For the Record

“…And when they pull up a list of other users they’ve registered as members of their party, they can-”

Yeah, so this is a lot more complicated than I was expecting. I thought Nyx was just going to ask for, I don’t know, a sword that kills gods or makes pancakes or something.

But this?

“I can tell you’ve actually been planning this for centuries, you know.”

“What did you expect? I don’t do small projects anymore, and hadn’t been for long before… everything,” my former Assistant replies halfway indignantly.

The short version is that she’s designed a runic earpiece… thing.

…That lets people register others as being in their party…

…And then talk to those same people cross-plane…

…While also showing a small holographic projection superimposed over the heads of people they’re looking at that shows a limited amount of information about those people, like their name and levels and so forth, which is all pulled from the Record.

…

And there’d be no point to any of it at all if she couldn’t make lots and lots of them, mass produce them basically. So she wants me to empower a second runic gadget that’ll mass produce them, basically just duplicate the one that already works.

“Or I can do this instead,” I offer. I’ve been mulling over this since she first started explaining it. “I understand the words of creation a bit better than before, and the Record too… I think maybe my old self had a lot more experience with it? But that’s neither here nor there. What I’m getting at is that I could probably just create a whole category of gadget in the Record that already has those properties, and then you could just tie into the concept and it would already work.”

The estranged inventor furrows her brow. “And how exactly would that work? How do you even tie an object to a ‘concept’?”

“Actually, pretty easily,” I answer with a grin. “I’m already going to give you a freebie on how this is actually at least two items or whatever being empowered, entirely because this is a fascinating idea. Wait, why hasn’t anyone done something like this before?”

“Because nobody else who’s had the idea was owed a favor by a god that still had the keys to the proverbial castle? Who do you imagine could even do this?” Markus says dismissively.

Yeah, his personality has definitely taken some cues from Nyx’s over the past few centuries.

“Probably no one.”

“Exactly.”

And that’s fine. Whatever.

…

It hasn’t escaped my notice that my one-time guide isn’t commenting or even reacting at all to my obvious internal monologue, and that’s fine. I’m sure if she cared she’d say something… or not.

Either way.

First things first though…

A new concept, hmmmm…

It’s not actually that complicated.

“What are you even calling this thing?”

With a grin and gesture of fanfare that I definitely wasn’t expecting, Nyx spreads her arms and grandiosely declares, “The universal communicator, or u-comm for short! Ideally we’ll have these available in every adventurer’s guild across the planes in under a year!”

“That is… ambitious, isn’t it? Well, I can’t say I expected any less from you. Let me just… see what I can do.”

So yes, a new concept…

…

“You know, staring at me intently isn’t going to make this happen faster.”

And now they’re glaring instead. I sigh lightly.

I’ve been thinking over how best to implement the lowest underpinnings for some time when I’m suddenly interrupted by a quiet pop behind me, one that’s unfortunately become all too recognizable.

“Hello! I’ve come to play!” the pink-skinned demoness in a maid uniform chirps as she drapes herself across my back.

Two pairs of eyes blink blankly at the sudden arrival while I just rub the bridge of my nose.

“Shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, cleaning something truly vile that the other maids don’t want to handle?”

She actually giggles at that. “Nope! Already done.”

“Uhh. Nemesis? What is that?” Nyx asks while pointing at the she-demon peering over my shoulder – or she would be, if she were tall enough to do it.

“Are you sure you want to ask?”

“By the gods, you’re so mean!” Eros protests from behind me, before quietly saying, “Don’t you dare stop.”

“Why are you even here anyway? I’m pretty sure these two aren’t interested in anything that doesn’t involve, I don’t know, making things or designing things or whatnot.”

“That’s why you’re here though, right?” she answers with a swish of her tail. “They want you to help make something, right?”

…

Oh.

It just occurred to me that Eros doesn’t know I have the words of creation.

…Should I tell her?

She’s probably going to find out eventually… but I’m not exactly excited to have this chatty weirdo blabbering it around to every single adventurer she’s inevitably going to keep accosting in my castle town.

Not that the mortals would have any idea what it even means.

Maybe I can conceal it somehow.

…

“Well? Get on with it,” Markus prods.

“I’m going to!” I protest… but I’ll admit I was at least momentarily distracted…

So, first things first I guess… the concept itself…

It needs to be some kind of compact, wearable device…

It needs to be limited in capabilities, specifically because I don’t want it showing things that people with Status concealment Skills are hiding. People like me. Well, it’s not a Skill… but I still count it.

…

“You said you wanted it to show a title, right? Any idea what one?”

Nyx rubs her chin for a moment and then says, “Let’s make it configurable per user.”

“Alright.”

Configurable per user it is.

Moving right along… it has to allow users to register other users as being in a party… which means they don’t need to all be interconnected, although… wait, yes they do. I’ll make them pull Status information that way instead of from the Record itself.

But that still leaves… wait, did she want that?

“What about monster information and so forth?”

“You can just show the monster type and level… or maybe just color it to indicate whether it’s in their reach… maybe green for lower, yellow for plus or minus ten levels, and red if it’s higher?” the possessed book suggests, and I tend to agree so I simply nod.

