Creation: Book 3: Strandbinder Complete!

Walker began to head towards the entrance, ready to ask Heph some questions. As he stepped forward, he quickly realized that he'd forgotten the one-hundred-vault chest, and turned around. Picking it up, he whispered to the living chest beside him, "Come on."

He saw it vibrate a little, but there was no movement aside from that.

"What's wrong?" He asked, not really expecting it to answer, "Is something holding you back?"

The chest vibrated again, but never moved from its spot.

Walker scratched his chin, thinking. It should be able to move, otherwise, what was the point of the life strand? Figuring it out, he snapped his fingers, "You don't have full control of your body, do you?" Stepping closer, he put a hand on the side of the chest as he took a knee, "Sorry little guy. Here, let me help you out."

Reaching into his overlay, he gathered five life strands and placed the green glowing substance against the chest. It took the resources easily, a green coloring quickly outlining its body before disappearing.

"How's that?" He asked.

The lid of the chest opened a little on its own, before closing with a bang, unable to hold its joints in place.

"More?"

Walker again reached toward his overlay for another five resources, but based on the strength of the chest's movements, realized it needed quite a bit more. He gathered twenty life strands this time, soaking it into the living wood with a flash of green.

This time the chest opened and closed its lid easily, the action looking almost like a mouth shifting its jaw for the first time.

"How about this time?"

The chest moved a little, the corners of it moving up and down as if it enjoyed what he was doing.

"I should've just used that ability." Walker lamented, thinking of the lost strand resources, "But, experimentation is why I have this free time in the first place." Shrugging, he looked a little closer, trying to figure out how it was moving in the first place. The chest didn't have muscles, so how was it able to control its body like that?

"Wizard shit." He said out loud, "Wait a second....I'm the Wizard. It's my Wizard shit....."

Walker in that moment became a member of an elite club called the selfawarewolves. Shrugging a second time, he asked the chest to follow him. Small thudding sounds echoed behind him as he began to walk, again carrying the one-hundred-vault chest on a path to where he thought Heph's smithy was.

"What to name you?" He said as they exited the building, spying some Founders pointing at him but ignoring their faulty adulation. "I don't need to go with Dante's Inferno as you're not an assistant, and I don't need to go with harmonies and symphonies as you're your own thing, my somewhat wooden friend. So, we get a new theme!" He noticed his pace was a little too fast for the living chest to keep up, lagging a decent distance behind as it struggled to keep up. He slowed down a little, apologizing.

They walked past a group of Founders sitting around Echidna, who was in the act of explaining the basic reproductive system to them. He didn't like the motions she was making with her hands, but it was information a newly created group of humans should know.

"You're a box, so....Boxy?"

The chest showed no reaction.

"Okay, no then. Coffrey? Like a coffin?"

"Trunks? You'd have to be blue, of course. No?"

They moved beyond the arena at this point, entering an area with a fancy-looking orange sign stating Crafting District, Fuck around and find Heph.

"How about Caddy?"

The chest stopped hopping for a moment. Walker looked back and found it opening and closing its lid with excitement.

"Ah, you like it?"

It hopped from one wooden corner to another.

"Alright then. Caddy it is. Come on Caddy, we're almost there." He said, noticing a few larger smithies with an assortment around them. It seemed that Heph had been quite busy in the last two months, creating several working areas for differing skill levels. Walker spied some that just had a simple setup which a basic apprentice might need, while others had many options within, including molds and bright silvery-sheened metal. He walked past them all and entered the largest one in the middle.

Finding the god of crafting and smithing wasn't difficult. He was currently yelling at a young woman who had arms that would fit better on a bodybuilder than the petite form he saw in front of him.

"I told ya! You have to heat it slowly, not all at once! What are you, a blasted idiot?"

Walker saw her cheeks redden, although he didn't know if that was because of anger or embarrassment.

"Don't you ever do that again! Ya'v wasted the material and I'll not have that in my smithies."

She clenched her hands at her side, "You barely even know what you're talking about! Ethereal Ore has different proper-"

"I don't know!" He yelled back, taking two steps forward and getting in her face, "I don't know!" A bit of spittle just barely missed the side of one of her cheeks, "I'm the gods-damned god of smiths you moron. Do ya think that name not mean something?" He looked at the ceiling before looking down at her with a roll of his eyes, "Get out of my shop!"

She took a step back, "But, I was-"

"Get out!" He yelled again, pointing one soot-covered meaty finger toward the exit. That was when he noticed Walker standing there holding a chest. The Founder saw him as well, her face turning even more red if that were possible, and ran right by him.

Walker put his chest down and hooked a thumb toward the exiting woman, "Was that Karen?"

