World Seed: Game Start (46 page)

Interesting,
so slimes are literally constructed of pure magic. Take that away and
they break down. Next, I shot a ball of plant mana at the slime,
seeing if it was possible to simply will its core away from it. That
test… did not work out as planned. Rather than being
controlled by the plant mana, it was strengthened. The slime
immediately increased in radius by another foot, and its speed also
increased somewhat. I did a bad.

Next
up, fire! My experiment continued, this time sending a thin beam of
fire at the slime, which visibly shook as the attack connected. I
watched as the slime slowly reduced in size, apparently burned away
by the magic attack. I then repeated the process with wind and light,
and the same thing happened. By the time I finished, it barely had a
layer of slime, and couldn’t move at all.

Just
as I was about to destroy it, I had a thought that made me realize
what an opportunity this was. I had an already defeated slime in
front of me, with no power to resist. Time to study! There was a
chance my later experiments would result in failure, so I should take
advantage of this while I can. There was even the possibility that
studying this slime would help me create my own later.

After
I knelt down next to the slime, I began pushing my Mana Sense into
it, and frowned as I saw the slime trying to absorb it. Right away, I
created a barrier of light mana around the slime to prevent it from
growing while I worked. And honestly, the slime was currently only
six inches in diameter, making the study process extremely quick.

As
I had suspected, the nucleus of the slime was a Seed of Plants, but
it seemed to be a bit more pure than the ones I refined. Likely, that
meant it was a medium grade seed. When I asked Celeste, she confirmed
my theory. That also gave me a hint on how to refine seeds of higher
quality.

There
was a slight ringing in my head as the window appeared, and I
accepted the call. “Hey man, what’s up?”

“
Wanted
to check in. You make it to Crailor okay?”

“
Not
quite. Hit an alien blockade, and crash landed on a hungry jungle
planet.” I said as I continued studying the slime in depth.

“
A
hungry… jungle planet? Anyways, that’s not important.
You said an alien blockade? I just got a message from my other friend
a bit ago that was heading there, and he said the same thing. Looks
like some race is making their move to expand their territory…
and they’re not doing it nicely.”

“
I’d
say not. Looked like a monster from a horror movie. All thin limbed
with an elongated dome head, long blade-like tail, and its blood was
acid.” I briefly described the alien that I had fought on the
Nostromo to Jacobs, who seemed to be passing the information on to
someone else.

“
Looks
like they are called the ‘Klax’. I asked them why, and
you want to know what they said?” There was a hint of laughter
in his voice, so I said sure. “They only speak in clicks and
clacks, and Clix was already taken by a different species.”

I
let out a chuckle at that. With my study of the slime complete, I
compressed the light barrier to remove the last traces of it clinging
to the core. Afterwards, I leaned down and picked the core up,
placing it in my inventory. Never know when a medium grade seed could
come in handy. “So, the Klax attacked your other friend too?”

“
Yeah,
from what I’ve heard, they are attacking any ship that comes
within a hundred parsecs of their borders. Since Crailor was on the
edge of space between wood elves and the Klax, that means they have
essentially claimed the planet as their own.”

“
Sounds
more like they’re getting ready for war or something. It wasn’t
exactly a small fleet I saw taking care of the Nostromo.”

There
was a pause at that. “You seriously rode on a spaceship called
the Nostromo..?”

“
Uhm…
yeah, why?”

“
Dude…
that’s like getting on a ship named the Titanic. You really
haven’t watched the old horror movies, have you?”

“
Did
they get remade in holo-cards?” I shrugged my shoulders as I
stood up and walked back to my previous spot. Old DVRs were
expensive, and the quality wasn’t nearly as good as a hologram
movie.

“
I…
don’t think so, but that’s not the point!” He
sighed, and I could just tell he was shaking his head. “Anyways,
they should be able to rescue you before too long. They’ve got
a bunch of other people they’re having to pull out of escape
pods or planets from attacks like that. So they’re just talking
about doing it all at once.”

“
Sweet.
Though it’s not all that bad here. I’ve managed to
convince the trees not to eat me.” I smirked slightly, knowing
how that must have sounded.

“…
.Sure,
whatever. I give up.” He said with a sigh, letting the
connection end. I laughed lightly, setting my staff down and looking
at it.

I
did not enchant my weapons yet, partially because there is the chance
I’ll need to take them with me to the real world if monsters
start spawning. However, this staff already is far too magical for me
to put it in my grove to transfer. So, there is no reason for me not
to enchant it!

Probing
the aura of the staff, I found that it would be suitable for either
durability increase, wisdom increase, or attack increase. Out of
those three, the only one that really mattered to me was the wisdom
one. This staff was not meant for fighting, at least not a physical
fight.

With
a bit of focus, I recalled the runes I needed, and began tracing them
in the air over the staff, empowering it with my enchantment. If my
skill was higher, I would directly give it a special effect, but
right now this was all I was able to do. Jacobs probably had a high
enough skill to do, but he was definitely too far away to help me
directly. Maybe if I called him, he could walk me through the
process, but I’d rather not risk nine element seeds and a mana
gem on a phoned in experiment.

Though,
with this, I began thinking about what kind of enchantments I might
be able to do with this staff. There was one that I thought would be
really good, and that was the ability to fire elemental blasts from
the staff, using different elements depending on which seed or seeds
I focused on. If that was possible, it would be really good, because
I could use any element that I put a seed into the staff for it.

