While the Witching Hour spent weeks arguing over the Lunarian Principle, the rest of the world had quietly discovered something far more alarming.
Lumen Enterprise.
At first, investors simply wanted shares. That was normal. Any company associated with Charlotte Sweeiz attracted attention. The problem began when people started investigating the company itself. The deeper they looked, the stranger things became.
Factories existed across multiple continents. Research facilities appeared in locations nobody remembered being built. Entire transportation networks carried the Lumen name. Energy projects, manufacturing divisions, medical research departments, agricultural initiatives, communication systems, and countless other ventures surfaced one after another.
The company seemed to be everywhere.
One analyst summarized the situation best. "How did nobody notice this?"
Nobody had an answer.
The revelation of the Witching Hour had simply redirected public attention long enough for people to overlook what had been sitting directly in front of them. Lumen Enterprise wasn't a company. It was an ecosystem. Naturally, investors immediately attempted to buy shares. To everyone's surprise, Aster agreed. Financial experts found the decision baffling. Most founders guarded ownership jealously, especially when their companies possessed technologies capable of reshaping entire industries. Aster, meanwhile, seemed completely unconcerned.
"If people want shares, they can buy shares."
When asked whether he was worried about losing control of Lumen Enterprise, he looked genuinely confused.
"Why would I?"
That was his entire response. Nobody knew how to answer that.
Three weeks later, Lumen Enterprise announced a public showcase.
The event was held in one of the company's largest facilities, a sprawling complex built specifically for demonstrations, exhibitions, and research presentations. Invitations were distributed across both worlds. Representatives from governments, corporations, covens, universities, and countless other organizations arrived in numbers that quickly exceeded expectations. Many expected announcements. Some expected products. A few expected another disaster, mostly thought of witches and supernaturals. Charlotte's reputation made all three equally possible.
The massive stage darkened as the lights dimmed and conversations gradually faded into silence. A ripple of purple light appeared at the center of the stage before unfolding into a familiar portal. Aster Collins stepped through without fanfare, announcements, or any attempt at a dramatic entrance. He simply arrived. After taking a moment to look around the packed auditorium, he offered the crowd a small smile.
"Good afternoon."
Thousands of people stared. Aster seemed pleased by the attention.
"There seems to be some confusion about what Lumen Enterprise actually does." A brief pause. "So let's start with something simple."
A massive display appeared behind him, a cylindrical structure rotated slowly above the stage, glowing blue light pulsed from within.
"An Aether Reactor." Silence then Aster continued. "It converts atmospheric mana into usable energy."
Several engineers frowned at the explanation. One eventually raised a hand and asked if the reactor was essentially just a power plant. Aster confirmed that it was, prompting the engineer to nod before immediately frowning again as the implications began sinking in. Aster's smile did not help. He explained that the fuel source naturally replenished itself, that its energy output surpassed both fossil fuels and nuclear reactors, and that it produced no meaningful pollution. Whatever residual byproducts remained were harmless, consisting of the same aether already present throughout the atmosphere. Under normal operating conditions, the reactor could continue functioning indefinitely with little more than occasional maintenance. Somewhere in the audience, someone dropped a pen.
Aster continued as if nothing had happened. A new diagram appeared behind him, displaying aether for the Barebloods who don't feel nor sense aether in the atmosphere and for everyone else to see mana itself in a visual way. He explained that the moon constantly replenished atmospheric mana and that the reactor merely harvested a fraction of what was already being produced naturally. The audience remained frozen as the implications settled over the room. One government representative eventually raised a hand and carefully asked whether the reactor could theoretically operate forever. Aster admitted that Lumen Enterprise had not existed long enough to test that claim directly, but according to every model and observation they possessed, aether would continue to be generated for as long as a natural satellite remained in orbit around the planet. By the time the explanation ended, the representative had quietly returned to his seat looking considerably more exhausted than before.
