World Seed

by Justin Miller

  “Huh… so you’ll start out with the same kinds of stats as us, then. That’ll make it easier to fight.” I nodded my head as I thought about it, but she corrected me with some new information.

  “Not quite. Deus Ex don’t train their stats like normal races. We get a set amount of upgrade points every level, that we can use to buy upgrades. So… two levels’ worth of upgrade points could let me fly, for example, by giving me either rocket boots or jet wings. If I spent all twenty levels on something, I could probably get a high powered attack, but my mana supply would only allow one shot of it.”

  “Ahh… so you will be able to buy upgrades for your body, then, to put yourself on the same level as us… Speaking of which, what class are you going for? You should have a few ideas in mind, right?”

  Celeste nodded her head happily, despite her lack of facial movements. “I am debating between either hunter or a rogue right now. Those two would benefit most from being able to see through three sets of eyes. Maybe a fighter, but I don’t particularly want their fighting spirit. If I accidentally burn through too much aura, my upgrades could break down.”

  I nodded again, and a thought occurred to me. “Once you get your soul, wouldn’t you be able to go to a rebirth shrine and change your race to an organic one?”

  She thought about that for a few seconds as we changed direction to head towards the hotel. “It’s possible, but I won’t do it. I’m considered a native of this side, and people from this side work a bit differently when we use the rebirth shrine. We actually are reborn, and have to grow up from scratch. We retain our memories and the basic levels of their skills, and are born with a certain birthmark to show that we have been reborn. Many people use it as a way to cheat death when they are at the end of their lifespan.”

  “Ahh… so if you did that, then you’d have to wait until you grew up again to start adventuring.”

  “Right! And that’s not what I want. Besides, with the right upgrades, I’ll be able to do most of the stuff that the organic races can do.” She nodded her head with determination. “Also, after we get my soul, could we take a break for a few days? In order to fully integrate my consciousness with the soul, I’ll need to download all of the knowledge I have. That means that I’ll be giving it a lot of knowledge skill experience, but have to do so slowly so that I don’t overload the aura and explode.”

  This realization made me blink, concern showing on my face. “Sure thing, take your time. But, does this mean that you will out level us thanks to that?”

  “By a bit.” She let out a soft laugh. “But a lot of my upgrades will be on things like flight, or adding the sense of touch. I should be roughly on the same level of power as you. Maybe even a little lower.”

  “Alright. Just wanted to be sure we wouldn’t have things too easy with you around.” I felt the corners of my lips tugging up as I joked. “Though, after this I think I should level up quite a bit. Aside from that time in the forest of nope, I’ve never done large scale hunting like this.”

  She let out a chuckle, and we arrived at the hotel. For convenience’s sake I put the three of them back in my grove for the night. Though after they were all gone, Celeste couldn’t help herself. “Aww, and here I thought you were going to let Yang cuddle up with you while you sleep.” She appeared in my mind, grinning at me.

  “I’ll admit, I can’t exactly look at her like a bird anymore… but still, don’t try to move things along too fast.” I shook my head as I laid down, thinking about things that would be happening soon. I was going to be fighting monsters made of living rock, who were resistant to my Earth Manipulation. As such, I had to come up with a plan.

  My first, and most obvious idea was to just rain hell on them with plasma, but that was rejected by Celeste. According to her, most monsters had some kind of core inside their bodies, which contained their souls. As long as it existed, there would always be a way for the monster to come back to life. Thinking back to Yin, and how she was now classified as a monster, Celeste confirmed that she had one as well, but her resurrection conditions would be more complicated. As for the rock beasts, as long as the core was connected to any kind of dirt or stone it could reform. So shooting them with plasma would be useless.

  The typical way to deal with them was blunt force… but I don’t have much blunt force, aside from Earth Manipulation. However, I could make some! Diving into my grove, I grabbed all of the iron ore I could and brought it up to the surface, making sure it was away from anyone else. From there, I began the process of smelting it into several ingots and stacked them on the ground before I exited the grove and looked up some quick information.

  Naturally, this was information on how to construct the greatest of blunt force weapons, a giant hammer. My strength would definitely not be enough to wield this with any degree of proficiency, but if I controlled it with my Metal Manipulation and Magnetism Manipulation, I could make it much easier to use. Lift big end with Metal Manipulation, make rock beast magnetic, swing for an easy hit and smash.

  With the information I needed, I went back into my grove and quickly began making this hammer. I made the head extra large and heavy, while making sure that the shaft was strong enough to support it for a while. I didn’t need this to be usable as a permanent weapon, just something that would last until I was done unleashing smashy death upon all of the rock beasts I could find.

  Once the hammer was done, it ended up being nearly two meters in length, with a large circular head. With this, I should be able to smash quite a few rock beasts. Though, I should consider finding an alternative blunt force attack method in the future. Maybe make a giant steel block and just dropping it from my grove onto people from above?