Heph blew some air out of his nose, "Yes. The damned idiot is always doing stupid things, even though she is as wrong as a person can be. Fool. You would think after awakening she'd have caught a glimmer of how stupid she is, but alas, some people are truly deluded." He spied the chest behind him as well as the one in his hands, "What's going o-" Heph took two steps back when Caddy hopped forward. "By Alma! What is that?"

Walker turned and looked at the chest, "That's Caddy, a new creation of mine. Caddy, say hello."

The chest lifted its lid once before closing it again.

Walker looked back at Heph, who was now positioned behind a table as if it would protect him, "What on Earth have you done now, Walker?"

He shrugged, "What? I gave life to an inanimate object that doubles as a massive storage container. Are you saying you wouldn't do the same?"

Heph face shifted from fearful to confused, ".....what?"

"His name is Caddy, and he has a pocket dimension ability. Don't you Caddy?"

The chest bounced left and right, hopping up next to him.

"He can't talk, but he understands me pretty well. Of course, I did put a lot of consciousness strands into him, so that makes a good bit of sense." Walker scratched his chin, "I wonder if adding consciousness increases their-"

"Helloooo!!!" Heph said, waving his hand in front of Walker's face while he was zoning out, "Why did you bring him here?"

Walker snapped out of it, "Oh, sorry. This chest." He said, planting the plain one down on the ground, "Is a one-hundred-vault. That means it holds over 100 times its size. That should be...yeah..a little bigger than the smithy here. Just make sure you tell it what you're adding before you do, and it'll always return the items you place into it by vocal request."

Heph looked around the shop, measuring it in his mind while mouthing the words vocal request before nodding, "Okay, and what about that creature."

"That's...ummm...for you? He's a gift, for everything you've done for Sonata. He'll follow you around, holds half as much as the one-hundred-vault, and has a good temperament." Walker paddy Caddy beside him, "He's a good boy."

The living chest bounced around, vibrating.

Heph didn't look convinced, "Uh-uh, and, what do I feed him?"'

"Pets? I don't know." Walker said, putting his hands on his hips, "I don't think you get it."

"Why would I feed a chest dogs? What kind of monster did you create?" Heph asked, sliding back behind the table he had previously stepped out from.

Walker sighed, "Here, give me something."

"Alright."

Heph walked over, grabbed a large piece of ethereal ore, and brought it quickly back, giving it a light toss so he wouldn't have to come any closer.

Walker caught it and lited it up in front of Caddy, "Alright buddy, this is Ethereal ore. Please hold onto it for me."

The living chest bounced left and right before settling and opening its top. Walker dropped the ore into its "mouth" and watched it disappear. The lid closed with a wooden clang.

"Where'd it go? Did you just waste materials?" Heph said, already beginning to stomp forward for another tirade.

Walker held his hands up, "watch." He gently knocked on Caddy's lid, "Can I have the ethereal ore please?"

Caddy opened his lid and part of the ore poked through. Walker grabbed it, pulling it out with no resistance, and handed it to a wide-eyed Primigenial, "See! He's a walking storage device. You don't have to carry him, you can just throw a bunch of stuff in there and ask for it when needed."

Heph fell to his knees, stepping awkwardly on them as he came forward and cradled the chest with his hands, "My word, this is the greatest gift a blacksmith could ever receive." He bent down and kissed the quivering chest, "I love you Caddy. Don't ever leave me, okay?"

Walker scratched the back of his head, "Umm....alright. Anyways, the one-hundred-vault" He said, pointing at the non-living chest on the ground, "is for the Founders going to Crescendo. They needed something to hold their cohort gear and I've made a large group of smaller vaults for them individually as well. It's mainly for things like food and water, but that's up to them." Heph was barely listening, still hugging Caddy who at this point seemed to be okay with it, slowly opening and closing his lid, "Heph....HEPH!"

"Huh, what?"

"I said the other chest is for the first cohort and I made some bags for them individually as well."

"Oh, right. Great...great."

Walker shook his head, "Do you have a warehouse?"

"For what?"

"For, I don't know, holding things?"

Heph stood up with one last fond glance at Caddy, then shook his head, "No, never had a need. Founders, so far, don't steal. No need, as they can get pretty much whatever they ask for. I mean, you built a whole god's damned planet for them to train on, Creator. I didn't think we'd need a warehouse if I'm being honest."

Walker nodded, then stopped. An idea popped into his mind. One that would solve many of his problems at the same time.

"A whole....planet...A WHOLE PLANET!"

"What?"

But Walker wasn't listening, "Not a problem, sorry for bothering you, enjoyhavingCaddyhe'sagoodboy!" Walker said quickly as he ran out of the shop.

Heph watched him go as he gently rubbed Caddy's top, the chest's lid slowly opening and closing, "What a weirdo."

