World Seed_Expansion

by Justin Miller

  “Any idea how long that will take?” I ask the AI, who grumbles something under her breath.

  “No… Thankfully, I don’t have to do much work with the ship, so my attention isn’t too divided, at least. I’ll let you know when I get a working theory. For now, could you go fill the generator? I didn’t have enough spare upgrades to get ones to generate plasma freely like you can do.”

  I nodded my head at her, and walked off towards the generator. Once I had spent enough mana to completely refill the ship’s engine, I went to the bridge. “So, what can you tell me about these boss monsters?”

  Celeste smirked at my question, having followed me back to the bridge. “Well, I’ve only got reliable information on two of them from what I downloaded in the future. Another one has fairly detailed reports that I was able to put together to make a profile, but the last three have unknown abilities.”

  On the screen, a large wolf was displayed against a green background, but its entire body was made of clear ice. “This is known as a frozen tundra wolf king. Bit of a mouthful, but not without reason. It’s a large scale monster that only spawns in thick ice climates. This one spawned at the northern pole of the planet, and seemed to wipe out the city that was positioned there within five hours of its appearance. Its body is bigger than this ship, and likely more powerful.”

  The screen shifted again, this time showing a giant stone man. “This is a mountain golem, one of the largest forms of stone golems that can spawn. Obviously, they don’t compare to a lunar titan, but it is still not something to underestimate. This one is fairly passive unless provoked, and its weakness is its slow movement speed. However, in close range, it is able to reshape its skin to attack anyone that tries to climb on it. Rather than attacking a city, it destroyed one simply by walking through, trying to find a quiet place for itself to live.”

  “Neither of the two so far are likely to be affected by any bioweapons that the elves might deploy, since they are made of ice and stone respectively. However, this one could be.” The screen shifted to display a blue dragon, standing proudly on four legs with its wings fully extended. “This looks to be a lesser green dragon, if I’m putting the information together right. It attacks with a peculiar kind of breath weapon, green flames that will cling to any surface, and burn for six hours without fuel. From the elven reports, nothing could put the flames out until the time had expired, at which point they go out by themselves.”

  “Since the elves aren’t familiar with magic yet, I don’t have enough information to tell you if this is a magical attack, or just a peculiar chemical. If it’s the latter, it’s entirely possible that your ability to control flames would be useless against it.” With that, Celeste ended her presentation.

  “Do you have any other information on the remaining two dragons, or the giant spider…” I really didn’t want any information on that last one, but since it was the closest to where I currently was stationed, I needed to know.

  “All I can tell you about the other two dragons are their colors, black and yellow. Otherwise, their physical appearance resembles the green dragon. There weren’t any reports filed about their attacks, so I have to assume that they knocked out the local communications before they attacked. This could indicate either luck, a natural ability, or intelligence.”

  “Let’s hope they aren’t that smart..” I grumbled slightly, knowing that the bad news came next.

  “As for the spider… well, I won’t go into too much specifics. However, in the area surrounding the city that was destroyed by it, there is merely a giant web covering everything, with countless other spiders of varying degrees of huge. The boss monster has been resting at the heart of the web ever since we hit orbit.”

  “We can nuke it from orbit, right? Please tell me that we can nuke it from orbit…”

  “We should be able to… However I am not positive that it would solve the problem. Since I don’t know the characteristics of the smaller spiders, they may be capable of burrowing underground to avoid detection or damage. If that is the case, and these are its children, then over time any that survive in this manner will simply grow to this size on its own.” Celeste had a worried expression, her brows knitted together as she thought about this.

  “Okay… so nuke it from orbit, then go in and perform a deeper scan to look for survivors. If there are any, nuke again. Repeat process until they all die.” This was very simple to me. If one shot didn’t work, keep nuking until they were all dead.

  “That… could work, but there is no guarantee we’d catch them on the scanner, depending on their size and ability to hide themselves. I’d suggest we take care of that one first, and keep an eye on the area while we deal with the others. If there is any signs of movement before we’re done, we just have to revisit the scorched earth strategy.”

  “I like the scorched earth strategy. Let’s stick with that one.” I nodded my head rapidly. This was a very good strategy to use against giant pests that consumed everything in their path. “Now… onto a much better topic. You said that there was interesting wildlife to be found here. What did you mean?”

  “Ah!” Celeste suddenly began grinning from ear to ear. “About that, it should be right on time.” She closed her eyes, likely doing another scan, before an image appeared on screen. I saw Sharon, being led around by that elven hunter, though at the moment she was running ahead… and dived head first into a giant white wall of fluff.

  “Is that…” Slowly, the image zoomed out, showing me a rabbit…. a thirty foot tall rabbit. “I think I just broke…”

  Celeste giggled off to the side. “And that’s only a young one. The adults can reach nearly double that size!”

