With the revelation to my parents—and Grandpa Joe—dealt with, I dug into the work of getting a nest egg. There were a lot of steps to it—of course—but it was something I’d done before. Given that I started later, I didn’t get quite as much money as I’d done the previous times. That said, it was more than enough to do what I had in mind.

  Before I could start my media blitz, I had to build out as much of the system as I dared. There were some parts I needed to think deeply about first. Like would the stats I went with be simplified—Body, Mind, and Spirit—or something with more nuance like Strength, Agility, and Endurance instead of Body. On some level, that was a choice I didn’t have to make right away like I had with Mana.

  Even if I had to refine the features later, I could get the basics in place. That way, I had something to give to the creatives to work from. What they produced would help me finish the system. The most important thing was having the common ground to build upon.

  The biggest ones were the tutorial and the changes I wanted to make to leveling—even if I wouldn’t be buying the latter one right away. Maybe the quest update would be among those, too. So that was where I started.

  For the tutorial, I had a general plan in mind. The goal was to prepare the people to be able to fight monsters and to survive in a world with magic more generally. The monsters were a big problem, but so were the aliens out in the vastness of the cosmos. In order for humanity to stand up and thrive, it needed to know how to fight and how to create. The arms and armor necessary to face down monsters would have to come from somewhere. Sure, the system could provide a limited amount. If someone wanted a piece customized to their specifications and not a random piece of junk? They would need to seek out qualified craftsmen.

  So the tutorial needed two parts. The first was a simulated battle that felt real. Every participant would get hurt like the real thing—and possibly die as well—but those injuries would disappear after the fight. The goal was to train them to survive, not to kill them. Depending on how each person did, I knew they should be rewarded. A gauntlet with a variety of weapons to find what they had an aptitude with—if anything. Then—upon completion—they would be rewarded with a basic weapon of the type that best suited them. Or maybe even a skill if they did well enough. That part of the tutorial was also important for the options they would get for their class—especially once I limited the options available more generally.

  The second part of the tutorial would be the profession side of things. Whether they would be a craftsman or something else. The system would need to read their memories and determine what they would be best at and what they’d enjoy most. Like the combat tutorial, they would have choices to make. It would be up to the system to nudge them towards a profession that would help humanity in general.

  As easy as that was to put into words, it was much more difficult to make out of features. The base for the tutorial was incredibly expensive at 10 billion experience. Doubly so when I added the other pieces it needed. It only got worse from there!

  There were many more—mostly smaller—features that I needed to pick up along the way. One change I made to my initial plan was to limit the tutorial to people who were fully grown—or close enough. Sixteen had been—roughly—the cut off for martial endeavors historically. Reusing that here seemed like a good idea. And because of the cut off, I made sure to extend the tutorial such that when someone turned sixteen, they would automatically start it. Of course, I made an exception for myself in case I was not quite old enough yet. If I went through with the plan of starting soon enough for Grandpa Joe to be healed, that would be the case.

  Having every human start the tutorial with all it entailed—even hundreds of years in the future—was stupidly expensive. I ended up offsetting it with a very small tax of experience so that they system would be able to afford paying for skills and stuff like that. Finally, I included the initial healing for anyone entering the tutorial. I had done that for Grandpa Joe, but it would affect everyone. As long as someone made it to sixteen, any disorder, disease, or injury they had would be cured.

  Before I forgot, I made sure the system would only apply to people from the planet. No more aliens getting access to the wonder that was the system. I was building it for humanity’s sake and no one else.

  With the tutorial out of the way, it was the monsters that were next on my list. Firstly, I wanted the monsters to be on a sliding scale instead of all being the same strength. People would need easy monsters to train against—especially early on. As they got stronger, tougher monsters would be needed to keep advancing. Tilting the monster levels so that there were both lower and higher leveled monsters than the average would be incredibly important.

  My instinct was to shove all the monsters into dungeons, but there was a problem with that. If monsters were all safely in dungeons, there was a good chance many countries would ban people from going into them to fight and level up—at least until it was far too late and the aliens had taken over. What I needed was a way to force people to keep advancing so they would be prepared.

  There were three options, I felt. The first was to allow dungeons to break when not completed for a long enough period of time. I could futz with the numbers so that humanity would always be able to accomplish it—like not starting the timer for higher-leveled dungeons until there were people capable of clearing it nearby—instead of letting there be complete chaos. The second option was to allow a subset of monsters to roam free. They would be enough of a problem that people would need to level to fight them off. Not a huge challenge, but an incentive to clear dungeons for experience.

  The third was to forgo dungeons all together. Let the monsters roam and create chaos. It wasn’t the option I wanted, but it was a proven method that would force everyone to do their duty. That said, I thought the first two options were a better choice. It was a choice I didn’t have to make right away, so I would leave it as part of the media blitz to see what came out of it.

  Since I didn’t need the experience anymore, I officially changed quests to give a variety of prizes. It could still give experience, but it could also give equipment, valuables, crafting materials, or a number of other things. I wasn’t particularly invested in completing quests at the moment, but I figured it would be interesting to see what I got as rewards when I did complete the odd one.

  With the skeleton of the system completed, I figured it was time to start the blitz. Unlike the real thing, mine would take a while to wind up. But once it was going, there would be no stopping it. The first order of business was buying an overseas company. It would be one of those that typically handled scam calls and emails—using effectively slave labor. Instead of screwing people out of money, they would be doing work they could feel good about. Maybe it would be enough to offset the terrible conditions of the workers, but I doubted it. There wasn’t much I could do on that front aside from pay the workers a little better.

  Once I had a stash of crypto, it was a straightforward proposition to contract with one of those shady companies through the dark web. Surprisingly—or maybe not so surprisingly—Grandpa Joe had some experience with things like that. He helped me find one that wouldn’t just take my money and run.

  The set up for the foreign firm was simple. The workers would create a ton of social media accounts. For now, those accounts would follow and communicate with each other and the general population. They had fake personas and lives for each. Once the first of the books came out, they would push them. Since they operated kinda like a bot net, the sheer force of likes, shares, and other interactions would make whatever they pushed get seen by a wide audience. That—in turn—would give the pushed thing a chance to catch on.

  At the same time, I doled out more money towards authors and comic artists to create the media I wanted to see. The framework I had for the system was the base they had to stick to. They were allowed leeway in the type of story they wanted to tell, but there were specific things that had to be in it. The system, monsters, magic, and possibly aliens. The first three were required while the latter was more of a suggestion.

  I knew it would take time for the projects to bear fruit. Not everyone who I paid money to would finish their assignments, and that was ok. That was why I spread my money out to as many different ones as I could. The point of the exercise was to spread awareness of what was coming. That I would get some feedback on the problems I faced—incentives to keep getting stronger, the specific make-up of the stats—was a bonus.

  The year I spent getting the whole operation up and running was a flurry of activity. But now that it was going, there was a lot less I needed to do day-to-day. It left me in a bit of a pickle. For over thirty years, I’d been singularly focused on bringing the system together and saving humanity. I no longer cared that it was me who set it off with my errant wish. That job was basically done. It left me with the conundrum of what the hell did I do now?

  I was like someone who had toiled for years at a job only to be forced into retirement when the company reorganized. I didn’t know what to do with myself. What I had lived for was done—nearly so—and I felt lost. Without the pressure from my mission I felt worthless… and it wasn’t like the nightmares had gone anywhere, either. So in addition to feeling lost and useless, I was being tortured nightly by what I had done in order to save the world.

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