World Seed_Endgame

by Justin Miller

  After I saw the deaths of countless different versions of Sharon, my vision flashed with gold again, and I saw her staring up at me from the bed, a confused expression on her face. “John… what was that?” I noticed that her right eye had turned golden, shining slightly as it looked at me.

  “Uhm… Quest rewards?” I answered, still not completely sure myself. To me, the strangest thing wasn’t those visions, but my near absence from them entirely. The only time I ever appeared was when she happened to choose a wood elf, and we briefly met during training. Still, I rolled over and looked at Yin, wanting to get whatever this was over with.

  Again, there was a flash of golden light. This time, however, the visions were much… simpler. Yin had begun her life as a lovebird, after all. There were a few different versions, but most of them simply ended up being eaten by giant snakes or larger predators. Only one managed to attach itself to someone through the same method Yin and I met, but even that one was killed soon after.

  Malthan… just what is this? I asked inwardly, though I already had a fair guess.

  Welcome, new god-to-be, to the Eye of Truth! This illustrious new power has been embedded within your body, and cannot be removed! So don’t bother trying! Until you ascend to godhood, you will see the previous versions of everyone you know! Of course, this only applies to those who you have had an actual influence on, but given the circumstances that is still quite a lot!

  Then… why were there so many versions of Sharon that didn’t have the Seeds, and NeoLife?

  Ah, that? It’s quite simple, really! The race of the previous ascendant determines where the Seeds will appear in the next world. You and Sharon both chose elf-related species, so next time we get to see some more elf action! Think of it as a tutorial period to give one species a bit of an advantage before all hell breaks loose.

  Okay, not exactly what I had in mind. Part of me wondered what would happen if an evolved monster became the god. Would the Seeds simply appear on the world the monster was born on?

  ...Not feeling like answering this time, huh? I roused Yin from her sleep, and had Sharon explain things as I went towards the bathroom. I had a quest to continue, after all… and a pretty good idea why it wanted me to find a mirror, after what Malthan said.

  Sure enough, as soon as I looked into the mirror, my vision flashed gold once again. Though, unlike when I was watching Sharon’s past lives, mine seemed to be split right from the start. On the one side, I had the me who lived alone in nice house, playing games for a living.

  The other side was where things seemed to get weird. In it, I wasn’t living alone at all. My parents were there, as well as a redheaded woman I had never seen before. Judging by my interactions with her, we were fairly close. Girlfriend? No, it doesn’t make sense for us to be living with my parents.

  The images began splitting again with the arrival of the Seeds. In the scenarios where I was alone, I would choose a variety of different races, seemingly picking at random. Yet, in the other versions, we would always pick the same race. A pair of high elves. The woman always became a crafter, while I would vary between wizard, fighter, or druid.

  After mana flooded the real world, things naturally began changing. In the scenarios where I was alone without NeoLife, I tended to die by some monster within the first few months. The other times when I was alone, I would join an organization and fight to protect people, until I was left behind by the ships leaving the planet to abandon the world and most of its population. After that… well, naturally I died by some abyssal horrors.

  In the other versions of history, things were different. My family had always stuck together, whether we were with or without the Seeds. Sometimes we died due to a random monster, but other times we would make it through. Most often than not in these versions, we managed to get our own ship to leave Earth, going and living among the elves.

  Still, death was inevitable. I saw myself being killed time and again, either by monsters, men, or time itself. Only when I had fully witnessed my past lives did I come back to myself, just to find myself sweating above the bathroom sink, staring into the mirror. Malthan…

  Hmm?

  Did I ever have a sister? Given the apparent relationship between myself and the woman I saw in my timelines, we had to have been family. And… I seemed happier in those worlds. Though, maybe I shouldn’t say that since every time I met Celeste in those timelines, we ended up dating. That’s going to make things awkward later…

  You really expect me to know the family situation of every single creature over countless different timelines? I mean, really? How am I supposed to know that?

  He had a point, though I couldn’t help but feel like he was hiding something. Yet, part of me did not envy those timelines. Yes, I had lived together with my family for so long, but I hadn’t met any of the people that were now close to me. Whether it was Tokemi, Yin, Yang, Yo, even Sharon. None of them played a big role in any of those timelines.

  With a sigh, I exited the bathroom, only to be greeted by a surprised looking Yin, and an annoyed looking Sharon. “This is Malthan’s fault, isn’t it?” Sharon asked, sending a glare upwards, as if hoping it would reach him.

  “Well, according to what he said before, this is supposed to be some kind of tradition? So… yes, it’s his fault.” I nodded my head, unable to find an excuse to defend him. “I take it you both got the ‘rewards’ and the new quest?” When I asked that, they both nodded their heads.

  “It’s… strange.” Yin admitted. “What now?”

  “Well, first there are people that we need to talk to about this.” Namely one young time-fox-girl who is going to be very upset when she heard the news. I was not looking forward to this conversation.

  Chapter 58: Loose Ends

  After finding Tokemi, and explaining the situation to her… her reaction was pretty much what I had expected. She looked at me with big, watery eyes, her body trembling. “Do… do you have to go?” She asked, her voice shaking.

