World Seed

by Justin Miller

  Again, he grimaced upon hearing the requirements. The glass ball wasn’t that bad, they could get one almost any time with a bit of work. But drawing a circle around the entire city would take time. At worst, it could take them a couple of weeks to lay down a proper circle, assuming they didn’t just have a small ditch dug. Thinking about it, I offered a suggestion. “You can try laying wire around the city underground to act as the circle. That might actually be the easiest way, and then set a length of wire connecting it to the building where the glass ball will be.”

  “Right, we can try that. Now, about the other matter you saw today. You naturally cannot tell anyone about it, understood? If I find out you did, I’ll have you arrested for interfering in an investigation.”

  I nodded my head, accepting this, before he continued. “Though, you’ve already been involved more than you should. And just knowing that this is blood magic will help. If it were a different alien language, then maybe we could just run around and question anyone of the race. But for it to be a shapeshifting one makes it harder..”

  Tilting my head, I asked curiously. “What did the message say, anyways?”

  He raised an eyebrow, but shrugged and replied, as if the message itself wasn’t that important. “Just a bunch of ramblings. As far as we can tell, it’s just a song that people sing when they fly in spaceships. Our men have already looked into it, and there doesn’t seem to be any significant connection between it and the crimes.”

  “Ah… well… anything else you can tell me?”

  “Don’t answer your door for anyone for a while, unless there’s at least two people, even if it’s someone you know. There’s a chance that the killer might have seen you at the scene.”

  That realization made me freeze, shivers running down my spine as I imagined that what happened at that house might happen to me. Celeste said that blood magic could be done over a distance. The only thing necessary was a drop of the victim’s blood to serve as a medium. But.. If that was the case… I began to calm down and think about it. If blood leads to blood, it should connect through the aura. I quickly, right in front of the chief of police, shapeshifted into a void elf. Theoretically, if I changed my aura enough by changing races, the connection should be broken.

  However, something hadn’t occurred to me between the time that I was fearing for my life and the time that I shifted to present myself a possible solution. When I opened my eyes, I found about six officers all with their weapons drawn pointed at me. “Oh come on… really? You guys already know I can shapeshift.”

  “‘Fraid we need you to prove who you are, son.” The chief said strictly, being one of the ones with his gun trained on me. At this distance… even if I changed my skin with Aspect of the Armored Beast, their guns could probably shoot straight through me.

  “Okay… well… you guys looked up druids, right?” He nodded his head at my question. “Then you know about groves, right?” Another nod. “Okay… anyone feel like taking a look at mine? Probably easier to send you in there than it would be to summon a tree in the middle of the police station.”

  Surprisingly, it was Faraday who nodded to the chief and walked up, though he still had his gun out. I could see how this was a bad situation, especially for him. If I turned out to be the killer, I could just be taking him hostage. In that case, the other five would have to either open fire on me or let me leave with him.

  “Okay, I’m going to take you into the grove, but for that to happen, you have to not resist. If you resist, and part of your aura leaks out when I’m pulling you in… pieces could fall off.” No sooner had I said that than a realization dawned on me. “Fuck… he’s a druid.”

  “What do you mean?” Faraday looked at me, a bit of hesitation in his voice.

  “I just said it. If you resist, pieces go missing. It’s not blood magic I sensed back at the scene, it’s Blood Affinity. He must have tried to pull people into his grove by using their blood as a medium he could control, which is why only their organs were missing. There were no tool marks because he didn’t use any tools, they really did just fall apart.” I’ll admit, the idea of a weaponized grove terrified me. There was no way to see it, and if it hit you’re as good as dead.

  “Why didn’t you consider it before, then?” The chief was the one that asked this time, still suspicious.

  “Because I’ve never tried to take something into my grove that I wasn’t holding in my hand or on my body. I didn’t even know it was possible. But the mana and control required to do this… He’s got to be a fairly high leveled one, probably specialized in the Blood Affinity.”

  “And how do we know you’re not the one with the Blood Affinity?” He asked again, and it was a good question.

  “Dammit… well, if we were in the game, your companion could tell you with a certain software. But I’m going to wager that none of you are in the Gallen star system of wood elf space. Or have methods to bring your AI companion over to this side.”

  This seemed to make the chief even more suspicious. “I heard that you couldn’t test for druid groves or things like that.”

  With a sigh, I tried to explain myself. “You can’t, but you can read strong affinities on their aura if you have the Aura Sight skill and the Identify software on your companion. For instance, I can see a bit of metal affinity on you, so that is likely your strongest secondary affinity. You can get your affinity tested in the game if you want to confirm it.” Celeste had been kind enough to show me his metal affinity, which was surprisingly at 4%. If he were to be a druid, he’d be able to cultivate that pretty easily.

