World Keeper

Chapter 661: I Want to Play a Game

Now that I knew that fallen gods were actually helpful in a way, I could ask the others to be a bit more lenient on them. It’s a bit too late to spread that ‘faith’ in any of the currently civilized planets, but perhaps there would be some that appear in the future in other worlds. Either way, what I needed to do now was focus on my final preparations for the coming invasion.

I had previously obtained several decks of spell cards from Deckan, representing various domains that I wanted to specialize in when it came to combat. However, after giving it some thought, I realized that there were other domain abilities that I could utilize even outside of combat.

Tsubaki. I sent a mental message towards the fox-girl who I knew would be waiting for me to message her. Sure enough, she appeared in front of my desk no more than a few seconds later, already kneeling.

“You summoned me, my Keeper?” She asked, her tails swaying happily. Okay, I’ve got to make sure to come down and spend more time with her from now on. It’s pretty clear she’s missed having me around.

I simply nodded my head, not expressing my inner thoughts. “I want you to put in an order with Blank. If necessary, have Dana work with you on it. There’s a very special type of magic card I want you to purchase, and I’d prefer if it was delivered within the next three days.”

Blank was floating through the vast, digital void, out on a stroll when a letter appeared in his hand. There was a red exclamation mark in the top-right corner, as well as a blue K next to it, indicating that this was an alert from the office of the Keeper.

Curious, he flicked his wrist, throwing the letter in front of him and letting it open up to transform into a large screen. On the screen was a familiar scene, numerous cards being laid out and arranged. “Oh? It seems that they’re ordering another deck. I wonder what it will be this time.” He remarked, a slight glimmer in his black eyes.

Thanks to the inspiration from many years ago, he had opened a specialized service catered to newborn deities, selling them cards to help them take advantage of their domain. Through this, he had earned quite a stream of revenue, and had managed to purchase a physical data center to use as his base of operations for himself and his subordinates.

As he looked at the screen, he quickly began to discern the characteristics of each card that was appearing. “This is definitely the fourth-tier. But… one card calculates resource costs and production, another seems to be… pathing data?”

It took a little while for Blank to realize that these were not separate cards in the deck, but were rather being stored to be used as later components for a single card. “Could it be?” His eyes flashed in realization, his excitement rapidly growing.

I closed my eyes, counting down the seconds until the invasion began. Thankfully, Blank contacted us and cooperated to help get the new card completed, otherwise it was unlikely that Dana would have been able to do so in time by herself. Now, I felt it in my hand, waiting to be deployed at a moment’s notice.

Soon, it was time, and I felt the world seem to shift and lock around me. I knew that my connection with the Admin Room had been severed at this moment. Until the invasion was over, I wouldn’t be able to return, or even communicate with the others aside from their local incarnations.

“Tsubaki!” I shouted out, issuing my first order of the event. “Contact the fleets stationed at each world, and report any anomalies. You’re looking for a medium or larger spacecraft that would have suddenly appeared without any valid identification.”

“Understood, my Keeper!” She nodded seriously, leaning her head forward as she contacted the different groups, likely using avatars that she stationed at a communications relay.

My left hand clenched, hoping that they were unlucky enough to appear within detection range. According to the system prompt, there were exactly two hundred individuals sent in this invasion, which would have been more than enough to kick things off if we go by James’s estimate of events.

After roughly five minutes, Tsubaki raised her head, before shaking it. “No suspicious ships detected within the last hour, my Keeper.”

I cursed under my breath at that, slowly standing up. “Then, it’s time to play a game. Keep my presence confidential for the time being. There’s still the chance that they deployed ground troops.”

Tsubaki nodded, watching me walk out into the courtyard. In my right hand, I lifted up the card that I had commissioned, at the same time focusing to channel the Games domain. “Game, start. My opponents are all matured humanoid creatures who appeared in my worlds within the last ten minutes, grouped in teams of at least twenty individuals.”

Normally, such a demand would not be possible, no matter the card used. However, if the card is amplified by the Games domain, I can use my divine power to ‘force’ a game on a target group. Of course, for it to be a true game, both groups had to play it. Therefore, I naturally could not make it a game that allowed direct attacks.

Galactic Seeker is now online.

Registering players…

Two groups match target specifications. Invite both to play?

“Yes.” I said, focusing on my divinity to make it a far more forceful invitation. As the name implied, this was a game of galactic hide and seek, though it contained a city builder aspect. As a game itself, it was meant to give the players access to a simulation space, where they would be able to construct their own base.

From there, they would gradually upgrade and collect resources, until one side managed to penetrate the stealth systems of the other and find their location. For normal people, it was just a simple game to enjoy over the course of a few days in the background. Although I would have preferred to make the game faster paced, doing so would have likely cost far more divinity to keep it active in this state.

Nonetheless, Blank was excited as it represented a game created purely through cards, and showed a way that he could create his own divine deck. That was… not my intended reason behind creating this card, though.

