Sharon’s eyes went wide for a moment before she hesitantly nodded. “So… you want to go to one of the closer homeworlds, and help out by introducing some of the mechanics to them..?”
“That’s right. With Celeste, we can save all of the basic knowledge from the starting classes, and give people a way to train themselves. Though, this still relies on there being a homeworld close enough to Earth for us to quickly reach. We should still in the milky way, so it’s just a matter of time to reach the nearest homeworld. Meanwhile, humans are probably the race most capable of taking care of themselves right now. Still want to come with me?”
The druidess smiled, nodding her head. “Yup! There’s not much for me on Earth anymore, and you seem like a fun guy. Even if you do end up surrounded by women…” There was a look in her eyes that made me shiver, so I quickly shook my head.
“Look, that’s totally not my fault! I was expecting Yo to turn into a guy, not a girl, and not one like that especially.” I wasn’t really sure what killing intent felt like, but I was starting to get a good idea now. However, that feeling completely vanished in the next moment, with Sharon returning to her usual smile.
“Still, that’s fine. Just don’t forget about the rest of us, okay? Besides, I don’t really blame you for that. If Celeste is right about the evolutions, then I’ll probably have a bunch of humanoid wolf people eventually too.”
“Yeah, yeah. We’re going to need to find some animals to raise for meat before we go. That, or I’ll have to take a few of your rabbits. Yin is an omnivore now, but she does still need meat occasionally.”
Sharon thought it over, and then nodded. “I can give you a few rabbits. Right now, I’ve got a couple hundred of them, so it’s not a problem.”
“...How do you have that many?”
“Ah, well, I didn’t like how they would always fight and kill each other… So I set each species up with their own ‘planet’ inside my grove, and every so often I’ll have them merge into several larger planets for the races to fight and hunt each other for food, before separating them again. That way, I can prevent the endangered species from dying out while letting the carnivores eat. I just had them fight it out on the way here, that’s why there’s only that many rabbits.”
That was… actually a pretty brilliant idea. It required more management, but ensured that she never completely lost any of her races from her grove. “Huh.. smart. So, any time one of your races grow too big, you can move them over to a larger carnivore and dwindle them down a bit.”
“Yup~! Also helps them train themselves. Though, they only send the younger generations off to fight, because the older ones are too strong. Even a fully grown and matured horned rabbit could easily take on one or two humans at once. If it was one of the wolves, they could probably take on an entire group. Of course, that’s going by the standards from before NeoLife. Now, people are trained enough to take them out, for the most part.”
I suddenly realized that Colony Druids likely had far more battle potential than a Xeno-Shifter, though my class was more skilled in other things. So far, I hadn’t seen Sharon do any shapeshifting at all, and wasn’t even sure if she had practiced it yet. We continued walking around aimlessly, not really caring where we ended up. After all, we didn’t have any pressing business for the building of the ship. Celeste was handling most of that. “Oh yeah, I don’t think I’ve met your companion AI yet, have I?”
Sharon smirked slightly to me, and raised her wrist. “Say hi, Jeeves.”
A blue hologram emerged from her wrist, taking the shape of an elderly man in butler clothes. “Good evening, Falenel. Is there anything in particular that you require of me?”
I thought about it, and shrugged. “Well, if you’d like, we could arrange for you to get your own body like Celeste did.”
The holographic butler remained completely unfazed by this. “Apologies, but the young mistress has already made this offer. For the time being, I am content with my current form. It may be convenient to have a body in reserve, but I do not require a Deus Ex body. Such a thing would only serve as a distraction from my duties.”
“Huh… alright. Well, I’ll see if we can get Celeste to build you a body once the ship is prepared.”
“That would be most agreeable, thank you.” The butler gave a polite bow before vanishing, and Sharon gave a helpless shrug.
“He’s been like that ever since he awakened. I guess that he figured I needed a guardian to take care of me or something.”
I looked over at her curiously. “I haven’t actually heard much about you, on the other side I mean. Mind sharing a bit?”
“Not really much to tell. Typical spoiled rich girl.” Sharon giggled playfully as she said that. “My parents virtualized when I was eight, so I was living with my aunt until she passed away a couple years later. From there, I’ve been taking care of myself with the money from the trust fund. Since I’ve been living by myself, I didn’t really have the chance to get a pet or anything like that. At most, one of the people that worked for my parents would come by to check up on me every now and then since my parents couldn’t do so physically.”
“A few years back, I got started with VR games, but that was mostly a hobby to pass the time. What I really love to do is painting. Sometimes, I’ll take the chance in one of the games to be a painter and expand my skills, while other times I like to take on other roles to make up for some of the things I missed growing up. For NeoLife, I wanted to be a druid, because I’ve never been able to enjoy holding a soft pet in my arms. You can get the basic feelings in other games, but you can never get the warmth right. It’s never the real thing.”
