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Chapter 1144: Thinking Ahead

It was almost surreal how quickly the people were able to put behind them the catastrophe that had destroyed numerous planets and countless living beings. Considering just how dangerous the event was, nothing seemed to have changed after it was over. There was no societal upheaval, no real panic in the streets.

The biggest upset was when the people saw the carcass of the giant monster, which was visible from Earth with the naked eye. However, even this was quickly forgotten after Clara had its body devoured and converted into an army of drones. She did something similar to the other monsters that were located close to the inhabited systems.

As for what she did with these drones? They were used to assemble massive ships, using designs taken from Fragments of Acidia, modified with the latest designs from the Metong. These ships were donated to the primary worlds as an additional combat force, simply waiting for crew to be assigned to them.

Elsewhere, Udona let out a helpless sigh, looking at Aznod. The latter had an excited look on his face, but she could only shake her head. “You can’t be thinking of harvesting the meat from those giant figures, can you?” She asked, and Aznod looked at her with a nod.

“Of course. Think of the exotic flavors that could come from beings of such magnitude. They would be able to feed countless worlds.”

“For a day.” Udona pointed out. “Moreover, think of how long it will take you to harvest them. Even if you use the DC scanner and only sample small portions, how much of the meat will have rotted by the time you get to it?”

Aznod hesitated at that. He didn’t know how quickly this meat would rot, especially since it was being ‘preserved’ in the vacuum of space. Though, with that said, the sheer size of their bodies meant that it would take some time for the cold to truly seep into their bodies. And they had already been left out for days, some of them over a week. It wouldn’t be surprising if most of the usable meat had already gone bad.

“I suppose you have a point.” He said with a nod. Although it was regretful, it didn’t seem like he would have the chance to add a new ingredient to his collection on this day.

“Forget about that for now.” Udona laughed, moving over to lean against him. “What about the sixty-sixth floor of Fyor? Have you gotten anything good from there?”

Aznod blinked, a wide smile on his face. The sixty-sixth floor of Fyor was one where everything had been ‘contaminated’ by a relic with the power of the Food domain. Thus, everything on the floor, whether it was the beasts, water, even the ground itself, was an amazing delicacy.

“There are too many things there for me to have experimented with them all. However, the dungeons that Aurivy created provide a number of fascinating monsters. I’ve used them as a basis to create a snack food similar to what is provided by the Hajit. I’ll be sure to serve you some soon.”

Udona licked her lips at that, nodding her head eagerly. “I’d love to.” She said in a wistful tone.

Elsewhere in the universe, Pierce sat in a hotel room, looking through his notebook. He could confirm that the major threats had passed, so he waited. Given his experience, he believed that the Keeper or his people would come for him soon. Having someone able to predict disasters was too important of an asset.

When he went to meet the Keeper, he had resolved himself to the possibility that he would not be allowed to leave Olympus. Even after he did leave Olympus, he was still sure that he could be called back at any given moment. Without his contribution to the battle, he believed that many more planets would have been lost. In fact, he had seen such in his notebook.

In the last page of his notebook, he had written a small section for him to fill in details about how the Keeper would capture him. It was written in such a way that he could immediately mark something down the moment anyone came for him. Thus, he wasn’t worried that he wouldn’t have time to write out what he needed to do when the time came.

However, no matter how long he stared at the notebook, or how far into the future he looked, no new writings appeared on that page. He was even suspicious that they confiscated the journal from him or destroyed it, so he wrote out another section, this one to mark various days when they hadn’t gone after him.

This time, markings appeared, and he recognized his own handwriting. Every few days, he would mark down the date, and this continued for as long as Pierce continued to look into the future. “They’re… not coming for me?” He asked in surprise. He had expected that they might take a while to get to him, but not that they would simply let him go entirely.

Eventually, he closed his eyes, taking off his glasses and massaging his forehead. It was for the best if they didn’t come for him. He had just been wanting to prepare himself. After all, even if he tried to evade them, there was no escaping the Greater Pantheon.

