While I was there, and walking around town, I spread out my Mana Sense to study the auras of all of the humans that walked by me. Normally, I’d need at least ten minutes of focused study to get an aura down, but that only applied to when I was studying a single person. Now, I was studying the auras of dozens of people, albeit more passively. By the time I had left Tessa’s house and made my way back home, I had managed to obtain the auras of both standard humans and psychic humans. Surprisingly, there was only one small part of the aura that made the difference between the two, and when I mimicked that one change on my own aura, I got this message.
New Spell Unlocked!
Aspect of the Psychic - Nature Magic - ★★
By studying a psychic race, and copying their aura onto your own, you have unlocked the abilities of your mind. What abilities you manifest initially may be random.
The last part of that message surprised me. I had expected that people chose their psychic abilities when they made their character, or as they level up. And maybe they did, but mine was not a ‘naturally’ gained ability, so maybe I had to play by different rules? I’d have to figure out later what my psychic ability was, but unless it was something bad I would definitely be keeping this part of my aura active whenever I shifted again, like with my bones.
Anyways, I was happy to find out that Tessa was doing okay now, and had not been having any other problems. Her mom even became a druid, thanks to the bracelet I had randomly enchanted for her, though she had only done the very basic training in the game during her spare time. Still, that was enough for her to be able to keep them safe for now.
By the time I got back to NeoLife, a full day had already passed in game, because I had taken my time while walking around. Celeste was…. still absorbing information in front of the TV. Meanwhile, Sharon had taken Yang out to go shopping for clothes, only to later return disappointed for some reason. When I asked her, she just sent me a mild glare and sighed. With a shrug, I sent Yang back into my grove.
The next day, Celeste was still not done, so Sharon and I went to the pet store to check out what they had here. Since we already had more combat pets than we would ever need with Sharon’s grove, we only visited the noncombat store. Once we got inside, Sharon was looking around happily at each and every pet in the store. “Oh my god, they’re so cute~!”
When I asked Sharon her budget, she said she could spend up to one gold on a pet or two, which was over double my own funds. Then again, I had to buy stuff like Celeste’s body and the construction materials. While looking around, her eyes naturally landed on a large kitten with small wings on its back in one of the containers, and she smiled from ear to ear. “Ohh… I want it…”
Looking over, I saw that it was listed as ‘Midnight Tabby’, with a bit of information written below. Apparently, it had low affinities with both dark and light elements, but was only able to use them during the relevant parts of the day. So, it could use some weak light effects during the day, and dark effects at night. As for the effects it could do, it was able to glow, serve as a flashlight, or turn nearly invisible.
Looking at the store owner, I asked rather curiously. “What about when it’s out in space? There aren’t exactly day and night cycles.”
The store owner, a middle aged elf male, simply smiled at me. “Rather than depending on the time of day, it’s more accurate to say that it depends on the relative position of the nearest star, and the distance to it. Out in space, once you exit a system, it will almost always be attuned to darkness.”
I nodded my head at that. It did make sense, after all. Though, Sharon immediately picked up the midnight tabby and bought it for thirty silver. Maybe eventually she would be able to evolve it, but otherwise it’d still be a cute little kitten for her to play with. “I’ll name you… Jasmine~!” After saying such, she hugged the kitten against her chest, causing it to meow pitifully at the sudden treatment.
Shaking my head, I chuckled as I looked through the other pets. There were several interesting ones, like a three headed snake, a blurred figure that led me to believe it was some kind of spider and that Celeste was saving me from destroying public property, and finally a two headed puppy like I had found on Hascion. However, this one was more grey, its fur seeming to shine slightly. Its display listed it as a ‘Lesser Orthrus Variant’. The variant listing seemed to be because, unlike the normal lesser orthrus that was attuned to fire and water, this one was attuned to two secondary elements. These elements were void and metal, and caused the price of the pet to drop to ten silver.
Apparently, creatures that were attuned to secondary elements were naturally weaker than ones attuned to primary elements. Whereas a true lesser orthrus could release breaths of fire and water from its two heads, this one did not have a breath weapon. Instead, it was able to ‘feed’ on magic at a very slow rate, or sense ores.
Thinking that it might prove useful, and seeing that Sharon had started looking over this way with a bit of drool hanging out of her mouth while she looked at the puppy, I decided to hand over the ten silver to pay for it. When I did so, and picked up the puppy, she immediately snatched it out of my arms and held it alongside her midnight tabby. “I’ll name you… Chrome.”
“Uh… shouldn’t I be the one to name him?” I asked as I glanced at her, and the two pets in her arms. At least Chrome and Jasmine seemed to get along, playfully pawing each others’ noses and nuzzling their heads against her.
