The next few days were largely uneventful, with me spending most of my time watching Tokemi to make sure that she didn’t have any issues with her slightly larger body. Thankfully, after needing Tessa to help her around for the first day, she seemed to be fine walking on her own, though she was still a bit unsteady on her feet for a while.
After that had passed, things quieted down again. Though, it was only a couple days later when Celeste sent me a message. “John, we’ve got the data files from the various race representatives. Do you want me to summarize it for you?”
Okay, I’d just like to point out that these messages don’t always come at the best time. For instance, when I happen to be in the middle of a shower and happen to hear a female voice in my head. That would count as ‘not the best time’. After jumping slightly, I groaned inwardly. “Send the summary to my computer. I’ll read it when I can.”
There was a small, knowing laugh in the back of my head, but Celeste complied, letting me get back to my shower. When I was done, I walked out in a large robe and sat at my desk, pulling up the files that had already been transferred. She really had summarized it quite a lot, not going into many details with each file. Unsurprisingly, the Ha’vosh had nothing to offer, as their race still refused to leave beyond their own system most of the time.
Dwarves: Weapon designs, likely effective against Empire shielding.
Elves: Life Support/Internal defense against organic invaders.
Halflings: More efficient maneuvering thrusters.
Drake: Biomechanical nerve wiring for increased processing speed.
Fairy: Adaptive shields, able to leach small amounts of energy from attacks to strengthen itself.
Deus Ex: Long-distance warp core. They finally finished it!
Humans: Modified impulse thruster.
Demons: Automated defense lasers to shoot down incoming fighters and missiles.
Kleptids: Medbay upgrades, largely for disease resistance and cloning stations.
Out of all of them, a few caught my eye right away. For instance, the Deus Ex’s contribution, the device that we discovered blueprints for in our very first raid on the New Human Empire. The fact that they had finished it meant that we would be able to travel over extreme distances even faster than in subspace.
The next one that caught my attention was the one from the humans. I couldn’t help but call out. “Celeste, what’s with this one?” I asked out loud, my eyes focusing on the ‘Modified impulse thruster’ line.
“Ah, apparently that’s the best they could do. With humans not having a proper foothold yet, they weren’t able to design something too complicated. According to the footnotes, they actually exchanged a large sum of gold to the market for this blueprint. However, it’s only slightly better than what we have right now, and uses more energy. So, I didn’t want to call it an improvement.” Celeste’s voice rang out in my mind after I called for her, before returning to silence.
I wasn’t surprised that there was nothing on the list from the Qu’Lopti. After all, we already had their most advanced technology here in the form of the combining fighter squadrons. If we wanted to apply some of that technology to the Ariadne, it would be easier to just build a whole new ship.
“Have the Deus Ex tested the warp core yet?” I asked, looking forward to that one above all else.
“Up to a distance of five parsecs. The largest problem with that technology is the precise coordinates needed. The further away you’re moving, the easier it is to miscalculate. Sadly, it’s not as easy as pointing to a star and going there, because the light from that star had to travel for so long that it might not be in quite the same position anymore. So, they can do five parsec jumps at a time and land exactly where they want. Anything more than that and they have to aim for empty space.”
I nodded in understanding. “I see… Still, that would allow us to get there much faster than before. How long will it take to get the upgrades installed?”
“Once you choose which upgrades to install, I can figure it up. Also, I would like to request permission to pass the designs to the Deus Ex as well. If we go into battle with only one ship that is capable of fighting them we’ll only end up getting destroyed.”
“Alright, permission granted.” I agreed easily. “And see if any of these can be applied to the Qu’Lopti ships without compromising their other systems. Having the warp core alone will save us enough travel time to make up the modifications.”
“Okay, I’ll get on it, and I’ll let you know when I have a timeline.” Just as Celeste finished that, a window appeared in front of me. At first, I thought it might be someone using the friends list to contact me, until I saw the message.
I’m back!
Chapter 42: A Good Idea?
Oh great… I thought to myself as I saw the prompt. I had forgotten that he said he would only be gone a week, and was getting rather used to the silence. It almost reminded me when he had all but vanished for several years. Ahh… those were the days.
I heard that! And for the record, gods apparently can’t get high. (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
Not for lack of trying, though!
Okay, didn’t exactly need to know that. I shook my head as I got changed, wanting to get on with my day. It was unlikely that Malthan had anything actually meaningful to contribute aside from bored rambling. At times it made me wonder just how lonely the gods could be, given the sheer number of them.
I can still hear that! And you really have no idea! Now, let’s see… what new developments have I missed lately...
I was just about to say, or think, something possibly rude when another window appeared in front of me, cutting off my train of thought.
Wow, you had a boring week. Aside from your beach vacation and helping the fox get a bit bigger… you did jack all, didn’t you? Glad I spaced out then.
