The monarchy menu was more complicated than anything else the system had ever put to her, far more so than any readout of her stats or abilities.

It began with a simple statement.

{You are the Monarch of Earth}

You count Earth as your only native realm

Any native of Earth who kills you will become Monarch of Earth

Any non-native of Earth who kills you will trigger a new election

[Nativity], [Aspect], and [Race] restrictions of other monarchs don't apply to you

Restrictions that you place on your own realm don't apply to you

The meaning of everything in the last bullet point wasn't clear to the humans, and neither were the four stats that she saw when calling up the new {Monarchy: Earth} menu.

{Monarchy: Earth}

Challenge Chance: 0% + 30 days of grace

Level Minimum: 38

Restriction Decay: 0%

Restriction Decay Rate: - 2.5%

She brought up some introductory text with a simple query, then wrote the {Monarchy: Earth} menu out again, this time with detailed instructions. As she worked, Matthews' aide took pictures of her glamour with a digital camera.

{Monarchy: Earth}

Challenge Chance: 0% + 30 days of grace

?: This is the percentage chance that the system will allow a challenge. Each day that no challenge occurs, this value will rise.

A challenge has two parts. First, all eligible challengers compete or opt out until only one remains. This last challenger then fights the remaining monarch.

When a challenge concludes, this value resets to 0 and you will be granted a quantity of days of grace. The chance of challenge will rise only when these days have run out. You cannot store days of grace.

A challenge always takes place outside of normal time.

Level Minimum: 38

?: While you may restrict travel to or from Earth based on a traveller's level, you may never restrict access below this listed minimum.

This limit will rise the more time Earth spends as an inner realm.

Restriction Decay: 0%

?: Each day, your Restriction Decay will rise or fall based on the intensity of your restrictions. If restriction decay reaches 100%, your travel restrictions will all be disabled.

Restriction Decay Rate: - 2.5%

?: This is the rate at which your Restriction Decay is set to increase/decrease each day. Adding restrictions will raise this value. Removing restrictions will lower it.

"So it's about balancing restrictions with decay rate?" Matthews asked. "Optimizing our travel limitations based on a decay rate budget?"

"Mhmm!" Ashtoreth said. "The pool of a hundred percents will let us go into the red for a while, too—in case you want to bunker the Earth in the face of an attack. Even a decay rate as high as +5% will still give you 20 days before you need to reconfigure. Anyway, here's the restrictions menu. Defaults first—every other realm abides by these unless it's given specific restrictions."

{General Warp Restrictions}

?: Any change that you make to Earth's travel restrictions does not take effect immediately. Instead, Earth's restrictions will update to the settings listed here every 24:00:00 at a specific time.

Earth's restrictions will be updated in 11:31:41.

[Aspect]

?: Allows you to restrict travel based on a creature's aspects.

[Nativity]

?: Allows you to restrict travel based on a creature's native realm. Note that there are existing means to change a creature's system-recognized nativity, allowing them to circumvent this restriction.

[Level]

?: Allows you to restrict travel based on a creature's level. Note that this restriction has a minimum level; you cannot bar travel from those who are level 38 and below.

The closer your level limit is to this minimum, the more costly the restriction will be.

[Race]

?: Allows you to restrict travel based on a creature's system-indicated race.

[Conduit]

?: Allows you to restrict both the total mass and total system-granted power that can be warped to or from Earth in a given day.

Both these restrictions can only be adjusted gradually, increasing or decreasing day by day until the desired value is reached.

[Key]

?: Allows you to alter certain parameters of warp spells that move to and from Earth. You may require them to use certain runes, to warp to certain locations/runic circles, or to exceed a given level of magical intensity.

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[Clock]

?: Allows you to restrict specific forms of travel to specific times and dates.

Matthews made a few comments as he read the first of these, but fell quiet sometime after they reached the race restrictions, his face a thoughtful mask as Ashtoreth composed her glamour.

"There's more," she said once the aide was finished her photographs. "Here."

Under the heading {Realm-Specific Warp Restrictions}, she found a very similar menu with the same restriction types repeated. This one had a lot more added complexity, however—functions for merging realms into groups with shared limits, or assigning higher weights to the restricted travel from one realm, but not the other.

At the moment, the only eligible realms whose restrictions she could set were the bastions still remaining in the interplanar medium around Earth. Each was obviously recognizable by a long code that resembled a human serial number.

Throughout the whole process, Ashtoreth felt herself becoming increasingly grateful of the fact that the humans, not her, would be the ones responsible for sussing out exactly which restrictions they'd want… though of course she'd want to give suggestions.

At last Matthews' assistant seemed to finally finish taking digital pictures of her menus, presumably sending them off to the actual decision makers.