“Nope. Denied. His name is Chrome.” Sharon shook her head cutely and smiled at me. “Now what?”
Since there wasn’t another midnight tabby or lesser orthrus here, we couldn’t exactly get a breeding pair of them to start our own fluffy farm, so we went ahead and left the pet store. “Now… I don’t know. My plan was pretty reliant on Celeste only needing a day at most to finish getting the information she needed.”
My companion bracelet lit up a few moments later with Celeste’s hologram. “Sorry, this is taking longer than I expected. I want to make sure that we have everything we need, including all of the racial languages and information on how to train the starting classes. Then there’s some future ship blueprints and technology that I want to get, in case we need an upgrade later.”
“And how many fictions are you downloading to keep yourself entertained?”
Celeste froze up at that moment, but looked away slightly. “I am sure I don’t know what you’re talking about. Anyways, I already got all of the star charts for the homeworlds, and completed the calculations to date it back three thousand years.”
“So, where’s our first stop?” I looked down to the AI, and Sharon also seemed interested by this.
“Well, there are two homeworlds within close proximity to Earth. The first is Gerin, the elven homeworld, while the other is the halfling world Raxicoral. They’re both about thirty five parsecs from earth, but in opposite directions.”
I thought about it for a moment, but the decision was pretty easy. “Let’s head to Gerin. First of all, I am not even confident in being able to pronounce the halfling’s world, and second we already have the ability to blend in with elves. Though, the fact that there are two races that close is a bit surprising.”
“Well, by now they have drifted a bit further from Earth, but back then they were pretty close. I’ve already plotted the location of Earth in this time, if you want to take a look at it?”
This time, it was Sharon that answered. “We’d better not… That’d take quite a bit of time, and we’d be risking our only ship, right? Let’s just send the information to people back home, so that they can check it out and use what they find to help make their decision.”
I didn’t doubt that there were people already looking for Earth’s location in NeoLife for that very reason, but many of them don’t have the advantage of a robot that is able to quickly plot it out. It’d likely take them a few weeks before they ran all of the necessary calculations and found it. “Alright. We can send that off with the portable Seeds before we leave
. Speaking of, Celeste?”
“Right, I’ve already assigned three of my worker drones to the construction project. I’ve got a basic design planned out, and once it’s complete you can try it out. It’ll take three days for the clone body to be prepared, but after it is you should be able to activate it. The principal behind the technology is the same as your Soul Arts, so that made the job easier.”
I nodded my head, thinking that was pretty good. “So, we’ve got three days after the prototype is complete before they can be tested. How long until the ship is done?”
“I’ve already assembled most of the pieces with a synthesizer in your grove. Now I just have to put them all together. If you go into your grove and move everything into a void area, it’ll make the job go by much faster. However, it’ll still take nearly a week to construct. I’d suggest both of you focus on your cultivation training until then.”
Looking over to Sharon, I gave a slight smile. “Well, at least we have a timetable now.”
Sharon nodded, looking down to the two fluff balls still in her arms. “Let’s make sure we have everything we need to feed these two, and then we can start training.”
“Ah! Falenel!” Celeste suddenly called out from my wrist. “Yang said that it looks like Yo just got her class.”
“Uhm… what did she get..?” Yo hadn’t been trained yet, so it was weird for her to unlock a class by herself.
“The class she got is a unique class only available to those with a slime’s abilities, Morphic Warrior. Give me a moment to look up information about them…” Celeste went quite while the two of us waited. “Alright, a Morphic Warrior is a Fighter advanced class, and its special ability is allowing someone to go relatively unarmed. Instead, they are able to turn their bodies into weapons and armor, much like the slime’s racial trait. However, they also gain a measure of proficiency in the items they turn into, because they absorb the knowledge on how to use them from the item itself.”
“So… this basically does nothing for Yo except make her able to get the proficiencies more easily?”
“Basically, yeah. You’ll need to get a companion swarm for Yo before I can read her actual information.”
“A what now?” Again, it seemed it was Sharon’s turn to raise the question on everyone’s minds.
“A slime’s body rarely stays fully solid for long periods of time, so they can’t wear bracelets like most races. Instead, they get a nanite swarm programmed with the same effect as a companion bracelet injected into them.”
“That… sounds expensive.” I grimaced as I heard the description.
“It is, yeah… one gold coin.”
Yo didn’t really need that, right? I mean, she can just read off her information to Yang or myself, or even Sharon. “Uhm… maybe later. I take it she got this advanced class by…”
“Yeah… she was eating some of Yang’s weapon and armor that she made from the diamondback skeletons.” I gave a low sigh when I heard Celeste say that, and couldn’t help shaking my head.
