Takumi watched the chat bubble avalanche with a small, private grin. What started as a petty scheme — bundle a few of his old single-player games, price them at pocket change, and let Houraisan Kaguya feed her daily sign-ins into the city's tiny economy — had transformed into a full-blown cultural phenomenon.
He'd uploaded the first pack in five minutes: a handful of nostalgic platformers, a puzzle compendium, an odd visual novel, and a tactical roguelike that always chewed his evenings. Price: 5 points. Cheap enough to be impulse, interesting enough to be addictive. His AI was already compiling variations, procedural levels, and an idle-game backend that would quietly funnel micro-revenue into his point treasury while keeping Kaguya entertained.
Kaguya's little gasps of betrayal — and affection — filled the chat.
Houraisan Kaguya:[You did this for me?! I thought you were noble!!]
Takumi:[To fulfill your every need. Also: keep signing in.]
Chika:[HE'S EVIL!!]
Bronya:[Good plan. The Bronya will upload some too.]
One by one, members added titles. Bronya exported compact puzzle suites with low resource cost. Sagiri silently uploaded a curated visual-novel anthology — innocuous, heartfelt, and surprisingly popular. Himeko tossed in a battered RTS she'd "found" in a random sale. Even Megumi uploaded a low-key reading app with ambient music.
Within an hour, the system store swelled with fresh content. Kaguya, who had logged on for a single sign-in, found herself surrounded by irresistible novelty. She bought two bundles, then three. She was trapped by her own delight.
Takumi rubbed his hands. The trick worked: tiny purchases, repeated daily, added up into a reliable stream. Kaguya's sign-ins became small donations to the public purse — and, more amusingly, to his personal fund for snacks and extra AI compute cycles.
He was still grinning when Miori Shiba pinged him, tension and teenage bluntness stitched into the message.
Miori Shiba:[@Takumi, boss, can you assign someone else? These tasks are soul-crushing. Robots should do them. I'm sixteen!]
Takumi squinted at the screen. Miori had the exhausted energy of someone who'd been running non-stop since she'd arrived. When the Holy Empress and the military left Liyue with ideas and industrial texts, they hadn't brought a workforce. They had brought hope — which had turned into logistics, and then into hard, unglamorous labor that always ends up falling on the young.
He typed back, careful to balance firmness and empathy.
Takumi: *[We need people to build civilization, Miori. Robots help, but humans learn by doing. However — you're young. School's better. I'll enroll appropriate-age migrants and residents into education cohorts. You'll have classes, then practical shifts. You won't be a slave.] *
Miori:[(?_?) School? No way!]
Takumi:[You asked to quit. Fine. Study. But you'll still help in leadership training later.]
Miori blushed and typed a resigned "Back to work I go!!!" — the sort of teenage theatrics that always made Takumi smile.
Still, the exchange left a residue: there were not enough managers. The city could pump out restoration nodes and syringes, but human supervisors, teachers, caregivers — those required training, patience, and a willingness to do repetitive human work. Takumi considered the million cursed children he aimed to integrate. Even with automated systems, scale demanded people.
He flicked open the institutional console.
AI Ops:
Restoration nodes: scale-up to 20,000/day target in 48 hours.
Education halls: 12 operational, 48 queued.
Instructor shortage: 93% of demand unmet.
Volunteer mission backlog: 1,240.
He pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Alright," he said to the room. "We'll convert the mission system into a recruitment funnel. Offer tiered points for managerial training. Bundle education with light-duty work. And create an apprenticeship stipend."
He typed into the chat.
Takumi: *[I'll launch an Education Enrollment mission. Complete training modules, pass simulated management exercises, and you earn points + certification. We'll staff the first 2,000 instructor roles from volunteers and select migrants.] *
Chika:[Ohoho I shall be the greatest manager ever!!]
Bronya:[The Bronya will optimize the training pipeline.]
Kaguya:[If I teach leisure time protocols, will that count?]
Kaguya's message elicited a dozen eye-roll emojis — then an unexpectedly earnest one from Bronya.
Bronya:[Leisure time protocols increase morale efficiency by 12%.]
Takumi nodded. The Herrscher of Reason loved data. He designed the training batteries like nested games: cognitive load progression, conflict resolution scenarios, basic logistics, and an ethics module. He insisted on the ethics module. Power distribution had evolved into real politics here; if they wanted to hand out pseudo-cores later or grant authority, they needed people who understood the consequences.
Speaking of pseudo-cores — he'd uploaded the Wind-Type Pseudo-Herrscher core to the mall earlier, priced as a deliberate gate. The chat's reaction had been spectacularly human: want, panic, plotting, and immediate scheming for points. Chika's wild idea to "core-hunt" in other universes was simultaneously impractical and comic. Bronya's deadpan "optimize" response had been perfect.
