For several agonizing minutes, the entire Kepler estate remained sealed within its heavy durasteel shell. The ground beneath them violently trembled and groaned, shaking the framed photographs on the walls and rattling the kitchenware.
Then, the tremors finally subsided.
CHIME.
The automated security system let out a crisp, clear chime of safety. The flashing red emergency lights shifted back to a warm yellow, and with a heavy mechanical hiss, the thick durasteel blast-shutters slowly retracted from the windows.
Dorian immediately burst out of his bedroom, his right eye still gleaming a vivid, unnatural red.
He wasn't the only one moving. Rapid, panicked footsteps echoed from all over the massive house. John rushed out of the master suite, while Lyra and Marcus bolted from their respective rooms. Leo floated rapidly behind them, its optical sensor scanning frantically for structural damage, while the family's menagerie of Pokémon; Charmander, Eevee, Growlithe, Clefairy, and the towering Articuno, all hurried alongside their trainers.
Together, the entire family rushed through the back patio doors and out into the cool night air of the backyard.
Dorian immediately looked toward the perimeter fence. The Golden Rock Guild guards stationed around the property weren't scanning the tree line for intruders. Instead, their weapons were lowered, and every single one of the battle-hardened ex-miners was standing completely still, gawking open-mouthed toward the right side of the horizon.
The family turned to look.
Marcus let out a strangled gasp. Lyra's hands flew to her mouth.
There, looming several kilometers away in the distance, was a colossal, jagged mountain. It completely dwarfed the rolling green hills of the Friton agricultural sector. The sheer scale of the sudden geological addition was staggering; the fact that it was several kilometers away and had still shaken their estate so violently was a terrifying testament to the sheer force of its emergence.
John Kepler's protective instincts instantly took over. "Alright! Everyone, we need to get out of here right now!"
In the grand scheme of the galaxy, Friton was a relatively newly stabilized planet. While the terraforming was complete, there was still a documented history of newly stabilized planets experiencing sudden, violent crust shifts, spawning spontaneous lakes, seas, rivers, hills, and mountains overnight.
"Leo!" John barked. "Initiate the rescue protocol!"
"Acknowledged, Master John," the Compadre unit droned. Tapping into the estate's localized network, Leo immediately sent a remote override signal to the private hangar. The heavy hangar doors slid open, and the thrusters of the Millennium Falcon roared to life, pre-warming for an emergency sequence.
As the family sprinted toward the landing pad, Dorian suddenly slowed his pace, his mismatched eyes locked onto the distant peak of the new mountain.
His breath hitched in his throat.
Right at the very top of the jagged, impossible peak, nestled among the clouds, was a sprawling, breathtaking palace. It was built in a flawless, ancient Greek architectural style, with towering white marble columns, grand amphitheaters, and golden braziers that shone like miniature suns. It was the absolute spitting image of Mount Olympus.
Dorian quickly looked around. The Golden Rock guards, his father, his siblings, they were all pointing and shouting about the mountain. Not a single person mentioned the massive, glowing divine city sitting right on top of it.
'They can't see it,' Dorian realized, a wave of profound relief washing over him. The System had actively cloaked the mythological architecture from the native inhabitants of this universe, presenting it to the world simply as a freak geological anomaly.
Several minutes later, the Millennium Falcon blasted out of the hangar, tearing through the night sky. Looking out the viewport, Dorian could already see the flashing blue lights of local Accord rescue frigates descending into the atmosphere to assess the sudden geological event.
Sitting securely in the co-pilot seat, Marcus gripped his harness. "Where should we go, brother?!"
Dorian expertly gripped the yoke, banking the ship upward toward the exosphere. "Let's go to Sela tonight."
Sitting in the passenger lounge directly behind the cockpit, Lyra was furiously typing on her datapad, her brow furrowed in deep confusion. "What in the galaxy was that, brother? According to the official Accord terraforming data, Friton's tectonic plates fully stabilized over two hundred years ago. Spontaneous mountain generation of that scale defies all current geological models."
Dorian forced a tight, reassuring smile, keeping his eyes on the stars. "I know, Ly. Space is weird. Nature finds a way."
