Chapter 75: The Myths We Make

  CROWN

  I hadn’t been sure it would work, but it did. Both the guards and the villagers in Kelstad were eager to hear the myth I’d made up to prepare them for incursions… once I made it sound like it was common knowledge elsewhere.

  This was a technique that I had heard about when I had been Tastka, but I had never considered myself a storyteller so I had never tried it. The theory went that if I was eager to tell them a story, they'd wonder what my motivation was. They would just figure they could listen to it later, but if I made it seem like it was something other people knew and they hadn't heard yet, they would be eager to “catch up” with everyone else.

  That definitely wasn't how it worked for me, but maybe that was just what I told myself. I could certainly see the appeal of wanting to know what everyone else did so that you could discuss it and be part of the “in crowd.” Of course, they couldn't know that my tale of the distant tribe was completely made up. In theory the system that I had set up to identify and quarantine incursions would work just like this, but we hadn't really tested it.

  How could we, when we had yet to see an actual incursion?

  It was refreshing to think of this management of an entire universe with the pronoun of “we” now. It wasn't technically true, I knew, because Duck was supposedly just a splinter of my own soul. She could communicate more directly with me if she really wanted to, and I could do the same for her, though. I had never tried. It was just a lot more comfortable to speak through chat or directly. This gave me the feeling that I was speaking to a colleague instead of just a fragment of myself.

  Though I still wondered why she was so sassy. Did I really second-guess myself that much? I was sure that a therapist would have a field day dissecting what this meant for my psyche. Orpheus claimed it was fine, since it was just my sense of self adjusting to having a soul that was capable of doing these things. She claimed that everyone adjusted to their terminals in different ways – that she was actually unusual in how hers were barely more than automatons.

  Orpheus had also informed me that it was not uncommon for Administrators to attempt some kind of quarantine on detected incursions. It was a relatively low cost in Reality Points to just block off a section, but that made it much more difficult for the inhabitants to reject the new reality if they didn't know it existed. Apparently most who tried to quarantine method either ended up removing the quarantine when it was safer, or spent far more reality points just purging the incursion.

  My world had the advantage here. Since my System tried to codify everything in numbers that it could, it was easy to see when numbers didn't match. The problem was finding a way to get rid of them without risking people rejecting the System for some reason. This had been easy on Upside because their gods and religion had largely grown out of worship of the System to begin with.

  The solution that I had come up with for Downside had been different. Downside did not appear to have the same kind of belief structure, and instead focused on a type of animism instead of higher deities. With less directed belief being notoriously difficult to harness in a useful fashion, this made things more complicated. My whole “wounded world” story would hopefully resonate more with these people than the solution I had used Upside.

  As I looked around at the villagers dispersing for the evening, I saw them discussing the tale as they each headed to their respective dwellings. Just as the guards had predicted, I had arrived in Kelstad shortly before nightfall. This was useful for my actual purpose, as everyone was winding down from their daily activities. The arrival of a new stranger gave them reason to sit and eat together; to listen to my stories and news of the world outside.

  I could waste Reality Points just creating money, now that I knew up close what it looked like, but I thought it would be suspicious for a stranger to show up knowing so little of local affairs yet carrying money. Maybe I was being paranoid, but I thought I should at least wait until I was in the city, where it could be reasonably guessed that I’d stopped by the money changer.

  This meant that I had to work for my room in the wayhouse. I was fortunate that this village was the first stop after a checkpoint, so it was set up to receive visitors. A lot of small villages wouldn't have anything like an inn or hostel or anything. Travelers would just have to rely upon the generosity of those living there and hope that someone would put them up in their house.

  As a place of occasional foreign visitors, Kelstad was no stranger to housing people with no money. My story had been part of my payment for a full belly and a bed in the guest house, which was just a few rooms full of bunks. The other part of my payment had been to help a little around the village tomorrow before I left… which would be easy for me, because I had picked up the [Patternist] class.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The vaskan had casters, but they were relatively rare amongst the population. It wasn’t strange to have one or even two in a village, but each had specialties, and this one had none who were good at repairing and reinforcing structures with mana. The [Patternist] class could do that easily, even at a low level. I had no desire to reveal I was pretty high level for a vaskan, not unless I had to.

