Celeste nodded with a faint smile. “Right. I’ll be right back.” To my surprise, she actually left the room to physically inform them. I had expected her to just call people on the comms while staying in the room. Or for her to even ask why I didn’t do just that. Really, it was just because I felt a bit too tense at the moment, and didn’t want to worry them unnecessarily.
Well, it’s not like she isn’t always with me if need be, anyways. I thought to myself, not sure whether Celeste was currently paying attention to my thoughts. Looking to Lex, I decided to ask what had been on my mind since I identified him. “Lex, you listening?”
It took a moment before the young voice replied back to me. “Yeah, just working on this mana thing. Is something wrong?” His voice seemed to panic at the last bit.
“No, nothing like that. I just had to ask, do you know anything about your abilities? They aren’t quite what I originally put in that ring. And then there’s one that I don’t know anything about.”
Again, I was met with silence for a brief period. “Well… If you mean the element ones, everything started to shift when you were giving me that little world. I don’t really know what happened, but I ended up with that.”
“And the Elemental Integration?” That was the part I was most concerned with, as I couldn’t be certain where it had come from.
“Shortly after you put me in the ring, this strange voice asked me to pick an upgrade. But, before I could choose one, you started giving me that world. When I checked again, I just… had it. Maybe… maybe you gave it to me by accident?”
Yeah, right… Malthan! I called out in my mind. I know that nothing I had done should have given him an entirely new enchantment. Maybe modifying his previous enchantments to condense them, but not adding something new. And, since he didn’t select the option, that left only one choice.
ヾ(°∇°*) What’s up, my boy?!
I froze for a moment as I looked at the screen that appeared. Deep breaths… God of Chaos… expect random… Just an hour or so ago he had completely forgotten about me, to the point where he forgot to give me a system window, but now I get this? Explain the Elemental Integration thing… Please . I am still dealing with a being of unknowable power. Politeness would be wise, if a bit forced.
(ΦωΦ) Hmmm… nope! You could always buy that information from the temple, but I don’t feel like telling you right now!
Are you high on something right now? Even for Malthan, this was getting kind of ridiculous. Maybe he’s just having a random mood or something?
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) I could be high on a lot of things right now. I think. I’ve never really tried. Σ(‘◉⌓◉’) I should go try that! See you in a week or so!
What? Wait, no! Bad god, no running off to get high, I need you to explain this to me! I tried to get his attention, but it was no use. Is he seriously going to try for a week to get high?! The fuck is wrong with the God of Madness?! Oh… wait…
I silently facepalmed, before turning back to Lex. “I’ll figure something out about that ability.” Not sure how, since my gold reserves went down a black hole… Wonder if Maeve would be willing to give me a loan? And wait… if Malthan is gone for a week, does that mean I won’t be getting any new system prompts for a week? How does this shit even work?!
I knew that my item creation prompt was apparently something that he sent me, or else he purposely delayed it to prank me. Right now, I wasn’t sure which was the right answer. If it was the former, then I feel sorry for the gods that have to constantly send out those random information windows all the time. If it’s the latter… I really want a chance to beat Malthan up someday.
Either way, there was not much I could do at this point. With a wave of my hand, I pulled Lex from the ground, causing the ring to fly over and land in my palm. “Alright… let’s get ready to head to the planet. It has been… too long since we had a proper downtime. One that did not result in a murderous rampage, at least.”
Thankfully, there was no response from the ring, which I slipped on my finger. After clearing up the last few signs of the enchantment process that remained in the room, I went ahead and left to go see if Celeste had contacted the girls yet. I really did not want to go down in my clone this time, but given what happened last time, I couldn’t find a realistic reason not to. We may be on friendly territory now, but the Qu’Lopti world might as well be considered a planet I owned with how they treated me, yet I was nearly killed there. In this case, paranoia was a necessary caution.
Walking through the ship, it did not take me very long before I came across Sharon and Yin, who seemed to be hurriedly heading towards my quarters. With a smile, I called out to them before they could run too far. “Hey, Celeste already got to you, I take it?”
Yin nodded silently, while Sharon replied with a smile. “That’s right. The others are already getting ready. We were just going to grab some clothes to change into.”
“You planning to use the clones?” I asked, curiously. The two girls looked at each other, exchanging a bitter smile.
“I don’t want to… I mean, I trust the elves, but we already found out that the Empire can set up spies anywhere. For all we know, there might even be one in our crew. Because of that, Celeste has been setting up some extra security measures.” Sharon said, shaking her head and choosing not to elaborate further.
While I was a bit concerned that there were extra security measures in place, Celeste spoke up in my mind to clarify things. “Sorry, everything’s been busy lately, so I forgot to tell you. I asked the girls not to say anything, in case of the worst case scenario. The only people that I can be absolutely sure about are you and Sharon, because of the special links between you and me, and the one between you and her. I imagine that it would be harder to impersonate someone like Yin, who is an ‘enlightened’ monster, but the possibility still exists.”
