World Seed

by Justin Miller

  So, if I kill enemies, I can create a buffer zone for emergency transfer? I still did not like the idea of this new skill, but the fact that it could bring back the dead made me at least accept it as something useful.

  “Basically, yeah. But enough of that, you should take a look at what you managed to get from Legion. I could only control the memories and personality as they flooded into you, but from your mana I also felt a sudden rush of the elements as well.”

  Blinking with surprise, I looked at my status briefly, followed by skills.

  Name

  John Hulett

  Race

  Half-Elf(Woodland)

  Titles

  Vengeful Heart, Amateur Brain Surgeon

  Fame

  400

  Level 26

  88%

  Class

  Druid

  Advanced Class

  Xeno-Shifter

  Deity

  Malthan

  Health

  210/210

  Health Regen

  0.27

  Mana

  910/910

  Mana Regen

  1.91

  Strength

  15

  Wisdom

  120

  Agility

  21

  Intelligence

  91

  Dexterity

  22

  Charisma

  10

  Vitality

  21

  Luck

  20

  Points Remaining

  10

  Earth 13%

  Fire 10%

  Wind 10%

  Water 10%

  Lightning 10%

  Light 11%

  Dark 11%

  Plant 11%

  Void 10%

  Metal 10%

  Skills

  Mana Manipulation - Advanced Level 1: 1%

  Nature Magic - Novice Level 5: 32%

  Wind Magic - Beginner Level 7: 5%

  Archery - Beginner Level 3: 0%

  Dagger Mastery - Basic Level 2: 1%

  Wild Luck - Basic Level 7: 0%

  Sketching - Basic Level 6: 60%

  Herbology - Basic Level 9: 10%

  Gathering - Beginner Level 6: 6%

  Alchemy - Basic Level 8: 23%

  Mana Signatures - Advanced Level 5: 0%

  Cooking - Basic Level 3: 55%

  Flight - Basic Level 1: 0%

  Aura Sight - Intermediate Level 2: 72%

  Technomancy - Intermediate Level 3: 21%

  Programming - Intermediate Level 4: 5%

  Runic Language - Advanced Level 4: 0%

  Enchanting - Basic Level 2: 30%

  Engineering - Novice Level 1: 16%

  Maintenance - Basic Level 9: 13%

  Dodge - Beginner Level 1: 20%

  Swordsmanship - Beginner Level 3: 20%

  Marksmanship - Beginner Level 9: 13%

  Energy Weapons - Beginner Level 5: 3%

  Soul Arts - Beginner Level 8: 9%

  The sudden increase in several skills, most notably Runic Languages and Mana Signatures, made me a bit happy. More importantly, though, when I sent my consciousness into my grove, I was startled to find that its size had drastically changed. Before, it was at a mere twenty something meter radius, but now its radius was over two hundred meters! The secondary grove had also improved, but only to a size of fifty meters. I absorbed part of his grove…

  I found new items lying around in my grove, a set of high tech armor, and weapons similar to my own. Wasn’t this supposed to be a bloody landscape in his memories?

  “Ah, yes, I think that was the work of the souls he had absorbed. They weren’t able to directly influence him yet, so they changed what he saw when he looked into his own soul.”

  That helped me to understand it a bit, and I was surprised that my other affinities hadn’t increased when I was taking in this much mana. Still, though, this gave my ore veins more room to grow once I absorbed more of that mana. First I would need to cultivate to balance out the elements again so that it could properly grow.

  At this time, a dark haired man in a white doctor’s coat came in, smiling to me. “Awake at last, are we?” I flinched unconsciously at his use of the word ‘we’, as if it triggered a bad memory. “Don’t worry, you’re not in any trouble. The police brought you in here yesterday saying that you had collapsed while helping them with some business.”

  “What about my bracelet?” I looked over to him, holding up my wrist. It’s not that I was ungrateful or anything, but it felt wrong not having it.

  “Ah, you mean that companion device?” The doctor smiled knowingly. “I play the game too, son. Took quite a bit of research before I figured out how you got it here. But again, don’t worry, it’ll be returned to you when you are ready to leave. An Officer Monte said to call him when you woke up, so I’ll bring in a phone for you to use. We’ll be keeping you overnight for observation, but you should be able to leave in the morning.”

  After getting a nod from me, the doctor left for a moment, coming back with a small holo-phone. “He said you’d know the number to call.” With that taken care of, the doctor left the room again, leaving me surprised. Celeste, did he ever give us a number?

  “Uh… not that I can remember?” She tilted her head from side to side, as if trying to think about it. With a shrug, I dialed the only number that I could think of.

  “911 operator. What is your emergency?” There was a male voice on the other end of the line.

  “Officer Monte told me to call, and I’m guessing he’s expecting me like this…” There was a sigh from the other end, before the call was transferred.

