Admin: Angels and Demons (1)

Could a month, a mere thirty days, considered a long time or not?

Well, I suppose that depends on what happened during that month and who is experiencing that month. Yadda yadda, ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ and all that, only in this case the matter is about how one experiences the passing of time.

A child forced to spend a month in a hospital? Might as well be an entire lifetime, maybe even two.

A middle-aged man spending a month at his job? Blink twice, and the month is over.

I, on the other hand, don’t quite fit into either category. On one hand, I wasn’t a kid bored to death by inactivity, instead I was a busy working adult constantly buried under crises and tasks with deadlines labeled ‘yesterday’… Or even ‘a year or two ago’, when no one could even guess that any problem would surface.

After all, until they had suddenly been confronted with an empty game, basically nothing, [Titanomachia] thought that they had a complete game on hand. Which is where I had stepped in, not by choice, but it sure beats death – but having to deal with crises after crises was making me rethink this ‘life’.

But, perhaps because each crisis crashed over me nonstop, or because everything happening to me was as novel as a child’s first experiences, the past month didn’t blur into oblivion. No, I instead felt every second of it. 

Still, if I ever doubted how much time had passed since my ‘job’ began, all I had to do was look around me. None of what I’m seeing existed before me.

When I first arrived in this ‘world’, if you could even call it that at that point, I floated like an unbound spirit in a blank, directionless white space. Now?

I could see the Players leaping between floating islands and zones. See the Skirmishes between alliances and a full-fledged demonic kingdom. In another direction, aspiring Paladins purge the corrupted ruins of an Angelic city. Storm-summoning traps block the sky pirates from escaping the floating isles. And an NPC tasked with training other NPCs waits impatiently. 

And the best part? I’ve prepped three new raid-tier zones, ready to launch once Players finish the current ones. Each zone isn’t just stuffed with quests, mobs, and loot — I’ve seeded resources to close the temporal rift threatening reality, the next big event in the story line. 

By the time the Players finish grinding through these zones, I’ll have finished Togra — the first living zone. A place where Players could meet and interact with dynamic NPCs, factions, and lore. 

Content would literally flow like a river.

One could say that I’ve fully adapted to my new lot in life, to the Players and their antics, and also to my role as the Game’s Administrator and Creator. 

Of course, I haven’t mastered the ways of manipulating the Players flawlessly or even found a speck of free time for myself – but I no longer needed to panic like a headless chicken with every crisis. I could troubleshoot issues, generate content, and ride the wave without constantly propping up flimsy lies to myself and the Players like ‘this’ll make sense later’. 

Heck, I’ve even started building a cohesive magic system — not just labeling spells to give to the AI responsible for making special effects, but actually tying them into a semi-logical framework… With magical hand waving sprinkled around, of course.

But here’s the thing.

All this progress only means one singular thing.

I was terrified. Utterly terrified.

Never before had I lasted longer than ten seconds in an ‘everything’s fine, going according to plan, I even have free time to spend on myself!’ scenario, before some new emergency disaster knocked me off track. But this time, things actually seemed smooth and quiet.

Suspiciously so.

The Players were gleefully waving their new iron swords, as ore smelting and blade forging had reached near-industrial levels by now. They were running around the Shattered City, subduing demons who fought tooth and claw to resist being ‘farmed’ for XP and loot. The occasional monster-respawning storms brought some of these foes back to life and prominence, but the Players stubbornly cleared them out again, grinding forward with relentless efficiency. 

Even Jabberwocky wasn’t giving me much grief. 

He’d leveled his combat skill to a respectable tier, around Level 23, and was now in the frontline, brawling with the demons alongside the other Players. Sure, he still schemed while doing, manipulating the loot tables and pathing routes, testing ways to cheese enemy groups, but I low-key approved of it. 

His antics didn’t break the game; they’d instead added depth, forcing the other Players to adapt tactically. All in all, Jabberwocky wasn’t a problem right now.

My AIs occasionally stumbled, either leaning too hard into clichés or conjuring ideas so batshit I’d never have risked them, but for the most part, they stayed within their program limits. No more pirate fleet spam or mass NPC betrayals. The AI ‘players’ actually role-played decently, earning themselves reputations with the other Players. I could even see some Players forging budding friendships with the AI. 