Takumi opened the core's administrative panel. He had decided that individuals shouldn't casually wield cognition-enhancement tools. But institutions? If properly trained, a team could use a pseudo-core to accelerate infrastructure projects without descending into megalomania. He created institutional licensing: municipalities, education consortia, and vetted humanitarian organizations could lease a pseudo-core for a fixed point deposit and a monitored usage window.
Takumi:[Pseudo-cores available for institutional lease. Individual access requires certification and council approval.]
Himeko:[Good move. Control first, experiment second.]
Kaguya:[Boooring.]
At least Kaguya still had games.
A Reality Nudge
The evening dimmed outside the dome; the sky's projection panels painted soft auroras to lull children. Takumi was filling the first training cohort roster when his Authority flickered — an almost unnoticed ripple, like a curtain fluttering.
He froze. The Herrscher's backchannel reported a small anomaly in a remote node: a foreign access attempt, low-level, not the ancient interference from before but something clumsy, like a probe.
He smiled sadly. "Always with the interruptions."
He pinged Zhongli privately.
Takumi:[New probe at Sector 73 North. Low-level. Not Teyvat-old. Can you trace?]
Zhongli:[I will inquire with my connections. Be cautious.]
Zhongli's reply landed like a comfort. Even if the Archon was planning negotiations and trades with otherworldly relics, his presence was a steadying hand in discussion. But for now Takumi had to manage a different threat: social collapse by overwork.
He restructured missions again. Low-skill, high-reward "morale missions" would pay out steady points to caretakers — to people who would otherwise be tempted to push themselves to exhaustion. He created "study-shift" rotations: two hours of learning, four hours of light tasks, two hours rest. The AI would enforce compliance. The system logged sleeping hours and flagged chronic overwork. He even assigned "moral officers" — volunteer Q&A mentors who could step in and resolve disputes.
Takumi's hands hovered over the chat, then typed the new mission batch.
Takumi:[Mission set: "Care & Learn" — 50 points per completed cycle + 200 bonus for instructor certification. Enrollment opens now.]
Chika:[I signed up! I'll bake morale cakes!]
Bronya:[The Bronya will map optimal routes for shift coverage.]
Miori:[Does this count as school or work?]
He smiled and decided: both.
Administrative Authority — A Small Test
Later that night, after the first group of volunteers completed their simulated training and earned certification badges, Takumi ran a small, controlled experiment. He allowed a certified team temporary access to a Team-Level Pseudo-Core (a low-tier variant) for a rebuilt microfactory line: to automate and scale assembly of portable restoration nodes.
He watched as novice managers, guided by protocols and backed by the Herrscher-augmented cognition scaffold, solved small production bottlenecks in minutes. A layout that would have taken weeks to optimize was reworked into an elegant flowchart in under an hour. The AI logged every decision. Takumi observed silently, heart thumping with a complex cocktail of pride and anxiety.
When the prototype line finished its first batch of nodes, the certified team erupted in exhausted joy. Their faces — flushed, earnest, human — made something settle in his chest.
This was why he'd refused to automate everything. Machines could do labor; humans needed purpose. If the children and newcomers could be given agency, if they could shape and steward this rebirth, then the civilization had a chance to be more than scaffolding and serum. It could be flourished with culture and stories and mistakes.
He switched off the pseudo-core lease with a few keystrokes, retracting the borrowed pattern back to his Authority. The managers blinked, slightly disoriented but intact. He sent them congratulations and a recommended reading list on ethical supervision.
Night Chat — Quiet, Human, and Sweet
The group chat thinned late at night. Only a smattering of messages remained: Kaguya grumbling about the cost of spellbooks, Chika excited about morale cake recipes, Bronya silently posting an optimized logistics matrix, Miori doodling education timetables.
Takumi scrolled, then posted a final message for the day.
Takumi:[Good work today. Training will continue tomorrow. Remember: rest, and report fatigue. This project is for people, not productivity metrics.]
Several hearts popped up under his message.
Kaguya:[…don't be too soft on me. I will defend my daily sign-in.]
He flicked off the chat and walked to the window. The city lights hummed like bees. In the distance, restoration nodes pulsed soft green, like constellations dipping into the skyline. Drones arced gently, and somewhere, a child practiced running on newly regrown legs.
He pictured a schoolyard filled with the million faces he had sworn to help — perhaps distant, perhaps close. He thought of Zhongli bartering Gnosis, of Kaguya's rabbit-earnest purchases, of Chika's candy-energy, of Bronya's cold brilliance.
Being a leader was not a crown; it was a balance beam. A single misstep could crush hopes or create tyrants.
Takumi inhaled and whispered to himself, to the Herrscher, to the empty room, to the children drifting to sleep in the next building:
"Okay. Tomorrow we teach them how to build a world that art and machines will envy. And maybe… teach them to play a few good games."
He smiled, turned off the balcony lights, and let the city's soft guardian hum lull him into restless, purposeful sleep.