I Somehow Got Tasked With Managing A Realm

I Somehow Got Tasked With Managing A Realm – Chapter 8

The second night passed quickly with the majority of the time taken up by adding lead to the planet and running from Mr. Flippers.

I noticed that it was almost time for the next class to start, so I forced myself to put on my still-soggy shirt and teleported with the penguin back into the audience hall. Near the doorway stood a tired and depressed-looking Julia with her hair reminiscent of a wild animal.

"Hey, Julia!' I called out as I approached her, "You look gorgeous as always."

"Be quiet," she grumbled despite a slight blush showing on her cheeks, "It's been three days since I've bathed or even changed clothes. If I looked in a mirror, I'd probably mistake myself for a wild boar and shoot the reflection."

"If the boars on planet Julia all looked like you, I'd love to take a trip there after this whole thing is over," I teased.

"Save that kind of talk for when I'm not able to smell myself from across the room," she sighed.

"Yeah, you have a point about the whole bath thing. Mr. Flippers is getting pretty smelly- ow!"

My sentence was unfairly cut short by a peck on my arm from the accused penguin.

"... Well I'm sure that they won't keep us in this condition for much longer; pretty soon there will be a whole herd of wild boars sitting in the class- ow!"

I was unjustly attacked with a punch on my shoulder from an angry elven girl.

With a reluctance to sustain any more injuries, I stayed fairly quiet as we made our way to the lecture hall. Although it wasn't bad when the creatures were spread out in the audience hall, having hundreds of creatures cramped into the classroom produced an unbearable stench that not even the most poorly maintained zoos could compete with. It seemed that most of this odor was caused by the creatures with fur, so despite Julia making such a big fuss about not bathing, I couldn't smell anything off despite her sitting right next to me.

I was a bit jealous of the blob creature next to me who didn't have a nose. It seemed to look around at the audience curiously, probably wondering why everyone looked so uncomfortable.

It didn't take long for the sheep instructor to walk in and then immediately walk back out. Eventually, she forced herself to enter again and weakly made her way to the front of the class.

"Welcome to class Seedlings. I know it may be difficult to focus in this environment, but today's information is extremely important, so please make sure you all pay attention," she began, "Tonight will be the last night you all have to spend the Resource Points allocated to you. I know the majority of you have either already finished preparing your realms or are nearly completed with the task, but please keep this in mind regardless.

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The next stage of preparations for the competition will begin tomorrow: the introduction of life. After all, now that the realm is completed, it would be a waste for there to be nothing to enjoy it."

There were a few murmurs in the seats with that last reveal and I hurriedly grabbed my notebook to make sure I didn't miss anything. The grumpy elf and penguin next to me gave a quick glance before Julia turned her attention back to the instructor with Mr. Flippers following her lead.

He really is like a kid.

"In preparations for your lifeforms to settle into the realms, you must establish an environment for them to reside in. To do this, you will all be selecting organisms that made up the environment you all inhabited prior to being selected for this competition. In total, you will be choosing three primary, two basic, and two moderate lifeforms to bring into your realm. Of course, the environment each of you came from is vastly different from one another, so the definition of these categories will fluctuate a bit, but I will go over what each of these is considered to be.

Primary lifeforms are very simple organisms that convert inorganic materials such as sunlight or minerals into energy. We also consider some simple decomposers and various plants in this category. Primary lifeforms must be extraordinarily simplistic in nature; they can not produce any notable fruits or have any complex qualities. Basic lifeforms, as you can probably guess, are basic organisms that get their energy through the consumption of the primary lifeforms, though they must be very simple in nature to be considered in this category. Moderate lifeforms are a step above basic lifeforms and are a great deal more complex in nature. Though some may be on the top of their food chains, they have yet to succeed in stepping outside of it and entering the realm of advanced lifeforms which is where all of you Seedlings used to fall into prior to being chosen for this competition."

The sheep instructor spent nearly the rest of the class going into immense detail about the roles each of these categories have both on each other and on the environment and stressed the importance of choosing the right primary lifeforms to use as building blocks for the rest of the food chain.

Even though she's talking about these primary lifeforms, I doubt most of these creatures know about the most basic ones like phytoplankton. I mean, if they try to add fish without anything fueling their oceans, they'll all immediately starve. Hold on... do their planets even have oceans? Julia never saw one, so it's not that far-fetched to think that at least some of these guys would not know about them or even consider making one.

For the first time, the harsh reality of invading an unknown world seemed to hit me. Even simple geography that I considered to be guaranteed could be anything but that.

The lecture continued while I now racked my brain trying to think of potential battle plans for different environment types. As I paid attention in middle school, I was already well informed about this topic, so after snapping out of my battle-oriented thoughts, I spent this time trying to think of various species from Earth that would be most helpful for humans to survive.

"You will all have a total of 7 heavenly days to choose your lifeforms and get them approved by me. If for some reason you can not think of any or simply can not get yours approved on time, I have a list of some from past cycles that you may choose from. We are giving you all this much time because of how important this step is; it is not a stretch to say that your success in the competition is highly dependent on your choices now. Please take this very seriously.

Clearly, you will not be sitting around thinking of lifeforms during the entire seven heavenly days, so we will be opening the training facility today, along with the bathhouse connected to it. Please... please use the bathhouse. I know that many of you will rush there after class, but any roughhousing or disorderly conduct will be severely punished. That also applies to the training facility; do not try anything you will regret. With that out of the way, I will see you all next class!"

A massive stampede of creatures bolted out of the door immediately after her speech had concluded, sweeping Julia, Mr. Flippers, and me out with them. We were finally able to get out of their way once pushed into the fancy corridor outside the classroom.

"Out of the way!"

"I can finally take a bath!"

"Go away you stinky things- I get to go first!"

"Water water water~"

The three of us stared in silence at the group dashing down the hall. Although not every creature present was included in that stampede, a group of a few hundred different crazed creatures running past us was an interesting sight to see.

... It's only been 3 days; why is everyone going so insane over this? I mean I can't remember properly, but I'm pretty confident that I've gone way longer than this without taking one.

Deciding not to risk angering the elf closer to me by voicing those thoughts, I instead checked to see if we would follow the herd.

"So," I broke the silence as their figures turned the corner, "are you two ready to finally take that bath you were looking forward to?"

"... On second thought, I think I can deal with smelling myself for just a little bit longer," Julia muttered still looking at the corner where the creatures vanished behind.

Not even three days of being bathless would be enough to convince her to squeeze into a bathhouse with that many creatures.

While her eyes still held hints of impatience, Mr. Flippers let out a squawk and looked away as if saying he didn't want to take one anyway.

"It'll probably be packed for a bit. Should we meet back here around 1 pm? We can think of what lifeforms to add to our planets until things calm down. Wait... do you even have a clock in your domain?" I asked.

"Well, there is a magic tool that shows the time in my room if that's what you're referring to. Thank the high heavens one was put in there, or I'd have no idea when to come back for these classes," she began trailing off before snapping back to focus, "Ah- yes I'm fine with meeting back up later, though!"

"By later you mean at 1, right?" I double-checked.

"Of course! Or maybe 12:30..." she muttered with an embarrassed look on her face still clearly not wanting to wait so long.

After a few more parting words, we ultimately decided on 1 pm before departing back to our domains to pass the time until the crowd died down.

I made a mental note to come back here earlier, however.