Bottom line; while my AIs were crushing the Turing Test, the AIs weren’t a problem either.

And that terrified me. 

First time this had ever happened. An AI not going rogue? Players not exploiting the living hell out of the game’s fragile balance? I braced for calamity.

But no lightning struck the clear sky, the ground didn’t crack beneath me. So when cosmic irony hit, I was caught off guard. The feeling? Familiar, but so long buried, I only recognized it two seconds later. And when I did?

“Fuuuuck~ !” I swore like a sailor. Thank god I’d skipped adding chat filters, or this’d be peak irony. An Admin muted himself.

The message blinked into my UI:

“Greetings, assuming you perceive a ‘morning’ as you are. Today marks one month since your employment. Congrats, by the way. The Rescue Corps and Bosses are very grateful. Apologies for not talking with you directly and using the mail instead, but with half your limiters deactivated, real-time comms would melt your brain waiting for a sentence to complete. So, here’s the TL;DR:…”

I’d only met my friend a handful of times since first being trapped in the game world, but there was no mistaking him now. At least I think it’s him, the messenger window blinking before me bore his name and a profile pic of him in a sharp business suit, a look I was painfully unaccustomed to. Seriousness didn’t suit him at all, especially after all those nights we’d spent drunk off our asses back in college.

“Seriously, no one suspects a thing. The average rating for [Tenebris Orbi] is 9.5/10. We’ve already outpaced sales figures from the past five years, and Marketing’s popping champagne – even though a month ago, they were preparing for bankruptcy-level funerals. Nobody knows how you pulled this off, but they’ve already commissioned a lifetime monument in your honor. Want a private bank when you’re old? Trust me, they’ll gift-wrap one for you. You didn’t just save the company. You funneled so much cash into it that the execs have a new problem – not enough helipad space on their yachts.”

I won’t lie — the praise felt good. But vigilance kept creeping in; none of this was accidental. They could’ve sung my praises any time over the past month, but they hadn’t. Even if this sudden flattery was timed to the game’s one-month anniversary, there was no reason to carpet-bomb me with compliments… unless they wanted something.

“So the execs value you extremely highly and would deeply appreciate it if…” 

My breath, artificial, since I was a disembodied game spirit, hitched – somehow. Here it came; the crux of the message. The ask.

“…you could help expedite player logins. People keep swiping their credit cards for access, but the queues are still snowballing, the current rate that you allow new player batches isn’t thinning the crowd, some have been waiting a month and are rage posting. Rumors are spreading that Titanomachia’s servers can’t handle the load even after a month. You know how bad that looks for the world’s premier electronics vendor, hardware included. The bosses would greatly appreciate any fixes from your… end…”

I exhaled slowly after reading the trailing ellipsis, as if my friend was nudging me toward the ‘correct’ reply.

So this is the real price of being this world’s Demiurge—corporate mandates under the guise of ‘requests’.

Seems like the bigwigs have enough of letting me run wild, betting everything on a Hail Mary play. Seeing that it had paid off? Immediately reverting to their true selves; profit-hoarding suits, squeezing gains from every angle.

For a long time, I’d dodged questions and reports to the bosses with excuses about barely keeping up, managing only to stay one step ahead of the Players. But it was obvious this couldn’t last forever, especially since third-party devs might’ve already reverse-engineered my work. They’d probably wanted to approach me earlier about… something… but hadn’t found the right angle or timing. 

After all, I was still single-handedly shouldering the weight of The Project, or, rather, my brainchild now, and even an army of coders couldn’t replace me, short-term or long-term. A month post-launch was a ‘neat’ milestone for tossing congratulations my way… while slyly tacking on ‘requests’.

The worst part? They phrased it as a ‘favor’, not a direct order I could outright refuse. Sure, I could’ve played the diva and claimed it was impossible, and maybe the higher-ups would’ve swallowed it without instantly permabanning me, or worse, deleting or limiting my admin privileges. But picking a fight with the folks funding my entire existence in this sandbox? Bad strat. Too many debuffs.

