Soon, the two of us arrived at the bridge, to be greeted by the knowing smiles of the crew members who saw Tokemi dragging me. The little girl could definitely be considered as being dependant on me right now, as I was the only one that could help with her time hiccups. By now, she almost refused to go anywhere without me. I really needed that backup item that would dispel her time hiccups automatically, and I had a plan for it… but there was a problem. Most materials weren’t capable of holding time-related enchantments, because time itself was too powerful.
So instead, I had to wait until I had almost ten grams of orichalcum. According to Celeste, this was the best material for enchantments involving time. At least, until the epic materials like godsteel, devilstone, or blood ore were available. Thankfully, with my grove absorbing both time mana and metal mana, I am slowly producing those rare materials.
“Ahem.” Celeste ‘cleared her throat’ from next to me to get my attention and snap me out of my thoughts. “Awaiting orders, captain.”
“Right… Has the navigational data been input?” I looked to Celeste, and she nodded her head. “Then…” I tapped the intercom button in my chair, while Tokemi climbed up onto my lap. “Hey, that tickles. Wait, this thing’s on. Everyone, ignore that, and prepare for FTL. This will be our longest journey yet, and I don’t know when we will return. At the very least, it will not be for a few years. While journeying, I suggest for people to do their ‘standby’ training, if your skillset possesses one. Otherwise… find a game or something fun to do.”
Tapping the button again, I turned off the intercom, and looked to the crew on the bridge. “Alright, take us out.” I still felt like I was forgetting something, though. Well, if it was anything important, Celeste would have reminded me.
After the ship went into subspace, we stayed sitting there for about five minutes before Tokemi began yawning in boredom, laying her head against my chest. Taking that as the universal indicator for nap time, I chuckled slightly, before getting up and moving to my room so that I could lay her in my bed.
With Tokemi taken care of, I got to work on my own projects. “Can I come in for a moment?” Or I could see what Celeste wants first.
Instead of letting her in, I stepped out of the room, so as not to disturb the sleeping fox girl. “What’s the matter?” I asked her curiously, but she shook her head.
“Nothing major. I just need to visit the Toy Chest for a little while, so that I can cultivate the Dural Affinity. It will make my factory run much more smoothly if I have it set on a dural foundation.” She explained with a smile, and I recalled her saying previously that dural was like a super mana-conductive dirt.
“Alright. Need any help clearing out monsters that might have spawned?” When I asked, she shook her head.
“No, I should be fine by myself even if another jack appeared. But leave the portal open so that I can come back when I’m ready.”
I thought about it, and decided to put the portal in my closet. If she was cultivating a new affinity, then she’d probably be in there for a few days. Can’t just leave a portal lying around in the middle of the hall.
Once Celeste was through the portal, and I popped a pill to ease the resulting headache, I then got started on my own projects. “Captain?” Or… I can see what Ackbar wants first…
“Yes…?”
“I have the final reports from the dungeon teams on Hydra ready to be reviewed.” He spoke up from the other side of the door.
“Upload them to the system and I’ll go over them later…” Seriously, we had over a year of travel coming up! I could put off reading reports for a couple hours.
“Very well, Captain.” I made sure that I could hear his feet walking away before I started once again to work on my projects…
...Anyone else? No…? Finally! Opening up the new guild interface, I looked for any explanations. However, the only button available was ‘Create Guild’... I didn’t want to press that yet in case it was automatic and permanent! Malthan, this is a prayer.
John, this is a window.
Okay, I deserved that. What are the requirements for making a guild?
Oh, is that all? Easy, just gather ten thousand gold coins, and one hundred people willing to join your new guild.
Ten thousand… well, we could afford that pretty easily. But, that raised up another question. What purpose does gold have in the system? It’s used for guilds and rebirth, but there has to be other things you can do with it, if you wanted to make it a galactic currency.
Huh? Oh, I guess most of you guys haven’t figured it out yet. Some people already started using the gold market to buy special gear, and hints at how to improve their skills.
The… gold market? The what? Where and how?
You forgot Who, When, and Why, but whatever. Just go to the temple in your ship with some gold, and pray for the market.
Thankfully, I had been made aware of the temple in the ship a while back, or that might have caused me to freak out even more. Instead, I cast a quick glance back at Tokemi and stepped out of the room. Tapping on my comm, I placed a quick call. “Sharon, I know this is going to be real hard for you, but could you come watch Tokemi for a bit? She’s napping right--”
I hadn’t even finished asking before Sharon suddenly appeared in front of me, panting for breath and changing from a rabbit girl into her normal appearance. “Now…”
“I’m here.” She grinned widely, before looking back into the room. Before I could explain anything else, she pushed me out and went to sit beside the bed. I probably don’t have anything to worry about here…
Anyways, I grabbed some of the gold coins that we looted before I left, and made my way to the temple. Once I got there, I was kind of surprised to find that the temple had a dedicated priest… though I didn’t know or ask who his patron was. The priest was a tall human male, dressed in a long white robe. When I got there, he looked at me curiously. “How may I help you, captain?”