According to the information that I obtained, my opponent would never use any type of supernatural energy. So, it is unlikely that they would have their own gods capable of countering a tracking method like this. And besides, there truly was a degree of risk to this plan, as it was possible for them to use it to track me instead.

At this moment, I was betting on the information I received being correct. MeatLover told me that the troops Silence deploys have their memories wiped from their world. If that’s true, and they retain only their military training and mission directive, they should not have the knowledge required to play this game. Furthermore, all of the prompts would be in an entirely foreign language to them.

Even with all of this, I had no desire to take unnecessary risks. If my world did not have a God of Stealth, I would not be as comfortable playing a game like this. With that domain in play, I was essentially playing this game with cheat codes.

Galactic Seeker has been accepted.

Players may access their bases at will.

Finally, the last domain that I could employ, changing the landscape of this game from a ‘simulated’ base to the real world. And also the reason that I had exited the citadel. My divine energy poured into the card, before I threw it out beyond the shield of the Sky Citadel, allowing it to stab into the dirt of a vast plains.

The Cities domain activated, bringing the simulated base to the real world. Buildings arose from the soil, creating what appeared to be a small, modern town. It’d be nice if the forced appearance of the city base directly destroyed their ships, but I doubt that’ll happen… that would violate the principle of the game, so it will likely just integrate itself into their ships instead.

Stepping off the ledge of the citadel, I allowed my body to plummet towards the ground below. As I descended, I could see numerous individuals walking throughout the town, the NPCs created by the game. Sadly, these NPCs were not true AIs like Blank, as the creation of those was not yet possible. Instead, each one served a specific purpose, like mining for resources or upgrading facilities.

I considered using pseudo-AIs created through cards like Ana, but decided that it would be best not to have them be too intelligent. If the AI was able to get around the language barrier, I would lose my lead.

Thus, I immediately began walking towards the Control Hub, where players would make the choices for their game. In truth, the rest of the city existed mostly as a visual example of the player’s progress, and to enable me to use the Cities domain to bring it to reality.

Once inside the Control Hub, I sat down, opening the menu. Since the game didn’t respond to voice, I silently navigated through the purchasing options, upgrading the data miners to pull in more resources. I was not ambitious enough to try and create a new type of material for this game that I would manifest from thin air, so the ‘resource’ that had to be harvested and spent was simply data.

I knew that it was a lazy way around the problem, but this was a somewhat rushed job. And the game itself was meant to be rather simple in its design. I’ll let Blank modify the game after the invasion to release it to the masses. Maybe they’ll find it fun after some more work is put in.

“What shall we do now, my Keeper?” Tsubaki asked, standing beside me. Having participated in the game’s creation, she surely knew that it would be some time before they were found using this method. Yet, it was far more likely to succeed than randomly searching through space.

“For now, we just pray that they don’t have a universal translator that can decrypt our language.” I said with a somewhat bitter smile. As the opponent was a pure technological world, this was entirely possible. It was even possible that the ‘fairness’ of the game made that not required, and the computers produced for the base on their end was in their own language.

“Keep the fleets in orbit. I’ll need six hours before I can start signal amplification, according to my initial plan.” In other words, for six hours I would be relying on the Stealth domain to keep my base hidden.

“Are you going to do this every invasion?” Dana asked curiously, looking at the map on the wall before me. The map was displaying NPC movements, and how they were currently upgrading the data nodes for increased resource harvesting. “It seems kind of…”

I shook my head, knowing what she was getting at. “If it wasn’t for the information that the opponent doesn’t use gods, I’d never resort to this plan. The proper domain could counter a game like this, or potentially even attack me through it. And against monsters… well, they wouldn’t even keep a single base to play the game, so they’d avoid it entirely.”

Tsubaki nodded, though seemed to think of something. “Then, what would happen if the invaders were to simply abandon their base and operate in a different region of space?”

I chuckled dryly at that. “It’s a risk, I’ll give you that. I’m betting on the information I received being correct, as well as my own conjecture. If they arrived with small numbers, with the intention of establishing a deep-space structure, then they likely only arrived with the essential resources needed.”

“If that is the case, they wouldn’t be able to afford to abandon their bases, because they need them to create their future fleet. The worst-case scenario is for them to only create a small factory at first, and then use that to build a new ship to take them elsewhere and start over, leaving the bases I ‘gave them’ behind. Most likely blowing them up in the process.”

“If they do that, the game should end because there will no longer be an enemy player. And if they don’t blow up their bases after they leave, we’ll get access to their technology once I’m able to track their location.”

I knew that this was by no means a perfect plan. Regardless, it was the best one that I could come up with using the resources at my disposal. It was simply too unreliable to send my main fleets out to scout for the enemy when I did not even know which universe they appeared in. That was why I set this game to be able to work across the dimensional boundaries.

Of course… interdimensional scanning was a much higher tier of research in the game, and only really meant to counter specific stealth types. Regardless, I included it due to the likelihood that the enemy would not appear in the same universe as myself.