“Though, that’s not to say I missed out on everything. I had a love life, kind of. My boyfriend, Ryan, was someone that I had met in the last game I played. We found out that we lived near each other, and met up in real life. Eventually, we got closer, and started dating. Though, after I started playing NeoLife, and my body changed like this, it seemed like he lost interest in me.” She gave a rather sarcastic smile. “Guess he was just after my body, huh?”
“Men can be separated into two categories. Jerks, and idiots. He was definitely a jerk.” I said with a resolute nod of my head, which made Sharon giggle lightly.
“And what about you?”
“Obviously, I’m an idiot.” I gave another nod, and she started laughing more loudly.
“I meant your life story. Come on, I already spilled, it’s your turn.”
“Oh, right… Well, my story isn’t really anything special. My dad was a doctor for a few years. Not a big shot like you’ll see on TV, just a regular surgeon. My mom would stay at home to take care of things there and raise me. We were never exactly rich, but we had enough to get what we needed. They put me through college for programming, but the technology advanced faster than I could. So in the end, I wasn’t able to do anything with what I had learned except adapt it to a bit of mischief.” I smirked playfully towards Sharon as I said that.
“A few years back, my parents decided to join the virtual communities after my father was let go from the hospital. Since the technology had advanced to the point where his presence was irrelevant, they didn’t keep him around anymore. So they took the severance pay and virtualized themselves. Since then, I’ve been doing the best job I was qualified for, bouncing around from VR game to VR game to make money by selling items and stuff.”
“Oh? So you are a ‘pro gamer’, then?” She smiled as we walked. “Guess that does put you in a bit of an advantageous situation now that the world has become a video game, doesn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t call myself that… I would typically barely make enough to get by. Especially with how fast new games became popular. When I had the chance to enter the beta for NeoLife, I saw it as an opportunity to get ahead of the business, and finally get a somewhat stable income.”
“And now we’re about to leave Earth, and any money you had before will become meaningless?”
“Right… S
till, it’s probably for the best. There are people much better than me to help out on Earth, and in much better positions to do so. I’m just an average guy, so I’ll do what an average guy can do. Right now, that’s going to help the different races that actually need it. And while I’m at it, I can learn the various auras to advance my own class abilities.”
Sharon nodded her head, thinking about something. “You’re a Xeno-Shifter, right? That means that you learn the auras of different races to transform into them. At least, that’s what I remember him telling you back on Hascion. What races do you have so far?”
“Well… for sentients, I only have myself and a void elf. I want to take the chance to copy Celeste and Yo whenever it’s possible, because they each have interesting racial traits.”
That earned me another nod, before she smiled warmly in my direction. “What about me? If we end up meeting elves, it’d be better for you to resemble a full elf, rather than a half-elf, right?”
“I thought about it… but wasn’t sure if you’d be comfortable with me doing that or not…”
The druidess laughed lightly for a moment before she spoke again. “Oh, it’s fine. But you have to do me a favor in exchange, understand?”
“Uhm… that depends on the favor?”
“If you learn how to modify specific parts of the body like the ‘surgeons’ around here. You have to… let me get my original appearance back.” As she said that, she glanced down towards her petite chest. I guess she really did miss having sizeable assets.
I felt my face heating up a bit, but could only quickly nod. “Alright… I think I can do that. But I’ll have to practice with auras for a while before it’s possible. With Yo’s help, I think I can speed it up, but I’ll need to experiment.”
Sharon was starting to blush as well, but agreed with me. “Good! This body just feels wrong to me after growing up like that. I know that elves don’t typically have large chests, but still…”
“Change subject please?”
When I said that, she glanced over at me and giggled cutely. “Fine, fine. What else do you want to do before we leave Earth?”
“Well… The most important thing is gathering the information. I want Celeste to get a complete star chart, marking as many known homeworlds as possible, and then date it back three thousand years to find their positions in our time. She also needs recipes for various potions, but she’s already gotten most of that. Don’t want to risk getting a strange infection in the middle of space. Aside from information, I want to test out the ‘portable Seed’ project that Celeste and I talked about before. If it works, I’ll send a copy of the machine to the authorities on Earth, since it can help out there as well.”
Sharon nodded, so I continued detailing the plan. “With that taken care of, if you are able to use the portable Seed, we can go get what we need for an FTL drive from the asteroid belt. Otherwise, we’ll need to fly over to where you live and pick up your main body first.”
“You’re not worried that they’ll shoot you down to try to confiscate your ship?” Sharon frowned at that thought, but I just shook my head.
“The ship itself really isn’t that special. It doesn’t use any advanced technology aside from the FTL drive, which isn’t even going to be on it until after we leave. At most, the most advanced hardware will be enchanted shield arrays and weapons, which they have probably already started production on by now. Rather than building the ships, the biggest issue with evacuating the Earth is getting the people to do it.”