  I could only nod my head in response. Even if there wasn’t some calamity even that would occur if we put this off, no doubt Malthan would make our lives a living hell until we finished his little quest. “Sorry…”

  Before I could finish apologizing, the young fox girl threw herself at me, burying her head into my chest and sobbing loudly. “But… but I don’t want you to go, daddy… Can’t you… can’t you stay? You and my moms… we can all just stay together, right?” She cried out, not able to lift her head to look at me.

  Now who’s making the loli cry, Malthan… I thought internally, shaking my head. “I can’t, Tokemi.” I spoke softly, bringing my hand up to gently stroke through her silver hair. “But I can come back and visit you as often as possible.”

  “P...promise?” She sniffled slightly, finally looking up at me with her tear stained cheeks. When I found her, I was momentarily surprised that the ‘Eye of Time’ didn’t activate, but then I remembered something. The quest that created her was to give birth to something that had never existed in all of time. This should be Tokemi’s only timeline, unless someone later makes her like I did.

  I had a soft smile on my face as I looked down to her. “Promise. And that goes for Sharon and Yin, too.” Even if we had to leave to become gods, Malthan had already said that we could return to this timeline whenever we wanted.

  Tokemi stared at me for a while, as if trying to tell whether or not I was being honest, before nodding her head slightly. “O..okay. But… can we all stay together… at least until then?” As she asked that, her arms tightened around my waist, like she was afraid to let me go.

  “Alright, Tokemi, we can stay together.” I accepted with another nod. “How about we go meet with the others?” I asked, and she nodded her head again. Reaching down, I took her hand in mine and began walking back towards the room where I had left Yin and Sharon.

  By the time I arrived, only Sharon was left in the room. No doubt Yin wanted to go and talk to her sister like I did with Tokemi. When Sharo
n saw the girl walking with me, her eyes held a trace of guilt in them. “I’m sorry, Tokemi… I didn’t think something like this was going to happen.”

  “It… it’s fine, Mommy.” Tokemi shook her head, pulling her hand from mine before running up and jumping into Sharon’s arms, wrapping her own arms around the woman’s waist. “Just… just visit all the time, okay? Don’t forget about me…”

  “Silly child, how could we ever forget about you?” Sharon asked, her eyes watering slightly as she patted Tokemi’s back. “We’ll come back and visit all the time, just you wait. We’ll be here so often you’ll get sick of us.” Her words seemed to draw a small giggle from Tokemi, though I could still see the tears at the corner of her eyes.

  “It’s a promise.” She said, her arms tightening around Sharon again. “Where’s Momma Yin?” She asked, looking around curiously as she finally noticed that there was someone missing from the room.

  “She had to go talk to Yang first.” Sharon answered softly, still looking down at Tokemi.

  This time it was my turn to speak up. “You didn’t have anyone to tell?”

  She smiled slightly, shaking her head. “The only people I really have left are you guys. Jeeves is still working at that space station, and my only other family would be you, Yin, and Tokemi.”

  “Ah…” I had almost forgotten about Jeeves. After we established the space station around the Qu’Lopti homeworld, he had surprised us all by choosing to stay there and work as a waiter, as opposed to continuing with Sharon. It was that incident that let me get a better look at what the AI companions from NeoLife really were.

  Each companion was exactly what the person needed when they received it. For me… I received a best friend. In the previous timelines, I saw situations where the relationship between Celeste and I had been basically that of lovers, but it seemed like she had never even considered such a thing a possibility in this timeline. In the truest sense, she was born to be a good friend.

  For Sharon, perhaps because of her loneliness and need for someone to take care of her, Jeeves took a role more similar to a butler. Yet, unlike Celeste, Jeeves wasn’t able to continue his role forever. After Sharon met us, and her circle of friends expanded, he said that he was feeling less and less needed. Not in a bad way, he was actually happy about it, because it meant that Sharon no longer needed someone to take care of her. So, he chose to take up a different life, serving others at a restaurant. According to him, the Qu’Lopti needed someone to take care of them far more than Sharon ever had.

  Though, I’m pretty sure that bit was just a slightly disguised insult to the Qu’Lopti. Either way, we hadn’t seen him again after leaving that station. And unless our quest took us back to that world, it was unlikely we would again. Though, knowing Malthan, he probably planned for us to visit Qu’Lopti at some point.

  Yup! It’s the next stop on your list, after all! You can take care of that on your way back to Gerin, so it’s no real problem.

  Great, so he’s still watching after all. I sighed, shaking my head as I noticed that. Tokemi was still being held in Sharon’s arms, the two holding each other. “Hey, John?” I suddenly heard Celeste’s voice in my mind. “Before we go anywhere else, think you can take care of my little issue? It’s really uncomfortable not having a soul anymore.”

  I couldn’t help but chuckle slightly. Sure . In truth, doing this for Celeste was actually very easy for me now. With a thought, I pulled her mechanical body into my grove, on an uninhabited world populated by fairly powerful monsters. I didn’t even need to strictly enter the grove myself to do this at this point, and several dozen monsters near her died, their souls siphoning away into herself. Afterwards, I brought her back out where I had pulled her from.