  “Mister Hulett?” I could hear the familiar voice on the other end, and Monte’s face appeared above the holo-screen. “Good to see you are awake. What happened to you?”

  “A mean prank of the new world?” I responded, thinking that was honestly correct. When I had received the quest, it obviously knew that my skill levels would suddenly rise and that I would get that new skill when I completed it. The only explanation was that it had all been predicted by whatever higher power there was.

  “Okay then… Whenever you get the chance, we need you back at the station. We don’t have another mage practicing Technomancy, so until the AI is able to be fixed we’ve had to take it offline. It seems that traditional tech support can’t handle an AI altered by magic.”

  Yay… more work. And I still have to refine those seeds as well. “Alright, but they won’t let me out of here until tomorrow. I can refine some of the items for the protective barrier in the meantime, but I don’t have what I need for it. Also, what happened to my slime?”

  “What do you need? And the slime is still in the office…. it’s too big to force out, and since you said it was with you, we didn’t want to kill it. We’ll be counting on you to retrieve it when you visit as well.”

  I thought about it for a moment. I already had a medium quality water seed from the big slime fight. “A rock the size of my fist. Everything else I should be able to manage on my own.” I needed at least some form of earth mana if I was going to refine that seed.

  “I’ll… see what I can do.” It was obviously an unorthodox request, but getting a simple rock into the hospital shouldn’t be too hard for the new chief of police.

  With that taken care of, I began the refining process for the Seed of Wind. I actually found it much easier to gather and control the mana now. Maybe that was because my Mana Manipulation had advanced so much, along with my Mana Signatures skill? Either way, I felt like if I had to do that fight again, it would be over much more quickly. I thought back to the deaths that had occurred during that fight… If I had woken up sooner, maybe I would have gotten there in time to resurrect one or two of them, at least. This new skill should try to make itself useful at some point.

  Chapter 22: Do-it-Yourself Exorcism, for Dummies!

  I’d like to say that I spent the rest of the night refining Seeds of Wind
and Seeds of Earth, but that would be a lie. I didn’t pass out or anything, Celeste just offered me a much better solution. “You can make things in your grove now, right? Why don’t you just refine the seeds in there? You should have more than enough to spare of the first five elements.”

  Realizing that she was right, I begrudgingly accepted the proposal. When I went to my grove and began refining the ground to make a Seed of Earth, I found that a two meter radius sphere was enough to instantly refine a low quality seed. If I increased the radius to three meters, I could refine a medium quality seed within a minute. I suddenly felt like a dunce for always refining them by hand. Although I could not easily bring magical items into my grove, taking them out of it is easy, as I have learned from Yo and Celeste.

  Though, this wasn’t really a viable option before, since I had only a small grove. Each one would leave a nearly visible impact after refining it. However, now the grove was large enough that I had plenty of room. Though, this only applied to fire, water, earth, wind, and light seeds. It seemed that I did not absorb any other elements from Legion, meaning I still had to refine the Seed of Dark and Seed of Lightning by hand.

  Still, now that I knew I could do it this way, I had a better idea. Instead of refining those two seeds outside of my grove, and then having to do the whole combination effect on the outside, I began actively cultivating those two elements, drawing them into my grove and forming the seeds in there. This way, I could do the combination procedure in a controlled environment. And, worst case scenario where the combining fails? The mana doesn’t rush out into the open, and should just be returned to my grove so I can quickly start over.

  This took roughly four hours for me to refine both medium quality seeds, and then about ten minutes to combine them all into a rainbow patterned sphere. Once that was taken care of, I began pulling the element seeds I had gotten from the big water slime out, and popping them into my mouth like candy, breaking them down the same way as when I add a new element to my grove. With this, I received even more water mana, and could remake the seeds whenever I wanted.

  The only one that I didn’t do that for was the seed which had a mixture of water and darkness. According to Celeste, it was the Mire Affinity, which I had not practiced yet. I planned to feed this to Yo when he turned into a slime person, and see what happens.

  Anyways, with that, I ended up having the rest of the night to just relax. I spent it cultivating metal mana until I was ready to pass out again. In the morning, the doctors examined me and determined that I was physically fine, and just needed to eat a bit since I had slept so long. I took them up on that right away, and grabbed a bite to eat on the way to the police station. Once I had Celeste back, she told me that Yin and Yang were bugging her to let them out now that she could connect to the other bracelet again. I was honestly a bit surprised to find that she could connect to it in the first place when Yang was inside my grove.

  In the end, I relented and summoned the two of them. Each one quickly assumed their ‘ideal place’, with Yin perched on my shoulder and Yang hugging my arm as we walked. Now, let me tell you, that was an awkward situation to explain to the police. Telling them that they were both my animal companions, and that Yang had simply evolved in the game. They seemed suspicious at first, as if they thought I might be working with slave traders, but when they saw how ‘enthusiastic’ Yang was they let it drop.