That IS my wife you are talking about, you know? I said inwardly, earning my a small chuckle from Celeste. “I know. And, if nobody tries to sabotage the ship or its crew, none of the defenses will activate. I only wanted to be ready in case the worst happened.”
I could understand that… though, I did think that our crew was safe. After all… we haven’t really had the chance to land for them to be abducted and replaced until now. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that it’d be easier to get to any of the High Queens than it would have been to get to our crew.
“Well… who all is coming on our trip? You said the others were getting ready too, right?”
Sharon nodded her head when I asked that. “Well, there’s Tessa and Tokemi that practically begged to join us when Celeste mentioned it. So Tessa’s mom is coming too. Aside from them, your parents wanted to stay on the ship for now. Apparently, your mom is working on a new technique at the moment. So, it’s just us, Yo, Yang, and Celeste.”
I gave a brief nod when she said that, though I might have twitched slightly when she mentioned that my mom was working on yet another technique. If I didn’t have the cheat of overwhelming raw power with the elements, I’d… need a lot more techniques than I have. I considered stuffing my cheat items into my inventory, but that wouldn’t really solve anything. I still need to work on my techniques whether I have the items equipped or not.
Thankfully, I did have a technique up my sleeves, assuming I was able to get an understanding on how consciousness worked with Celeste’s AI children. A self-sustaining army of elementals was… quite the appropriate ‘technique’ for me. Okay, so maybe I’ve given up on subtle control, alright? I’m about as subtle with my magic as a meteor impact, and I can accept that.
Pulling myself out of my own self-deprecating thoughts, I looked to the girls, only to see that they had already left to go to my room and grab their clothes. “They walked off around the time you were thinking about nerfing yourself.” Celeste’s voice chimed in my mind, making me twitch slightly again.
“What? Everyone else has all these awesome abilities… I’m a Xeno-Shifter druid, for crying out
loud, and I hardly do anything related to my own class.” I cursed under my breath, turning around and walking towards the medbay.
“Aside from shapeshifting into a combat form in almost every battle. And studying every offensive, defensive, support, or movement power organisms have that you encounter. Did you think that you would be constantly shapeshifting as a regular trait when you picked the class? If anything, none of what you have now would be possible if you didn’t first get the understandings of auras that you got because of that class.” Celeste spoke in a relatively harsher tone now, making me falter in my steps.
“Yes, you use the elements to fight more than your own shifting. But, that cannot be considered a fault in your strategies. Rather, you have yet to encounter a creature that has abilities that would be more useful than your elements to copy. Don’t sell yourself short, John, you use your abilities decently. Maybe not to the best they could be, but you specialize in what you specialize in. You have great control over your shifting, so it’s okay for you to brute force the elements.” Her tone turned a bit more supportive towards the end, as if she was trying to console me after a strict lecture.
I could only nod my head in response. I knew on some level that she was right. Though, I didn’t feel like I had really done the best I could with my shifting. Even among Sharon’s companions, there were many with interesting abilities. I had already copied most of them, but had yet to figure out how to combine them into a better battle form than the one I currently used for fights.
“Oh, and one more thing.” Celeste began, and I let out a groan, thinking there was going to be a sequel to the rant. “Once your grove hits the next step, you will probably have a lot more opportunity for your shifting. I mean, it’s supposed to be its own universe, right? I imagine that includes natural life developing. If you can get enough time to pass in your grove, you might have hundreds, or even thousands of boss level monsters to study.”
Strangely, that seemed to cheer me up. I wasn’t entirely sure what would happen when my grove evolved. However, judging purely by the requirements, some things could be determined. Like she said, there was a good chance that life would be able to develop in my grove. With my Time Affinity, I might be able to speed it up enough that monsters and magical beasts are abundant. At that time, I could get practically any ability I could imagine, as long as it existed somewhere in that universe.
Of course, this all relied on me having the universe grove, and right now that was still quite a ways away. At this point, it was unclear whether or not I would even get to it before the final battle. I wanted to just take time off from the war to let my grove finish evolving, but leaving the New Human Empire to continue their plans that long would be the equivalent of surrendering the war to them altogether.
I got off track again, didn’t I? I thought to myself as I arrived at the medbay, opening it to see the others already inside and waiting for me. The only ones not present being Sharon, Yin, and Celeste. “Well… I guess it’s time for a vacation, after all.”
Chapter 37: Time to Disembark
I smiled to those gathered in the medbay, as Tokemi rushed up to me, wrapping her thin arms around me. “There you are, dad! We were just about to take off without you.” She said as she looked up mischievously at me. It was hard to believe that she had not aged a single day since she was ‘born’. Her body looked exactly the same then as it did now. Even her hair, which had been cut a few inches shorter at her request a couple years ago had not grown back.
It made me worried just how her life would be. With my magic, I could ensure that old age would not be a problem for me, but for her friends to all grow old around her, while only she remains in the body of a child. Even Tessa had already hit her teenage years, her body having long since grown past Tokemi.