  “Error… sanity not found… Why does this exist…” And more importantly, will it hold the same grudge against me that Sharon’s rabbits do? Am I going to be glared to death by a fifty foot tall bunny?

  “If it helps, their wolves are only the size of puppies, and eat grass and weeds. It’s the rabbits that eat meat.”

  “The food chain has been flipped. This feels wrong on so many levels…” I fell down into my comfortable captain’s chair, unable to take the shock of this news. To me, this was more painful than almost any of the information I had heard today. After all, I’ll have to live with those things in the future! Giant, carnivorous rabbits…

  “So wrong, and yet so right for Sharon.” Celeste chuckled, as the screen showed Sharon absorbing the giant fluffy creature into her grove. No doubt she had either already found another one, or was going to do so soon.

  “Well, can you tell what’s going on with the High Queens?” I tried to change the subject towards something safer. This was one of the rare cases where politics qualified.

  “Ah… well… I may have hacked into their calls… I didn’t want to say anything about it… She was just too fun to watch!” Celeste smiled at me, before continuing. “Maeve, though that’s not her real name, already called the other High Queens to discuss the information we sent. They’re still chatting now. And before you ask, Maeve is her ‘given title’. While normal queens keep their birth name when they ascend to the throne, the High Queens instead get an inherited name. For Gerin 6, that name is Maeve. The others are Kalira for Gerin Prime, and Melris for Gerin 3. That’s how they distinguish their planets, rather than fancy names like Mars, or Uranus.”

  “Doesn’t that only apply to the planets they colonize, though?” I glanced at her, confused.

  “Why would they need special names for planets they don’t use? That’s their view on it. Stars will have names, but planets are the children of the star. As such, they are addressed how they are. By the way, I looked up their information, and found Sol on their star charts. Their name for it is Espior, and apparently the name loosely translates as ‘dim child’.” Celeste was giggling like a lunatic by the time she finished telling me that.

  Chapter 17 - Kingdom Rules

  After confirming the information on the ship, I logged back into my clone body down
on the planet below. There were several elves surrounding me when I opened my eyes, who jumped back in shock. Apparently, they had not expected me to suddenly wake up or something. Sharon was already on her way back from her little outing, with an incomparably happy expression on her face. I could only imagine that she found a bunch of new animals to add to her grove. “John, I’ll be cultivating for a while to make space~. Should take me just a day or two and I’ll be ready to look around again.”

  With that, she excused herself, and had a guard show her somewhere with a wide open area that she could meditate for a while. Part of me wondered just how many animals she had at the present time that would be able to help her cultivate, but Celeste promised to do a scan and send me an image, just because she was curious as well. Given that animals live, die, and reproduce so quickly when we got most of her animal companions from, she could have as many as double the number she had previously told me that know how to cultivate. Especially now that she is able to properly communicate with them.

  Roughly half an hour later, Celeste sent me a mental screenshot, likely taken with the ship’s scanner, of Sharon sitting in the castle’s courtyard. Surrounding her were at least twenty wolves of various shapes and colors, fifty rabbits, even a pair of large armadillos the size of a car. At the very back, there was even a boulder lizard that she had only recently acquired before we left NeoLife for the last time. And they were all sitting straight up with their eyes closed, as if they were meditating.

  So… she now has over seventy cultivating animals… I’m sure it’s just a matter of time until she converts them all… I sighed, shaking my head as I looked around. I wasn’t really seeing any vehicles that could be used to go between cities. Did they just ride large mounts, or were their vehicles hidden away from view? I knew that they had the technology, after all they had space ships able to travel to other planets in the system.

  “Celeste, how long will it take to have the orbital laser ready?” I asked as I walked around, bored out of my wits. I could probably train my affinities, but we had just touched down on an alien world, and there was still quite a bit I wanted to do. Or, to put it more accurately, I wanted to do anything but training right now.

  “Should be a little over ten days. I’ve gotten all of my construction drones working on it right now. But once it’s done, it’ll need a full five hours to charge between blasts. You don’t have the materials for anything more energy efficient in your grove.”

  I wasn’t really surprised by this revelation, to be honest. In fact, ten days for an orbital weapon was still quite impressive. “Will we be able to take it with us to the other planets to help them out with their monsters as well?”

  “I’ll make a towing cable so that we can bring it along, but it will take some careful piloting so that we don’t damage it in transit. Can you do a quick check, see if you’ve managed to acquire any more mithril in your grove yet?” After Celeste asked, I inspected the grove to do a search.

  Mithril was, in essence, platinum that had been naturally saturated with magic. I only had one tiny ore vein that held any platinum in it, so there was not much to check. And in that small vein, there was maybe five grams of mithril. Definitely not enough for whatever she wanted to use it for. However, if I keep expanding my grove, more will naturally appear over time.

