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Chapter 840: Update

Looking through the point totals, I was rather pleasantly surprised. This was only my fourth time in the annual meeting, so earning nearly a hundred thousand points at once was really nice. Of course, I had to do a short double take when I saw the note after Lifre’s entry.

Not only did she get the most points overall, but she even got an attack ticket? I looked around at the others, only to find Keliope grinning at me. Seeing how she had the same exact total as Tsubaki, and seeing that expression, it felt like she had kept up with that group. “What happened?”

“It was pretty cool!” Keliope said with that same grin. “At first, Tsubaki and I paired up while Dana and Lifre went off on their own. We spent most of the time playing games by ourselves, but we met up on the last day to go over our results. Tsubaki and I were playing a cooperative game, so we both got pretty good points. But they did a competitive one… some kind of adventure maze.”

“According to them, Lifre hit the first place prize all three times they played. It was kind of funny watching Dana pout like that, even though we all knew she was really happy.” Keliope chuckled after saying that much, and I could just imagine the scene myself.

“Aww, I was hoping I’d be able to give him the ticket myself.” Lifre said, her cheeks ballooning out on either side of her face. As they had been in the middle of dinner when they were sent to the meeting, they were all naturally brought back to the same place. However, the Keeper still sat frozen, indicating that he had not returned to his body yet.

“I’m sure that he’s just reviewing how everyone did.” Dana said with a smile, reaching over to pat Lifre’s shoulder. “We managed to bring in a bigger haul than last time, after all.”

Tsubaki nodded her head, setting about cleaning up the table. They had already eaten just before the meeting ended, using the last bit of time to enjoy another system-prepared meal. “Indeed, we made quite good progress. I wouldn’t be surprised if Lifre is given a special reward for her work.”

“Wha?!” Lifre’s eyes went wide, and she quickly shook her head. “It was a wedding present! You don’t get rewards for giving presents!”

Dana blinked in surprise with how adamant Lifre seemed about this. “It’s not about that. Last meeting, he let us have a choice of rewards based on our points. For myself, I asked for the solid mana refineries that the Citadel released way back. And Tsubaki…” Dana gave a small grin as Tsubaki clutched the necklace that she was wearing, contained within a compass that seemed to be constantly turning.

“Ohhh… so it’s not like a reward for me, just something I get to pick to help out the world?” Lifre asked, seeming far more alright with this than if she had simply received a reward for giving a nice present.

“That’s right.” Tsubaki confirmed with a soft smile. “Given how much you earned, you should be able to pick out something quite nice. If I were you, I would begin thinking about what I wanted.”

“Well… what kinds of things are my options?” She asked in confusion, tipping her head until it bounced off her small shoulder.

“Remember, this is the Keeper we’re talking about.” Dana emphasized, shaking her head. “You could ask for some special blueprint that you think we need, or a change to a certain race that is falling behind, or you could even ask for an entire new system to be added to the world!”

Lifre’s eyes went far wider when she heard that, her head standing straight up on her neck again. “Woah… okay, uhm… yeah, I can think of some stuff!” Dana and Tsubaki simply smiled at each other when they heard that, curious to see what kind of changes Lifre would ask to make.

After speaking with the others about their meeting misadventures, I joined Ashley as we went to check up on the new office building across the street from our Admin Room home. It had been a few weeks since her group had really started their work, but I hadn’t received any updates on their progress.

“Did you run into any new problems when you were setting up the inventory?” I asked in concern as we reached the office, though Ashley simply shook her head to deny it.

“No, we were able to finish the inventory system after just a few days, once the entire team got working on it. They are… even better than I could have imagined. Honestly, they’re better programmers than myself, if I don’t use my divine domain to cheat. They’re the kinds of people that could complete a full game in a weekend, as long as they had the art assets prepared.”

“I do have to admit that none of them are graphics specialists, but that’s not a big problem since we are dealing with real world effects. I just had to make the interface for the inventory myself.”

“Then…?” I let my words trail off curiously, but Ashley simply smiled and led me into the building. To my surprise, I saw all ten of her team members diligently working. It was hard to tell if they had just come back knowing that their vacation was over, or if they had been working all this time despite having the option to take the last few days off.