  After retrieving Yo, I went down to the server room and used Technomancy to connect myself and Celeste to their AI. For the most part, the next bit was a boring cyber battle that lasted all of two seconds before the far more advanced AI overpowered the station’s, and reset it to the default. It was interesting to dive into an AI, though, like floating in a stream of endless code. I wondered slightly if that was what it was like for Celeste to be in my head, but she couldn’t answer.

  When I told Monte that I had refined all of the items needed for the protective field around the town, he said they were working on getting a length of cable to run a circle around Oakland, but it would take a few more days. He had also put in a word with some other districts to spread the word, so most of the cities on the western coast were looking for druids to set up the barriers. In a few more days, that should extend to every city in the country, and then most likely the world.

  Though, as a side note, I did offer to Yin to have her quickly train up to her next evolution when we got back to NeoLife, since I could easily refine Seeds of Wind now. It took her a while to decide, but she still decided against it. Still, I gave her a medium quality seed to slowly refine to help her cultivate, and Celeste said that she should be bordering her evolution now.

  With that taken care of, I walked around with the two birds for a while to show them the city. Normally, this wouldn’t be very special, but I haven’t taken the chance to really show either of them around a city yet since I found them. Thanks to that, they were both very impressed with the scenery. Of course, there were many people that had their eyes glued to Yang as well. Even though women could choose to become a different race to change their looks slightly, it would not automatically make someone beautiful.

  After spending a couple of hours walking through the city, I pulled the two of them back into my grove. Before doing so, I asked Yang to practice making staffs out of the trees, and spread the plants out a bit more now that the grove had grown so much. Then, I went back to my house and logged into the game. Since I was going to be waiting a few days for the police in the real world, that meant I had at least a week or two in NeoLife to train.

  Once I was back in the game, I decided to take up a certain subject with Celeste. “What kind of monsters normally spawn in space? And what levels are they?”

  “Hmm… The big monsters, ones with a level over two hundred, are hunted down as standard policy when a system is colonized. But there are several smaller species that can be quite troublesome, like the stellar fish or void caller. Wait.. are you thinking what I think you are? Why am I asking that, of course you are. And the answer is no, you shouldn’t do it. At least, not yet. Maybe when you train the Gravity Affinity, and already have a fairly decent Plasma Affinity. But right now, that would just be suicidal.”

  “Damn…” To be honest, I had thought about quickly training my Plasma and Gravity Affinities by flying out to the local sun to cultivate. That should have an even greater effect than I received when I cultivated on the jungle planet. Though sadly, the idea was firmly rejected. “So my best bet is still to farm monsters here, huh?”

  “Right. And now that you have the Scythe Mantis arm, you can work on getting another animal. What kind of trait do you want next? Or would you rather focus on getting experience for Yin so that she can evolve quickly?”

  “I’ve already got several layers of armor, and natural weapons. My eye covers sensory abilities.” That made me remember something, so I decided to upgrade my ears before I left the town this time. “I think at this point, I’ve gotten what I can get from animals, unless I go for things based more on appearance. Are there any magical animals with useful abilities that I can copy on this planet?” With my Aspect of the Armored Beast covering both my skin and bones, and Aspect of the Hunter giving my diamond-like claws, I didn’t have much else to gain from the more mundane animals. Maybe if I found an animal that was especially good with speed, but this was a planet where everything had integrated with rocks, so that was unlikely.

  “Hmm… there is the silver moth. It’s a fairly rare insect on this planet that consumes ore and refines it into silver thread. You don’t have a method of making metal threads yet, so that might be useful for you. There is also the cliff tiger, which is able to dive into the ground and swim through it faster than most animals on this planet can run. It can’t breathe underground, so it has to do this in short bursts.”

  I thought about it for a few moments before answering. “While silver threads would be cool and all… I wouldn’t really be able to do much with them but sell them. Yang’s a crafter, but silver woul
dn’t really qualify for the Nature Magic crafting method.” With that decided, my next target would be the cliff tiger. Earth swimming would be a good defensive power and movement ability. “Do cliff tigers have something like tremorsense to detect what is on the ground above them?”

  “Nope, but they typically don’t stay under for more than twenty seconds at a time. So a tremorsense isn’t really needed. There are other animals on this planet that do have that sense, but they are mostly back in that forest where--”

  “Nope, not going back there, fuck that.” I didn’t even let Celeste finish, knowing what she was going to say. She smirked wryly to me as I vehemently denied that plan. “Not worth it for a new sense. I can just have you keep an eye out for any other animals that we come across that fit the description.”

  Celeste laughed lightly, but agreed to that. “So, are you going to get the new affinities first, or level up Yin?”