World Seed_Expansion

by Justin Miller

  My only concern now was whether or not the boss that spawned there would be another shadowflame mimic, or if something else would appear. Though, I wouldn’t really be around by then to find out. I could always just leave a message with the Ha’vosh to warn them about the dungeon, and tell them not to enter it until they level up a bit more.

  By the time I was done thinking about this, we had already been teleported elsewhere, with a few Ha’vosh standing in front of us. If not for the tech circlet on the head of one, I would never have been able to recognize my good friend Bob.

  “Greetings.” He said as he noticed that I was now paying attention. I wonder if that happens a lot with their people, just randomly spacing out in thought.

  “Hello. Got the temple built for you.” I pointed back in the direction that the temple was. And then changed to point in the direction it actually was, after Celeste corrected me.

  “Many thanks. That was… far faster than we had anticipated.”

  I decided not to tell them that I actually already went to the dungeon after finishing the temple. “If you send someone over to become a priest, they can set up a barrier to stop the spawning of monsters. Then we can begin training people as they get new classes.”

  Bob shook his head at that. “Again, many thanks. The language is… going slower than expected. It will likely take… two days, in order to get it fully transmitted.”

  “I see.” Celeste quickly let me know that, despite their years being twice as long, their days only last twelve hours, so two days for them was only one for us. “My ship will stay in orbit until then, and once it’s taken care of we’ll come back down to begin teaching.” Honestly, I wanted off this planet as quickly as I could get off, because the higher gravity was starting to get to me.

  “Understood. If all goes well… I hope to see you in two days.” Bob shook his head again, and turned back to the others.

  Shrugging my shoulders, I turned to look at Yin. “See? Not really that fun.”

  She just smiled gently, leaning in to give me a hug with one arm. “Still… happy to come.”

  After that, we had Celeste beam us up to the Ariadne.There was still the chance that they would be sending people to join us after the training period was over, so I had Celeste start mass producing the psychic inhibitors. As long as they don’t send up more than two hundred and fifty people like the elves did, then we should have plenty. Hopefully.

  For the next couple of days, Sharon began learning what Kismet’s powers were. She wasn’t having him practice them, unless she wasn’t able to understand something. After all, someone with level one stats should not be able to use level one hundred abilities. I’ll summarize his powers a bit now.

  First of all, he has Dark Affinity at 75%, and naturally has Darkness Manipulation to go with it. He also has Magic Manipulation, though it is only at the beginner levels. No doubt its level will skyrocket once he actually starts practicing.

  Next, he has Shadow Magic, also at the beginner level. According to Sharon, the skill description for it says that he is able to use it for even more than the manipulation ability. If I’m right, once he trains a bit, making copies of people like the shadowflame mimic did should be entirely possible for him.

  He also has two different skills, each of which I considered very overpowered. The first was called Shadow Armory. With this skill, he is able to create weapons made of shadows. Now, you may think that this is just like the Dark Affinity ability to do basically the same thing. However, there is a key difference. The Shadow Armory weapons he makes can be enchanted with any power he has, or any that he has ‘absorbed’.

  The second power, the one that compliments the Shadow Armory, is the Shadow Arsenal. With this, he can create a shadow area that absorbs magic attacks thrown at it, and gives him instinctive knowledge on how to replicate that effect with either Shadow Magic or Darkness Manipulation. To test it out, Sharon had him dump a few points into intelligence to up his mana, and then had one of her animals send a weak poison spell at him.

  The result, he learned how to make a curse spell with his Shadow Magic that mimics the effects of the poison. Now, between that and the Shadow Armory, he can potentially make unbelievably strong weapons. The limiting factors of these two skills are that they can’t create/absorb an effect higher than the strength of the skill being used. So, he can absorb a very weak poison spell, but not a fireball spell one level higher.

  Still… that is a terrifying combo. According to Celeste, that’s not even something that shadowborn typically have. They are born with a high Dark Affinity, but don’t usually have inherent Shadow Magic, or any of his other skills. Those were probably his special boss skills. And fighting a boss able to do that… probably more scary than fighting the shadowflame mimic.

  Moving on, though. As I suggested to Sharon, she has started to bring out some of the fully evolved animals from her grove to work various areas of the ship. In total, ten came out, while the rest chose to stay in her grove for now. I’m sure that, in time, more will come out as they evolve. But until then, we have ten new crew members. Like with Yin, I gave each of them the psychic power surgery.

  The only power that emerged which was truly unusual was Demona, the wolf shade. She was the one that Sharon brought out when the bats did quite a bit of damage to me in the dungeon. Her psychic power was called Domain. Quite simply, she is able to establish an area around herself, where she has a high degree of control. Telekinesis, teleportation, pyrokinesis, cryokinesis, from what I understand, it is all possible within her domain. However, right now her domain only extends an inch from her body, which severely limits the use for the power until she trains it. For now, she is learning from Celeste about piloting, and hopes to be the go-to pilot for small craft like shuttles and fighters.