Another
thought I had would be to enchant it with a barrier spell, since
defense is always a good thing to have. However, I couldn’t do
either one yet, so instead I turned my attention elsewhere.
Specifically, I wanted to try copying some slime traits. “Celeste,
going to need to take you off again. If I turn my skin into acid,
would rather I didn’t dissolve you.”

The
holographic woman appeared on my wrist, ready to raise a fit about
what I had said, until she heard the last part. Then, there was an
audible gulp, and she slightly nodded her head. With that, I went
ahead and put her into the grove, before closing my eyes to focus.
What I wanted to do here was change my skin into the same substance
the slime had coated itself with. If I did that, I might gain some
resistance to physical attacks, as well as an acid touch.

Ssss…..
“GAAAAHHHH!!!!” I let out a blood curdling scream, as my
experiment unfortunately worked. However, I immediately cancelled it
and began healing myself. Note… to self… acidic skin
burns muscles and veins too!

The
moment my skin had turned into that of the slime, there was a massive
drop in my health due to my skin trying to dissolve the rest of my
body. If I had waited even a couple more seconds, I might have
accidentally killed myself with that experiment. Instead, I was
collapsed on the ground, struggling to breathe as I repeatedly healed
myself. It took a full ten minutes before the pain faded away enough
that I was willing to move my body, and another ten minutes before it
was completely gone.

After
the pain was gone, I summoned Celeste back to my wrist. “Never…
again…” I did not even want to try doing a full
conversion into a slime now, because the mere thought of turning into
that plant slime filled me with pain.

Celeste
appeared at my wrist, looking up to me with a worried expression.
“What happened…?”

“
Acid
skin is officially a terrible idea.”

She
winced a bit as I said that. “Ouch…”

“
That
is the understatement of the millennium.”

No
longer concerning myself with the outside world, I did my first
attempt at a Runic spell. It was a pretty basic one, and should
function as a perimeter alarm. All I did was a ‘lasting, field,
intruder, sound’ set of runes and cast it around myself. The
small mana requirement made my eye twitch as I realized just how
little mana is needed for Runic spells. If I didn’t have the
druid’s Worldcasting method, I might put in more work and learn
the hundred million runes to master that language.

Anyways,
after I set my alarm, I focused purely on cultivating. At my current
levels of mastery, I could focus on all four of my 8% affinities, and
also Lightning Affinity, which was only at 6%. Doing so took all of
my attention, but with my wings absorbing the surrounding plant mana
I had more than enough mana regeneration to sustain it at this level.
I wouldn’t be able to get them to 10% before being rescued if I
split my attention between five affinities, but it is the easiest way
to grow my grove, since I am evening out the balance of mana.

Chapter 42: A Storm
Cometh

The
cultivation went fairly smoothly, especially since there weren’t
any plants trying to eat me. My cultivation showed only a bit of
progress, with my Lightning Affinity increasing to 7% after the first
few hours. None of the other elements I was practicing showed a
noticeable increase, though. On the other hand, the Plant Affinity
that I was only passive training increased to 11%, which surprised
me. This was likely only due to the dense plant mana this planet
offered, and I wouldn’t see such increases after leaving for a
while.

Anyways,
after a few hours of cultivating, I got rather bored and wanted to do
some experiments. Specifically, I wanted to see if I could alter my
wings to be able to take in mana types other than plant. Like I had
done with the lesser orthrus, I focused on a single leaf of my wings.
Having studied this aspect, I naturally knew which part it was that
absorbed the plant mana, so I tried changing that single part of the
aura to wind.

To
my surprise, this seemed to trigger a chain reaction throughout the
entire aura, with every piece of plant mana in the aura changing into
wind mana. Naturally, I suspected this meant my feather leaf would
fade away, but when I looked there was simply a small gap between the
feathers. According to my Aura Sight, it was still there, but had
been rendered invisible due to becoming one with the wind. I did
another quick change and switched it back to plant mana, and the leaf
returned.

Over
the course of the next hour, I experimented with changing the leaves
into every element I was currently capable of wielding. Earth had the
leaf turn to stone, which unbalanced me a little due to the extra
weight. Water had the leaf turn into a large drop of water just
hanging off my wing, which I quickly turned back in case it fell off.
Fire had the leaf burst into flames, which hurt a bit as it burnt the
surrounding leaves.

Lightning
had the leaf crackling with electricity, which shot off of my wing
into the ground. That one actually hurt more because I felt the
feather forcefully plucking itself from my wing. Light and dark
turned the leaf into a stationary mass of light and shadow
respectively. Finally, void was interesting, as it turned into a
black feather similar to how it reacted to dark mana. However, there
were tiny specks of light on it, which looked like shining stars. Out
of curiosity, I expanded this effect to an entire wing.

It
actually looked like a scene of a starry sky, like one would find in
space. Though, there was hardly any void mana to be found in this
planet’s atmosphere, except for the Seed of Void I brought with
me. After that experiment, I did one more. This time, I changed all
of my leaves into light feathers, and actively absorbed the light
mana around me. It was still a couple of hours before the sun will
set, or else I would have done this with darkness instead.

I
could see the light warping around me as it gathered in my wings.
Rather than letting myself take it in like I had been with plant
mana, I held the light mana in my wings for two or three minutes,
until it felt like I couldn’t hold anymore. This caused my
wings to continue growing brighter and brighter, until I finally let
them release.