  “Thanks, John! I’ll need to rest for a bit again to get everything adjusted, and then I should be back to normal!” Well, she’d probably have to start leveling up from scratch again, but otherwise at least she was back to being a Deus Ex.

  The following days were spent in relative silence. Although Abzul had been killed, we still had to go around and make sure to round up all of his remaining followers in the New Human Empire. Otherwise, they could use the knowledge that he brought back from whatever timeline he used to eventually lead another war, at a time where I might not be around to stop it.

  Thankfully, there was something that made the problem easier to solve, strangely with Malthan’s help. Since I hit what is apparently the level cap, I was able to massive boost my abilities. Right now, I was no longer limited to just scanning one solar system. If I tapped into subspace to speed things up, I could scan up to an entire parsec away, making our search fairly easy.

  We spent a full week taking care of that, while Celeste acclimated herself to her new soul again. Once that was all taken care of, we got to work on our final quest. The first stop, Qu’Lesh, went fairly smooth. When we arrived, the three of us plus one Tokemi were sitting in the bridge. The moment we saw the planet, all of us had a flash of gold, and saw the history of the various timelines.

  In truth, it was like Malthan had said. At first, the world was fine. The people who had any sense were able to control those that currently ruled the world. But, one by one they ascended, the world slowly devolving into what it was now. From what I saw, this was one of the few timelines when someone came along and actually saved them from their fate. And most of the times when someone did, their old habits would just act back up after that person was gone. Really, a doomed species…

  While we were there, we stopped off to visit old friends. Sharon met up with Jeeves to tell her about what happened, and the Qu’Lopti flights that had been loaned to us for this war were finally able to return home. However, we kept this visit brief, in order to avoid long, drawn out goodbyes.

  When we left Qu’Lesh, we had far less people with us than when we had been traveling before. The Deus Ex had returned to their world with the aid of the warp gate, leaving the Ariadne as the only ship from the Sons of Chaos that remained. Initially, we had wanted to use the gate to go to Gerin, until we saw the destination for our next stop on the quest line.

  Upon our arrival to Hydra, I was surprised to find that the world had changed significantly since I last left. The previous black spot surrounding the demon dungeon had grown massively. It now seemed to cover nearly a third of the land mass on the planet.

  And apparently, the vision we were to see this time was specifically for me. I saw how the world would normally progress, a tiny seed of mana eventually turning it into a jungle of carnivorous plants. Every now and then, someone would come along and alter the image, but it largely stayed the same, until I hit the current timeline. I had managed to land on the world, and accelerated its growth well beyond the norm through dungeons, while also placing the demons there.

  Near the end of the vision, I was shown someone who was currently fighting down on the planet below. Not a demon, but a woman made of plants. She seemed… so familiar. It took me a moment to recognize her, because she appeared thousands of years before her time. A woman made of foliage, angrily lashing out at the demons who were trying to consume her home. She commanded giant plants with special abilities, and even summoned the Nature Wyrm that had given me trouble when I crashed here before.

  Arianne… I thought to myself hesitantly. I had once made her an offer, to take her away from here and let her see the world beyond. Yet, she had refused, not willing to leave her family behind. And, in this case, her family was the entire planet. I didn’t have the strength to accept that kind of request in the past, but what about now?

  Focusing, I exerted my will to wrap my mana around the world. I worked with the essence of the universe itself to extinguish the demons, causing them to scream in agony as they were ripped apart from their very core. The black region of the world, showing where they had burnt and terraformed the land, seemed to shatter at a visible rate, greenery quickly growing back where it had once been impossible to do so.

  I even managed to see Ari
anne herself, who stared in confusion as a pride demon disappeared from in front of her. She looked around, not sure what had happened while I rooted the demons out from every corner of the world. They were created by the dungeon, and so they would be eliminated with it. In the past, I had owed my survival in this world to Arianne, so in a way I saw this as returning a favor.

  To those on the ship, they saw the healed planet turning into particles of light that swarmed at the ship, disappearing into my body as I moved the entire planet itself into the grove. For those on the planet, though, it was likely they never even noticed the transition, as I did my best to put them in a location with roughly the same characteristics as where they had been originally.

  Sharon looked over to me curiously, likely not knowing why I had done what I did. I smiled to her, shaking my head. “Just paying back an old debt.”

  She seemed to accept that answer, and we quickly moved on from the empty space, finally moving towards Gerin. This time when we arrived, we saw mixed visions. Gerin could be seen as a main system, a place where the Seeds could often spawn. Like Earth, there were timelines in which it became absolutely overrun by monsters. In one, the entire system had fallen to ruin when the sun acted the same as our moon. After gathering the mana from the entire system together, it had taken the form of a Solar Titan, a being far more terrifying than even the Lunar Titan that I had seen.

  In other timelines, they lived a fairly peaceful life, not interacting with other worlds for generations. Although there was chaos when the mana initially spread, it was nothing like what would happen when the Seeds themselves appeared in this system.

  However, it didn’t seem that we were able to leave quite so fast here. “John! You made it back!” An excited message was broadcast to our ship from the planet below, and we all saw Thalia’s excited face appearing on the screen. “We’ve been waiting for you!”