John unbuckled his harness slightly, letting out a long, heavy sigh of relief as he looked at his safe children. "Alright, let's just let the planetary authorities deal with the geology. We just need to be thankful it was an upward mountain thrust and not a localized land tear."
"Exactly," Dorian agreed quickly, eager to drop the subject of the mountain he had accidentally purchased. "We all just need to get some sleep. I'll contact Ratik on the private channel and have her book us a secure penthouse suite at a hotel in Sela."
Dorian reached up to the overhead console, flicking a series of heavy metallic switches. The hyperdrive core hummed, vibrating through the floor panels of the Falcon.
"Jump point calculated," Dorian announced, his hand resting on the primary throttle. "Hold on, everyone. Ready for hyperjump... in 3... 2... 1."
BLIZTTT!
The stars outside the viewport stretched into blinding streaks of white light as the ship tore through the fabric of space, leaving the newly manifested realm of the Gods far behind.
For a long while, the only sound inside the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon was the steady, rhythmic hum of the hyperdrive core. The swirling blue-and-white tunnel of hyperspace outside the viewport cast a serene, calming glow over the cabin, slowly washing away the adrenaline of their sudden evacuation.
Sitting in the co-pilot seat, Marcus let out a long breath, his hand lazily petting his Growlithe, who was curled up warmly in his lap.
Dorian let out a heavy sigh of his own. He spun his pilot's chair around to face his family. "We'll arrive at Sela in about four hours."
Lyra, who had finally put away her datapad, looked up at her older brother. Her sharp eyes immediately locked onto his face. She froze, her brow furrowing in deep confusion.
"Brother," Lyra asked, leaning forward. "What happened to your eye?"
Dorian was completely caught off guard. He had been so focused on flying the ship that he had briefly forgotten about the permanent, blood-red heterochromia he now sported. "Uh... my eye?"
He scrambled for a believable excuse. But before he could invent a lie, a calm, distinctly divine voice echoed directly into his mind.
'Say this,' Athena's voice instructed smoothly.
Dorian didn't question it. He repeated the words exactly as they were fed to him. "It's... it's just another growth to my power. With this eye, I can see another world more clearly."
Lyra blinked, accepting the mystical, perfectly ambiguous Solar logic without a second thought.
Dorian was incredibly grateful for the assist. He was intensely curious as to why he could hear Athena's voice when he didn't even have her Boon equipped right now, but he wisely decided not to question it in front of his family.
John stepped forward, his face etched with parental concern as he looked at the glowing red iris. "Does it hurt?"
Dorian smiled, shaking his head gently. "No, Dad. Don't worry. It doesn't hurt at all. It just shows that my training is bearing fruit."
John studied him for a moment before letting out a relieved sigh. He looked over at Marcus, who was visibly struggling to keep his eyes open, and Lyra, whose shoulders were slumped with exhaustion.
"Alright," John said softly. "Let's go back to the main hold. We can stretch our legs and get some proper rest on the couches there."
Marcus nodded sleepily, clutching his Growlithe to his chest as he stood up.
John looked back at his eldest son. "Are you coming?"
"Don't worry about me," Dorian said, turning back to the flight console. "I need to monitor the hyperspace lanes. I'll be right here."
John smiled warmly, reaching out to give Dorian's shoulder an affectionate squeeze. "Alright. Good night, Dori."
"Good night, Dad."
Once the heavy cockpit door slid shut, leaving Dorian completely alone with the hum of the ship, the air inside the cabin suddenly shimmered.
A pulse of radiant golden light materialized on his left, while a blur of yellow, kinetic energy snapped into existence on his right. Standing inside the cramped cockpit were Athena and Hermes.
Dorian spun around, his mismatched eyes wide. "What... what was that back there?"
To his utter shock, the Goddess of Wisdom and the God of Speed didn't answer immediately. Instead, both ancient deities lowered their heads and offered him a deep, deeply respectful bow.
"We are here to offer our profound thanks, Creator," Athena said, her voice filled with a reverence she had never used before. "With the physical realm of Olympus finally manifested into this universe, our consciousnesses are no longer strictly tied to the activation of your Boons."
Dorian's jaw dropped. "Wait. Does that mean you can actually unleash your full power now?"