Chapter 8 - To infinity
After buying a couple of plants that would produce pet food for Jasmine and Chrome, we spent the next few days alternating between cultivating and taking care of our new pets. Well, I spent most of the time cultivating. Sharon was more than happy to take every ‘pet shift’ that she could to spend more time with the two of them.
For this cultivation session, I decided to focus more on my Metal Affinity, that way we wouldn’t be lacking in materials for crafting. Though, there was one thing that I decided to take care of even before cultivating, because I had been putting it off for too long. And that was copying Celeste’s aura, to become a Deus Ex myself!
Like I had expected, this process was a bit different than when I changed into an organic species, because metal is not really covered under Nature Magic. I had to use a bit of a mix between Nature Magic and Technomancy to get the shift to work, but in the end I had turned into my very own robot body. Though, it was only the very basic model… Looking at my status, I almost panicked because of what I saw.
Name
Falenel Hulett
Race
Deus Ex
Titles
Vengeful Heart, Amateur Brain Surgeon, Spider Slaughterer
Fame
400
Level 40
40%
Class
Druid
Advanced Class
Xeno-Shifter
Deity
Malthan
Health
100/100
Health Regen
0.17
Mana
100/100
Mana Regen
0.5
Strength
10
Wisdom
--
Agility
10
Intelligence
--
Dexterity
10
Charisma
10
Vitality
10
Luck
10
Upgrades Remaining
39
Earth 13%
Fire 11%
Wind 11%
Water 12%
Lightning 11%
Light 11%
Dark 12%
Plant 12%
Void 11%
Metal 13%
Magnetism 11%
Plasma 11%
I panicked because I thought that I might have actually lost all my stat points when I shifted back to my normal form. Thankfully, though, that wasn’t the case. I shifted back to test, and I still had all of my stats, I just didn’t have them as a Deus Ex. So, doing another shift, I looked at the options for upgrades. There were really too many to choose from….
Initially, the upgrades were all separated into defensive, offensive, utility, and cosmetic. Seeing as how I had neither the sense of touch or smell, I used two quick upgrades to get that. It was honestly disorienting to not have the senses I was used to. Next, I browsed around the various upgrades to see what there was. Most items only cost one or two upgrade points, but were able to be purchased again to increase its effect. For example, I found Celeste’s flight wings, a basic upgrade that only cost one point, but started out as mere levitation.
I decided to go ahead and buy the flight, and found out that I could alter the shape of the wings, as well as their color and the glow effect that showed when I used them. For now, I just went with a basic metallic gray and kept everything else as the default. I’d think about what kind of upgrades I get for this in the future. Maybe have my Deus Ex form be a crafting specialist? That could come in handy.
Anyways, after I was done with that, I went ahead and got to working on my cultivation. We had a week until the ship was done, or a few days for the clone project. I had already moved the construction materials to a secluded area of void space in my grove, and actually had to rearrange the mana in order for everything to fit…
I decided that I’d be the one to test the new device in my NeoLife body, since it was more convenient than Sharon doing so. If she tested it, and it failed, then we’d have to go pick up her body in Europe while it was defenseless against the giant monsters. If I did so and failed, I’d just need to wait a few hours before logging back in.
By the time the clone project was done, my Metal Affinity had risen to 15%, and I had replaced a little under a third of the metal that was being used for the ship in my grove. Interestingly, new mineral types began appearing as well, such as trace amounts of what Celeste identified as Orichalcum and Mithril. There wasn’t enough of it throughout my whole grove to create even a single ingot, but it was interesting to see the metal form in the first place.
Now, for the clone controller, it was rather… interesting, to say the least. Celeste created a headset like the old VR controllers, and linked it to a bracelet. Whenever the clone was not in use, it would appear to fall asleep, as our NeoLife bodies would. However, before it was activated the first time, it looked like
a white mannequin in a vaguely humanoid shape.
As I tried the device, I felt my aura tingling a bit. After that, it just felt as if I was a bit chilly… We forgot to dress the clone before activating it, didn’t we…
“Yup…” Celeste responded verbally to my thoughts. “It did work, though!”
Opening my eyes, I found that I was in my own body, looking at my own body on the other side of the room. Unfortunately, there was a window that appeared telling me I had lost a level due to seeding my soul in a new body. “Don’t worry, that should only happen the first time you activate a new body, not every time you ‘log in’ to it. Now, on the bracelet you’re wearing there is an enchantment to send you back to your main body when you activate it. Just do so by channeling your magic into it and focus on logging out.”
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