  I had expected there to be some opposition from the crew when it came to evolved animals suddenly being added to the roster, but they handled it surprisingly well. Maybe they were already used to it thanks to Yin and Yang, or maybe they had just expected it to happen sooner or later. Either way, the sooner that we got the rest of the facilities of the ship crewed, the faster that we could see what other cool things we could add. I know I was looking forward to being able to put in a hologram room or a fighter bay.

  On to the new ship that we found in orbit. By the next day, Celeste had already downloaded all of the information from its computer, and had begun disassembling it with her construction drones. Although most of them were busy making the gadgets for the Ha’vosh, she was able to spare a couple for this.

  During these two days(local time, still only one day by our standards), I was focusing on training my elemental affinities by creating element seeds and then absorbing them.Tis a long and painfully boring process, but one that offers much benefit in the long run. For now, I was focusing on my Plant Affinity, while messing around with some of the unique plants that Celeste had brought me while we were at Hydra. I won’t go into detail about them now, but I’ll bring them up when they are relevant later.

  After the two days were up, Sharon and Yin both joined me as we went back down to the planet. I felt a bit bad for not sticking around and helping rid them of the mist walkers for good, but that was not really possible. I don’t have the ability to stop monsters on a global scale, and even if I did they could just spawn again anyways. The best I could do was to show them how to take care of it themselves.

  When we got down to the planet, Bob was waiting at the temple with a group of Ha’vosh. Most notably was one wearing a fine purple suit. Why purple, who knows… Anyways, what surprised me was that it was this new Ha’vosh that did the talking.

  “Greetings… I am leader.” I could tell that he hadn’t had much practice speaking verbally yet. “You have helped Ha’vosh. Why? You do not… know Ha’vosh.”

  I tilted my head curiously. I really shouldn’t be surprised that the leadership of the planet had these questions. It is pretty basic stuff. “Why not? We come from a distant planet whe
re we had advanced warning of these changes, so we thought we would go to other planets in order to help them.”

  It seemed like the leader guy didn’t really understand what I meant, but locally Bob seemed to do some psychic translating. “I see… Charity, is it?”

  Well… I never really thought about it like that, but maybe? “Sort of? You’re in trouble, we can help. Seems like common sense for us to do what we can.”

  And again, he needed translation assistance. Most likely, he had no idea what ‘common sense’ meant. That tends to be the case with leader types, I think. “Ahh. This one you call ‘Bob’ tells me of the ‘noblesse oblige’.” Okay… did not think Bob got that bit of info, but sure. “It is… unusual concept. Still, we would… appreciate, any assistance you could give us.”

  “The assistance will be fairly limited right now. Normally, we would upload the information we have to your computers. However, the systems you use, if any, do not seem to be compatible with ours. Unless we get the chance to study your system and figure out how to translate it over, we’ll only be able to give you the most basic training.” Thankfully, it was Sharon that pointed this out in my stead. I should let her come down here to do the talking more often. Maybe make her my diplomatic ambassador? That would be a cool title for her.

  “That… is a problem. We will need time to… come up with a solution.” The Ha’vosh rested his chin on his hand in thought, his four eyes blinking rapidly. “It would be… helpful if you could… begin the training in the… meantime.”

  I nodded my head, agreeing to that. That’s what we’re here for, after all. “I’ll need any Ha’vosh that go through with the training to wear the inhibitor like Bob is wearing, to ensure the safety of my people.”

  He didn’t seem to have any problems with that, so now for training a species, round two! That reminds me, we should probably check in on the robots after we leave here on our way back to the elves. See if they’ve become less tyrannical.

  Chapter 51 - The Beginning?

  So, you’re probably wondering if anything special happened while we were doing the training this time around, right? Well… as much as I would love to say that it did, and there was some epic battle, honestly it was really boring. I did learn a few things about the Ha’vosh though, which were quite interesting.

  First of all, their ‘network’ was an organic computer that projected a psychic link over the planet. Anyone that knew how could access it, and once inside it worked somewhat similar to the VR internet on Earth, navigated by thought. I even learned how to tap into it myself, and turned into a Ha’vosh to do so. Once inside their network, I was able to gradually ‘upload’ the information that we had been unable to simply give them due to the compatibility issues.

  Unsurprisingly, my psychic powers were not strong enough to maintain the link for too long, even after I shapeshifted. The Ha’vosh essentially train their abilities every day of their lives, so even if I transform into one and get the racial boost, I won’t be able to match up in terms of actual ability. Since I could only connect for about ten minutes at a time, and then have to take a break for an hour, it took me about a week to upload the necessary information.

  According to Jimmy, my name for the leader of the Ha’vosh, the organic computer had been showing problems ever since the system was put in place. Several people believed that it was going to crash, which would cause the psychic network to fall. However, the problems were mostly just slowing down the speed of information transfers. I asked Celeste if she could investigate it, but since she doesn’t have the equipment to interface with an organic computer that is based on psychic input, she was only able to do preliminary scans. Of course, these scans didn’t reveal anything structurally wrong with the device.

