The Masters of the Mystic Arts might not be the isolated monks the average person would believe but they were not very attached to the digital world. After all, what could the mundane world offer when you had the opportunity to learn magic? When one of the Acolytes informed the Ancient One of the problem she immediately went to investigate. After collecting one of the more technically inclined Masters among them, a Master Green, and waited as he attempted to remove the program.
"I don't know how this is possible. That should have worked. I deleted it from the hard drive, the computer says it worked, but when I go back to double check, it's still there. And when I checked the hard drive it's like I never deleted it in the first place." His frustration was apparent and a frown started to form on the Ancient One's face when she heard his words. Perhaps a demon had finally moved past their arrogance and discovered a new way to infiltrate the Sanctums.
Any demon that held any sort of power would disdain using such primitive devices. As if the fact the technology was created by mortal hands made it unworthy of their time. But when the Ancient One scanned the device for any taint her spells came back clean, and that caused her frown to deepen. Because it wasn't just free of any demonic taint it was clean of all magic. While it was possible Master Green's skills were just not up to par, the fact that the program was free of all magic meant something else was going on.
Everything had magic as magic was a fundamental part of the universe, it was like standing on a planet that didn't just have low gravity but no gravity at all. "Keep trying Master Green, I am going to see if I can find anything that may aid you." He nodded in understanding but his eyes never left the screen in front of him, the Ancient One nodded and turned around to leave. That same determination and focus was what made him one of the better guardians at the Sanctum.
But today they may need a little bending of natural laws to see if this discovery would help or harm. The Ancient One walked into the deepest depths of the Scantum, where the Eye of Agamotto was stored, both for its protection and as a focus for the wards. Once she arrived she lifted it from its pedestal and slipped it around her neck before making a couple of complex motions with her hands.
The center of the eye opened slowly and a green flash of light burst forth before a gem humming with power emerged from the hidden niche. The Ancient One closed her eyes and peered past the veil that surrounded the present and into the future. A moment later her eyes opened as she gasped in shock, "That is not possible!" The future she witnessed was not only remarkably different from the one she had worked towards, it also changed from second to second.
One moment the world was a paradise where every person on earth had everything they could dream of. In this future they constantly reached out to new worlds to try and spread this abundance to other worlds. But in the next moment that perfect world disappeared and instead different parts of the world were under the heel of powerful tyrants who ruled through cruelty and fear. And those were just two of the countless futures she saw, they spanned from utopias to apocalypses and everything in between.
Not to mention the effects earth now had on numerous other worlds, worlds in this universe and even worlds beyond our own. Reality and fate was being altered across time and space, and the worst part was, she could not find who was pulling the strings. That meant only one sort of Being could be at the heart of this chaos, a Beyonder. The Ancient One sighed and closed the Eye of Agamotto and placed it back onto the pedestal before walking back to the room where Master Green was still working furiously.
As she made her way back she tried to make plans to counter such an influence, but there was very little she could do. If such a being wished to stay hidden she would not be able to find it until it revealed itself so there was little she could do at the moment. However, if there was a silver lining in all this, it was that the Beyonders would not stay hidden for long. They were all drama queens so eventually it would reveal itself, most likely when and where it would draw the biggest audience.
Plus this might not be a bad thing, most Beyonders are playful instead of malicious so there is a chance they merely wish for some entertainment. When the Ancient One arrived in the room Master Green was working in she told him a brief overview of what she had seen. A neutral entity far beyond even her power had made the program and they would not be able to remove it without that being's permission.
When he asked what they should do next she shrugged in exasperation, "There is little we can do until the Being who made this reveals their intentions. So you may keep a watchful eye if you wish to do so, you may use the program, or even ignore it. But it is unlikely you will learn anything more than anyone else." After leaving that parting comment she turned around and walked away, her last thought on the subject was, not my problem.
Strange may only be starting his journey but soon enough this would be his problem to deal with and she could relax into retirement. Meanwhile halfway around the world I had let the day get away from me, it was something I always had trouble in my old world and I am kind of disappointed it carried over into this one. Back then whenever I would use social media or watch videos on youtube I would get sucked in and watch one after another until I wasted the day completely.
The worst part was that it wouldn't even be useless information and it was just interesting enough to keep me coming back for more. So to combat this I stayed as far away as I could from anything that would suck me in like that. And today I learned that this would need to be added to my list, I had things I needed to do after all. I couldn't spend all day watching videos, it didn't matter how entertaining they were.