Do you have anything useful to say, or are you just here to torment me again? I thought inwardly, really hoping it was the former. Though, a part of me worried whenever Malthan did have anything useful to say to me. Only on rare occasions would it be something good.
Just figured I’d pop in, see how things are going. It’s bingo night, and I wasn’t really interested in cheating again.
I couldn’t help it, I facepalmed when he casually admitted to cheating. Just ignore him and he’ll go away… just ignore him and he’ll go away. I repeated this mantra to myself over and over, closing my eyes tight. When I opened my eyes, of course there was another window there waiting for me.
Peek-a-boo. Also, nice job on the elemental robots. Way to cheat the system.
He’s still there. Of course he’s still there. I wasn’t sure why I was hoping that he’d take the hint, so I just finished getting dressed and opened up the door to leave the room.
Though, I probably would have trained them to merge into one supreme elemental warrior that held all of the combined elements. I mean, you’ve definitely got enough of them there.
And stopped dead in my tracks when I saw the last message. I hadn’t even considered the idea of them combining like that. Why would I, each one was its own entity, and their thoughts could potentially conflict when they try to join together. That would prevent them from merging into a single being. Though, with how simple-minded they were, that might not be an issue.
I furrowed my brows as I considered the possibility that Malthan had given me a good idea. The fact that it might have even been on purpose worried me even more. However, this time there really was no window that appeared. “Celeste, I need a training ground. A big one.” I said out loud, still standing in the doorway to my room.
“Oh?” I heard her inside my mind again, a surprised voice that made me think she hadn’t been paying attention during my little exchange with Malthan. “How big?”
“As big as possible. Malthan gave me an idea.” There was an exaggerated and horrified scream echoing in my mind as I said that, making me raise my eyebrows in surprise.
“Sorry, couldn’t
resist. Hmm… I think I’ve got a place that would work. You don’t need your own dedicated planet or anything, right?” When I shook my head slightly, she continued. “Good. There’s an island off the coast of Gerin 6, it was abandoned after Genesis due to monster activity, and they never got around to reclaiming it. As long as you don’t mind a few monsters, that should be a perfect training ground. The next best thing would be an uninhabited world or the moon.”
“Monster island works fine.” I shook my head, accepting the suggestion. I doubted that there would be anything down there that could pose an actual threat to me, especially with the fifty soldiers there as well. If there was anything like that, it would have to be at the world boss level, and there was no way that they wouldn’t notify us of a monster like that living on the planet.
While I walked to the medbay to get into the clone body, I went over the details of my idea with Celeste. Like myself, she seemed surprised that Malthan actually came up with and shared a good idea. One that could give a massive power boost if it worked properly. After all, one elemental soldier was already powerful. Fifty of them combined into one would be nearly unstoppable.
After switching Lex over to my clone body, I had myself teleported down to the island that Celeste designated. Sure enough, when I arrived, I saw a host of monsters crawling around the ruins of a wrecked city. The streets had been torn open, revealing the transit system beneath, while large, doglike creatures wandered around.
It was rather unusual that they were all the same species of monster, but I could only assume that they were the dominant creatures to remain after the city was destroyed. Each one could come up to my shoulders on all fours, with glistening blue fur and four golden eyes. “Celeste, do you have any records on these creatures?”
“Checking… Nope. They weren’t included in the information I got when I was looking up wolf evolutionary lines. Most likely, they are just a species not part of that evolutionary tree, for some reason.”
“Probably because they’re ghosts.” I said with a groan as I noticed one of the blue wolves casually walking through the shattered remains of a stone wall. Even if they weren’t ghosts, they definitely weren’t normal wolf monsters.
“Yeah, that would do it. Will make for an interesting fight, though! You and fifty undying elemental soldiers against… Three thousand, six hundred, and seventy five ghost dogs! I gotta go make some popcorn.” I half expected a reply from Malthan to appear after that, but again he remained quiet. Much to my relief.
“Alright, Lex. Start bringing them out.” I said with my brows furrowed. While I wasn’t concerned that the wolves could actually kill me or the soldiers, I wasn’t quite sure how I could kill something that casually phases through walls. There were some obvious methods to try first, but we’d have to see how things go.
In response to my command, I felt a fairly powerful mana build up on my finger, before a trail of flame appeared in front of me, solidifying into the shape of a person. Afterwards, more figures began appearing, made of stone, metal, light, shadow, even some made from plants and the flesh of beasts. And then came the combination soldiers, those that were composed of between two and five elements.
When all fifty had appeared, the ghost wolves finally took notice of my presence. Or, more specifically, the flaming/glowing/sparking presence of the small army that suddenly appeared on the street. There was a series of angry growls as they began to turn to face me en masse. Some of them phased up through the street, or through nearby walls to stand horizontally.
