World Seed_Expansion

by Justin Miller

  It was only a few moments later that there was a sharp cry in the sky. Looking up, I saw a small storm cloud moving in our direction, before a streak of lightning shot down at me. Reflexively, I wanted to use my magic to defend, but I soon realized that the very fact I had time to think about that meant that this could not be a real lightning bolt.

  Indeed, just a few meters short of me, the lightning bolt shattered, and in its place was a silver bird with golden specks along her feathers. She stood just over a meter tall, and yes I knew it was a she because she immediately nuzzled against me when she arrived in front of me. Yang, who had heard the cry, rushed nearby and squeeled in surprise. “Sister!”

  Yang hurriedly ran over and gave the bird, who was by now obviously an evolved Yin, a big hug. Then, something happened, something that nobody here expected. “I’m home…” Yin spoke, even in her bird form. It was a high pitched voice, but still distinctly feminine.

  I could only chuckle, patting Yin on the head. “Welcome back. Did you finally manage to get your alternate form.”

  Yin nodded her head quickly. “But… embarrassing. No clothes…” She then looked towards Yang, nodding towards the latter’s attire. It seemed that with this method of evolving, her mentality was much more developed than Yang’s was when she first became a demi. Even Yo was not that developed. And finally, I could be proud of the fact that one of my animal companions did not enjoy walking around naked.

  “Well… this is going to be interesting…” I chuckled, opening up my friend’s list and placing a call to the little queen that we had just left.

  “Yes? Did something happen?” She sounded somewhat worried that we had called her so soon after leaving.

  “Ah… well… kind of. I need a favor, and I’m not sure who the right person here would be to ask.”

  “Oh?” She calmed down quite a bit, relieved by the fact that there was not some earth-shattering terror invading her land. “What is it?”

  “Well… I need clothes.”

  “...Say again?”

  “One of my companions needs clothes.” I nod towards Yin, sending her a mental message to head into the castle. She nods back, and flapped her wings to fly on in, passed the shocked eyes of several guards. “I just sent her in now. I really hope that this is not asking too much.”

  “No, no, it should be fine. Is it Sharon? We could see her outfit getting damaged easily if she spends so much time with wild animals--you just sent a bird in here.” I could quite easily tell when Yin arrived in the throne room based on the conversation. “Please do not tell us that this is a joke? Are we supposed to find clothes for a--oh…wow..”

  Either Yin just spoke, or she shapeshifted in front of Talia. Either way, mission accomplished. “So, can you help her out?”

  “Uh huh…” That was pretty much all the reply I was getting, which made me curious. Worried for my own future, but still curious. Nonetheless, that was taken care of. So, we decided to wait around. It’s not like it would take too long to find something for Yin to wear.

  “You know, we’ll really need to get someone that knows how to sew in the future.” Sharon looked to me with a slight smile. “Even leaving your companions aside, now that they all will have at least one outfit, I have no idea how many I’ll evolve that will require clothes of their own. And last I checked, the ship did not have a sewing station.”

  It really didn’t, as Celeste informed me, but Sharon raised a very valid point. “I… don’t suppose you’d be willing to learn?”

  I was instantly pierced by a rather evil glare. “That was a joke because I’m a woman, right?” However, her smile quickly returned. “Just kidding. But no, I really couldn’t. I’m more likely to stab myself with a needle than use it properly. Maybe we can teach Yin or Yang to do it? I mean, Yang is already a craftsman of sorts. Maybe she could make clothes out of natural materials?”

  “We’ll have to find out eventually, I guess…” I felt a bit of a cold sweat, and I was not entirely sure why. I glanced over towards Yang, and saw her looking at us curiously after we mentioned her in our conversation.

  Yang, Sharon and I waited outside the castle for roughly fifteen minutes, and I was just about to send Talia another call when the gates opened. The figure that came out was, in a word, stunning. At just over five and a half feet tall, although she did not have much of a bust like most of the other girls around me, she had a very well defined body. Silky smooth skin, an almost perfect face with long silver hair trailing down to her narrow waist, and long, slender legs.

  The woman’s outfit was something that I believed could have been pulled from the queen’s own wardrobe, a light green dress that practically shined when the light reflected off of it. The dress only had one sleeve, the other side dipping down under her should for an almost teasing view of skin. She was wearing rather elaborate green slippers on her feet as well, which matched rather nicely with the dress.

  When this woman walked out of the castle, she approached us and said with a soft smile. “I’m back… what do you think?”

  Sharon, who had not thought much of the woman that came out of the castle, suddenly widened her eyes in surprise. “Yin..?” The other woman’s cheeks reddened slightly, but she nodded. “Wow.. you look great.” She then turned towards me. “You know that this is totally not fair, right? All of your companions have become gorgeous in one way or another…”

  I couldn’t help but laugh lightly at that, grinning to her. “Yes, they have.”