Athena slowly shook her head. "No. We are still, in many ways, tethered spirits. The cosmic transaction was an equivalent exchange."
"Right!" Hermes chimed in, leaning casually against the bulkhead with a cheeky grin. "The things that physically materialized onto your planet were the architectural domains, the House of Hades and Olympus. Our physical bodies aren't walking around out there, boss."
"So what actually changed?" Dorian asked, trying to wrap his head around the mechanics.
"Before we get to the fun part," Hermes said, suddenly standing up straight and placing a hand over his chest. "I must bear our formal thanks. In the name of our Sky Father, Lord Zeus, we forward our absolute gratitude for giving our home a place in the stars."
Dorian couldn't help but smile.
"So," Hermes continued, his rapid-fire pacing returning, "from now on, you don't need to equip us through your System just to chat. You can simply call upon our names, and we will manifest to speak with you whenever you need us."
Dorian let out a massive sigh of relief. Finally, he didn't have to waste his precious Boon slots just to get combat advice or philosophical training from his mentors.
"That's amazing," Dorian said. He looked over at Athena. "Thanks for the help with that explanation for my sister, by the way."
Athena smiled warmly and offered a graceful nod.
"But wait, there's more!" Hermes said, rubbing his hands together. "Try using a Boon right now. Go on, equip one of mine."
Dorian tilted his head curiously. He opened his System interface and quickly equipped Greatest Reflex, one of Hermes's signature Dash Boons.
The very second the Boon slotted into his profile, Dorian physically gasped.
The surge of energy wasn't like before. It was blinding, explosive, and overwhelmingly potent. He felt like his body had just been injected with pure, liquid lightning. The sheer kinetic force thrumming through his muscles was staggering.
Dorian looked at his System panel. The border around the Hermes Boon wasn't the white of Common, the blue of Rare, or even the purple of Epic.
It was a brilliant, blazing crimson.
Dorian looked up at the two gods in sheer disbelief. "Is this...?"
Hermes smiled his trademark, cheeky grin. "Congratulations, boss. Since our home is now firmly rooted in your reality... from now on, every single Boon you equip will automatically be at Heroic rank."
Dorian slowly looked down at his hands. He flexed his fingers, feeling the terrifying density of the crimson-bordered Heroic rank. Everything about it felt different. The energy was heavier, the effects were exponentially more potent, and the duration of the power felt practically limitless.
"Also," Athena added, stepping forward.
She gracefully raised a golden-gauntleted hand and gently tapped Dorian's forehead with her index finger.
A sudden, incredibly warm wave of absolute safety washed over his soul. A glowing, impenetrable golden shield icon flashed in the corner of his vision. It was Divine Protection, the legendary, top-tier Boon unique to Athena that completely nullified enemy attacks.
"Since we are no longer strictly tethered by the rigid mechanics of your System," Athena explained, her eyes glowing with wisdom, "we can now bestow our Legendary Boons upon you directly, without the need for you to acquire the prerequisite boons first."
Dorian couldn't help but smile, a massive wave of confidence swelling in his chest. With base stats this dense and instant access to Legendary defensive abilities, he had officially crossed the threshold. He was finally standing on the exact same physical playing field as a proper, highly-trained rookie Solar like Juno.
"Wait," Dorian said, suddenly remembering the very real, physical crisis happening back home. "What about the mountain? I'm absolutely sure the Accord planetary authorities are going to send surveying teams there to check it out. Are they going to see Olympus sitting right on top of it?"
Hermes laughed, waving his hand dismissively as he floated upside down in the zero-gravity of his own speed force. "Don't worry about it, boss. The rules of causality dictate our complete autonomy over the physical realm. We alone control exactly who is allowed to perceive and enter our domains."
Hermes flipped right-side up and threw Dorian a cheeky wink. "For now, it is VIP access only. Meaning you. The rest of the mortals will simply see a very steep pile of rocks and snow."
Dorian let out a long, heavy sigh of relief, slumping back into the pilot's chair. "Hooo... thank god. That would have been a nightmare to explain to the Accord. But wait, is that it? It's just Olympus up there?"