Seeing her embrace me like that, I could only smile slightly as I brought my hand down to pat her head. “How’s your training going, young lady?” I asked her while moving over towards the clone prepared for myself. I needed to put Lex on my clone before I forgot, or else I might accidentally leave him in the ship.
“Going alright, I guess.” Tokemi said, holding one of my hands as she followed behind me. “I got another percentage for my affinity. And… I think I’ve worked out a cool little trick.” Suddenly, her eyes shot open, and she glanced at me with excitement. “Want to see, dad?”
I smiled, nodding my head as I put Lex on my clone’s finger, then moved to sit in one of the free chairs. “Alright, go ahead and show me. As long as it’s not going to hurt anyone.” When she heard that, she nodded her head heavily.
“It’s not an attack or anything like that. But… I need to concentrate really hard to make it work.” Saying that, Tokemi closed her eyes, and I extended my mana senses to watch what was going on around her.
I could easily feel a rush of time mana flowing towards her body for a split second, but then nothing. The time mana stopped moving towards her, but even more alarming was the fact that she disappeared! Not simple invisibility, any trace of her existence that I could detect with my senses had completely faded away.
Out of the group, only Yo did not seem too surprised by this. Everyone else gasped in alarm, and we quickly began to look back and forth, hoping that she had simply teleported somewhere. However, roughly five seconds after she vanished, Tokemi appeared in exactly the same spot she had left from. When she reappeared, she let out a heavy breath, but grinned up to me as if nothing happened.
“Cool, right?” She asked in a confident voice, obviously eager to be praised.
“What did you just do?” I had to ask. I had a feeling that I knew, but I didn’t want to voice my suspicions. Only for them to be proven true when she answered.
“I shifted myself a bit ahead. Umm… it should have just been a couple seconds, right?” The baishiro asked as she glanced around, noticing the alarm on people’s faces. “I didn’t go too far, did I?” Her face held a small amount of panic, as if she knew she made everyone worry.
“No… no, it’s okay.” I couldn’t help but try to reassure her when I saw that scene. “We just didn’t know what happened. But, you can time travel? When did that become a thing?”
Obviously, I knew that time travel was possible. If it wasn’t, none of us would be in this mess. I’d still be back on Earth as a NEET gamer, and Tokemi would have never even been born. But, this was the first time I had seen time travel outside of the Seeds.
“I guess about a week ago? I’ve been working on it for a while.” Tokemi’s face relaxed when she realized she wasn’t going to be punished, instead choosing to brag about her work. “You see, time mana actually changes its composition slightly over time. It took me a while to notice it, but when I did I started thinking. I studied the patterns for the changes, and when I was confident I tested it on Fluffums.”
Fluffums was the name of her stuffed Qu’Shin, the Qu’Lopti version of a six-legged dog. And yes, it’s pronounced cushion. “I only meant to send him a couple seconds ahead, but got it a bit wrong. Only by a minute or two, though! I had to isolate the time mana inside his body, and then shift it all at once to what I believed time mana would look like in the future. It’s… not easy.” She then began mumbling the rest under her breath, crossing her arms behind her back and tracing a circle on the ground with her foot.
“The further away you go in time, the more changes there are to time mana. Right now, ten seconds is all I can really work with, unless I memorize time mana from the past.” Hearing that, I was just about to ask a rather important question, before she raised her hands up in front of her, waving them to stop me. “I tried the whole traveling to the past thing with Fluffums. It… well, it didn’t go as I expected. I was hoping to end up with two Fluffums, since I could just change my mind and not send the original back after I got it.”
“But… when I tried that, it kinda worked? Not really, though. I got Fluffums to go back about five seconds. But, when I changed my mind about sending the original back, he did it on
his own! I don’t know why…” At that, she sulked like a child that had its favorite toy taken away.
I nodded, quickly switching over to my clone after her explanation. Once done, I slowly got up, and smiled over to Tokemi. “Well, that would certainly be an interesting ability. But you have to always use it carefully. Time travel is very dangerous.” The girls around us all nodded heavily at that. We knew the effects of time travel first hand.
“Aww… alright, dad. I’ll save it for emergencies.” Tokemi said sullenly, though she still eagerly grabbed my hand when I got back up. Regardless of how old or young she looked, she was still not even six years old mentally and emotionally. Just the fact that she had figured out time travel was a testament to her natural skill with time.
“Good girl.” I said with a light chuckle. Tokemi really was a good kid. I’d probably have to think of something later to help with her aging issue. Maybe using my magic to shapeshift her body to look older would help.
“Hey guys, sorry we took so long!” The medbay door slid open, and Sharon, Yin, and Celeste walked in. To my surprise, the clothes they were wearing were anything but normal.
Sharon was wearing a blue, one piece swimsuit that practically only covered the front and her butt. On either side, it left off with straps that went around her back to hold it in place. On her head, she wore thick sunglasses and a domed, black hat with a wide brim. Instead of her usual sneakers, she was currently wearing sandals on her feat.
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