I guess I worried myself for nothing. He thought to himself. With a sigh, he closed the journal. He hadn’t foreseen any other disasters lurking around the corner just yet, so he was going to take his time to wander naturally.

Thankfully, there weren’t many documents that I had to take care of in the days following the invasion and subsequent release of the streaming service. Granted, there were a few people who tried to attack the streaming website online, seeking to hack into it and gain access to all of the money passing through it.

However, those efforts were ultimately fruitless, as we didn’t have the technology capable of doing things at the level of removing system restrictions yet. Instead, they were quickly located by local law enforcement, who apprehended them as soon as they were identified.

With the clean-up of the invasion settled, that left… very little that I needed to immediately concern myself with. I was actually surprised, having expected that I would need to make some big speech to calm the masses. As it stood, it actually felt like giving such a speech would only make people more aware of how much danger they had been in, further inciting chaos.

When I looked at the report from Chelsea, I widened my eyes in surprise. She had written in a report that she believed it would take her team only a month to have a blueprint set up for the new world that they were working on. However, she also reported that this new world would have its own system for the time being, and that the NPC that they created had told them that it would take a bit longer before they were able to do a system merge safely.

Still, even with the possibility of a system merge further off, it was surprising that they were so confident that they would be able to complete the new world within a month. I had expected it to be accelerated, but I thought I would still need to skip over a few years for us to reach the finished product.

As for what world they were planning to create? It seemed as if they were working with Ashley to make this new world with the code that she had prepared for her latest game. This game had its story designed by Galahan, and had been adapted into the series he had named the Night Verse. Thus, the name that Ashley had given the game was Night Code.

I was curious to see how this would turn out. Once Night Code was finished, I was sure that I would be promoted to the Fifth Rank as a Keeper. Thus, I closed my eyes, thinking about the timing. If I was to be invaded in my next match, and the invasion was set up before my promotion, then I would only be invaded by a Fourth Rank Keeper.

However, if the match was set up after the promotion, then I would be pitted against a Fifth Rank Keeper. Because of this, I needed to make sure that I didn’t fast forward time at all until the match was set. That would buy me more time to find ways to deal with Origins, or other similarly dangerous threats.

At worst, I would need to use my defense ticket if I ended up on the defense against a dangerous Keeper, allowing me to skip a month. However, even if I was clever about how I used both of the tickets at my disposal, the longest that I would be able to ensure my safety would be until the next annual meeting. And this time, I doubted that the system would be kind enough to make the tickets available from games that my people were specialized in.

This meant that it was only a matter of time before I had to deal with those powerful threats. Part of me was curious how Sarah was handling it, though… from what I recall, people don’t typically attack her with big threats, due to her popularity. Anyone that seriously tried to take out Sarah would become the enemy of everyone who enjoyed her games.

Because of that, it was unlikely that she had had to deal with any Origins yet. She might not have even learned the trick to making one herself. And, given that she was the highest ranked Keeper in my guild, that severely limited the number of people that I could turn to for advice. Specifically, it limited it to zero, unless I asked the Gilded Branch, which would probably cost a large sum of points.

For the time being, I’ll try to deal with it on my own. If I run out of time before I am able to create a proper Origin-level combat force, I’ll consult the Gilded Branch for advice.

This felt like back when I had cultivated gods for the first time. In reality, this could be seen as a similar jump in power. A combat-oriented Origin should be able to effortlessly destroy an entire universe, if they were at their full power. This could be seen when looking at the Origin of Fate, who had managed to identify and kill every giant monster in every universe once she had obtained enough energy to use her power freely.

Of course, those giant monsters weren’t gods, or even energy beings. They were all physical creatures, the easiest to be targeted. Still, the fact that she managed to identify and target all of them at once was an impressive feat.

If she was actually a combat-oriented Origin, she would have probably been able to take care of it even more easily. For those that have Origins, there probably isn’t any point in sending out a combat force that isn’t capable of fighting on that level.