So I sighed, weirdly relieved. At least this ambush had finally dragged my paranoia out of stealth mode. Better a known boss mechanic than an invisi-aggro bug, right?

“I’ll… I’ll see what I can do,” I replied vaguely, refusing to outright capitulate to their soft-blackmail. 

Placating the suits was one thing; letting them dungeon-stack my quest log was another. Over-performers don’t get promoted here, they get more overtime, like a demented trash pull from a loot box. Worse, my ‘employers’ were essentially whales with god mode cheats, and our ‘contract’ meant I couldn’t even AFK. No respawn timer, no logout button. Just an endless grind.

“How many extra players are we talking of adding here?” I messaged back, tabbing over to map out the starting zones while waiting for the response. 

Maybe Ja-Raja’s holdings needed a balance patch, or Jabberwocky needed to get swarmed by mobs that could push his stool in. Depending on how much rope they’d handed me, really.

To my luck, most Players who had already graduated from the ‘tutorial’ on the floating islands had indeed flocked to the Broken City. Only a few dozen remained to develop their own Factions’ camps or monitor the Infernals, who, lacking access to the Broken City, mostly stayed in the starting zone. 

For the other Players' sake, I subtly aided them by inciting internal discord among the demon-worshiping horde. As a result, the Infernals began slaughtering each other with even greater fervor than they did outsiders. In other words, the Players in the Infernals camp have fully embraced their roles as the ‘horde of vile demon cultists’. This prompts those repeatedly killed, and whose hard-grinded levels had been stolen by other Infernals, to wonder if there was a way to revert from demon-worshipers back to regular Players. 

No such mechanic existed yet, but players weren’t far from ‘discovering’ one. As I’ve asserted to myself, I was adapting to live with them, anticipating both their grievances and future desires.

Given that the starting islands were mostly cleared and free to explore, save for a few leveling zones for new Players, and that I’d already prepped new zones, in multiple variants, for post-Broken City progression, I could absorb additional Players without overwhelming the game world. Competition for mobs would grow fiercer as Players were already claiming demon spawn areas as ‘their’ grinding spots, it would only get worse, but I was prepared for even that grim turn. 

The key here was to avoid letting the bosses know I’d always been ready to ‘digest’ extra Players, otherwise, they’d assume I could handle any decision they made. Still, I had to demonstrate some competence to convince management I wasn’t just leeching company resources in my high-ranking position. 

The line between being indispensable and expendable? That’s what kept me from being ‘accidentally’ deleted the moment a boss decided I’d failed my duties.

A new notification popped up, freezing my overclocked brain mid-calculation. Blinking, my mouth moved faster than my lagging thoughts.

"Are you joking?!"

"Well, the bosses want to send a million players next. To test if we can handle more…"

Well… shit.

***

An emergency dive into the forums greeted me with a million threads about various topics. 

Players swarmed discussing their in-game adventures, strategic plans, debates over optimal builds, and prime grinding spots. Some meticulously pieced together lore, while others brainstormed new crafting recipes. Players exchanged rumors scavenged from other media about the game’s state, while others speculated on upcoming zones. Meanwhile, clusters of engineer-type players debated how to replicate the invention of the printing press using vines from the sky-floating islands that are currently under Ja-Raja’s control, arguing over deforestation risks and the urgent need for reforestation. Of course, they would still need to deport Ja-Raja’s ilk, but that’s for another discussion.

A few islands, they noted, were already stripped bare with no signs of regrowth.

I brushed past the chaos and navigated to the rarely visited admin panel to check registered user counts. The number I found made me exhale a long, slow breath.

I’d known [Tenebris Orbi] would be a hit long before launch. A global megacorp with flawless reputation, dominating every electronic niche, drops the century’s most hyped gaming project; a full-dive VR MMORPG, touting tech so revolutionary even a used-car salesman would blush at the marketing? 

Interest exploded, immersion capsule sales shattered ceilings. Hell, I bought one myself before the accident left me as the sole admin of the game that I was supposed to be enjoying.

But after my… transition, calling it ‘death’ felt wrong, the game’s popularity faded into background noise. My mind instead fixated on surviving undetected among tens of thousands of Players while making sure that the game succeeded.