  After realizing the implication of those words, Sharon’s face turned red immediately, and she began mumbling something to herself. Yin, however, walked up to me and did a polite bow. “I’m back, John.”

  Well, this was a pleasant surprise. Not master, not papa, she actually called me by my proper name. “Welcome back, Yin. Did you have enough of your training?”

  “Yes… I’m glad to be back. I missed you.” Her smile widened, and she stepped forward to give me a light hug, before moving over to give one to Yang as well. Though, I thought I heard her whispering something to the demi.

  “It’s good to have you back, sister.” The demi didn’t seem to mind whatever it was that Yin had said, and only smiled brightly at the fact that Yin had returned. Still, looking at how she turned out, I am not surprised that Talia was left speechless. Aside from her ears looking human, Yin looks like the perfect example of what the elves value for beauty. And she just appeared naked in the throne room.

  I could guess that those clothes likely came from the late queen’s wardrobe, and that they were simply too big for Talia to wear herself yet. With that thought in mind, though, I went over to Yin before something bad had the chance to happen. “Before anyone goes doing something that we all might regret… Yin, can I enchant those clothes real quick? That way they won’t break when you transform back.”

  Yin blinked at me in confusion for a second, before realization dawned on her and she nodded her head quickly. After all, I was still shirtless from my previous incident of forgetting to enchant my clothes. Seeing her agree, I quickly went through the process of enchanting her dress and shoes to adapt to her form. After I did so, the dress seemed to tighten slightly, further revealing her figure without causing her discomfort. I was not even going to suggest doing this for her undergarments before she spoke up to save me. “Will have Celeste do the rest.. on the ship.”

  “Right.” After this was all settled, we would still need to retrieve these clone bodies so that we could go to the other worlds as well. That meant that Yin could hand off these clothes to her real body at that time. Though, it seemed that she did not enjoy talking as much as the other girls, which was not a bad thing. Variety is the spice of life!

  At this time, Celeste spoke up in my mind, and I had to relay her words. “Celeste’s going to teleport you back up to take care of this real quick.”

  Which meant that I would need to log out afterwards to refuel the ship. But still, I felt that this was worth it. A few moments later, green lig
hts surrounded Yin, and she vanished from our view. Roughly two minutes later, as expected I was asked to log out and resupply plasma to the ship’s generator.

  When I got out, Yin was looking around the medbay, seeming to take the view in with a different perspective than she had previously. Thankfully, she didn’t seem as averse to space travel as Yang did, though I figured she would probably still stay in my grove to keep the demi company. Our next trip was going to be a long one, longer than the total amount of time we’ve had since NeoLife appeared. It would be natural for her to get lonely if she was in my grove all by herself.

  I’ll have to try to get her more comfortable with the ship… See if there’s anywhere that we can put in a garden or something for her. I thought about this as I went and refueled the ship, letting Celeste teleport Yin back down before I filled it up with plasma one more time. Might as well make sure the generator is full before I go back down, right?

  Anyways, when we got back down to the planet, we decided to walk around for a bit with everyone and catch up. To my surprise, Yin had apparently evolved several days ago, but wanted to do some training to get used to her new body(or would it be bodies?) before she returned. As such, she was already familiar with her new powers. That explained how she was able to do her little entrance that she had shown before, at least.

  She had various other powers as well, such as shooting lightning bolts from her feathers, altering the weather, and she was even able to wield the lightning like a sword or a whip in her human form. Though, according to her, it felt like she could only use about half of her power when she’s not in her bird form, which made sense. If she was able to use the full potential of the bird form in human form, then what would be the point of it?

  Chapter 21 - Why Me?

  After Yin came back, she continued to escort Yang around the elven village, promising to take care of her. I wasn’t sure if the two of them were literally sisters, or just treated each other that way because they were both my animal companions, but it was nice to see that Yin wasn’t getting mad at her anymore. There’s only so much space on that small ship and in my grove, getting angry at each other doesn’t really help anyone.

  Anyways, our stay in the elven village lasted a few more days before the first of the two druids managed to successfully complete all five element seeds and fused them together. When they successfully completed their grove, they were again amazed at this new aspect of their power, and wanted to fully explore it. Naturally, I first made sure that he was willing to teach the other druids, and even watched him help the second one through this final breakthrough.

  Out of these two druids, neither of them had chosen the path of a Xeno-Shifter or a Colony Druid. One wanted to be a Plant Lord, while the other wanted to be something he called an Earthshaker. According to Celeste, it was a druid that specialized heavily in the earth element. Not an uncommon choice, but not exactly one that we could help with. As such, I could only direct the two of them towards whatever information Celeste had left in the elven networks.