"It's a strange set of conditions," he said, "but the way the whole system functions seems simple enough. We'll find the most protective set of restrictions we can bear without exceeding the restrictive decay limit."

"Yup."

"And I'm guessing the system is not going to let us cover all our bases? Ban everyone in every way possible."

"Not the system's style, unfortunately."

Mattew's face was grim. "So I see. In any case, we need to gauge exactly how the system is going to cost our defenses. It would seem that presenting one set of restrictions could insist our enemies attack us with one strategy, but that we could switch to an entirely different set quite easily once their attack was underway, complicating a siege. To do that, we're going to need a pretty exacting model of how to handle restriction decay."

"That all makes sense."

"I'm going to want you to stay here for a long time and test these systems for us so that we can copy out the results," said Matthews.

"Oh boy!" Ashtoreth said. "Data entry!"

The corner of Matthews' mouth curled upward. "Yes, Your Highness. One of the most regular joys of a military career. Both of us can share in it."

She laughed, and soon they'd set to work. Frost had been right. The meeting ran long. Ashtoreth let him go on account of the fact that he couldn't really help with anything, then settled into an unglamorous afternoon of helping the humans record the restriction decay cost of various sets of restrictions.

It was slow work. She had to communicate something to Matthews, who was clearly communicating to someone else.

Eventually, she caved. "Look," she said. "Since this is still gonna take a while, I'm gonna grab a quick bite. Do you mind if I step outside for a minute?"

"Just eat in here," said Matthews. "We'll get out faster."

Ashtoreth glanced down at her satchel. She couldn't remember—had she eaten in front of Matthews before? "Uh—so you know about—"

"That you eat raw hearts?" Matthews asked, a note of humor entering his voice. "Yes, Ashtoreth. Most people see that as a conversation piece."

"Right," she said, reaching into her satchel. "Don't mind if I do, then."

The afternoon progressed slowly. Settings could only be changed once a day, but she could always check what the cost of a potential change would be, and so she wound up feeding thousands of data points by checking the cost of restrictions against the bastions.

[Race] and [Aspect] restrictions were found to be highly expensive. [Level] and [Key] restrictions felt comparatively cheap.

In the end, the only restriction that Ashtoreth was told to place on Earth was by level. Setting the level restriction of incoming travelers to its minimum of 38 would have cost an overall restriction decay rate increase of 5%, which combined with the base rate of -2.5% to make a rate of +2.5%—Earth could do it for 40 days.

But doubling Earth's current minimum of 38 to 76 made it break even—a 0% overall decay rate. It was a plain set of restrictions, and wouldn't actually stop any of the remaining bastions from attacking, but she assumed it was a placeholder and that the bossmen had a plan.

She stepped back out into the rest of headquarters with a spring in her step, eager to get to the part where she got her upgrades.

"Awake, Dazel?" she asked the furry bundle in her arms.

"Mmm," he said, shifting slightly. "I slept through most of it, but I got the tail end. They really ought to put down some [Key] restrictions. Make defensible entry points. That's much more important than keeping your invaders down another 20 or 30 levels."

"They probably will," she said. "But they've got to pick and fortify the points first."

"They're not even stopping the demons who are coming in right now. You didn't want to ask them about it?"

"Nah," she said. "I think they just want to see me following orders right now." She shrugged. "Who knows? They might even test me to see if I'll pick a bad set of restrictions, just to see if they're really in control, or if they're only in control when they agree with me."

"Yeah, I suppose…"

"Ah," she said, pushing open the metal door at the top of the stairwell to walk out onto the roof and stretch her wings. "That breeze feels nice after being cooped up and doing minion work all day."

"Poor princess."

"Aren't I, though?" she asked, grinning. "All right, which do you think we should check out first: race upgrade or class upgrade?"

"Doesn't matter," he said. "Read through them all before you pick, then upgrade both before you pick your advancements." He yawned. "You know how it goes."

"All right, I'm picking class," she said. "My race upgrade will have [Archfiend of Pride] in it anyway, and that's the best one anyway."

"[Archfiend of Pride], [Archfiend of Sin], and some kind of vampire lord," said Dazel. "So you're probably right. The choice is made for you."

"But you," Ashtoreth said, opening up her class upgrade to read the results. "You might still have that swanky teleportation upgrade, and…."

She froze, her eyes scanning the text.

"No teleportation?" Dazel asked.

She blinked. "It's here," she said slowly. "But… huh." She began to laugh.

"What?" he asked.

Ashtoreth kept laughing. "It just looks like I'm taking something else again," she said, weaving a claw through the air to conjure a glamour of her system text. "Look!"

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