But it was time for me to go to bed, I didn't even get to try my own game and my eyes were already having a hard time staying open. At least I would get some work done once I fell asleep, being able to work on my realm while I slept was very useful. Just watching the people interacting inside my realm had taught me a lot and there were many things I wanted to change. I wasn't sure I would have enough time tonight to implement everything I wanted to, but even if I ran out of things I wanted to add to the Oasis I could work on Minecraft.
Or I could even start working on one of the other games I was planning on making, there was just so much to do. So without stalling anymore I put together a quick dinner and shoveled it into my stomach before I rushed through getting ready for bed. And for once I didn't stall going to sleep by surfing the web or watching TV, I just laid in bed and tried to force myself to fall asleep.
Which turned out to be kind of hard when I was so excited and was actually trying to get to sleep as soon as possible. But eventually I managed to fall into the embrace of Morpheus, and between the blink of an eye I found myself back inside my realm. Now that I had access to the app I noticed It was a lot different to join the realms while I was awake and asleep. While I was awake it was like I was a part of that world, interacting with the people, walking down the streets and even eating the food alongside them.
But when I entered the realms in my dreams it was like I was outside the realm and anywhere I wanted to be at the same time. One moment I was gazing at the people enjoying this new aspect of their lives and the next I was standing in a crowd of people watching a skit a couple of comedians decided to put on. I bounced around a little but it was a little harder to enjoy when time was moving so much slower than me.
Everyone around me moved slower than a glacier as they laughed and ate and had the time of their lives. And while it did fill me with happiness to see that they enjoyed all the work I put into this, at the same time there was a very firm barrier between us. It really hammered home that I was an observer right now, I could have all the fun I wanted to while I was awake but right now I had a job to do, it might be the coolest job ever but still.
So I got to work, first I separated the changes I was making to the realms and what everyone was currently experiencing. I didn't want to have the realms change around them as they inhabited the same space I was changing, I imagine that would cause a not insignificant amount of panic. Instead I would make all the changes first and implement them all at once right before I woke up, or whenever I finished everything I could work on.
I still wasn't sure how long this was going to take, I was trying something new tonight after all. This was the first time I was working on the realms while there were people in it, so it could be that I wasn't able to spend weeks here in a single night anymore. I just didn't know, but judging from the speed everyone was moving the time ratio wasn't one to one so I should have more than a single night of work ahead of me.
The first thing I wanted to work on was the whole look of Oasis, it was too chaotic right now. At the very basis of the realms it took from people's thoughts and formed the world around them based on their memories and preferences. It was already something that was a part of how people dreamt, so I used that to fashion my realms from person to person.
Only the scale I had access to before today was very small, just my mind, and while I may have been an avid reader I wasn't the most well traveled person. But now I had access to the minds of every person that joined the realms today, not exactly the entire population but a large chunk of it at least. If I was an evil villain I could do a lot of bad with this kind of access so it was a good thing I wanted to make the world a better place.
With that in mind I decided not to even look through the information I had access to, changing the realms like that would kind of be like sculpting blindfolded. Not a very easy thing to do and it certainly wasn't going to be what my final version would look like but it would get the invasive part out of the way without a look through everyone's dirty laundry. But once I got the rough outline of what I wanted I would take a closer look at the areas that didn't quite come out right without paging through everyone's dairy.
Of course none of this worked like how I was trying to describe it but I was using my mind to shape a dimension through the thoughts of the people inhabiting it. The English language, or really any language, didn't have the words to describe what I was doing. But that didn't mean I was lost, I might not be able to explain it but that didn't mean I was a complete amature, I had built the first iteration after all. And after a few days of tweeks here and there I had a model of what the Oasis would look like tomorrow.
Then I pushed it to the side, as much fun as it was to design a city using aspects from every culture on the planet, it was time to start working on something a little more important. First I started to work on the rest of the Minecraft game, so far I had finished everything before hardmode but it was after you beat the Ender Dragon, that the game really started. With magic released from the Ender Dragon's seal and infusing the world with magic creatures of all sorts would start to awaken from their slumber, both bosses and regular monsters.
But it wasn't just those, I also had to add in all the new materials and everything you could make with them. There were also the events that were hardmode specific, and the NPCs that would show up in town after the dragon was defeated. Plus a ton of other details that took me another couple of days to work into the game, but eventually, after a week of working on Minecraft I finished the game exactly how I wanted.
And now that it was done I moved right on to something I thought of during my first few minutes exploring the inhabited realm tonight, time in the game. I wanted to change how time flowed after I noticed just how slow people were when I watched them tonight. If I could move this fast, why couldn't they? Well, it turns out that it wasn't that easy, being the master of this realm I had a little more ability to bend the rules of time to my whim.