“Ahh… So… we’re just going to be flying around space, dodging monsters in a rather ordinary ship, then…?” Suddenly, the plan did not sound so good when she put it like that.
“Well… at first. But once we mine enough materials, Celeste can build a better ship for us in my grove. Right now we’re just focused on the minimum needed to get to a safer region of space.”
She seemed satisfied by that answer, and nodded her head. “Uhm… Falenel, before we go back… can we see if this town has a pet shop with anything interesting in it… please?”
The sudden change threw me for a loop, and I glanced over to her. Seeing my surprised reaction, she grinned sheepishly. “Well, we didn’t have enough money to afford the ones on Hascion, but now we have more money and nothing left to spend it on, right? Might as well get a good mascot for the Seraglio.”
I thought about it, but her logic wasn’t really wrong. After we left Earth, we wouldn’t be coming back to NeoLife, and thus our coinage wouldn’t be useful anymore. “Alright, fine… We can see about getting you a new fluffy pet before we are ready to leave.” After saying that, I found myself being tackled by an overly happy druidess who was profusely thanking me for agreeing to her request. I mean, we really weren’t lacking money anymore. If we found something really interesting, I could sell off my Advanced level Mana Signatures skill, since I have plenty of buffer now. That would get me a couple dozen gold to play with.
Chapter 7 - All of This Cute
After walking around town for a bit more, we decided to stop at a restaurant and get ourselves a bite to eat. By the time we got back, Celeste was still wholly absorbed in watching rapidly flashing screens of information. However, it was a bit strange. Rather than her Deus Ex body absorbing the information, she was letting the AI mind transmit it to the companion bracelets. That way, she didn’t have to slow down and let her aura adapt first.
Since we had some time, Sharon asked me to go ahead and study her aura, though she was a bit shy about it. After all, this was pretty much the most intimate you could be with someone and still have clothes on. It’s just, it was the same kind of intimacy you’d have with a doctor. Still, I studied her aura for a while and added it to my collection.
Next, I summoned Yo out from my grove, who latched onto me happily. Sharon simply giggled when she saw that, and let me study Yo’s aura as well. Since Yo does not have an acidic property like the plant slimes I had originally studied, I wasn’t as concerned about whether or not I would burn myself by doing this.
Naturally, after I got Yo’s aura, I turned myself into a slime person, which was a very strange experience. Slimes don’t really have eyes, so I could see everything around me at the same time. It was fairly disorienting to try to choose a direction to ‘face’ like this. Also, they ‘hear’ with their entire body as well, so sounds were slightly distorted from what I was used to. However, it was still a fairly fun form, and I was able to alter my body fairly easy by concentrating on the form I wanted to take.
Strangely, when Yo embraced me in my slime form, her own body felt much more solid than usual. Likely there was some sort of membrane on the edge of our skins to prevent ourselves from accidentally falling into each other. When I was done with that, I transformed into a wood elf and sent Yo back into my grove.
Since Celeste was likely going to be doing this for quite a while, I pulled Yang out of my grove and asked her to stay with the Deus Ex while I logged out. As long as there was still one bracelet that was connected to Celeste in NeoLife, she should be able to continue her work. After logging out, I again checked on the world news again, hoping that there would be something by now. It was now March 3rd in the real world, and it had been just over a day and a half since the Lunar Titan emerged.
Currently, there were two major opinions in regards to how to proceed. Information regarding NeoLife being the future has already been publicized, and people have been studying anything they can within the game’s history to help make their decisions. The first opinion was naturally to leave Earth, and seek refuge on another world. With the FTL drives becoming available, and druids able to slowly terraform a planet, there was no reason why we couldn’t establish a new homeworld.
The second major opinion regarding how we should act was to train a generation of powerful fighters, and defend our home from the monsters spawning on it. The people with this opinion would often say that we should take as much technology as we could from the future, and use it to destroy anything
that unnaturally spawns on Earth. Most likely, these camps would end up each doing their respective activities either way, and only the people in the former would take the chance to leave Earth. As for the rest… I could only guess what would happen to them.
In other news, there had been many more monsters spawning all over the world. Famous landmarks would be twisted and made to come alive. Mount Rushmore turned into five giant golems that walked around, destroying anything in their path. The statue of liberty actually walked all the way to Paris, and picked up the Eiffel Tower to use as a giant lance, which I personally found to be quite hilarious.
Thankfully, there had yet to be a large monster rushing into town yet, though that was not likely to last very long. Shadows had been sighted under the water just off the coast, so we were probably due for something bad to happen soon as well. Sea monsters were not my cup of tea…
Once I was done looking stuff up, I took a walk around town to check up on some people. First, and most importantly, was Tessa and her mom. I knew I couldn’t take them with me when I left, because honestly Earth was probably still safer for a while than flying out into space. Though I wasn’t sure how long that would last, I could only hope that they managed to get on a ship and leave before it did.
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