  They put me in an interrogation room after that, while the chief went off to confirm the information I had given him. Naturally, as soon as I learned that we were dealing with a shapeshifter druid with Blood Affinity, I had Celeste check for anyone with a Blood Affinity above 5%. Getting an affinity that high is impossible without cultivation, so anyone that had it would be my primary suspect.

  Of course, there wasn’t much I could do while locked up. Oh well, guess I can get started on the element seeds…

  Chapter 18: All Just a Game

  Being locked up in the interrogation room like this was both a blessing and a curse. It was a curse because obviously, the police suspected that I was the ‘Gamer’ killer they were looking for. However, it was a blessing because this meant that I didn’t need to take Faraday into my grove anymore! I hadn’t realized until after the fact, but if I had sent him in there, he would have undoubtedly run into Yang. I did not even want to imagine what kind of things would happen after that.

  Shuddering at the narrowly avoided disaster of misunderstandings, I got to work on refining a Seed of Wind. For now, I would just be making it low quality, and then work on making it a higher quality when I had more time. I had at least an hour and a half to do this, most likely. And it was the easiest one to make in my current situation.

  Closing my eyes, I focused on drawing in the wind mana around me to create the elemental seed. Naturally, they did not have any methods yet to prevent magic use in the prison, but I’m sure they would in a couple more days at most, once their officers got to the point where they could do it. Until then, however, there was nothing stopping me from working on the method to stop monsters from spawning.

  At least, there wasn’t until a ringing voice entered my ear. “Look at the little birdy, lost and alone, trapped in its cage. Such gifts you have, yet wasted. Such potential, unfulfilled.”

  “Uh… John?” After the voice rang out, Celeste appeared near me. “What was that?”

  “Sound… Looks like he’s got the Sound Affinity, too. I had actually been interested in that one originally…”

  “Oh? The little birdy knows his stuff. He knows what I am, what I can do. But the little birdy is trapped in his little cage. All alone with nobody to help.” The voice rang out again, and I tried to focus on it. It was obviously a male voice, but the tones seemed like a dozen people overlapped so I couldn’t identify it. “Did birdy get
my message? Did he see the writing on the wall?”

  Glancing around curiously, I saw that under the camera in the room, red liquid was dripping out. Blood… He’s probably killed someone to write this.

  As the blood dripped down the wall, it began flowing in patterns, forming letters. “Lives remaining: 10.”

  The message confused me for a little while, but I had the feeling that he was wanting to play a game of life and death with me, for some strange reason. Maybe it was because I was a druid? “Why are you doing this? What could you possibly gain?”

  “Why, experience of course. The world is a game, I am merely a player.” The voice called out to me after I questioned it. “It’s not long now before what has happened will come to pass. Before the end, let’s play one last game. Hide and seek, what do you say? I’ll hide, and you come find me. But be quick, or the boys in blue will be the ones to lose.”

  I grimaced at that, using a quick application of Metal Manipulation to break the handcuffs and open the door to the room, before using Wind Manipulation to amplify my voice. “Somebody get in here!”

  I could hear the voice cackling as it withdrew, though the writing on the wall remained. A pair of officers soon ran in with their guns unholstered. “What did you--!” They paused as they saw the writing on the wall.

  “He’s close.” I said to them, and one nodded to his partner, who ran off down the hall.

  “What happened?” The one remaining asked. Naturally, I checked him with my Aura Sight, and was relieved that I was not left alone with the killer. I began explaining what had just occurred, including the voice and what I was doing when it arrived. When the officer saw the broken handcuffs, he grumbled under his breath.

  With a slight sigh, I fixed the handcuffs using the same magic that broke them. “You need magic defenses, otherwise people like me could walk out whenever they wanted. He’s picked out ten people, and it sounds like they’re all cops. I don’t know how he chooses, but he has.”

  At that point, the other officer came back, and whispered something to him. The one that had been staying here had his eyes widened and he looked at me. “Come with me.” Naturally, I was inclined to follow the people with guns who were walking towards their own deaths. They led me to a much larger room, with several desks manned by other cops. “Folks, we’ve lost contact with the chief. His home AI reported that he never got back home, and tracking his car showed it abandoned a few blocks away. Matthews and Johnson, I want you two to check it out.”

  Of the two that responded, one was surprisingly not human. For the most part, he looked human, but his head was a bit taller, and his eyes were pitch black. Out of all the officers here, I could count the nonhuman ones on one hand. Thinking for a moment, I looked to the officer that had taken charge. After confirming once again that he, and everybody else in this room, was clear of the Blood Affinity, I tried to get his attention.

  “What is it?” He glared over at me.