But that didn't mean that I couldn't make a little more time for everyone else, I managed to change the time scale from one to one to one in ten. For every hour spent in the game ten would pass in the real world, I wanted more but any more and the brain would literally start to overheat. Thanks to my safety measure it literally couldn't get to the point of brain boiling but it could get close.
But at ten to one the worst that would happen was slight fever, same if you had a hard workout. And that was only if you were right on the edge of being kicked from the game for hours upon hours and that was highly unlikely. People couldn't just stay that stressed for long periods of time, there had to be at least some variation. When the stress level fell they would recover and if it rose again for long enough then they would be kicked and could get a glass of water or something.
Once I solved the problem of time inside the game I worked on the next step. Now that they had all that time, what would they do with it? Well some would be satisfied with just playing Minecraft the whole time or hanging out in Oasis with their friends but I wanted them to have more options than that. The first thing I added took almost no time at all, I had already done most of the work when I used all the memories stored in Oasis to sculpt the city.
Extracting their knowledge took even less time, it would have been much more difficult to do so if this realm didn't allow me to cheat so much. But here it was like pulling on a string, I held the idea of what I wanted firmly in my mind and pulled. It still took a few hours sorting it out into a usable form but soon I had an archive full of knowledge. And it wasn't just a bunch of dry textbooks filled with formulas and dates, there was also a portion that was for practical skills.
Once the building this was all going to be anchored to was put in I would dedicate a section where anyone could practice any skill they desired. From perfecting a kickflip to performing surgery, or even attempting to paint a masterpiece. Using memories of people performing those skills as a base I made simulations they could play through that would teach them those skills.
I even used a bit of power that I collected yesterday to add a little bit of muscle memory to anything they practiced here. It took so little energy that I set it so anyone who used it would charge the energy in turn so it only needed that first spark before it became self sufficient. Of course I knew that there was also a chance people would abuse this knowledge so to get access to each simulation you had to learn the requisite knowledge from the books first.
And even before they stepped into one of the simulations they would be informed that any skill they practiced could be looked up by the authorities. I might be a tad zealous about teaching but that didn't mean I was blind to the possibilities, knowledge was power and not everyone would use that power for good. Walking the line between privacy and security was difficult but I leaned more to the side of if you didn't have anything to hide then you shouldn't mind your information being public.
I didn't completely agree but I couldn't think of a better way to protect people and allow them access at the same time. It was a little disappointing that no magic user had joined the realms yet, but at the same time maybe it was better if I waited until I had a more concrete system in place. Of course I was hoping that once they confirmed that I wasn't a demon trying to steal their souls or something they would join in and I would get access to magic.
And once I could be sure of the safety of others I would be adding a new section to the archives and simulations. How they would get real world experience would be a bit harder, from what I could remember from the movies you had to connect to the universe's energies. I'm pretty sure that would require more energy than would be self sufficient. Something to think about another time, like when I actually had access to that information.
Overall humans were a very weak race and if things moved like they did in the MCU we are not going to be left alone for much longer. Sooner or later someone was going to come knocking and I for one wanted the human race to have the ability to give a black eye to whoever showed up to see what we were doing on this little blue dot. Even in the comics there were plenty of visitors that came and they usually didn't demand to see our leaders, they just plowed through the regular folk like they weren't even there.
Well that wasn't going to be so easy now, it would take time but I would elevate the human race so anyone would be able to join the fight against any who would try and rule over us. Once I finished the archive I had to think of a cool name, after a few minutes the only thing I could come up with was the Library of Alexandria. It wasn't the worst name and it fit the theme rather well but I was hesitant to use it. Because in some Marvel continuities it hadn't actually burned but instead was split between a few places.
But on the other hand it was a really good name, collecting all the world's knowledge and providing access to anyone. Yeah, there wasn't a better name, so if the Eternals, Namor, or Wakanda wanted to raise a fuss, too bad. They didn't share that knowledge with the rest of the world so they would have no right to complain when I did. With that decision I shook my head and got back to work, the library still needed a few more tweeks but I had a lot of time left for tonight.
Now that the library and city were done I think it was time I got started on the next game I wanted to release. I made a very big and complicated first game to attract everyone's attention so the next few games would be smaller and easier to swallow before I released my masterpiece. Maybe I'll release a few hints about it in the smaller games, or maybe I'll just drop a couple of easter eggs around Oasis to really build up that tension.
I'm not sure how I would hint about another Fantasy game in a racing game or a fighting game. But maybe I could add one to the kingdom building game, I don't know yet but I have plenty of time to figure it out. I still had a couple of weeks worth of time tonight and I planned to make the most of it.