“Kill them.” I commanded, waiting to see how the elemental army would act. After a moment of hesitation, there was a flurry of action. Those with solid bodies transformed themselves into numerous spikes that flew at individual ghost wolves. Those made of energy forms expanded and turned into a sea of light and shadow.
Perhaps the most unimpressive of this were the plant and animal soldiers. The plant soldier simply stood there, the flowers of its eyes watching the ghost wolves, while the animal one used its fleshy body as a battering ram. Every now and then it would grow one of its body parts to ridiculous sizes to smack at a wolf, only to have it harmlessly phase through.
As the ghost wolves approached the plant soldier, my opinion had to suddenly change. Thick vines began to sprout up from the street, cracking the pavement as they attempted to wrap around the bodies of the wolves. Though again, the wolves simply phased through after a momentary struggle.
I nodded my head slightly as I watched the battle. These wolves were pretty strong, under normal circumstances. When I allowed one to attack me due to seeing that they did no real damage to my soldiers, I felt a brief pain as it passed through my arm. Curiously, I checked my experience and noticed a very slight decline. So they attack souls. Well, that explains why this isn’t going anywhere.
“Darkness, Fire, Lightning, Light.” I called out to four types of elementals, letting Lex translate my words into the appropriate mana types. “Kill them. Everyone else, back off.” From my brief observation, I noticed a few things about these wolves.
Namely, only energy damage is guaranteed to do damage to them. Whenever they feel physical pressure or register an incoming attack, they turn intangible. However, they have no real defense against energy based attacks. And since their only two methods of attacking seem to be soul devouring and physical attacks, they can’t do anything against the elemental soldiers.
I watched as the elementals struck out, over a dozen of them taking action to flood the field with their various affinities. Sure enough, I could hear the screams of the wolves as they were torn apart, unable to fight back. Soon, their survival instincts had kicked in and they began to run away.
“Don’t chase them.” I said preemptively, not wanting to let the elemental army get too far away. Instead, I watched as the elemental soldiers reformed their original bodies, moving to stand in the same positions that they were summoned. I felt a smile cross my lips as I gave a brief nod, satisfied with their performance.
“Now, today we are going to be practicing a new technique.” I spoke, not waiting for an answer I knew would never come. “I will be picking out two of you, and you will combine to form one body. You will act as one entity, sharing your powers with each other.”
There was only silence after I spoke, though I knew that Lex had translated the words to them all. Sighing, I randomly pointed to two of them. One was the very first elemental soldier, the one made of stone, while the other was one made entirely of metal. As soon as I had pointed to them, they did not even wait for me to tell them what to do before following the instructions I set out previously.
Their bodies broke apart in chunks that flew together, twisting and fighting with each other as they attempted to form one solid body. What emerged when it was done was a creature roughly one third taller than either of the originals, its body a spiral of layered metal and stone. Raising my eyebrows slightly, I decided to give an order to test it. “Raise your right arm.”
There was a metallic groaning sound, followed by the cracking of stone as the arm fell apart, immediately pulling itself back together. When it reformed, it was about a third of the way up, and immediately broke again as it tried to move. They aren’t synchronized…
My next attempt was with two mixed-element soldiers. One that was light and lightning, the other that was lightning and fire. If believed that the shared element should make the joining more stable, not to mention that they were both energy bodies.
This time, when they raised their arm, there was a small explosion of light and fire that caused its form to become blurred for a long moment. By the time I was able to see it clearly, it had raised its arm. However, as soon as I had it move again to lower the arm, the same miniature explosion happened again. They need a stabilizing force …
This idea was a good one, and by Malthan I was going to make it work!
Chapter 43: Order to Chaos
No matter which of the fifty soldiers I chose to combine, they all had similar pr
oblems. Their minds were not completely synchronized, causing their bodies to fall apart as soon as they began moving. My next test was to have three or more combine together, and have all of them listen to the commands of a single soldier. That worked somewhat, but had limitations of its own.
Whenever the soldiers all shared a common element, they were capable of moving almost fluidly, only demonstrating slight synchronization issues. However, if one of them did not have an element matching the controlling soldier, then there was a lag in its movement while it waited for the order to be passed along by another soldier. If one of them did not share an element with any of the others, then it would not act at all.
I considered making a fifty-first soldier, one that was designed to be the leading component in the fusions. However, there was a problem with that, as Lex’s grove had not developed to the point where it could sustain any more than was currently present. So, I could only either alter one of the existing soldiers, or come up with a different method. Looking through my character window, I contemplated to see whether or not I had any means at my disposal to get the effect I wanted.
Name
John Hulett
Race
Wood Elf
Titles
Vengeful Heart, Amateur Brain Surgeon, Spider Slaughterer, Starship Captain, Creator of Baishiro
Fame
100,000
Level 207
98%
Class
Druid
Advanced Class
Xeno-Shifter
Deity
Malthan
Health
World Seed_Endgame Page 28