Well, now, rather than having to deal with thousands, I was supposed to handle a million. A thousand-fold increase.

The reason for the sudden jump was rather simple. At the beginning, even ‘Titanomachia’s’ hype machine couldn’t convince everyone to splurge on pricey gear and subscriptions. The ‘astronomical’ pre-launch player count I’d dreaded days earlier was just the tip of the iceberg. 

Post-launch, reviews raved, a hardcore D-MMO, though what does the ‘D’ stands for? Dark? Death? Depths? Who knew? Anyway, the reviews were stellar, and the waves of new Players followed, my own smoke-and-mirrors antics fueling the surge. 

But, one of my early decisions, the daily caps backfired: 100k daily slots meant 3 million users after a month. Peak concurrency hit 2 million+ in short order, causing elbow-jostling even in sprawling zones; with the lows still hovering around 200k.

The core issue was that the number of registered users awaiting activation had already surpassed forty million, and showed no signs of slowing. It was no wonder that the Bosses were getting a bit nervous. Here was a cash cow, just outside their reach.

To put it bluntly: if I allowed only a hundred thousand players into the game daily, it would take over a year just for the last person in the current queue to log in for the first time. Factor in subsequent growth and the reality that not every user was even registered on the forum, and the situation looked utterly dire.

Under these conditions, a ‘million per day’ quota could almost be called merciful, as even then, it’d take roughly a month and a half just to onboard everyone. In a twisted way, the higher-ups’ ‘request with an implied demand’ felt like leniency compared to forcing an instant flood of forty million users.

The problem? Their so-called mercy didn’t magically create server space for new Players.

After logging out of the admin panel and teleporting back into the game world from the forums, I surveyed my surroundings.

Players scurried like ants beneath my feet — busy, chaotic, yet with patterns discernible if observed long enough. Tracking their movements, I could almost parse their objectives.

Three million users? The current servers could handle that, barely, during peak hours. Four million? The game world would strain at the seams. Five? Catastrophic collapse.

Worse, the new additions of millions would all be newbies requiring starter zones, and my existing zones are already maxed out at half a million capacity. I needed fresh spawn points…

But creating new floating islands? I’d already canonized the seven angelic isles, plus the eighth for the Holy Name, a concept I’d shelved for now. Retconning another pantheon to copy-paste islands with cosmetic tweaks felt lazy. Parallel realities? Instance sharding? All valid band-aids, but none aligned with the game’s lore.

I snorted at my own hypocrisy. 

Once, I’d cobbled together patchwork solutions, praying they’d hold long enough for Players to log off before the systems imploded. Now I scoffed at ‘cheap tricks’ and fretted over ‘artistic integrity’, as if this entire world wasn’t built on duct tape, spit and an abundance of hope.

Still, I’d sculpted this game from nothing in a month, a void transformed into a realm millions clamored to enter. If that wasn’t proof of my mastery as a dev and admin, what was?

Thus, after surveying the starter zones once more and noting which intel might prove useful later, to ensure I’d do better this time and avoid repeating past mistakes, I plummeted downward toward the ground. A decision made.

No, I wouldn’t craft another batch of floating islands. I was already growing nauseated by them, and Players would eventually start questioning if the game had anything besides floating rock piles, especially since even my newer zones would still skybound.

So I teleported below the impenetrable celestial barrier meant to block Players, down the cloud cover and smirked faintly at the endless green plains around me… Save for a lone crater where an angelic statue had once crash-landed from the islands above, and kept moving.

Creating proper ground zones was still too premature, of course, deterring players from exploring the uncharted biomes of infinite empty meadows would take more time than I currently had. Though, admittedly, I’d need to address that soon.

Instead, I phased through the earth like the incorporeal spirit I’d become, diving deeper and deeper until I’d descended roughly ten kilometers, matching the altitude of the floating islands.

An instant later, my unfathomable divine power, or ‘admin privileges’, as mortals might call it, began rapidly hollowing out the underground voids around me, carving space for fresh spawn points and raid zones.

After all, if we already had the Celestial Sanctum for angels… why not let the next expansion plunge players into the Abyssal Realms?

Sometimes, my own genius is… it’s almost frightening.