Think, think… “Jeff, right?” He nodded his head, yay! Got it right. “Did you know about the gold market?”
“The what?” He asked, apparently not having any idea what I was talking about. Instead of explaining, I tossed one of the coins from my bag to him, and moved in front of the statues. Oh great gold market, appear before me now? I beseech you?
Welcome to the Galactic Market! As this is your first time as a customer, let me take this moment to explain! You may have heard about us from other successful business ventures, but we strive to provide you with a fast and reliable service! If you want it, we got it, as long as you can pay the price!
Disclaimer : Some prices may involve substantial payments such as quests, sacrificial offerings, or other binding agreements.
Well… That was… interesting. Next, a window appeared asking me what sort of object or service I was interested in looking for. To start with… let’s look for an elemental seed. After I entered that into the search field, a long list appeared with various elements and degrees of purity. Looking at this.. I was really surprised. A basic Seed of Water cost twenty silver, but a Seed of Time cost half a million gold… Too bad there was no option to sell items to the market, or I would have an unlimited supply of gold.
Out of curiosity, I looked up the Staff of the Minor World to see how much it would cost. Ten billion gold… Even a Legend ranked skill in NeoLife would only cost a million. Though, I could tell that prices were inflated on the market, because basic element seeds weren’t that expensive in NeoLife. So… I could completely mark off getting OP equipment from the market.
Next, I looked for skills. Malthan said that some people were already using the gold market for hints at skills, so I wanted to see what the price was. If I wanted to buy a complete skill of a certain level… the price seemed to be a hundred times more expensive than it was in NeoLife. That meant I could, at most, buy three Expert level skills. However, just getting hints was far cheaper.
When I put in ‘hints for understanding the structure of auras
’, another shopping list appeared. This one had various different topics, such as the physical structure, texture, magic abilities, even different body types. In order to purchase the ‘full’ information packet, I would need five hundred thousand gold… However, if I got that, then I should be able to pull off any kind of shapeshifting I wanted.
I was suddenly tempted to turn around and go farm the greed floor of the demon dungeon a few times, until we had all the gold we could ever need. But then, another thought hit me. The greed demon boss gave gold coins, right? What else could do that?
As that thought occurred to me, the list changed again, this time offering just a single item. ‘Information on gold acquisition’ for fifty gold coins. Well… it seemed like a good deal, and I had plenty of gold to waste. Besides, I wanted to see what this would be like if I bought something.
When I hit ‘accept’ on the listing, I felt the bag I was carrying suddenly grow lighter, while a stream of light poured into my head. In my mind, I saw a businesswoman in a black suit smiling as she stood in front of a whiteboard. From appearances, she seemed to be human, with long dark hair and a curved figure.
“Thank you for your purchase.” She spoke, and I flinched, afraid that she might be more than a recording. “You have shown an interest in the method of obtaining more system approved currency. There are multiple ways to go about this, which will be covered in this presentation.”
“First, as you have personally witnessed, it is possible for certain enemies or items to produce currency, which may be obtained by either the owner of the item, or the person who defeats the entity in question. These items and enemies are rare, so it is not advised to use this method.” The woman shook her head as she talked, before pointing to the whiteboard. Suddenly, a drawing began to take shape, forming a golden coin much like the one that I had tossed the priest before.
“The second method, and most commonly available, is to produce the coins yourself through means of smelting and engraving. As long as the manufactured coin is at least 90% similar to the system designations, it will be registered as an official currency. Details of the various coins are presented with your purchase, and will be uploaded to your mind at the end of the demonstration.”
“Finally, it is possible to receive currency in exchange for divine favors. However, the amount of currency provided varies based on the level of favor and the god you are exchanging with. That is the end of this presentation, we hope you will continue shopping at our Galactic Market. Where anything is possible, at the right price.” And with that, she gave one last smile, before my awareness returned to the temple.
“Holy fucking…” I started to say after the ‘video’ ended, but quickly stopped because the list instantly changed. “No, I don’t want to see the gods’ sex tapes!” I couldn’t help but say that out loud. I mean really, they recorded themselves having sex, just so people could spend money at what can only be a universal gold sink.
Chapter 73 - The Long Journey
Well, that’s interesting… I thought to myself as I continued looking through the shopping interface. There was one thing in particular that caught my eye, though I had no intention of buying it.
Sapient NPC
Base Price: 1000 Gold, 10 Gold Upkeep
Robotic NPC
Base Price: 10000 Gold
Out of curiosity, I tapped on a button for more information. At least they don’t try to get you to buy things without knowing what you’re getting. From the information, the NPCs were artificial entities created by the system for the cash market. There were various parameters that could increase their cost, such as starting abilities, appearance, and personality.
