“Hey John, Priscilla told me that you asked her to look into making it possible for travel between groves?” She looked at me curiously, but with a tinge of excitement in her eye.
“Yeah, was she able to come up with anything?” She’d been looking into it for about half a year… even though it didn’t really feel that long.
“Actually, she did. I told you that I let them make their own groves after they fully evolve, right?” When I nodded, she continued. “Well, Priscilla put together a research group to solve this problem, and they think they’ve got something worked out. After we leave in a couple days, she wants me to pull her out to talk about it with us.”
“Ah… alright.” I was expecting her to do so right now, but I could wait a couple of days.
From there, we decided to head back early, since we had already spent several hours in the city for our date. My date with Yin was… well, I can’t really sum it up too easily. It was honestly the happiest I had ever seen her, even though all we did was walk around one of the other wood elf forests and get dinner. When I asked her what she wanted to do, she said it was fine to let me decide. Well… she didn’t say it in that many words.
Nonetheless, it was good to see her so happy. Unlike Sharon, she didn’t get depressed halfway through, though I did ask if there was anything important that she wanted to do in life. The answer I got back from her was, honestly, not that surprising.
“I want… to take care of Yang.” She smiled as she said that. I knew that Yin would probably want something like that. I mean, she watches after Yang almost all the time as it is, like a big sister. She didn’t have a complex emotional issue like wanting to save the galaxy, she just wanted to take care of her little sister.
While walking through the forest, we gathered several new and interesting fruits, but most surprising was that we found a green, heart shaped apple. Although it was quite a long time ago, I remembered what this fruit was. It certainly didn’t hurt that Yin’s eyes practically sparkled when she saw it.
“I never thought that the lovebird’s favorite fruit would be from the Gerin system… though I guess it makes a bit of sense, since it was elf territory where I first found it.” I still had a couple trees in my grove growing these fruits, so we didn’t really need to gather any. Though, Yin still plucked one and ate it happily, loving the familiar taste.
Like that, the last days on Gerin passed pretty peacefully. In total, counting my parents, Tessa, and Beth we recruited just under a hundred people from Earth. Naturally, most did not have any useful skills for running the ship, but there were a few mechanics. The rest could be slowly trained up. At the very least, with this the last of the facilities on the Ariadne finally had crew assigned to them!
All facilities aboard the Ariadne filled. Conditions needed for further upgrades have been met.
Additional Features option enabled.
Reading that, I happily opened up the new menu I had for the ship upgrades, to see what the options were. There was one to design a custom room, but I’d need Celeste and my tech people to work on designs for that. Maybe a better hologram room or something. However, there was one option that caught my eye immediately.
Matter Converter
Creates an additional cargo hold where stored matter can be broken down into its base materials, and altered to create new materials. To create mana-rich materials, it is necessary to supply the facility with the needed mana.
Time for completion: 1:11:24:3:12:19
Seconds, minutes, hours, days, months…. It would take nearly two full years to get this upgrade!? Well, going from the description, I had no doubts that it would be worth it eventually. But right now, I wasn’t ready to just jump in for it yet. The important thing was still strengthening the combat power of the ship itself, so I bought an upgrade for our main cannon instead. Lately, Celeste has been working quite a lot with the new ‘Upgrades Department’ to continuously research new levels of tech to put in with the upgrades.
Anyways, I had an important meeting to take care of, once we left. But first… “Everyone, our next stop is a planet we set up for training purposes. I have a mission I need to take care of while we are there, and I don’t know how long it will take. So, until we are ready to leave that planet, I want everyone to begin working together and becoming acquainted with each other’s skills and abilities. If anyone is able to completely conquer one of the dungeons on the planet, that would be best.”
After leaving the message, I went to meet up with Sharon and Priscilla in my room. I was a bit excited to learn of the possibility to travel between groves, and wondered just what it would take to achieve. When I got there, Sharon was already sitting on my bed, talking with the bunny girl maid who was on a chair across the room.
Hearing the door open when I came in, they looked at me. Sharon smiled, being the first to react. “Nice going with the broadcast. Wonder if any of the people from Earth have even fought in a dungeon before.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Don’t know, but they’re going to start eventually. Only a few of them were crafters, so most of them need actual combat to level up.”
She nodded her head at that, and then looked over to Priscilla. “I guess we’re ready, Pris.”
She fidgeted a bit awkwardly at the nickname. “Yes, Mistress. As I told you before, John asked me to do research into groves when he taught me Enchanting. Since then, my group has devoted themselves to this task, specifically how to move from one grove to another.”
“As you should know, a grove can be considered a tiny universe contained within our souls. However, each grove is separate from any other, so travel between them is normally impossible. We even attempted to have two people establish their groves together while circulating their mana through each others’ bodies. However, the result was just the failure of a grove being established for either of them. In the end, we managed to come up with something, and it has shown some… limited success.”