The second presentation proved considerably worse for several industries. Portal technology was not new. Everyone in the room knew Charlotte could create portals, and most assumed the demonstration would simply involve Aster opening one himself. He did exactly that before walking toward a large circular frame positioned at the side of the stage. Then he pressed a switch. To the surprise of the audience, a portal formed inside the frame without the aid of a spell and remained open after he stepped away. Seconds turned into minutes, yet the portal showed no signs of instability. Aster casually explained that it was part of Lumen Enterprise's permanent transportation infrastructure before revealing that the other end connected to a different city where an identical frame had already been installed. At his invitation, several passersby from a busy street of London stepped through the portal from the opposite side and entered the auditorium. After a brief greeting, they returned the same way, proving that the connection worked in both directions.
The implications hit the audience immediately. One reporter asked how far the portals could connect. Aster simply replied that they could link to any location on the planet provided a compatible portal frame had been installed there. The reporter did not ask a second question. Several transportation executives suddenly looked unwell, while others stared at the portal as if witnessing the death of their entire industry in real time. The reaction among witches was not much better. Space Magic was widely regarded as one of the most difficult schools of magic in existence, practiced successfully by only a handful of individuals. Yet here stood a machine performing what many witches could not accomplish even after decades of study. As the portal continued operating without effort or visible strain, many found themselves staring at Aster, most known in the realms of the Witching Hour as Charlotte, with a mixture of awe and unease. The demonstration was not merely showing mastery of Space Magic. It was demonstrating an understanding of it so complete that he had transformed one of the rarest magical feats in the world into a magical artifact. The realization left more than a few witches wondering what other impossible things he might already know how to do.
Then Aster reached the projects he actually cared about.
The audience noticed immediately. Up until now, he had presented each invention with the same casual attitude, but the moment the next slide appeared behind him, his entire demeanor changed. His posture straightened, his eyes brightened, and for the first time that afternoon his voice carried genuine enthusiasm.
"Now this," he said, gesturing toward the screen, "is my favorite project."
A massive logo materialized above the stage.
Blueprint.
Most of the audience had no idea what that meant.
"Blueprint is a magical world engine."
Judging from the confused looks around the auditorium, that explanation had not helped. Aster either didn't notice or didn't care.
"Watch."
The lights dimmed as Aster raised a hand. Behind him, a massive magical display materialized into existence, projected directly from the machine, Blueprint, itself. At first, the audience saw only a dark void scattered with points of light resembling distant stars. Then the display began changing. With a few casual movements across Blueprint's controls, Aster sculpted the world in real time before the audience's eyes. Several interfaces unfolded around him, allowing him to shape continents, oceans, and landscapes as casually as someone editing a document. Continents formed from nothing. Oceans spread across the surface. Mountain ranges rose. Forests appeared. Clouds drifted overhead. An entire planet gradually took shape within the projection, floating above the stage like a living model of a world still being created. Silence swept through the auditorium as the world continued growing more detailed. Animals moved through forests, ships crossed oceans, and cities spread across coastlines and plains. The display looked less like a demonstration and more like someone peering through a window into another reality. One witch nearly fell out of her chair.
Aster smiled and zoomed in. The audience suddenly found themselves looking down at a village where tiny figures walked through streets, children played between buildings, merchants traded goods, and farmers carried supplies as if unaware they were being watched. It did not feel scripted. It felt alive.
"Hmm… This guy."
Aster pointed toward a random villager. Information immediately appeared beside him, displaying personality traits, habits, preferences, behavioral tendencies, and even thought patterns. The audience leaned forward naturally.
"Every intelligent entity generated or created by a user using Blueprint has a functioning behavioral framework," Aster explained. "They learn, adapt, remember things, form opinions, and occasionally do things I never told them to do. Just like the homunculi and marionettes used throughout Lunarium, these beings operate on the same underlying principles. The difference is that they exist inside an artificial world rather than here outside with us. "
A few nervous laughs spread through the crowd. Then Aster casually changed a value. The villager froze and his appearance changed in an instant. His behavior changed. The information beside him rapidly updated as his personality twisted into something hostile and unnatural. Within moments the harmless villager had transformed into a monster that immediately attacked nearby guards.
The audience collectively forgot how to breathe on what they were seeing.
"RPG settings are usually popular."