  I was tempted to do my own scan of the organic computer, to add it to my list of reckless brain surgeries. Doing so might even give me a major boost to my psychic ability. However… it was just too alien. Since I did not know how the technology worked, I could not isolate the parts that I would need for the surgery. I could only take comfort in knowing that my repeated connections to the network had strengthened my control to some degree.

  In total, we stayed at the Ha’vosh planet for one month, during which time we trained them as best as we could. Thankfully, our ‘training crew’ this time was more than just Sharon and myself, since we had representatives from the other classes in the crew. The only real downside was that we still had to use our clones to do the training. At one point, one of the ‘classes’ had been interrupted by a curious Ha’vosh that wasn’t wearing an inhibitor, and it killed the teacher.

  So, as I was saying, we spent a month training them to get them to understand the basics, and helped them construct three more temples on the planet. Given that we were busy, we didn’t bother going back to the Shadow Realm dungeon while we were here, but we did let the Ha’vosh know of its existence. They seemed to appreciate the information, as the dungeon offered an easy way for them to level up. Or it would, once they trained a bit more. Right now, they would be useless against anything that was immune to psychic attacks, and a darkness dungeon might just have something like that.

  After that month passed, we were finally ready to leave and head back towards the elven worlds to meet up with my parents. Jimmy told us that a few of the Ha’vosh had indeed decided to join us, so we had brought down the shuttle to ferry them up. We probably could have just teleported them, but this way they get to see their world as they leave it for the first, and possibly last, time.

  Unfortunately… there were not nearly as many Ha’vosh as I had been expecting. I had thought that there might be a hundred, maybe even two hundred or more Ha’vosh. I was prepared to ferry them in small batches so that they could enjoy their first trip to space. But… when we brought the shuttle down to the designated location, there were… only five Ha’vosh waiting there for us.

  Demona was our shuttle pilot, as she had become quite adept at flying the small craft, and when she saw the small number of people she cast a suspicious glance in my direction. “You got the right coordinates, didn’t you?”

  “I did… I think.” I got out of the shuttle after it landed, and looked at the five Ha’vosh. Each one was wearing nametags, something that we had to insist on because there were almost no distinguishing characteristics between them aside from height. Every now and then one would have different eye colors, but otherwise they all looked the same.

  The five Ha’vosh lined up in front of me were Bob, Mark, Greg, Sam, and Alex. Yes, they were all ones I had met personally and named over these last few months. Greg, the only priest of the group, stepped forward and spoke. “Hello, Captain.” His speech, as well as everyone else’s, have gotten quite better over the last month. And yes, they were all wearing inhibitors. “Sir Jimmy has told us that we would be able to travel with you if we waited here.” Thankfully, they had recently taken up the habit of adding ‘Sir’, ‘Miss’, or so on in front of names to help distinguish them for us, since they could tell we had problems.

  I nodded my head at that. “That’s right. I’ll be taking anyone interested up to my ship, and then we’ll be leaving.” Just like with Talia, I had added Jimmy to my friends list, but I had not been asked to give regular updates with him.

  “Understood.” Greg shook his head and looked to the others. “We can get on now, it seems.” At his words, the other four Ha’vosh all proceeded forward to board the shuttle, aside from Bob who just kept staring at it. “Sister Bob, is there a problem?”

  “Huh?” Bob looked at Greg, before nodding. “I am alright.” Bob then proceeded to head onto the ship as--wait, sister? Did I accidentally stick a female with a definitively male name? And how confusing was this going to get in the long run?

  Though.. I guess it didn’t matter much. Maybe from now on, Bob would be a female name for the Ha’vosh… I’m sorry in advance. “Right… well, let’s get going, then.” I said with a slight sigh. “I guess that there won’t be any others
coming?”

  Greg nodded his head at that. We were really going to have to work on that. “Only us, Captain. Ha’vosh have never left Alkrax. Many do not wish to do so. Others do not wish to leave their families without knowing that they can return.”

  Well… I guess that is understandable… Still, surprised they haven’t even gone to their moon yet. I suppose that they just didn’t have much interest in leaving their world. Kind of ironic to me that the elves had already left their homeworld and colonized multiple planets in their system by the time we show up, but the psychic race hasn’t even been to the moon yet.

  “Alright… Well, sit down and strap in. Demona, take us back.” I shook my head slightly, sitting down in the front of the shuttle. This was kind of a disappointment. Even if it was just for political reasons, I had expected that they would send no less than fifty Ha’vosh. To only get five… well, it’s not like I was helping people just to get a bigger crew.

  Hearing my instruction, Demona quickly launched the shuttle, moving to take us back up to the Ariadne. I looked back towards Alkrax, somewhat regretful. During this month, I had taken the chance to train a new element almost exclusively. Originally, I had planned to train Dural next, as it was a good conductor for mana, so that would make it a valuable resource. However… arriving on a planet with a higher gravity, I couldn’t help myself from taking the Gravity Affinity. I even went ahead and added it to my grove after getting the required 5%.