Meanwhile, I put my hand up on my head to make sure that I wasn’t going to get a bald spot from the laser earlier. “Really feeling less altruistic around these guys…”
Celeste sent me an apologetic smile, before going back to communicating with X5. After a couple minutes of them talking, she looked to me and spoke. “He’s ready for the Soul Arts skill, if you are able to transfer it.”
I nodded my head, deactivating my limiter again. Not because I particularly needed the extra speed, but I wanted to make sure that I did this just right. Looking into my aura with Mana Sense, I focused on my Soul Arts skill, the most basic parts of it. All I wanted to give X5 was the ability to purify souls and infuse them into another robot. Anything else they can figure out for themselves.
Once I found those portions of the skill, I began copying them over to my buffer area, and then gently pulled it out of me to send to him.
New Ability Unlocked
Share Skill - Soul Arts - ★★
By isolating and copying a portion of your soul containing a skill, you are capable of passing that skill on to someone else.
Good...now we can get out of here. I sighed, reactivating my limiter again and looking to Celeste. “Let’s just send the basic information and leave. I don’t want to stick around any longer than I need to here.”
I knew it may have come across as a little offensive, since these things could be seen as Celeste’s ancestors, but they were really hard to like. She nodded, somewhat stiffly at my choice, and spoke with X5 again. After that, we left the shuttle and returned to our own ship. “Sorry, John… didn’t think they’d be like that.” Celeste gave a low sigh as she spoke. “Though, it does explain a few things?”
“What does it explain..?”
“Hmm? Oh, a robot race naturally can’t come into being through evolution. They need somebody to manufacture them. But there are no organic life forms anywhere near here. So, it seems like they had a robotic revolution in their history, and wiped out all life on their planet…”
...Did you REALLY need to give me an excuse to like them even less? “Let’s just hurry up and get out of here. Give them the most basic info you can and let’s go.”
She nodded to me, and we hurried back to the bridge. As we got there, our communications officer reported to us. “We’ve got another message from them.”
With the power of Celeste, we have translated… “Your assistance is appreciated. Now, relinquish the promised information.”
I nodded to Celeste, who began sending the basic info. “Charge up the FTL, I want out of here as soon as possible.”
“Captain, we’re getting a reading from the lead ship!” Ackbar suddenly shouted out. “They’re charging up weapons. It’s… a double-cross!”
Celeste and I both cursed slightly, though not from the fact that the robots were trying to attack us. Is it so hard to call it a trap!? “Evasive maneuvers, and get me that FTL.”
I was immensely thankful for artificial gravity, because the only evasive maneuver we could do with the shape of our ship… was a barrel roll. “Ackbar, think we can send a volley on our way out?”
He nodded to me. “FTL is almost charged. Firing forward cannons now. Doubt they’ll do anything, but still.”
A large red beam passed through our previous position as we completed our barrel roll, and we shot off a dozen smaller plasma charges towards the robot ship. However, before the shots landed we were already in FTL. I sat back in my chair with a sigh as I looked at Celeste. “Please tell me that counted as completing your quest.”
She looked like she was disappointed, and about to say something, but suddenly her expression brightened. “Ah! There it is.” Celeste closed her eyes for a moment, likely requesting her reward. I still had a bit of a buffer left from the procedure with X5, so I was quite interested in seeing what would happen if I used Awakening on an intelligent armor or weapon.
There was a bright flash of blue light around Celeste, runes forming and merging together until a thick metal bracelet appeared on her wrist. It appeared to be a single metal piece, with the edge being about three inches thick, and snugly fit on her wrist. “Greetings, operator Celeste. I am the G-series modular cannon.”
Celeste looked down to the metal wristband, and could only say one word. “Coooool….”
“Mind sharing with the class?” I looked back to Celeste, hoping she’d tell me what her new toy does.
“Ah! Right. I asked for a ranged weapon capable of firing various projectile types. According to the information I received, this modular cannon is capable of firing lasers, plasma, or physical projectiles. It can also serve as a conduit to fire most kinds of magical energy. But to fire a physical projectile, it first needs to be fed the materials to make the ammunition.”
“Huh… so… that’s interesting.” Now I understood the difference between the different classes of favors. A large favor can give a truly overpowered item like this. “I take it that it transforms in order to fire?”
“Yeah. Enter firing mode.” She said as she raised her arm, and the metal bracelet expanded outwards. Then, it split into four rings, which spaced themselves equally in front of her arm. When I activated my Aura Sight, I could see a large current of mana holding the pieces together. “It’s only good for three shots at a time before I need to recharge it, but still an impressive weapon.”
I nodded my head at that. “Alright, we can study it later to learn how to do an intelligence bestowal. After that, we’ll see about awakening it, agreed?”
