Chapter 89: Bootstrap

  CROWN

  So much work to do.

  It sounded like a lot when I said it out loud. At a minimum I had about 400 years of time in my world to work with, and maybe an entire millennium. For any mortal being, that would have been a lengthy time period, something that they could see some real change with. For what I wanted to do, it was an extremely tight schedule that I needed to get started as soon as possible.

  I let Duck handle choosing where to put the various dungeons. Even with time slowed down, she probably wouldn't be assigning souls to the dungeons right away. That gave me some time to plan out the extra species or two that I needed.

  Downside would be fine, I realized. The vaskan had spread far and wide already, though they had not yet reached the barriers at either end. I was sure they would encounter the insect based species that I had created very soon, possibly within the next century, but I certainly was not going to interfere with first contact between those two. I would simply have too much to do. I couldn't afford to spend so much time stuck in an Avatar at 1:1 time.

  Even better, the vaskan had at some point splinter off into an aquatic sub species. Some of them must have consume the core of aquatic monsters or animals and collectively chosen to breathe underwater or something. Or perhaps they just started breeding true before making that cultural decision. Either way I now had a sub species that could handle the oceans of downside. That was important because incursions could appear anywhere, though I wasn't sure if they would appear in places where there were no sapient beings to believe in them.

  Better safe than sorry.

  That still left Upside to consider. They didn't have any intelligent aquatic species, and while the elves had developed ships and ocean travel, it was still relatively dangerous compared to overland travel. Magic helped a lot, but the oceans were big and ships were relatively small. That left too much open space for the elves to handle, and they were so slow at reproducing that I still had a huge amount of land to worry about, too.

  Fortunately, I had already worked on a template for a new species that was aquatic. It was another uplift, and I tried it at first because I’d thought it was cool. I’d also thought it would take less effort than the elves. I was completely wrong, but now I thanked my past self’s persistence and stubbornness in pursuing it anyway.

  It turns out that just making octopuses is more intelligent doesn't make them an intelligent species. In fact, they were quite close to being sapient already according to my interface. They’d had numerous other problems that I had to solve in order to make them a viable uplift. I still wasn't sure exactly how they would perform, but I had the template ready.

  I'd had to slow down their impressive regeneration and make their camouflage abilities less impressive, but fortunately, the biggest problem was that they were biologically coded to die soon after breeding. I had wanted a swiftly reproducing species, but I actually had to slow down their breeding so they would have more reason to stay alive and guide their young. It was paradoxical in some ways, and had been a huge project. It was one of the reasons I hadn't already seeded the new species.

  The end result was still one of the shorter lived species, as they would top out at about 40 or 50 years. I just couldn't extend it much further without taking away so much that it wouldn't be worth it. The sacrifices I'd made were necessary just to keep themselves from burning out. Their body type had changed very little since I put the octopuses in, but like all animals they'd learned to use their magical environment. And like their physical form, their use of mana tended to just burn them out. I’d had to reduce their mana conduits as well.

  I had 8,731 Reality Points – which seemed a little low, honestly, I could have sworn I’d have had more by this point – and burned over a thousand just populating the oceans with the new octopus people. I didn’t bother to change their actual physical form much. No need, and I was curious how it’d work with such an alien biology.

  “Okay, time for a faster-breeding species,” I said aloud.

  Duck looked up from her own interface. “Getting them up to a technological and organized society in a few hundred years is going to be rough. We might need to interfere.”

  “Maybe,” I agreed. “But I have an idea. It’s a bit of a gamble but it could work.”

  Duck looked on curiously – and I could see she was observing what I was doing through her own interface – while I brought up some of my in-progress projects. I had one in particular that was very promising, and in fact, something that I had initially wondered if I should get rid of would now prove very useful.

  My constraints were simple. I needed a species that was intelligent, probably more short-lived than the elves by a considerable amount, reproduced quickly, and could ramp up from the Stone Age to the Bronze or Iron Age relatively quickly. Actually, it needed to be insanely fast, because going from the Stone Age to the Iron Age in 400 years was basically not possible under normal circumstances.

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

  I had only just realized that I had the perfect specimen. At least, I thought it would be perfect. I'd learned by now that nothing on this job was predictable. Intelligent life just had an annoying habit of going sideways from where I wanted.

  This particular uplift was an avian species. I had already done some work in making them more capable of building and using tools, and increasing their size. Large birds were not very common in my world, but thanks to magic they could exist with the proper monster core. These wouldn't have monster cores, but I could certainly give them all an inbuilt method of allowing them flight. They would have to do most of their manipulation with their feet, but that was fine.

