if there is a behavior restriction that I can buy for the Heavenly Game system to prevent leaking information like that.”

Ashley seemed satisfied with that. “Alright. In that case, I’ll go get ready from my end. If they’re going to be working with the system code, then I need to save the programs I’ve set up so that they can be transferred to the Admin Room.” She said with a wide smile. “Ah, but first…”

She clenched her fist, shattering the egg in her hand, before focusing. “I can’t use that one anymore, so…” Blue light shimmered into her hand, rushing in a vortex that gradually revealed a new egg-shaped item of similar appearance. “There. This one has an updated version of the world’s system. Just please, please don’t buy any more systems or anything until I’m done with the inventory system.”

There was a genuinely pleading look on her face as she said that, causing me to chuckle. “Don’t worry, there’s not anything that I can immediately think of buying. I’ll even hold off on the behavior restriction until after you get that set up. Even if it’s just a change to an Admin Room system, I don’t want to risk it impacting your work.”

“Thanks. Once I get this one done, I’ll work on making a similar setup for Spica and Lorek. At that point, my new team should be able to help ensure that the process gets done smoothly.” Ashley seemed positively ecstatic about the thought of having her own team to work with.

It was probably even worse than I thought. I muttered inwardly as I watched the shadows envelop Ashley to take her away. Though, now that she was going to be getting her own team, I was quite looking forward to seeing if she would really be able to remake the entire world’s system, and what changes that would entail.

But first, I have to make them. I rolled my shoulders at that, closing my eyes and returning to the Admin Room. Since Terra was a quick worker, she likely had the personality profiles set up already.