The words of creation can handle all of this, although it’s going to be a long incantation…

I wonder if…

“Hang on, I’m going to test something.”

And so I create a simple concept, a placeholder really. One that doesn’t do anything.

When I’m done with it, and verify that it’s accessible (specifically by me), I try a second incantation… one that makes everything it’s applied to no longer respect gravity. Simple!

And then I apply it to Eros, because why not. Unsurprisingly, the succubus promptly lifts into the air.

“Wh-what? What’s happening? What did you do? That was you, wasn’t it? That sounded like a spell!” she squeals while flailing in the air ineffectually.

“Good, it works.” I promptly remove the concept from her and watch her flop face-first onto the workshop’s hard floor with wheeze. Eros promptly glares at me, but I can tell from the emotions she’s trying to hide in the depths of our bond.

She loved that. And I have no idea why.

Why are all the women around me so… strange!? Even I can tell this isn’t normal!

I glance back at Nyx, going back to ignoring the demoness. “So I can alter concepts on the fly too, meaning if you have new ideas or there are problems I can try to fix them, or just replace parts altogether.”

“Good. Well?” she impatiently answers.

But I’m already starting the process. I change the name of my placeholder to “universal communicator”, and remove the gravity rejection clause…

And then I add one that creates a network of them, where individual objects using the concept will be linked.

…And then I set them to hold user information pulled from their Status. With their consent, of course – I’d need to access the Record directly otherwise and I’m trying to avoid that.

Also, if she ever does remember herself, I assume Hades sure wouldn’t be pleased if I made a thing that did more things to mortals without their consent. Humans always seem hung up about that, but neither I nor my older self particularly care. And that’s fine.

Rigging it to hold an assigned title – defaulting to none – is another incredibly simple process, along with allowing the user to choose one from the store Status information. Party assignment is also relatively simple – I choose to limit it to five records per instance, just so dungeons aren’t being challenged by fifty-person parties… we can rig up something for that some other time anyway.

Once party management is in place, I start working on the communication.

…

…

Alright, actual voice information is… really hard for some reason.

“Voice isn’t going to work. Can I do some kind of, I don’t know, box with words or something?”

“Messaging? Those exist… but, well. Not cross-plane…”

“Good, I’m doing that. I can… do a lot of stuff, but voice just doesn’t work for a concept, looks like that needs something more like a Skill, and I’m trying to keep these independent of the Record.”

“We don’t want the administrator messing with this, though it probably will anyway,” I mutter under my breath.

But Nyx doesn’t miss it. “What was that?”

“Nothing, haha! Nothing at all! Anyway, let me just set up the messaging…”

And, done. Let’s see, hmm what’s left…

Right! The holographic whatsit!

…Which is also oddly easy, since I’m not actually displaying anything. I’m just reading information from other nearby devices in line of sight of the user and storing it, purging it once they leave line of sight.

…Except for parties, I keep that stored. Never know, Nyx might want the user to be able to see that somewhere.

Probably.

“Yes, I absolutely want that,” she chimes in. Good to know she can still read my thoughts, which also means I don’t need to tell her what I’m implementing. She’s actually taking notes as I go, so all the better.

And now, the last part…

Monster Statuses.

…Which actually do exist, from Identify, although it doesn’t show much.

Monster as a concept also already exists, so I simply link it to this one. And… yeah, bingo! The monster concept already has a short Identify line integrate!

…Although I do add an override so if the individual is an ascendant with the monster concept and a communicator, it’ll still treat them as an ascendant…

I don’t bother setting up the color for monster names either… although I do set one up for a display tag. That way it doesn’t need to be reprocessed every single time. Ah, I’ll add a timestamp to both the last time a user’s Status changed and the records stored on other communicators… that way when the user reads the display tag from another user it can compare to the timestamp, and update it accord-

“You know what, maybe you were me.”

“Hm? You think so?”

Nyx gives me a thoughtful look. “This is way more complicated and well thought out than what I’d expected from you. I half expected you to proverbially smash two rocks together and call it a day.”

“You’d just call me back here to fix it then, wouldn’t you?”

“I absolutely would!” she snaps.

I… think I’m done.

“Did I miss anything? You already know what I’ve done.”

Oh wait, I’ve got one more. I need to satisfy my pride… so I add a fixed property indicating that it was designed by Nyx and Markus, with the magical backend implemented by me.

That should do it.

“I didn’t ask to have your name on it anywhere, but I guess it’s fine.”

“You never said I couldn’t either, and I never said I wouldn’t when I first offered the favor.”

“True enough. Now get out, we need to work on tying it to the prototype.”

A dumbfounded Eros asks, “Wait, what did you even do? You kept talking in that weird language… I’ve heard a lot of them but I’ve never heard that.”

“I’ll tell you later. Probably.”

“No you won’t!”

“Correct!”

“You’re still not leaving,” Nyx points out. “We have work to do.”

And I just grin back.

“No you don’t.”

It only takes three words to attach the concept…

And only a few more to set the nondescript box with a hole in it on the workbench to spit out more when mana is applied.

“Anyway, I’ll let you handle the holographic projection whatever and so on. Bye!”

Without another word I grab Eros by the scruff of her neck and step through a rift.