The guards eventually killed the monster. Aster nodded in satisfaction before casually deleting the entire world. The floating planet vanished instantly without its inhabitants ever experiencing pain. An entire world vanished between one heartbeat and the next. Several audience members visibly flinched. Aster immediately replaced it with another. New continents emerged. New creatures appeared. Entirely different civilizations developed across unfamiliar landscapes. It wasn't a modified version of the previous world. It was an entirely new one.
By now the audience had fallen completely silent.
Aster looked delighted.
"You can make pretty much anything."
Another gesture and the second world disappeared. A third emerged in its place. This one looked strangely familiar to many Barebloods. Roads appeared first, followed by cars, buildings, traffic, and sprawling cities stretching toward the horizon. It resembled Earth so closely that several people immediately recognized what he had done.
"I created Blueprint, in a sense, for games actually," Aster continued, sounding increasingly excited as he looked up at the floating world. "It just dawned on me that it could be something much more amazing than just for games."
"Most people build games by writing stories."
Aster gestured toward the floating city of the new world he's presenting.
"Blueprint builds the world first." Aster gestured toward the projection above the stage. "Everything after that is optional."
He zoomed out slightly, allowing the audience to see entire nations moving across the planet.
"You can create a story if you want. You can create heroes, villains, quests, kingdoms, prophecies, wars, whatever comes to mind. If you want a specific character to become a king, a chosen hero, or the final villain, you can simply write those traits into them."
The display shifted as several windows appeared around one of the inhabitants.
"Or you can do nothing."
Aster closed the windows.
"The world will keep moving regardless. Heroes, villains, and all that would appear regardless."
The audience watched as the world's time sped up. Civilizations expanded, merchants traded goods, and armies marched across distant borders without any input from him.
"A fantasy world might naturally produce heroes, villains, adventuring guilds, monster outbreaks, and ancient evils because the people living there react to the circumstances around them. A modern world might develop corporations, criminal organizations, political conflicts, or entire cultures without you touching anything."
He smiled.
"The NPCs aren't waiting for players to arrive before their lives begin," Aster continues. "They're already living in the world. Players simply enter it." He zoomed out again. "That's why Blueprint isn't designed around a fixed path. There is no main road everyone follows. No mandatory questline. No requirement that every player experiences the same story." His finger tapped the floating world. "The world exists first. Stories happen because people live in it. Whether those people are NPCs or players doesn't really matter." A brief pause. "Honestly, if your world is interesting enough, some players might spend years inside it without ever touching the story you wrote. Check out Skyrim for all that mattered. I know I only finished the main story thrice."
Then came VRain.
Five randomly selected volunteers stepped forward from the audience. Two Barebloods. One witch. Two werebeings. Waiting nearby were several reclining chairs arranged in a semicircle facing the crowd. In its interface, Aster wirelessly transferred the previously made Blueprint World to serve as its grounds for demonstration.
"Once we mass release these things…" Aster said while adjusting several settings, linking the volunteers' VRains to the world he had just created through Blueprint. "Lumen Enterprise will eventually provide a world directory for both Blueprint and VRain. Something that lets users browse and access worlds created by other people." He glanced at the display and nodded in satisfaction. "For now, though, I'm just manually connecting them."
The crowd didn't quite understand why seats needed to be connected to the Blueprint but paid no mind, waiting for his presentation.
Unlike the grandiose design of the world engine on the opposite side of the stage, VRain appeared deceptively simple. A series of comfortable seats, a helmet, and a miniaturized aether reactor, serving as a battery for the VRain just like the Blueprint. Nothing about it suggested that it was about to become the most discussed invention on the planet.
The volunteers sat down.
Aster looked genuinely excited again.
"VRain is the system that allows users to enter worlds created through Blueprint. Kinda like one of those fulldives from fiction."
Several people frowned. That explanation somehow raised more questions than answers.
"The easiest way to explain it," Aster continued, "is that your consciousness temporarily enters the world while your body remains here."
Several doctors immediately looked concerned, while several witches looked even more concerned. The volunteers placed the helmets over their heads and received a casual thumbs-up from Aster. Their bodies relaxed as they settled into the chairs, then abruptly went completely still after reaching toward something unseen and pressing it. From the audience's perspective, it looked as though the helmets had triggered whatever came next. The auditorium erupted instantly.