"Hoho! You severely underestimate our home, Creator," Hermes grinned. "You see, Lord Ares specifically asked me to pass along a message to you. Starting tomorrow morning, your physical training will no longer be conducted in your backyard."
Dorian's blood ran completely cold. "What?"
"You'll be training up in the celestial arenas of Olympus," Hermes said cheerfully. "Exactly where Heracles trained! It's going to be brutal! Hehe!"
Dorian's stomach violently churned. He dropped his face into his hands and let out a soft, despairing, "Fuck..."
…
Several hours later, back on the surface of Friton.
The planetary emergency response was swift. A highly equipped Accord Ancillary science team, escorted by a heavily armed local army garrison, had set up a forward operating base around the perimeter of the sudden, jagged mountain.
The geological teams had also discovered a massive, gaping cavern network right at its base.
A squad of Accord engineers in hazard suits carefully made their way down into the dark abyss, meticulously mapping out the cave walls with thermal scanners. According to the official Accord registry, Friton possessed absolutely zero active Solar veins, meaning the team didn't expect to find any plasma-filled minerals that usually caused these geological ruptures.
And they were right. As the team reached the very bottom of the abyss, they hit a solid wall of completely normal, dead bedrock. The terrifying, green-lit gates of Tartarus were perfectly cloaked from their mortal scanners.
"Just like the preliminary scans," the lead engineer announced over the comms, shining a heavy floodlight across the dead end. "There is nothing inherently dangerous about this cavern. No volatile gases, no unstable crust tears. Let's just put some heavy durasteel supports around the entrance to prevent civilian accidents and call it a day."
The local Legionnaires standing guard simply nodded, lowering their photon rifles.
Meanwhile, high above them, another surveying team was utilizing a heavy-duty hover-rover to climb the steep, treacherous incline of the mountain. They reached the absolute summit with ease.
They parked the rover and stepped out into the freezing wind. They looked around the peak. All they saw was regular mountain snow and jagged rocks.
"No signs of secondary land tearing up here," the surveyor reported into his radio. "All we have to do now is wait for the orbital scans to clear and we are done."
Several hours later, inside the warm, brightly lit planetary command center.
The lead Accord geoscientist sat at her desk, reviewing the finalized orbital scans of the affected sector. She nodded in satisfaction. There was absolutely nothing to worry about. The tectonic metrics definitively proved the mountain was a completely benign, one-time stabilization shift.
However, as she reviewed the final topographical map, her eyes caught something highly unusual in the bottom corner of the scan.
The soil vitality metrics at the base of the mountain were completely off the charts. They were radiating an unnatural, practically magical level of dense agricultural nutrients.
Frowning, she pulled up the local land registry for that specific coordinate. The file popped up: Owner: John Elias Kepler.
She also noted that the neighboring plot of land was the newly constructed, heavily fortified headquarters for the Golden Rock Guild.
Suddenly, realization dawned on the scientist. She had read the recent high-society lifestyle magazines from the Core Worlds. The billionaire elites had been going absolutely crazy over an incredibly rare, hyper-nutritious import known as 'Kepler-grade' food.
The scientist let out a soft, amused laugh. "Well, that explains the soil readings," she murmured to herself. "I didn't know the famous Kepler-grade produce was coming from a farm way out here on the border of the Mid Rim. No wonder the soil is bursting with energy."
Satisfied that the geological anomaly was harmless and the bizarre soil metrics were just the result of extreme, high-end agricultural engineering, she completely brushed it off.
She picked up her digital stylus and firmly stamped the green clearance code across the screen.
"Geological events classified as benign. All evacuees can safely return home."
With the sudden geological anomaly officially classified as a harmless, natural planetary shift, local life on Friton simply moved on.
The heavy machinery of the Golden Rock Guild powered back up, and the construction crews casually resumed laying the foundations for their new headquarters. The Accord Ancillary team packed their thermal scanners and soil monitors into their transport crates, and the perimeter squads of white-armored Legionnaires marched in perfect, sterile unison back onto their orbital frigates.
Meanwhile, safely lightyears away from the commotion, the entire Kepler family were already fast asleep, deeply buried in the luxurious silk sheets of a five-star hotel suite on Planet Sela that Ratik had swiftly booked for them.