Seeing that we were both patiently listening to her, she continued with a bit more confidence. “As you know, a grove is established with the use of an item known as an Essence of Nature. This essence is created with the fusion of multiple elemental seeds, from the light, fire, water, wind, and earth elements. For our experiment, we made a somewhat modified version of the Essence of Nature, which we are calling the Essence of the World.”
“This new essence instead uses all seven primary elements. However… we found that doing it this way, the Essence of the World was not able to help a druid establish their grove. Actually… the person that tried it was killed, his body exploding with the raw power.” She looked regretful as she said that.
“After that, we abandoned the idea of refining the essence internally, and that was when we hit our breakthrough. We discovered that, by having two or more people simultaneously refine a single Essence of the World while they already have their grove, a link will be formed between them. The owner of the grove can use this link to see into the grove of the other parties, though he cannot influence the other grove. He can also create a physical structure within his own grove, and pass the link through it. With this method, we formed a gateway between two groves.”
She then took a deep breath and explained one last thing. “However… this can only be used effectively once. Each time a new essence is used to set up more connections, the new connections are unstable, and materials that try to pass through them are lost. Furthermore, there is a range limitation. The bridge will only function when the owners of the two groves are within a kilometer of each other.”
Chapter 59 - All That We See or Seem
Sharon and I looked at each other. Honestly, there didn’t seem to be any downside to this. While it might not have been as big of a solution as I had initially hoped for, wasn’t this still pretty good? “Is there anything else we need to know?” I looked at Priscilla and asked, curious about this.
“Yes. The Essence of the World has to be made using medium grade seeds. The process would
always fail if we tried with one made using low quality element seeds.”
Listening to her explanation, I nodded my head. Although it would still take me a few hours to refine all seven elemental seeds if I did it normally, I was able to do so in just a few moments using the mana from my grove. One by one, small pellets of different colors dropped down onto my hand. Each was a medium quality seed of the various primary elements. Although it burned up a bit of my grove to make them, it should still be worth it.
Sharon, seeing that I had instantly decided to do this, smiled gently at me. This was a decision that could only be made once, so it was probably reassuring to her that I didn’t hesitate. Instead, she simply waited for me to sit down next to her, and the two of us began making the essence together.
Once the essence was formed, Priscilla walked us through the combined refining process. For this, both of us had to carefully control our Nature Magic, and balance the amount of energy we used. Though this wasn’t exactly easy, it wasn’t really that hard either. Since we could each sense the amount of power the other was using, balancing it wasn’t a problem.
After about five minutes of refining, the small essence faded away into nothing. In its place, I felt a strange energy flowing into my grove. Similar to the feeling of adding a new type of mana, this experience let me know that the procedure was a success. Immediately, I closed my eyes and sent my mind into the grove, feeling the strange energy.
Inside the grove, I noticed that there were actually three small planetoids that did not used to be there. Going by their rough, cracked appearance, they were likely formed by multiple meteors colliding together after they flew into my grove. But that wasn’t important right now. What was important was finding the new energy.
It seemed to be everywhere at once, and something I could move around as I would any other mana. However, once I focused on it, I was able to clearly see the dozens of large land masses within another isolated space. Recognizing a few of the creatures on those floating bodies of rock, I understood that I was seeing directly into Sharon’s grove.
Next… I pulled my mind back to my grove, and gathered all of the strange energy together. Raising up a large arch on my largest planet, I condensed the energy inside of it. Surprisingly, the invisible energy actually turned into a purple swirl of light within the arch. After pulling out from my grove, I let the two of them know that I made it.
“Alright, my turn then.” Sharon nodded with a smile, closing her own eyes as well. This time, I was not able to feel anything different while I waited. However, a few moments later she opened her eyes, and nodded. “My side’s set up too, now. How do you want to test it?”
Shrugging my shoulders, I went into my grove and wrote a message on a small stone, saying ‘It works’. Then, I just tossed the stone into the portal. “Did you get that?”
Sharon blinked in surprise, before checking what I meant. Then, she began laughing. “Okay… yes, it works. Still, what is the point of connecting our groves like this? It’s not like our power is directly related to how large our groves are.”
“True…” I nodded my head, before I explained. “However, I wanted to let your people have access to my grove so that they could learn Alchemy. At the same time, they could cultivate in my grove to learn elements that don’t exist in yours, while also expanding my grove. Since I’m in the Stellar stage, I want to see how far I can take it.”
Priscilla nodded, smiling happily. “We will be more than happy to help you expand your grove, in exchange for that knowledge. We have already started making progress with Enchanting, so the addition of a new skill would be quite nice for us.”