  I shrugged, and decided to go ahead and rest for the night. In the morning, when I got up, I went about my morning routine, and then called out Yin and Yang. The three of us flew off towards the rock beast territory while Celeste just walked around my grove. I wasn’t all too concerned, though. It wasn’t strictly necessary to go to the rock beasts in the first place if I found a large number of wolves on the way.

  Thankfully, I did manage to find a few wolves, and introduced them to the burning power of plasma. Though, it was only one pack of six, and one got away before I could kill it. With a bit of hesitation, I decided to go ahead and use the entire purified soul on the crystal. I have seen two many zombie movies, and lived through my own brand of horror movies, so it was only natural that I hesitated towards something that could cause a zombie outbreak in certain settings.

  With that taken care of, I was able to add five soul fragments to the gem before leaving again, and quickly made my way to the rock beast territory using the mental map Celeste provided. As I approached, I began seeing large moving boulders, or at least that’s how they appeared from the sky. When I got closer, I was able to determine that they were just large rocks in the shapes of beasts moving around. They came in various different forms, ranging from bears, to snakes, even wolves and tigers. “Rock beasts are able to take on the form of any animal they have seen, so it’s natural for them to have so many different forms.” Celeste pointed this out to me as I landed near one of them while activating my combat Aspects. Yin and Yang continued flying up in the sky, watching what would turn into an inevitable battle.

  The rock beast did not seem to take too kindly to my landing near it. This one was one of the wolf shaped beasts, and lunged at me moments after I touched the ground. Dodging to the side, I was unable to fully avoid its attack, and it swatted me with one great big paw that felt like I was being hit by a truck.

  After rolling on the ground a few times and feel sore all over, I stood up in time to see the wolf charging again. This time, I immediately pulled the massive hammer out of my grove and had it materialize in my hands. Just as the process finished, the wolf lunged at me again. However… the hammer was far heavier than I had predicted, and it slammed me into the ground before the wolf even had the chance, causing the rock beast to sail over me.

>   Ouch… okay… let’s try this again… Using my Metal Manipulation, I slowly lifted the hammer off of me so that I could stand back up. When the wolf charged again, I used this same ability to create a magnetic field around the wolf while swinging the hammer. Though, I failed to consider just how much heavier the head was compared to the rest of the body. When I made the hammer strike, it simply rotated with the head as a pivot, and the base of the hammer slammed into the wolf. Still, this was enough to create large cracks on its body as it was thrown away.

  The wolf was quickly able to recover, and I could see the cracks on its body mending even as it ran towards me again. Plan B! Setting the hammer between myself and the wolf, I made it begin rapidly rotating like it had when I attacked previously, creating the world’s largest weed whacker. When the wolf jumped towards me, it was caught in the hammer and its body was shattered under repeated strikes.

  Watching closely, I was able to clearly see a small orange gem inside the stone body. Using Wind Manipulation, I made sure that it flew over towards me rather than falling on the ground, and caught it in my hand. However, now there were several other beasts glaring at me from nearby.

  Times like this, I really wish that I could fly without wings. Still, flying up into the sky and watching as my spinning death mallet pulverized several stone beasts was fun in itself. Maybe they just weren’t able to properly identify the mallet, but they nonetheless charged headfirst into it. After the fourth beast, the handle snapped off and I had to change tactics.

  Lifting the hammerhead up with my magic, I brought it over a target, and slammed it downwards. For some reason, it seemed that they did not notice anything that was not within a few feet of the ground, so they were unable to dodge my attack. This method served to kill them almost as efficiently as the weed whacker strategy. I shall call it, whack-a-stone!

  In the end, I had to activate my Aspect of the Mana Leech and absorb more mana so that I could keep doing this. But, after every successful kill, I would swoop down and retrieve the rock beast’s soul stone before flying back up. Eventually, I had all I needed, and was able to fly away. Unlike regular animals, the rock beasts didn’t run away even when I killed over a dozen of them, so purifying the souls here was not an option. However, I did gain two levels from this, so I was quite pleased.

  Chapter 30: That’s No Moon!

  After retrieving my broken giant hammer and putting it back in my grove, I flew off with Yin and Yang. Yang glanced back towards the scene we just left with a sigh, before shaking her head. However, she does not complain about the wholesale slaughter of the monsters. Maybe in the future, it’d be better for me to keep her in my grove when I’m fighting?

  “No, she just needs to get used to it.” Celeste spoke up in my mind as I had that thought. “Hiding her in your grove won’t help with that. She’ll still know that you’re doing it, especially when she makes weapons and other items out of the bodies.”

  I nodded, and once we were out of sight of the rock beasts, I descended to the ground. Part of me wondered if it would be possible to use my Xeno-Shifter abilities to become a Deus Ex… And I thought it might be worth a try after we ‘upgrade’ Celeste’s body. Taking out the soul gem, and the fifteen monster cores of the rock beasts, I once again began the process of refining the souls into one pure soul.