  After I relayed the information, I heard a disappointed sigh from Celeste. “Well, it can’t be helped. Still, be sure to check every once in awhile, mithril is useful in a lot of construction materials.”

  I nodded my head, and walked back out of the forest, towards the plains where the temple had been constructed. Already, I could see a long line of elves lined up in front of the temple, numbering no less than two hundred people. Standing at the temple’s entrance, Queen Talia was no longer wearing her silver gown. Instead, she was wearing a pure white dress with golden embroidery, and carried a white wooden staff. When she saw me, she smiled happily and beckoned me closer.

  “Quite a… drastic change of attire.” I commented as I approached her, making her blush slightly.

  “Not my choice… We received a message from the one called Aria, saying that this would fit our new role better than our last outfit. At the same time, our royal gown was transformed into this. It was… quite an uncomfortable experience.” When she said that, I blinked rapidly. Aria is doing stuff like that now? When I got my class, all I had to go with it was a quest telling me to find a trainer. Spreading out my Mana Sense, I found that her new outfit was lightly enchanted for defense, and her staff was constantly storing energy for something.

  “Please tell me that she told you what they do, at least…”

  “Do..? Are they meant to ‘do’ something?” Talia looked at me blankly, as if she could not understand the meaning behind my question.

  “Oh for the love of…” I activated my Aura Sight and called out to Celeste. Need your attention down here for a minute. Can you identify that staff?

  “Roger, Captain!” I heard the tired AI’s voice in my head as she looked through my eyes to identify this god’s handiwork. “This is an arcane enchantment, not a runic one. If I had to guess, it builds energy over time, and can unleash it in one big blast. The longer you wait, the bigger it gets. It’s not very efficient, though. With the energy stored right now, it’d barely be the same as a hard punch.”

  I nodded my head, and looked to a very confused Talia, who had her head tilted to the side and awaiting my explanation. “This outfit and staff are magical. The dress is capable of providing a measure of defense for you, while the staff is able to store energy to fire a blast. I’m not sure what the activation condition is for the staff, though.”

  “Eh…? Magical? You mean the power of the cycle?” Talia still had a confused look on her face as she glanced at the staff.

  “Right. It’s possible to imbue items with power as well. I take it Aria is now listed as your patron..?”

  Talia quickly shook her head at that. “No, no. My patron was listed as Halen.”

  “Ah.. I don’t really know anything about him, but hopefully he’ll be a better help. Did you already set up the protective barrier?”

  “Yes, as soon as I accepted the role of a priest, I asked Halen to defend this area. It was strange, when he did I was granted a vision of the range that it covers. Even now I can see that information, as well as others. There is now something called a ‘kingdom domain’ menu present.”

  ...You know, knowing about this earlier would have helped a lot. “I’d suggest exploring that, carefully.” Meanwhile, I was mentally asking Celeste what she knew about this.

  “Sorry, Captain! I saw it mentioned in a few articles, but since it was unlikely that you’d ever set up a kingdom of your own I didn’t look too deep into it. All I know is that it is something that owners of a vast area get when they receive their class. I had thought that you would get it for the Seraglio, but either the population or the size of the ship must have been too little for it to qualify.”

  Talia nodded her head, focusing on something. After a few moments, a window appeared in front of me. From the reactions of those nearby, everyone got one.

  Kingdom Alert

  Queen Talia of the Woods has set a work order for Increased Agriculture. After a period of 7 days, the Agriculture rating of the area will be improved. Qualified participants may help accelerate this process.

  Qualified: Scientists, Farmers, Geneticist, Worker

  I was not expecting something like that, and looked over to Talia curiously. “What… just happened?”

  “Uhm.. There were a list of upgrades we could choose from. We thought it would be best to secure food for our people, now that it is not safe to move beyond the boundaries of the kingdom. Did we do something wrong?”

  I looked up into the air, and in the sky was a massive clock counting down. “Well… I guess we’ll see in.. six days, twenty-three hours, and fifty-nine minutes.”

  “Uhm.. there’s an option to cancel the work order… should
we do so?” She looked far more worried now, since I did not have the answers she wanted.

  “No.. I think it’d be best to see how this develops.” In the meantime, I checked the area with my Aura Sight and Mana Sense again. It was faint, but I could see a trace amount of mana leaking from everyone present, myself included, and heading up towards that clock. “What other upgrade options were there?”

  Talia began to list some of the things that she had seen in her window. Among them was increased internal security, increased defenses, increased weapons technology, and various others. There were also options to move or remove trees, change the landscape, and even change the architectural style. I had the feeling that being a ruler made your ‘playing experience’ similar to a real-time strategy game. I was slightly curious how this would work for the High Queen, but I’d have to ask later.

  “Ah, right. Before I forget, would you like to be friends?” I asked Talia, and another window appeared in front of me.

  Friend request sent to Queen Talia of the Woods.