“Jamira, how is the progress coming?” Ashley called out, one of the members of the team jumping to her feet and walking over with a clipboard. This was a human-looking woman with a mousy expression, but a wide, bright smile.

“We’re running the final debug crunch now, Ashley!” She answered with a firm nod. “Jaune found six possibly system breaking bugs in the last batch that caused the party system to fail under certain circumstances like the death of one member, or if someone went off-world. We patched the problem, and are just checking to make sure it didn’t cause any other issues.”

Ashley nodded her head in satisfaction, before turning to face me with a wide smile. “It looks like we got here just in time.”

“What’s going on?” I asked in surprise. Clearly, they were reworking the party system as well, but…

“Like I said, you got me some great people. Honestly, the systems in this world aren’t that complicated from a development standpoint. The hardest part is how to identify specific actions and correlate that into the code. For instance, getting the skill system working. Speaking of which, this will cause a full wipe of currently saved skills. Pretty unavoidable, since we’re editing how they’re stored.”

“Anyways, since that code already exists in the main system, we just needed to find it and port it over. Then, adapt it to the new code, and we’re good. After that, just remake all of the current systems based on existing code in a more modular format.”

“So… you have finished the system overhaul? For both Earth and Lorek?” I asked in surprise, Ashley nodding her head.

“I know that I’m not that good with the games in the Keeper Meeting. So, I thought that this would make the best wedding present that I could give you. And before you ask, yes I already set up the system protection. We have special admin accounts that are entirely tuned to our profiles. Currently, the only ones with those accounts are you and I, so anyone trying to hack the system will need to have a ludicrous level of skill to avoid the backlashes that we set up.”

I gave a small nod at that, surprised by how much she had managed to get done in this time. At first, I was worried that she wouldn’t be able to get it done for several months, or that she might not have managed to get the inventory system working. “Okay, so… from now on we need to get the system updates through you, instead of the market?” I asked to confirm, though Ashley furrowed her brow, shaking her head.

“There will be some that my team won’t know how to do without a working example. For instance, the trigger actions resemble an extremely complicated type of void script written through the system code. That’s how they can identify different movements as the same action, as long as it has the same purpose. Whenever you want to get an upgrade for the system, just come and ask. If it’s something we can do, we’ll make it for you. Otherwise, you can buy it on the testbed world, then we can deconstruct the code to import it into your world.”

“Honestly, all of this is closer to building a system emulator than writing a new system itself. Everything we need is already there, we just need to put it together differently to make it work how we want.”

“Got it.” I smiled, glad to know that we wouldn’t reach a dead end so easily, and that her testbed world would still have a proper use after all of this. As I said that, there was a ding from the nine computers, one of the men looking up and slowly rubbing his forehead.

“All clear!” He called out, the others lifting their arms in celebration as they cheered.

“Well, then.” Ashley grinned. “Shall we do the honors?” As she said that, she looked at the same mousy girl from before, who ran over and handed her what seemed to be a thumb drive.

“I wonder when he’ll be getting back…” Lifre said, looking over at the body of the Keeper that still sat at the table with an expressionless face. “I thought it’d only take him a couple minutes to review the points totals?”

Dana shook her head, seeming confused herself. “Maybe one of the others wanted to talk to him about something?” She suggested with a shrug of her shoulders. However, her concerns were answered when a window appeared in front of everyone’s face.

Dana’s eyes went wide, having never seen a message like that appear in front of her. Tsubaki, however, seemed to recall an old story, nodding her head. “Let’s just wait and see.”

The three nodded their heads to one another, though Dana glanced over to see Gerard entering the room with a confused look on his face. No doubt the message had appeared for him as well, but she shook her head to signal for him to wait.

After five minutes, they could all feel something being dissolved around them. None of them were able to see their minimaps, or view their character sheets for an entire minute before it all came back at once.

“...But I was going to suggest a marriage system!” Lifre pouted her lips as she read through the message, causing Dana and Tsubaki to chuckle knowingly.