  Of course, our attack on the bosses did not stop during this time. Although we did not go up to personally witness the destruction of the other five, they were all killed over a matter of days. Apparently, Celeste had to go back and attack the spider boss’s location three more times to completely clear out all of the little pests that had hidden away. As for the dragons, they were all wiped out with one direct hit. The mountain golem didn’t fight back or resist at all, even though it took two shots to fully kill it. And for the ice wolf… well, according to Celeste, it literally melted under the orbital laser.

  Once the two druids had been trained, and the bosses killed, we spent a day touring around the elven world, taking a look at their cities. The high elf cities were really quite impressive, holding large metal buildings instead of the small stone shacks of the wood elves. While we were in the city, I made sure to spread out my Mana Sense and properly study the high elves’ auras to add it to my collection. Although they physically looked very similar to wood elves, their ears were slightly shorter and their bodies a bit taller.

  Before we left Gerin 6, we even met with High Queen Maeve in person. Though, this time there were guards present so she was using a business-like demeanor. The purpose of the visit was very simple, and she wanted to thank us for the help we have given to her planet and her people. She told us that, for our services thus far, we could ask any reward we wished, even a place in a royal castle. Sure enough, she was hinting that she wanted us to hook up with Talia, and seemed a bit disappointed when we declined.

  Finally, before we left, she asked that we visit one last time before we left the system, to receive a reward arranged by all three High Queens. Celeste made sure that I agreed, even though she wouldn’t tell me why. Anyways, after that we left to visit the other worlds, but all we really did there was blast the bosses from orbit. Apparently, Gerin Prime had already taken out another two boss monsters by the time we got to it, using their biological weapons. The remaining monsters were all made of inorganic materials, so doing the same thing again wasn’t really an option.

  Thankfully, none of the monsters were light elementals or something that could just shake off the laser. This made dealing with them just a matter of time. However, one of them was tricky, and required us to build a specialized bomb to deal with it. This was because it was buried deep underground, and would only surface when it was ready to eat. After getting the local High Queen’s approval, we(Celeste) spent a few days constructing a bomb that would not harm the planet itself, and made sure to accurately target the monster with it, sending it straight into the thing’s stomach.

  Not surprisingly, this teleport took all of our remaining power, and I had to store Sharon in my grove while switching to my void elf body until I recharged the generator. We really needed to get a few upgrades here…

  Oh, something I forgot to mention before. I managed to find a way to use this to power level myself! Though it’s not completely effective, I gained a few levels from doing it. After slaying some of the boss monsters who were safe to approach after death, or who managed to leave behind some of their body, I used my Soul Arts to slowly purify their aura before absorbing it into myself. It felt strange doing it this way, but after I got back to the ship I would then ‘share’ the absorbed aura with the others. This gave me a rather interesting ability.

  Share Souls - Soul Arts - ★★

  After absorbing excess soul energy, you are able to share it among those you choose. This is currently limited to pure soul energy.

  Yup, I was now able to power level the entire group by farming bosses. I initially thought about just stopping at various planets along the way to our next destination, but Celeste shot that idea down. In order to do that, we would have to spend a little over a week at each extra planet to build an orbital laser, and then when we leave we would have to abandon it. Our current ship does not have any weapons capable of assaulting a monster from orbit.

  Anyways, by the time we had taken out all of the bosses, my stats looked something like this.

  Name

  John Hulett

  Race

  Wood Elf

  Titles

  Vengeful Heart, Amateur Brain Surgeon, Spider Slaughterer

  Fame

  20,000

  Level 50

  1%

  Class

  Druid

  Advanced Class

  Xeno-Shifter

  Deity

  Malthan

  Health

  310/310

  Health Regen

  0.52

  Mana

  1300/1300

  Mana Regen

  5.16

  Strength

  15

  Wisdom

  166

  Agility

  26

  Intelligence

  130

  Dexterity

  22

  Charisma

  15

  Vitality

  31 />
  Luck

  20

  Points Remaining

  45

  Earth 16%

  Fire 16%

  Wind 16%

  Water 16%

  Lightning 16%

  Light 16%

  Dark 16%

  Plant 16%

  Void 16%

  Metal 16%

  Magnetism 16%

  Plasma 16%

  I decided to invest my points in wisdom until I hit two hundred, and then focused the rest on dexterity. After hitting two hundred wisdom, my mana regeneration shot up to nearly six per second, which made me very happy. It would take me less than four minutes to fully recover my mana, even if I used it all at once right now. Though, with how my health looked I was the very definition of a glass cannon… I’ll work on that later.

  Anyways, after the round of monster exterminations, we headed back towards Gerin 6 as promised. I personally wanted to just get moving to our next destination, and avoid the trouble of a party or anything to see us off. However, Sharon and Celeste both encouraged me to go. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t really say no to them. After all, wasn’t I only a figurehead captain? Celeste is the one that actually takes care of the ship’s functions. Probably the only reason I am captain in the first place is that she is essentially programmed to help me succeed.