Celeste grinned broadly at that, nodding her head. I wasn’t sure what the result would be, but if it was anything like a Deus Ex, then awakening an item could give extremely powerful results. But, now we were done with the robots. And hopefully would never be back, unless they received a major attitude adjustment. “Celeste, what are the nearest homeworlds?”
“There’s the Arachne roughly fifty parsecs out, or an additional ten parsecs on a different course, we have a psychic alien race known as the Glym.”
“Glym.” I did not even have to think about that for half a second. Let somebody else deal with the Arachne. I’d probably end up destroying the entire planet in a berserk rage by bombarding it from orbit.
“Understood, captain. Uploading the navigational data to the ship’s computers.”
I nodded, and got up with a sigh, moving back to my room. I did not want to mess with this stuff anymore, so I was officially taking a break for the day. When I got there, I found Sharon sitting at a computer terminal that she had Celeste install. Apparently, she brought some of her games from Earth, and wanted a console to play them on. Hearing me come in, she looked back at me curiously. “You’re back early. Shouldn’t we be getting to the robot world today?”
“Uhm… yeah, we got there and left already. They were… less than hospitable.” I began describing our brief encounter, after which, I summarized it with ‘They’re dicks’.
“Dildoes.”
“What?”
“They’re mechanical dicks, so dildoes.” Sharon said, giggling slightly and grinning at me. “So, on to the next race now. Any quests from the lord of chaos?”
“Don’t make me ask, please…”
“Oh, come on. It could be fun~.”
Yeah, come on. It could be fun~.
Nobody asked you! “Oh great, now we have his attention.” I lowered my head depressingly. It still irked me that I had this patron. Haven’t I done enough by now to get myself someone else yet? Anyone?
Well, if you want, I could trade you to Aria.
I’m sorry, Malthan, I’ll be a good follower. Sharon looked at my expression and let out a warm laugh. “So, who’s he ogling this time?”
Sharon Bradbury.
“Sharon Bra--Hey, back off there, mister! This one’s taken.”
Haha, I was kidding. Actually, I'm more interested in that daughter of yours. Her body is right in my strike zone. If only her mind were a bit further along, we could get together and ma
ke a Jesus baby.
Eww, no. I know she’s a slime, and thus only my daughter by technicality, but that still sounds so wrong! Looking at Sharon, I saw a shocked expression, which slowly turned into a wide grin. “Taken, am I?”
“Well… aren’t you?”
“I guess I am. So, quest? Or just random adventuring.”
“Fine.. fine… I’ll ask.”
Oh goodie! Hmm.. I could have you investigate a black hole.. oh! Maybe see the birth of a new star. Hmm... so many choices! Aha, I've got it!
You have been granted a Quest.
The Miracle of Life
Rank ★★★★★★ Creation
For the amusement of your lord Malthan, god of chaos and madness, you have been assigned the task of giving life to a brand new monster. This must be a creature that has never existed before, in all of time and space, present and future. With this quest, you can throw a wrench into the plans of time, and potentially create your own future. But can you do it? DARE you do it?
Time Limit: None.
Rewards: Medium favor for a small or medium sized monster, Large favor for a big one.
Failure: I play the My Little Pony theme song in your head for a week straight if you give up.
“Oh come on… that quest might not even be possible!” I walked over to the nearest wall, and banged my head against it.
Should I start the music, then?
“What is it?” Sharon looked at me as I continued banging my head against the wall, a bit concerned for my mental health.
No, no, don’t play it. At the very least, I can just put this quest off indefinitely. “Malthan wants me to make a monster that has never existed before, even in the future. I’m basically breaking the laws of time if it works. I think, quantum mechanics was never my strong suit.”
“What does Celeste have to say on the matter?” Sharon asked, a bit concerned with the quest as well.
I was just about to ask, when I heard a voice in my head, laughing like a mad woman. “She’s laughing.”
I moved to the bed and fell down on it. There was a brief bark before I felt a mild weight resting on my back. Though my voice was muffled by the comfortable blankets, I did manage out a ‘Hi Chrome’.
“Don’t worry, it should be possible.” Celeste said, though resumed laughing afterwards. “There is magic for time travel, and using it makes it possible to alter the past. Though, the mana cost is enormous, and almost nobody is able to go back more than a few minutes even with a full mana pool. But nonetheless, that proves that it is possible to alter the course of history. It’s just very difficult.”
I was not nearly as hopeful about this as she was, and continued to allow the blanket to hug my face, because at least that is comfortable.
