Grace grumbled as she glossed over the functions again. "We can't just keep resampling and resetting this stupid 'Soul Resonance' field setting! WHY does it keep increasing in scale over time!?"

Thankfully her Lord was busy researching the electronics for his upcoming tournament, because this was getting so FRUSTRATING! "The sample itself is static, I've confirmed that a few times… The automatic sampling and adjustment functions aren't causing the spikes, even though I was SURE they were causing all this… Damn it."

No, calm down. "The base sample is constant, check. The ambient sensors are picking up expected ranges of deviation, confirmed. Based on what little data we have so far, it SHOULD be simulating the steady growth curve of local active Duelists with a constant amount of ongoing battles."

How many times has she reviewed this so far today? A dozen? In frustration, she started just picking random modules NEARBY the stupid thing and examining them.

One to simulate John as weaker, another to fake him being more powerful (A deadly thing to actually activate or test, clearly.) This module would examine others to calculate a rolling average power level to show up as 'Normal' to nearby Duelists… THAT one would attempt to reduce his presence to something like a beginner player.

Eventually though, THANKFULLY, she stumbled upon something very simple and basic that was used ALL OVER the place: The Soul Resonance 'Heartbeat' simulator.

And almost immediately wanted to smack her own face.

The POINT of this module was simple: Introduce a variable amount of ambient 'static' to John's Soul Resonance field emissions.

There was a good reason to do so too! Living creatures after all didn't emit constant unchanging effects on their surroundings. No, like a heartbeat or a dance chorus, the Soul has its own signature, its own rhythm!

And early tests proved you NEEDED that rhythm, or even people WITHOUT amazing abilities would just feel something OFF about you. They'd start subconsciously treating the protected person like an object, a tree or bush or something.

So the module itself was fine, and needed.

The VARIABLES said module was using on the other hand? THOSE were WRONG!

It wasn't calculating each 'Heartbeat' simulation based on the current settings of the active defensive decoy.

No, it was calculating all those adjustment values using the host's ACTUAL resonance instead.

And that was why using her and her sister as test subjects caused no issues.

Because unlike them, JOHN easily overloaded everything to the breaking point… Because, even as crazy as their backup Soul networks had become, John's Soul was even further beyond. Crazy beyond crazy, immense beyond immense.

Grace's theory for WHY was again, tied back to the Soul Heartbeat. The real one, that every person or creature or thing with a Soul had, that pulsed with life.

Because like a metaphorical muscle, the Soul would gain in power as it pumped over time… It was why older Souls were more 'real' and 'sturdy' than something newly born.

And when it came to age, John's Soul won hands down.

Grace grumbled as she adjusted the settings to fix this whole mess… NOW her Lord could actually use her modified defenses to play this stupid game WITHOUT melting people or altering his cards with every touch. Finally!

Like seriously, that took forever!

Grinning and ready to activate the unit, Grace… Paused.

And then slumped. "No, don't act rashly… Let's run the testing modules again, see if there are any problems first."

Darn it, this was going to take FOREVER!

~~~Pocket System~~~

Jessica was relaxing on her castle balcony, a world of paperwork being ignored for the moment behind her and in the Pocket.

She was having a tea break.

Like, actual tea time scenario here, with small sandwiches and actual saucers with actual tea cups filled with some lovely oolong tea.

Could she have an actual meal right now? Easily.

Was this a good time to be taking a break? What with her agents bustling everywhere, her brother building mad scientist gadgets being embedded throughout their [[Home]], and the twin girlfriends actively trolling the internet and fundamentally redesigning their defensive modules?

Probably not.

But who cared!? An hour or whatever for a nice long tea break wouldn't be the end of the world. Not right now, anyway.

In the back of her mind, she could feel the agent working as her secretary organizing and sorting all the chaos that was still ongoing to ensure John's most recent project could be safely enabled, if they were lucky… But for now?

She sipped her tea.

Mmm. Nice.

Still, work needed to be done. Eventually. "Any update on Temptation's online stores?"

Unexpectedly, the response WASN'T drilled straight into her brain. "Yes Director. Several thousand orders have already been Crafted and shipped, while the resources running the site have been tripled. Additionally, the feedback forums have voted on a number of changes to the rules, to be tentatively approved by the young sir when time permits."

Jessica held her tea steady, glancing to the right… And saw one of her agents holding a clipboard. "Agent A33?"

The woman nodded. "Yes Director."

That uniform DID look darn snappy. "How long have my agents been able to Manifest directly into reality?"

The agent didn't even pause. "Seven minutes twenty two seconds, Director. The young sir has altered our [[Home]] to include holographic emitters within the general layout plans for the entire facility."

She gestured up at gem like decorations high up on the walls. "When within range of two or more emitters, any Agent is capable of directly interacting locally for any future missions, as required."

Jessica mulled that over… And then brightened like the sun! "Does this mean I can finally get some agents to do my paperwork!?"

Agent A33 tilted her head. "Yes? But we already ARE doing a good portion of your paperwork."

The woman pulled up a data feed. "Agent from Division A are entirely focused on administration needs and activities, and handle the vast majority of documentation, approvals for various missions, oversight, etc."

She pointed at the documents Jessica had been ignoring on the table inside. "THAT is the abbreviated, partially completed documents that require final approval and oversight before being completed. The top 0.01% of paperwork, as it were."

…Damn it. "Maybe I should just burn the damn things."

A form was placed on her tea tray. "That requires document B332-1a. Although I feel I must inform you that damaging your paperwork will delay a number of ongoing activities and projects, many of which were put into action on your orders, until the administration staff can refile them for later perusal."

Jessica sighed… Of COURSE burning the paperwork would creat paperwork. "Thank you, Agent A33."

Another sip of tea… But duty calls and all that. "Do you have a summary of the suggested rule changes the internet is pushing for?"

A folder was placed nearby. A fairly full one… Sigh.