It took twenty minutes to make it out of the Crafting District and back to the Evolution Chambers. The moment he showed up, Virgil turned his back on him, not wanting to be bothered.

"Ohhh, don't be like that." Walker complained, "I won't ask about what happened during the mass awakening. Besides, I have something more important to discuss."

Virgil shifted from what he was working on, "Okay, but please keep in mind that you are interrupting my work in seeding Crescendo. I am almost done with the Mana Tree placement you requested."

Walker waved a hand, "Right, right. Anyways, how do you build using the new Creation Instrument upgrades?"

Virgil gave him a look he didn't recognize, "How do you use the Primordial Strands?"

"I collect the resource from our storage and work with my hands by instinct."

"Ah, I understand. This is not that." He placed his hands behind his back,"You will notice that the Creation Instrument is gone, and yet you still have access to the Landmass system. Please click on it in your overlay."

Walker canted his head, "Why are you being weird about this?"

Virgil gave a small shrug, "It is one of the few leftover programming features I held onto after liberating myself from the Council's restrictions. Please click on it in your overlay now."

"But wait a second, I watched you do this stuff with your hands not long ago."

"It was over a month ago." Virgil reminded him.

Walker shrugged, "Yeah, but still."

"When you are as connected with the system as I am, you will be able to do the same. For now, please click on the damned overlay."

Walker put his hands up, "Jeez, okay, sorry." He went into his overlay and clicked on the Landmass system.

Welcome to the Upgraded Landmass System

Please click on one of the options below:

1. Create a new landmass

2. Seed a landmass

3. Copy a landmass

4. Schedule a landmass

Walker clicked on the fourth option to see what it did.

Option 4: Schedule a landmass selected.

Please select the landmass you would like to schedule.

Walker didn't have any, so that was a bust. He clicked back to where he was before and selected the first option.

"I see you are already figuring out how it works. I will cancel the remainder of the required programming for this."

"Thanks, Virgil."

The large black squirrel gave him a nod before going back to his work. Walker looked at his overlay and chose the first option.

Option 1: Create a new landmass selected.

Please select from your currently available resources for what type of landmass you would like to begin with:

Rock: Igneous, Metamorphic, Sedimentary

Metal: Ethereal, Faer, Steel, Aluminum,...

Soil: Clay, Silt, Peat, Chalk...

Gas: Helium, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Methane...

Water: Salt, Sugar, Ice, Sterile...

"Sugar?" Walker said as he looked at it. What would that planet be good for? Bees?

There were a lot of other options, but he wanted Metal to make things easy. Remembering what Virgil had said when he first lamented making the undercovering of Symphony in Steel, Walker selected Faer for its hardness and rigidity.

Faer selected.

What type of landmass will this be?

1. Planetary

2. Planetary-addition

3. Subterranean

4. Asteroid

5. Celestial

Option 1: Planetary selected.

What shape would you like the planet to start as?

1. Disc

2. Spherical

3. Ovoid

4. Doughnut

5. Cube

6. Ring...

Walker didn't have to think about it. He needed this to gravitate around the sun in an elliptical path, reducing the cost of temporal resources through the cosmic genesis system.

Spherical selected.

Model provided. Please make any changes you would like.

There are additional options near the bottom of the screen.

In front of Walker, a two-foot screen appeared. It showed a brown planet made up of Faer metal, with a huge bank of options near the bottom. He chose to ignore the options for the moment, as he hadn't really looked at the metal since he had first earned it long ago. Zooming in on the image, he found it was a dull medium brown color and didn't look extraordinary in the least. As if someone had taken some dirt and compacted it into flat planes with curved edges. It was nice of the system to make it all one object instead of interconnected sheets.

Walker chose the delete option and removed a small area, thereby creating a hole in his fully round planet. He then zoomed in further, noticing the screen made the outside of the metal world transparent. Step by step Walker deleted most of the interior metal, leaving just enough of it to hold up its structural integrity. The current size was difficult for him to measure. He asked Virgil, who sighed again, then informed his Creator that the dimensionality of his landmass was in the second as a part of the upgrade. Walker moved his hand over the image by grabbing an edge, and found an assortment of different informational breakdowns that were mostly all the same. That confused him for all of a moment before he realized that it was just a metal planet after all.

Looking at it, it said that the current diameter of his future new world was only a thousand miles. Smiling to himself, he expanded the size of the planet until it was five times as big. Pulling up the monitor he used for seeding, he placed the opening of his future planet right against the edge of Sonata. Walker stepped out of the overlay for a moment, hoping it would save what he was currently working on, then clicked on the broadcast ability.

Hello Sonatans and future Symphonians.

You are about to see a brown planet appear on the edge of our world. Do not worry, it will be trapped within the temporal stasis outside of our region and shouldn't collapse into us.

"Shouldn't?" Rimi asked from nearby. Walker ignored him.