  “I’d check the roof. The blood on the wall…” I didn’t get the chance to finish speaking before his eyes went wide again, and he sent someone to investigate the roof as well. Even if the druid’s mana control was excellent, there had to be a range. At least, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to control the flow of water that detailed from more than a few dozen meters. And the easiest way to make it flow like that would be if the blood came from a higher source, such as the roof.

  Once the people were all dispatched, the leading officer looked to me. “Okay, kid. What can you tell us about druids that we don’t already know?”

  Thinking about it, I shook my head. “All I know is that he has at least seven elements all above 5%. Fire, water, wind, earth, light, blood, and now sound. He should also have Nature Magic, but that’s all I can tell you. Each druid is different from any other. I can tell you that his control range shouldn’t be able to exceed twenty meters, unless he knows tricks I don’t. He probably also has Divination, which would have let him hear what I was saying in the interrogation room.”

  “Wouldn’t sound have done that?” The officer asked. I swear, eventually I’ll get his name.

  “Not unless he was in an adjacent room. He’d need to be able to extend his Mana Sense to me with enough detail that he could feel the sound mana I released. And, if he did that, I should have been able to sense his mana.” I did my best to explain to the person who more than likely hasn’t even set foot inside the game.

  “So, what does Nature Magic do?”

  “It is a magic that lets you control and replicate the effects of plants and animals. Alchemy can be replicated with Nature Magic, but it can also be used for my own shapeshifting. He probably uses it for poisons. And I’m guessing you’ve figured out how he chooses his victims…”

  The man gave me a cold glare, but a moment later, the officer he had sent off to check the roof returned. “It’s a blood mess up there, Monte.”

  Ah, so his name is Monte. I nodded slightly as the ‘new chief’ grumbled. “Dammit.” He then looked at me. “You said that you can read a person’s affinities by looking at them?”

  “That’s right. I’ve already checked everyone in the room. One of you looks to be a druid in training, but not with the Blood Affinity. My guess is he was going to be the one to create your anti-monster zone.”

  Officer Monte glanced over to the person who I had noticed to have druid affinities without me needing to point him out. “What level are you now?”

  “Just.. just twelve, sir.” The officer responded, looking over to me.

  I decided to ask first. “You don’t have your grove yet, right?” I could see that his Light and Fire Affinities were just below 5% with Celeste’s help, so he shouldn’t have it established yet.

  “No.. Not yet.”

  I gave a sigh and decided to throw him a bone. “You should hurry up and get it. Once you do, you can bring items over with it.” I had the feeling that I was going to regret doing this, but I pulled my companion bracelet out of my grove. Blue lights stretched out from my chest and went onto my wrist as the item formed. “That includes your companion bracelet. If you have that with you, and get the Identify software, you should be able to read affinities.”

  The man gave a surprised nod as Officer Monte turned to look at me. “You can bring items out of the game?”

  I nodded to him. “Items, animals, even people. Anything in the grove can be transferred over.”

  “Then why doesn’t the inventory transfer?”

  I had been wondering that myself, but Celeste provided me with a theory. “According to my companion, people are born with the power to have an inventory. It is linked with their body. However, the grove is embedded into their aura on an undetectable level. Since our auras essentially cross back and forth, so does the grove.”

  Officer Monte seemed to consider that for a moment, and then gave the unnamed druid officer(coincidentally Officer Forest) the next few days off to finish his grove. Likely, he was planning to use the grove as a means of smuggling weapons out of the game. Not the worst idea, and precisely why I pulled out my bracelet, rather than one of my own weapons.

  Around this time, the two officers that went to check on the late chief’s car returned. Before they even spoke, I could tell from their expressions what happened. Thankfully, Monte could too, because he didn’t ask them to report. He simply looked at me and sighed. “Alright, whether I like it or not, you’ve become a part of this. Your information is useful, and the Gamer will likely lash out if we send you back. He only targets people that don’t play NeoLife, so more than likely you are safe. However, the people around you aren’t.”

  I thought about it, and if he only targeted people that didn’t play… “There are only ten officers that don’t play the game, aren’t there?” He nodded his head slightly. “He might not be strong enough to kill like this if the person has a level in the double digits. If that’s the case, he just picks out the people that couldn’t have possibly leveled up yet… Then again, from how he ta
lked, he seemed to be at least a little insane, I think..”

  “The worst ones are never really crazy. Everyone just thinks they are.” Officer Monte looked out towards the others. “Faraday, I want you to have Haverson called back in. He’s our highest level diviner right now, and we need the help. Hulett,” he turned to look at me briefly. “Do you have any methods of stopping the attacks?”

  “I’ve got one that could work, as long as he hasn’t practiced the Void Affinity. But it would only work if the target is near me. Though, the easiest way is to just have the ten people log in to the game and level up a couple times.”