Above the stage, a massive magical display sprang to life, projecting the volunteers' perspective for the audience to see. Though their bodies remained motionless in their chairs, their eyes opened inside the Blueprint world they had just entered. To avoid accidental interference with the world's inhabitants during the demonstration, Aster had placed them far from any settlements atop a grassy hill overlooking a vast landscape. Mountains stretched toward the horizon, forests blanketed distant valleys, and rivers shimmered beneath drifting clouds. Signs of civilization could still be seen far away in the form of faint smoke rising from village chimneys and tiny roads winding through the countryside, but for now the volunteers stood alone in the wilderness, free to explore without disturbing the world around them.
One of the Bareblood volunteers stared at his hands then touched and pinched his face.
"I can feel this."
The werebeing beside him crouched and grabbed a handful of grass.
"This smells real too."
The witch picked a berry from a nearby bush and hesitated before tasting it and to her surprise, it tasted a bit sweet.
Another volunteer placed both hands against a nearby tree.
"I can feel the bark."
They all stared towards the floating magical eye above them. It was the one that Aster sent out using their VRains to get a live feed of what's happening. When birds fly through it, they realize that only they can see and interact with it.
The audience erupted and people began shouting questions before the volunteers had even finished exploring. With a raise of a hand from Aster, the noise gradually died down.
"All five senses function normally." A brief pause. "More or less."
That explanation helped absolutely nobody.
The volunteers continued moving through the landscape, walking across the hillside and interacting with everything they could find. Every sensation appeared genuine. Wind moved through their hair and grass bent beneath their feet.
When one volunteer stumbled while running downhill and immediately complained about the pain, Aster looked pleased.
"Pain settings are adjustable. Just forgot to lower it in this world and it is currently set to normal."
Several people looked relieved. Several others looked horrified that pain settings existed at all.
As the volunteers continued exploring, they eventually encountered a group of travelers walking along a road below the hill. The travelers looked completely ordinary. They spoke amongst themselves. They reacted naturally to the approaching strangers. One of the Barebloods immediately pointed and casually chatted with the other volunteers.
"So these are NPCs?"
The travelers paused and looked confused. One exchanged glances with another.
"What? What... language was that? Foreigners?" One of the NPC caravan guards had said.
The volunteer blinked, confused why they would think it was a foreign language when they both speak the same thing.
"Huh?"
Laughter spread through the auditorium.
Aster smiled.
"Oh. I should explain that." A new display appeared overhead, invisible to the NPCs and one also appeared on the stage to show to the crowd. "Certain terminology is automatically filtered by VRain."
The audience stared.
"If you use words that would expose the artificial nature of the world to its inhabitants, the system automatically translates them into mere gibberish to their ears, but normal to other users."
Several people frowned.
"What does that mean?" someone shouted. "It means the inhabitants don't hear words like NPC, game, aggro, experience points, quest marker, damage numbers, AoE, loot tables, respawn, or anything similar."
The audience became increasingly confused as most of the ones attending were older than the new age of modernity and some were ignorant of games. Aster seemed completely unaware of this.
"When a user says those words, other VRain users hear them normally." A display appeared demonstrating the process.
User: 'That NPC looks important.'
VRain Users: 'That NPC looks important.'
World Inhabitants: [Unintelligible foreign speech]
Aster nodded.
"To the inhabitants of the world, it sounds like you're speaking a language they don't understand."
The audience stared.
"Why?"
Aster blinked.
"Because imagine spending your entire life as a blacksmith and someone suddenly tells you your entire world exists for someone else's entertainment." Aster shrugged. "I'd rather not have the inhabitants questioning their 'reality'."
Meanwhile, the travelers simply assumed the strangers were speaking an unfamiliar foreign language and continued on their way. The volunteers just stared at them as their carriage left towards the road. The audience had absolutely no idea how to respond to that explanation. Aster moved on before they could recover.
"VRain also includes safety systems." A display appeared overhead. "If you become hungry, notifications appear."