There seemed to be a lot of room for abuse there, but I imagined that having an NPC become stronger would increase their upkeep cost. So gold farming with them might not be profitable, depending how that works. Next, I checked various other items and abilities that were on sale. I was completely unable to think of anything that was not on the market, from the ability to sense the time of day, to guessing how many hairs are on a creature.
In total, I only made one purchase, aside from the information presentation about making money. And that was two thousand gold coins for ‘Information about grove evolution’. I decided it was okay to splurge a little bit, seeing as this was something I had been curious about for a while. I’ll summarize what I learned below.
Groves start out at the most basic, ‘primal’ stage, at which point they are just barely starting to take in the elements. Then, after acquiring certain elements--you should know which ones, as I already did this part--the grove evolves into the Stellar stage. At this stage, the grove experiences its first true growth spurt.
After the Stellar stage comes the Nebula stage, which requires at least ten functioning solar systems in the grove. Once again, the grove experiences another growth spurt upon entering this new stage. Unfortunately, this information didn’t include the abilities each stage gave, just how to reach them.
After the Nebula stage, when the grove possesses at least a thousand solar systems, the next stage unlocked is Galactic. To get to this one, it is also required to have a high affinity with gravity as well, because a black hole is created at the center. This is the second to last stage, and unlike previously, the grove begins shrinking after reaching this stage.
Finally, the last stage is the Universal grove. This one is created only when the black hole of the Galactic stage fully consumes the entire grove, and also requires a high affinity with time, plant, animal, luck, and order. According to the information, the Universal stage is literally the big bang, and creates an entire new universe within the grove. At this point, there is no need to measure the grove in terms of size, because it is constantly expanding on its own.
I found this information rather enlightening, as I finally knew how to evolve my grove further. However, at the same time, it made me curious. If I reach the Galactic stage… would Sharon’s grove be pulled into the black hole through the portal we have set up? If so, would the new, Universal grove be shared between us, or would I be completely destroying her grove?
I decided that I’d look for answers on that when I was closer to unlocking the Galactic stage. Right now, I still only had one solar system in my grove, though I should be able to set up the second during this journey.
Time Mana surge detected, synchronizing. Mana flow redirected. Time flow stabilized.
Suddenly, I felt someone latching onto me, and heard quiet sobs coming from my side. Unsurprisingly, when I looked down, I found Tokemi clinging to me. “You… you were gone.”
I shook my head with a small smile, reaching down and petting her head gently. She relaxed slightly at the touch, and I could feel the time mana slowly dispersing. “It’s okay, Tokemi. I just had to come here to look at something. Didn’t I leave Sharon there for you to play with when you woke up?”
The little fox girl looked up at me with watery eyes, before those eyes widened, and a regretful look appeared on her face. “Sorry… I didn’t notice…”
“It’s alright. You can go apologize to her when we get back, okay?” When I said that, she nodded her head slowly. Soon, the gathered time mana had dispersed, returning to normal levels. Seconds later, a panicked message came in over the comm.
“John?! John, are you there? Tokemi vanished!”
“It’s alright, Sharon.” I couldn’t help but chuckle lightly. “She’s here with me.”
“Aww… and here I was wanting to welcome her with a nice meal…” She spoke with a pouting voice, and I shook my head again.
“Well, we’ll head back that way now. I’ve got something to discuss with you anyways.” After saying so, I gently grabbed Tokemi’s hand and left the temple. From what I could see, the priest was still clutching that gold coin and staring at something. Likely he was quite interested in the gold market.
Maybe I can use this to give my crew a salary, once I have a reliable method for harvesting gold. I thought about it, then nodded
my head. That would be a good way to reward everyone, I think. Maybe get some merchants to set up a trading hall or something to buy items people don’t need anymore.
Anyways, when I got back to the room, there really was a hot meal waiting for Tokemi, and she tearfully apologized for leaving Sharon like that. Naturally, Sharon couldn’t stay upset at the little girl, and helped her with her meal. Meanwhile, I explained to Sharon what I learned about the gold market, and she seemed just as surprised as I had been.
However, she didn’t seem as eager to go look at what the possibilities were, likely because of a certain fluffy girl that was sitting in her arms. Like this, the day slowly passed, one of many. Soon, I had trained my Animal Affinity to 10%, and got the manipulation ability that went along with it. Like the plant one, this would allow me to change and influence animals, though I did not think Sharon used it often.
After a couple of months of passively training, I had acquired the materials I needed to make Tokemi’s ring. This was, quite simply, an item that would disperse time mana whenever it gathered unnaturally. Although it is not a perfect fix, it proved to help with her time hiccup problem. Gradually, she began to play with others more and more, though she would still have more fun when I was around.
World Seed_Expansion Page 55