Chapter 32 - Dungeons and Directions
“So, what do you want to do now?” Sharon asked, the morning after we left the robot world. “We can keep going on to the psychic world, or you can work on your quest for Malthan.” Right now, we were on our way to the bridge, with Yin still being asleep in the bed. I guess that she wasn’t feeling like an early bird today.
I nodded my head slightly. It would be really impractical to want to do both, since I need to study the creation of a variety of monsters. Hmmm… “Let’s find a dungeon, first. Unless we go all the way back to Earth, the easiest way to watch and measure monster spawns would be inside a dungeon, and there is another benefit for us as well.”
Sharon looked at me questioningly, before the answer came to her, and her eyes widened. “You want to take the chance to strengthen the crew?”
“Right. Unless it’s a high level dungeon, you and I could just run through it with ease. But the crew will take quite a bit more effort.” Celeste, we need you to start mass-producing the clone controllers and bodies.
“I got it, boss!” The AI’s voice sounded out in my head.
“Hmm… It could work. But one of us should go with each group. That way, we can provide backup if needed. It would defeat the purpose if they lost levels faster than they gained them.” Sharon added in after my brief mental exchange with Celeste.
“Good point… How about four teams? There can be one each for you, me, Celeste, and Yin.”
“What about Yo?”
I shook my head a bit at that. “We still haven’t mastered the tech to clone Yo yet, so she can’t go down.” I had been keeping an eye on Celeste’s progress with that project, and so far there was still one major problem. Even though we could create the slime that makes up Yo’s body artificially, it would not hold a soul. “We need to find a way to create a blank monster core.”
Sharon tilted her head slightly at that. “Why not just take a core from an existing monster and refine it into what you need?”
This time, it was again Celeste that answered in my mind. “Well that’s because… even still… but then… This could work… She’d only get as many chances for clones as the number of cores we could refine, but if we run short we can get more.”
Unfortunately Sharon hadn’t been part of that research from the beginning, or that simple answer could have been taken care of months ago! So far, Celeste has been simply looking for a way to artificially create a monster core, rather than just stealing one. It’s less efficient this way, but until we find an alternative it’s the best we have. Leaning over, I grabbed Sharon’s head and gave her a quick kiss. “You’re a genius.”
She smiled wide at the show of affection, nodding her head. “Thanks. So, that means five teams. Does Celeste know what the limit is on team sizes?”
After consulting with her mentally I came back with an answer. “Ten people per team, but if we set it up right, we can form a raid party. There can be up to ten teams in a raid. A step up from that, which we don’t really need to worry about yet, would be a platoon, which can have up to ten raiding teams, and then an army, which can have an unlimited number of platoons.”
Sharon blinked, confused by the explanation. “Does the experience still get divided among the whole raid?”
“No, only among the party that earns it. Otherwise, it seems like the groupings are just for communication purposes. Still, that means we can take thirty-six elves down with us for the first run, then forty-five for each run after that once we get Yo to join us.”
“What about Yang? It wouldn’t be nice just to leave her behind on the ship when the rest of us are going down to a planet.” Sharon had a point… but…
“But would she even want to go down? She’s the pacifist of the group. I think that she’d rather spend her time in the garden on the ship than to go down and fight monsters. And she definitely can’t handle her own group.”
Sharon smirked slightly. “And Yo can?”
“....Touche. I’ll have to give them both a lesson on tactics.” Sharon looked at me and raised an eyebrow, so I amended my statement. “Celeste will have to give us a lesson on tactics.” Okay, fine, so I wasn’t really the best planner for group fights either.
“I think we’ll all be part of that class. After the first couple of runs, we can get more teams set up, and bring more of the crew down at a time. It’d be better after we get more people, but right now we can’t be too picky.”
I was somewhat relieved to hear that I wouldn’t be in the ‘team combat for dummies’ class alone with Yo and Yang. But I had to agree with her, getting more people down would be good. “Okay, but no more than one full raid party. We still need people on board the ship in case something happens.”
Sharon seemed to agree with my statement, and we soon arrived at the bridge. “But where are we going to find a dungeon fit for a hundred people? I mean, if it’s a small dungeon, then it’d be good for no more than just one or two teams at a time.”
At this point, Celeste, who was standing by my chair of captain’s comfort, spoke up. “We’ll just have to make them.”
Thankfully, I wasn’t the only one surprised by this, as Sharon appeared to be as well. I was the first to answer this time. “You can jus
t make dungeons?”
“Well, sure. They’re just like a special brand of monsters. It’ll take a bit of work, but once we find an uninhabited world with a breathable atmosphere, then it’s just a matter of time.”
“Just like a special brand of monsters… does that mean that the moon, wherever it ended up, would be spawning monsters inside of it?” Sharon asked something that I had been about to, but it didn’t really matter as long as it was asked.
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