A small alert window demonstrated itself.
"If you become dehydrated, notifications appear."
Another followed.
"If you require a restroom, notifications appear."
The audience seemed particularly grateful for that feature. Aster pointed toward a button attached to the side of one of the chairs.
"If somebody outside needs your attention, they press this."
One of the assistants immediately pressed the button. Inside the virtual world, all five volunteers received a notification as soon as the assistant pressed their buttons. One looked up when the alert appeared.
"Oh."
He reached toward a menu only he could see and immediately became aware of his surroundings outside the simulation before removing the helmet. The others soon followed. The audience watched in amazement as the volunteers returned from what felt like another world. Curiously, the projection above the stage remained active. Their avatars were still present inside the Blueprint world, but rather than standing motionless in the middle of the road, they automatically moved toward a nearby clearing and began setting up a small campfire. When someone asked why they were still moving, Aster explained that VRain automatically took control whenever a user disconnected, keeping avatars occupied with harmless activities nearby so the inhabitants of the world wouldn't see people suddenly freeze or vanish and start questioning reality.
After the presentation, questions began immediately afterward. Aster expected this and followed suite with sitting on a chair as his workers move everything off the stage in preparation of the coming Q&A.
One journalist reached a microphone first.
"What about Eidolons?"
Aster nodded.
"Eidolons are entering mass production."
Aster continued before anyone could interrupt.
"They will be personalized according to individual users." That somehow generated even more questions than it answered. Judging by the expressions in the audience, many weren't entirely sure whether that was impressive, concerning, or both.
Next up, a streamer who had attended the event jumped to her feet.
"Can we stream using VRain?"
"Yes. As everyone saw with the floating eye, that can be arranged."
Aster waved his hand and multiple streaming platforms' logos appeared behind him. Already integrated. Already functional. Already prepared.
"Livestreaming however would be way too censored in fantasy settings compared to modern or cyberpunks. Regardless, changing terms such as 'chat' or whatever, could be passed through the filtration."
The streamer sat down before excitement caused physical injury.
Another question followed from a slouching man.
"If we create games using Blueprint, can we sell them?"
Aster smiled.
"Yes. That's the intended part."
The audience leaned forward.
Aster continued.
"You own the hardware. If you purchase Blueprint, it belongs to you." Silence. "Any game you create belongs to you." More silence. "Any revenue generated belongs to you."
The silence became absolute. One investor visibly stopped taking notes. He was too busy questioning reality. Yet, Aster continued.
"We do not take a percentage."
Several people nearly fainted. Eventually, Aster requested one final question. A young boy approached the microphone. The wheelchair drew immediate attention from the crowd. The room quieted when he approached the mic. The boy looked nervous.
"Will I… be able to walk inside VRain?"
Silence.
The entire auditorium waited.
Aster's smile softened.
"Yes. That's also what I meant with the accidental creation of my game engine."
The answer came immediately. The boy froze. Aster continued.
"There's a free world included with every system."
A new environment appeared on the display. A beautiful city filled with parks, restaurants, shops, homes, people. It had no quests, no monsters, and no objectives. It was basically just a way for users of VRain to socialize and freely enjoy with friends or strangers..
"A place to relax and enjoy some fun activities, Anima"
Aster gestured toward the display.
"You can eat without gaining weight. You can drink without getting drunk. The blind can see. The mute can speak. People who cannot walk can stand."
The audience simply watched. The boy stared at the display.
After doing the closing remarks, a portal opened beside him.
"Thank you for attending. In case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!"
And just like that, he left with a wave.
The world spent weeks discussing the showcase. Investors celebrated. Consumers lost their minds. Engineers questioned reality. Governments panicked. World leaders became increasingly nervous. Some quietly realized Lumen Enterprise now controlled technologies capable of reshaping energy, transportation, entertainment, communication, and infrastructure simultaneously.
One official summarized the growing concern.
"At what point does a company stop being a company?"
Nobody answered.
Because nobody knew.
Meanwhile, somewhere inside Lumen Enterprise headquarters, Aster Collins continued working on new projects. To him, it was merely a hobby. That fact terrified world leaders more than anything else.