Hearing this, Sharon just sighed, shaking her head. “Well, I guess it doesn’t really matter. Just watch out. If they start mining up your grove, and I end up with an army of armored beasts… I’m blaming you in advance.”
“Oh, it won’t be that bad… I think.” I tried to smile reassuringly at her, but I could see how excited Priscilla had gotten when Sharon mentioned that. Well, at least if they mine my grove, they’ll replace whatever they take. “By the way, you have the metal affinity too. Why don’t they mine in yours?”
“Ah… I don’t let them.” Sharon said as she looked to the side. “I want to save the metal, in case we need it again for an emergency.”
I wasn’t sure why she would think we’d need that much metal for an emergency so soon, but it wasn’t really hurting anything so I didn’t question it. Instead, I was looking forward to the possibility of my grove expanding. I wanted to add in more solar systems, see if I could upgrade it again from Stellar by doing so. But that would take a lot of mana, especially the plasma mana I needed in order to establish the second star.
Anyways, with this, Sharon’s animals began visiting my grove, slowly learning more about alchemy, and the medicinal plants I had scattered around. Some of them even took plants back to Sharon’s grove to plant there, so that they would be able to grow their own. Though, the plants would not grow as well in her grove, since she lacked the affinity.
On the way back to Hydra, I took the chance to get to know the people that we had brought on board this time. Of them, there were five people I found particularly interesting, and decided to assign them as the ‘backup’ assault team. The first was Clara the Nekotane. She was one of my first interviews, a catgirl hunter that loved adventure. Among her pets were a sabertooth tiger and a three eyed lion. I really didn’t see why the lion needed three eyes, but apparently it did.
Next was Nathan, the talisman caster. With his Origin Magic, he could create small objects with relative ease, as long as he studied them enough. Then, with his knowledge of runes he would inscribe the talismans with various spells. I could see him as a good support character for this group, whereas Clara would be one of the attackers.
Third, was Brian, a mage from an orc race. His schools of magic were Fire and Life, giving him quite a bit of potential in both offense and healing. He was a tall, seven foot man with dark green skin. I had a hard time calling someone that looked so unusual by such a mundane name as ‘Brian’, but still… Behold, the great and terrible orc, the lord of life and flame, the infamous Brian! It just doesn’t work, does it?
Anyways, the fourth person on the list was Sam, and he was… well… he was a skeleton. A living(figuratively), breathing(again, figuratively), skeleton. His race was Bone Knight, and he was a fairly strong vanguard. I even tested his defense myself, and was quite impressed. Although he’d be weak against blunt attacks, his class abilities helped to cover that weakness with armor.
Finally, we had Amy, a halfling who was perhaps a bit too excited about… everything. Her and Sam seemed to know each other, so he explained that it was a halfling trait. Basically ADHD on steroids. Halflings were terrible at staying still for more than two minutes, and were always looking for something to do. Her class was a rogue, and although she had not unlocked her advanced class yet, she was still extremely capable at stealth. Even using my Cybernetic eye and ears, I could easily lose track of her.
This team seemed to have the perfect combination, in my eyes. There was a healer, a support caster, a vanguard, a melee fighter, and a rogue. Even my own team wasn’t that well balanced. I was the only healer, and my healing spells were not quite as good as Brian’s. Then again, he specializes in that department, so it’s no wonder. And I still have the monopoly on resurrection.
I kind of wanted to see how good they would do together in an actual fight, but I wouldn’t get that chance until after I was done with my time monster quest. Well, I made sure to tell them that people were expected to give reports for significant events. That way, even if I can’t see it myself, I should be able to read what happens.
About halfway through the trip to Hydra, I had a… rather strange dream. In it, I found myself completely aware, sitting within a pure white world at a small table. Across from me, sipping some tea was a blue skinned man about four feet tall, with a black gem embedded in his forehead. Looking at me, th
e man gave a cheeky grin, and waved with one hand. “Yo, John.” The man was wearing a white suit with a striped black and white bowtie.
“Okay… not used to my dreams talking to me. Can I wake up now?” I looked around the room curiously, though I really would like to wake up before things get weird. I’ve read enough stories to know that dream sequences like this never end well.
“Nah, maybe in a bit. It took me quite a bit to set up this meeting.” The blue man waved off my question as if it was nothing. “Come on, John. Don’t you recognize me? I mean, we haven’t really met face to face, yet, but you should know my award winning personality by now, right?”
I swear, if he turns out to be my subconscious alter ego, awakened by some misfire with my psychic abilities… “Afraid not..”
He set down his cup of tea, covering his face with one small hand. “Fine, fine.” He waved a hand, and a nametag appeared on his shirt. On it was written ‘Hello, my name is…’
I felt my breath catch in my throat as I read the last word. “M-Malthan?”
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