  Each soul took roughly fifteen minutes, and there were fifteen souls… man, this took a while. Guess it’s a good thing we slept first after all! A few hours later when I was done, I pulled Celeste out of my grove and had her open up her chest. The white plastic split apart at the center to reveal a complex pattern of glowing blue wires, at the center of which was a small hole the size of the gem that the golem had given me. “Well… here goes nothing.”

  With a sigh, I slipped the gem into its socket and had her close her chestplate again. “Alright!” Celeste spoke to me in my mind while the robot body seemed to power down. “Now I’m just letting my aura adapt to the presence of a soul. Should be done just about…. now!”

  As she finished speaking, the robot lifted its head up suddenly. Her eyes were darting back and forth rapidly as if reading. “Ooh, so many options. Alright, here we go. This should be good to start!” With my Aura Sight active, I could see her aura surging a bit, and at the same time her body itself began changing. The white ‘skin’ slowly began expanding, crawling along until it covered her entire body.

  Once her body had been covered by the smooth white skin, it changed pigment just slightly to look more realistic. If not for the lack of hair, she might look like a regular woman when she put some clothes on. Soon, purple hair began sprouting up from Celeste’s head, which surprised me. I could understand skin giving the sense of touch, but what purpose could having hair give? “It’s for cosmetic purposes!” The AI cried out in my mind.

  The next change was her back, as two purple metal strips seemed to grow out of her in straight lines. On closer inspection, these were containers, and each one released three large pink protrusions that gave it the appearance of wings, further reinforced by the five smaller strips of metal that descended, hovering just below the upper portions. Just as I was beginning to question it, Celste spoke in my mind again. “Don’t worry, they’re able to be stored in my upgrade inventory when I’m not using them.”

  The next big change was pink and purple armor growing out of her hands and feet. While the hand armor was sleek and formed a metal bubble around the back of her hand, the feet armor was more rigid, looking like wide armored boots you would see in an old mech anime. Then similar armor began to grow around her waist and along her sides and upper arm. Finally, a pink cloth began materializing and connecting her arm armor with her hand armor, and a dark brown one covered her torso.

  When she was done, Celeste opened her eyes, which had changed to match her new hair color, and looked down at herself. “Very cool… Totally worth the points.” Her face was much more animated now, able to properly display her smile and the widening of her eyes.

  A bit curious, I decided to ask a question. “How many levels’ worth of points did all of that cost…”

  With a wry grin, Celeste answered me. “Three for the upgrade inventory, two for the wings, one for the armor, one for the cosmetic change, four for the increased mana capacity and efficiency, and three for the additional senses.”

  My eye twitched slightly as I heard that she essentially spent nineteen levels for cosmetic changes and the ability to fly. “But… that’s not even really armor. It covers almost nothing.”

  Celeste laughed lightly, stretching in an obviously seductive manner to show off her curves under her skintight armor. “I know, right? If I upgrade it again, I can either get more physical coverage, or an energy field. But with this, at least I can fly back with you guys. If need be, I can upgrade the wings one more time to give me some extra speed to catch up.”

  I sighed, shaking my head in resignation. “Alright, well let’s get heading back then.” When I said that, she nodded happily, fully extending her wings. The various protrusions all let out a gentle pink light before they lifted her into the air. I could see that a similar light was also being emitted from her boots as well, likely to act as stabilizers. Dispelling my other Aspects, I grew my wings and took to the sky with Yin and Yang so that the four of us could all fly back to the city. Or, at least, that was the plan.

  Incoming call from Sharon.

  That message appeared after roughly ten minutes of flight time, confusing me. However, it’s not like I didn’t enjoy talking to her. She was pretty much the only other druid I had met, aside from my teacher. “Hey, Sharon, what’s up?”

  “Falenel… I’ll never get used to calling you that since I know your actual name now.” She giggled cutely, and I could see the Deus Ex that was flying alongside me send me a mischievous smirk. “Anyways, are you in a position where you can log out?”

  “I will be in a little while, flying to a city at the moment. Why, what’s up?” With a thought, Celeste pulled up the
local and real time. Although it was daytime here, it should be night where Sharon lived in the real world.

  “It’s… hard to explain. Something’s happened to the moon.”

  Error… does not compute… rebooting brain. “Sorry, what?”

  “Yeah… it’ll be easier if you see for yourself.”

  “Alright, I’ll hurry this up then.” Closing my eyes, I activated my Aspect of the Mana Leech to attune my wings to wind mana, and used the extra mana input to increase my speed as much as I could. The three girls seemed surprised by the sudden acceleration, but they were easily able to keep up. Though, Celeste’s wings seemed to glow slightly before the lights emitted from her wings became more intense.

  “Good. By the way, are you still at that planet you got rescued to?” With that, we had a bit of smalltalk while I was flying. When I told her about one of my companions evolving into a humanoid, she was surprised and asked how I did it. I didn’t know what the conditions would be for her own animals to evolve, so I just told her that she should be able to find out if she consults a terminal.