~~~Pocket System~~~

John blinked. "Oh… That just altered the entire [[Home]] network, didn't it?" Oops. "Can I uh… Can I undo that?"

[[The following sections of dimensional collective 'Home' would become inaccessible for the following durations…]]

Sheesh! "I would have accepted a 'no', darn it." Because THAT was a TON of downtime to undo the Conceptual infection of holographic/Soul reverberance/In-Realm Multi-Dimensional shenanigans he accidentally just pulled off.

[[The duration for removing said abilities from dimensional collective 'Home' could be reduced by…]]

Sigh. "Nah, it's fine. We can at least replace and upgrade the stuff in the future. Right?"

[[Confirmed.]]

It was just REMOVING the feature that was going to be damned near impossible. Whatever. "Change my work interface. I want an actual confirmation box for applying stuff like this in the future."

He didn't really have something like 'save slots' in his work setup, as any and all changes were stored in logs with major 'checkpoints' being marked in the timeline. And that was NORMALLY not an issue, either because he would finish his work up really quickly or be fiddling with something in his Pocket over the course of weeks.

Each Checkpoint was considered a 'completed version' of whatever he was working on, and all the iterative changes in between were treated as both the change log AND an easy way to reverse anything along the way that caused issues.

But that lack of 'Save now and quit' mentality meant that John didn't have a nice little point to say 'OKAY I am good, deploy this'...

And so when he absent mindedly slapped the 'Activate and Deploy' option instead of the 'Mark New Checkpoint' choice?

Bam. It went live.

And uh… This was a HUGE change, so a LOT of stuff got modified all at once. Before schedule, ahead of plans.

Because this wasn't just adding the new holographic emitters… John had been working on formalizing a systematic method to add new features to their [[Home]], both now and in the future.

Could he remove the emitters now installed throughout multiple Realms?

Yes. It was a trivial issue to roll that back.

Could he remove the 'Add New Feature to [[Home]]' ability that was just enabled?

No. Not within any sort of reasonable time frame.

Because this new feature fundamentally altered the way his [[Home]], Pocket, and existence operated. Interconnected in odd fashions, interacted in unusual patterns.

And some of the stuff automatically adjusted itself, and other bits hadn't been written yet, and those portions over there were written in multiple different ways depending on which altered past timeline the sections over THERE were checking for, and…

Yeah. "The emitter project is good enough for now…" Hit the actual checkpoint feature this time, idiot! There we go. "Pull up the metric unit now. I need dynamic error detection and conflict resolution options NOW, because I just KNOW this thing is causing problems we can't see right now."

If it will? Or it did and it would be adjusted so it wouldn't?

Damn it, this is why he had delayed publishing this stupid mess earlier! And he could actually FEEL some of his memories censoring themselves when data that could harm his Soul and Mind bled through some of the cracks in this spaghetti code!

[[The Pocket System is composed of metaphorical units and modules. The percentage of food based components, specifically the Italian dish known to HOST as 'Spaghetti', is less than 0.0013% when adjusted for minor divergence in ongoing operations.]]

John blinked. "What?"

[[The Pocket System is statistically NOT composed of the Italian dish known to HOST as 'Spaghetti'.]]

Hoo boy. "Yep, we need that metric unit designed A.S.A.P. I think." Then again, his System had been pretty sassy in the past too… Might as well ease up on the poor thing. "You know, so you can have a rolling calculated baseline. That could be pretty useful for lots of stuff, yes?"

[[...Confirmed.]]

There we go! Best not to have his Pocket in a huff. "First thing first: Let's have this thing just record a bunch of statistics. We can also set up some code for future modules, ones designed to verify ongoing activities and provide data for when things go off from expected output… That way we work with the output of that sort of data to begin with and save some time and effort."

Complicated heuristic stuff like 'Does this feel suspicious' could be worked on at some later point, for now it would be GREAT to detect massive resource wastage, misallocated cache management, and matrices undergoing cascading error propagation BEFORE everything starts exploding.

[[Explosions are required for ongoing Harvesting of Essence Blocks generated via the Lava and Water Source Blocks collected from Realm containing 'Steve'. Explosions are expected and required features for the Pocket System and should be considered as such.]]

Yeah well, that was the important bit, yes? They were EXPECTED. On the other hand, UNEXPECTED explosions would be very much of the bad, yes?

[[Confirmed.]]

Good grief. "Man, I've been working on this for hours… I could really use a snack or something."

"Ribbit?"

John blinked at the frog in a waiter's outfit, holding forth a platter with a cheese sandwich. "Oh." Right, the holographic modules were now fully deployed. "Thank you?" The guy (Gal?) really did look dapper in that little uniform.

Wait! "There's just cheese in this, yes? No extra stuff?" Like, John could eat flies if he had to but…

"Ribbit."

Oh thank goodness. "Thanks, I appreciate this." As for the tall glass of bug juice on the tray next to it, he'd have to give it a pass for now.

Mmm! Grilled cheese was always a fun snack! "Tell them it is awesome!" Never had mustard on one of these before, but it was a nice touch!