…
Several days passed. Back inside the sunlit, glass-walled headquarters of Round Table Studio, the team had officially hit the peak of their production cycle for Assassin's Creed.
The creative energy in the building was palpable. Liseli and her Art department were already in the final finishing stages of their character models. They were actively mapping out the complex skeletal rigs, seamlessly tying the fluid, momentum-based parkour animations directly to the intricate 3D models of Ezio and the various Renaissance guards.
Bem's design team and Dalle's audio engineers were also operating at their absolute peak, effortlessly knocking out their milestone targets.
However, there was one single department that was currently lagging slightly behind schedule: Programming.
The optimization process for the new engine had proven to be a bit of a bottleneck. But it wasn't because Logan Kim lacked skill; it was because Arthur was actively breaking his brain by introducing ancient, long-forgotten Earth optimization techniques.
In the modern galactic gaming industry, a standard, poorly optimized game easily weighed in at around 500 gigabytes. Accord developers simply relied on the sheer, overwhelming power of quantum processors to brute-force their way through bloated code. They rendered absolutely everything, all the time, because the hardware could handle it.
Arthur, hailing from an era of limited hardware, refused to build bloated games. He sat down with Logan and introduced him to two foundational concepts.
The first was Draw Call Batching. Arthur explained that instead of sending the CPU thousands of individual, heavy requests to render every single brick, NPC, and cobblestone on the screen, the engine should group similar objects together and process them in one massive, highly efficient bulk request.
The second concept completely shattered Logan's perspective on rendering: Culling.
"Only tell the computer to draw the objects that the player's camera is actually looking at," Arthur had explained smoothly, drawing a cone of vision on the holo-board. "If an object is hidden behind a brick wall, or if it is too far away in the distance, the engine should immediately skip it. Stop rendering things the player can't even see."
For Logan, whose brain was naturally wired with a heavy dose of ADHD, these concepts were digital catnip.
Once he understood the logic behind Culling and Batching, Logan's hyper-fixation entirely took over. He immediately saw countless ways to implement these rendering tricks into every single facet of the physics engine. He stayed up late, chugging caf, completely rewriting massive chunks of the foundational code just to see how obscenely efficient he could make the game run.
Because of his obsessive drive to optimize every single line of code he touched, the programming department had fallen a few days behind Kasavin's strict production schedule.
But no one complained. The sheer performance gains Logan was achieving were astronomical. Despite the minor delay, Round Table Studio was functioning in a brilliant state of harmony, actively forging a masterpiece that would soon bring the galaxy to its knees.
⋘ 𝒍𝒐𝒂𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒅𝒂𝒕𝒂.. .⋙
🎮:
- Stardwey Valley: Completed.
- Hades: Completed.
- Pokémon: Completed.
- Sky: Children of the Light: 66%██████▒▒▒▒ Paused...
- Assassin Creed: 64%█████▒▒▒▒
🎬:
- Spirited Away: 43%████▒▒▒▒▒▒
♬:
- Your Song – Elton John (ch.9)
- A Lovely Night – La La Land (ch.20)
- Merry Go Round of Life – Howl's Moving Castle (ch.25)
- Small Fragile Hearts – Victor Lundberg (ch. 27)
- Skyfall – Adele (ch. 29)
- No Time To Die – Billie Eilish (ch. 30)
- Yesterday – The Beatles (ch. 32)
- Lovely – Billie Eilish, Khalid (ch. 47)
- Best Part – H.E.R. feat. Daniel Caesar (ch. 67)
- Lovely Day – Bill Withers (ch. 68)
- My Song – Labi Siffre (ch. 75)
- Isn't She Lovely – Stevie Wonder (ch. 89)
- Gotta Catch 'Em All – Pokémon OST (ch. 90)
- Don't Stop Me Now – Queens (ch. 102)
- Grow As We Go – Ben Platt (ch. 102)
- Feeling Good – Michael Bublé (ch. 104)
- You'll Be In My Heart – Phil Collins (ch. 105)
- We Will Rock You – Queen (ch. 108)
- The Bones – Maren Morris feat. Hozier (ch. 110)
- Achilles, Come Down – Gang Of Youths (ch. 111)
- Wind of Change – Scorpions (ch. 113)