It will only appear for a moment in order for our work to continue. Please ignore it at this time and continue with your day.

Thank you.

Stepping back into the system, Walker clicked on the seed button in the bottom left corner after double-checking that the hole he'd created was right against the edge of Sonata.

Spherical Faer Planet selected.

Size set to small.

Planetary Size: Small.

Biodiversity: None.

Versatility: Very low.

Age: 0 Years.

Grade: D-

Rewards calculated.

Creation Materials have been replaced with Temporal resources.

A loss of 40 years is recorded.

Walker winced at the loss of resources, but he could always trade more bags...or even chests, now that he knew how to do them. Regardless, it was important. He got a notification for a task update, but ignored it for now.

A moment later, a massive brown planet appeared on the edge of Sonata, the opening he'd created right above him. However, as soon as it appeared, inch by inch it began to fall toward Sonata at a growing rate.

Walker noticed Virgil look up and winced a second time at what he knew was coming,

"I estimate you have five minutes," Virgil said, then went back to his work.

"Fuck me."

"Not likely!" Zeus said as he was passing by. Walker threw him the finger, then rubbed his chest before saying, "Come on buddy. We need to do this. I know you're worn out and so am I, but this has gotta happen."

His soul kickstarted, and like a car with an exhaust leak, he felt the darkness surround him then turn off, before turning on again. Walker put one hand on his hip and raised the other in a fist toward the sky, "I always wanted to do this."

His soul shot him straight up toward the slowly approaching hole. There were multiple hairy moments where he fell for several feet before it turned on again, but nonetheless he made progress in an unsteady fashion.

As he grew close he could feel his soul starting to hit its limit, already worn out by everything he'd put it through over the last few days. The result of straining an already worn-out soul was that Walker felt like his own energy was being drained, growing more and more tired the longer he was in the air. He slowed his soul down in its approach, and placed both hands beside the hole, holding onto it.

"Don'tttttt put your hands in." He said to himself.

Reaching into his overlay with his right while holding on with his left and letting his soul go back to recovering, Walker activated the dimensional pocket ability on the planet. It shook for a long moment, something he hadn't seen anything do before, then stabilized. He grabbed the space strand and started to slowly feed it in. Five, ten, twenty, fifty strand resources were added as he held on. While he as adding resources he could feel the planet slowly entering Sonata's atmosphere. He tried not to think about how everyone was feeling on the ground.

He hit one-hundred resources and stopped. He wanted to add more but it took time, and he didn't have any. He couldn't make the planet in space as he didn't want to even think about speeding up what was out there. He might end up accelerating all of the fourth rendition and cause a series of cascading issues. This was the only way.

Walker reached in and began adding consciousness strands. Although it wasn't slow, it wasn't fast either. He stared as the hole in the planet slowly took on a brown hue. When he finally hit one hundred, he quickly yelled out, "You're mine!", then the metal planet began to list further into Sonata, letting him know he was out of time.

Walker dropped straight down, even asking his soul to speed him up a little, strain or no strain. He shot straight into the ground, chest on fire, as he braced his legs before landing. The place he had aimed for was devoid of people, just a grassy as-of-yet empty field. However, after his fall nothing was left but a simple crater.

He clicked on the Cosmic Genesis system and was gone a moment later.

Of course, he'd forgotten that all of his AI's had updated to the Advanced level. He lost more time as he chewed a piece of his lip, going far deeper than he should've in his haste, and spit some blood into the cup nearby.

His chair appeared, the forest and a small blue peacock showing up on the screen in front of him.

"Hello, Creator." The AI said as he spotted it.

"I don't have time. Your name is now.....Celeste. Whatever."

"Rude."

"I don't have time!" Walker yelled at it, "Take the big metal planet about to crash into Sonata and put it on the other side of the sun. I need it to rotate at the same speed around the star as Symphony so it can't be seen."

The AI processed his request for a minute before stating, "That will cost you ten temporal resources."

"Fine! Do it!"

The Peacock dramatically fluffed its feathers out, before pulling them in and saying, "Complete."

Walker finally sat in his chair, putting his hands on his face, "Thank you." He mumbled.

"You're welcome, Walker."

When he looked back up, the Peacock had changed to a standard brown female type, rather than the bright plumage commonly associated with males. He guessed why that was, "You don't like Celeste?"

"It is fine. I had originally thought that a Peacock would be a good representative of the cosmos with their feathering, but as you gave me a female name...."

Walker waited for them to finish their sentence, but it wasn't coming. A moment later he said, "Fine, your name is Orion."

The peacock changed back to a blue male, "thank you."

"Sure. Now, while I'm here, we need to make some planets."

"Oh-hoh. Really?"

"Yep, and one of them has to be giant."

"Ohhhh-hhohhhh"