  Repairing the various items around town would be tomorrow, though. Tonight, as the light began to fade and the villagers shuffled toward their homes, I could relax and take in the sight of the village.

  | CROWN: The people are friendlier than I thought. And even more human than I’d guessed. ?

  | DUCK: You think you may have subconsciously made them more human when you created them? ?

  | CROWN: Maybe. I was trying to make them not-human though. ?

  | DUCK: You created them from simians. Even with the animal trait adoption, maybe they were always more human than you thought. ?

  | CROWN: Good point, but the dominance of animism over any other religion is weird, then. ?

  | CROWN: Everything good and steady from up there? ?

  | DUCK: It has literally been less than a day, boss. In both universe time and up here. It’s boring here. I promise if anything happens you’ll know right away. ?

  | CROWN: Good point. Keep an eye on the belief indicators, I guess. ?

  | DUCK: I know most everything you know about this. Relax, I’m watching. It’s the only real entertainment I have.

  As far as I could tell, needling me was the entertainment Duck normally relied upon. I had a brief worry about leaving her in the Sanctuary again, but as enigmatic as she could be, I knew she was as invested in my world thriving as I was. Maybe even more so, since she owed her entire existence to how strong my universe had become.

  At least, I thought so?

  I sighed and looked around the village again. It was remarkably like how I’d imagine a frontier village from the bronze age would be like. The buildings were usually one story and mostly timber, though a few used clay bricks for some or all of a wall. The foundations were all stone, but not quarried and cut stone… more just jumbled stone with a mortar held together by framing. The stone in this area must be too weak or hard to quarry in large pieces.

  I’d noticed the watchtower had a dome-shaped top, and that pattern repeated here. Every roof was a dome or ellipsoid dome, instead of a slanted or tapered roof, and flat roofs were just not used. I found that interesting.

  I walked into the shelter to take a look around, and lifted my eyes to the ceiling. Arched wooden supports covered in a layer of resin-preserved leaves. Very large leaves, too. I didn’t sense any heavy mana use, so this must be a naturally-occurring resin they’d learned to seal things with. The dome and the resin would make it a good shield against the rain.

  Neat, and something I hadn’t heard of humans doing, but maybe I just didn’t know about it. Certainly a reasonable thing for this tech level to use.

  It was moments like these that made me proud of my world. Seeing the differences in how they handled things, and the development of the people in learning to use their world. It made me feel like a proud parent again.

  Though I could do without the pain of childbirth again. Glad that part wasn’t involved here.

  | CROWN: I really do think I should have been a bard or storyteller or something. It would make these stories easier to spread. ?

  | DUCK: Not sure that’s something you can fake with just stat numbers, boss. ?

  | DUCK: Let’s see how well this one works, and if it falls flat we can try a new one. ?

  | CROWN: That’s a rather laid back attitude for you. ?

  | DUCK: The worst thing that happens is people don’t repeat it. We’ll know in a few years, more than enough time to fix it. ?

  | CROWN: True.

  I still had to figure out a way to give people quests here. On Upside, the dragons and the gods handed out quests. Downsiders didn’t visit the dragons, and didn’t believe in gods in a way that was helpful to doing this.

  Hmmm.

  I rubbed my chin as I turned to the doorway and watched the light fade. The sun was more like a blurry halo in the sky during the day these days – after the tweaks I’d made seven thousand years ago – but this close to nightfall it couldn’t be seen. Instead, the sky itself glowed, and that glow faded as the sun vanished into the far-off end cap.

  It was such a different view than the one I’d seen as Tastka. My previous incarnation – a young Totem tribal named Kenta – had taken the new one as a fact of life. Only now in my Proxy could I flip back and forth between the memories to compare them.

  The rainbow-hued sky during the day was far different from that of Earth, now, and part of me lamented that. Perhaps I’d been too attached to the idea, though. Did I really even need a moon that was a physical object?

  Something to consider for the next world.

  The Magnificence of Chall