  My chosen species looked to be roughly descended from the crows I had put into the world. They had changed a decent amount, mostly in actually picking up some varied plumage in coloration and style. I noted with amusement that it was the males that had broad and complex tail feathers, and crests. I was pretty sure that was how peacocks and roosters worked as well. From a human point of view, the males of the species would look delicate, glamorous, and pretty compared to the females.

  Being an Administrator had really helped me realize the variety in life.

  One thing that these birds kept from their crow ancestry was the intelligence and mimicry. When they had developed magical abilities, they had even created a sort of power copy that they could do. I made that a part of their genetic template, as well as the ability to reduce their mass to allow them to fly. Sadly, the structural changes required to make them tool-using kept them from being particularly graceful flyers compared to full birds.

  “Mimicry?” Duck asked. “Oh… I get it. Stick them close to some Aravel or something, and they’ll start copying things. Move them up into agriculture and tool use earlier than they’d do so naturally.”

  I nodded. “And in this case it is natural. Now that I think about it, we’re adjusting for the fact that this is a multi-species world. Just like human cultures learned from one another once they made contact, this should do the same thing but on a broader scale. At least, that’s my hope.”

  I didn't just tweak and go. I had to make sure they kept their social inclinations. My hope was that they would communicate with one another frequently, and their ability to fly would let them spread much faster. I was gambling on this, but with such a short timeframe to work with, I didn't have much choice.

  The new species was dubbed Rooken, so I wouldn’t have the problem of a clumsy name until they named themselves like I’d done with the vaskan. They could call themselves whatever they wanted, the auto translate would turn it into what I knew them as anyway.

  This only left placing the new species. With the octopus race – which I dubbed the Haptix – I could just spread them all over and hope that they would spread. This new species needed a solid start and a way to get exposure to the elf civilizations. I couldn't just drop them right next to an elf, though. That would result in confusion that could possibly lead to a genocidal war. That was the last thing I needed.

  At first, I consider placing them across from elven settlements next to bodies of water. The elves were still somewhat cautious of crossing water that didn't have land in sight. I stopped myself from that when I realized that the rooken wouldn't be able to fly that far. Instead, I concentrated on spreading them wide and made sure to place several large groups near to some smaller settlements at the edge of settled elven territory.

  “Now I just need a way to make sure they’ll run into one another sooner rather than later,” I finished, rubbing my chin. Another thousand or so Reality Points had gone into this, and that hurt, even if I no longer had the debt garnishing me. “I should probably make one more a little later, to provide some more pressure. Something like goblins or something.”

  Duck waggled her finger. “One problem at a time, Donut boy.” She lifted her tail slightly to draw my attention. “Have you thought about some Quests to help out?”

  That made me almost facepalm with how I’d overlooked the option. I’d literally invented that system to help encourage a direction without messing with free will. Hadn’t Duck mentioned something about a chat? That sounded like the easiest way to handle this.

  “I really should have made Sub-Terminals before,” I commented as I opened the chat interface and set the time dilation to 1:1.

  | CROWN: Hello again, everyone. ?

  | CROWN: Another Tastka name. ?

  | EYSSA: I cleaned up your mess when you left suddenly. ?

  | CROWN: Thanks. I won’t be doing that so often now, so it shouldn’t be needed much. ?

  | SOLEN: You really are a strange Soul-Sister. Are we truly alike any more? ?

  | CROWN: I don’t know, but I still have a deep fondness for all of you. ?

  | CROWN: I do have a favor to ask, though. I need the elves exploring the other direction, Dawnward. ?

  | EYSSA: Sounds like a job for me. ?

  | CROWN: If you would. I wonder if one of you could also encourage trade with the dwarves? We have a big problem coming in a few hundred years. ?

  | CROWN: Can you all count that high now? I know it used to be a problem. ?

  | KELAS: As our believers learn to do things, so do we. ?

  | SOLEN: That Reyth girl you met is working on it. That surprised me. She seems pretty intent on it, but I don’t think any of us gave her a Quest. Sometimes it just sorts itself out. ?

  | CROWN: I guess that’s one less thing to worry about.

  I couldn’t zoom in on the day to day lives of anyone, but since I had met Reyth I could find her in the interface pretty quickly. I pulled up her sheet and saw that she’d jumped several levels and picked up two more Primary Classes. That was a surprise.

  Just like Solen said, it looked to me like she had no Quest to do it, but she was definitely in the Homelands now. Something must have inspired her to travel that way. Curious, but I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  I had far too many other things to worry about.

  You Missed the War

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