Author’s Corner: Enjoy the chapter!

After my brave and heroic fight with the evil nature wyrm… okay, so I was running like a scared puppy the entire time and only managed to knock it out with a cheap shot that nearly fried my entire body, but still. After my BRAVE and HEROIC fight, I decided not to stick around and wait for the cheers of the audience, and left fashionably early. Once again, I made sure that I was disguising myself with as much plant mana as druid-ly possible to avoid the detection of the trees or other monsters.

Every now and then, I would hear a roar from the distance that reminded me that I had made a very angry enemy on this planet, and would likely be spending the rest of the time here running away from it. On the bright side, forcing myself to absorb so much lightning at once kicked my affinity up by an extra percentage, bringing it to 8%! But… I’m not going to be throwing myself into lightning storms just to raise my affinity like that.

After flying until the sun finally decided to set, I found a nearby tree to land on(one I made sure wouldn’t eat me if my mana control slipped). Before doing anything else, I decided that I would first fully charge my rifle. Given that the fight might have ended far sooner if I could have just shot it to death, I no longer put off charging my only long range weapon. Though, the charging process took ages, even with my increased mana regeneration.

Three hours later, and all my weapons were charged. Looking down to my wrist, I figured now would be a safe time to call Celeste back, and thus the metal bracelet appeared in my wrist again. Almost instantly, the holographic woman appeared above the device. “Is it over? Are you okay?” She quickly noticed that we were still in the forest. “Did you manage to escape? You didn’t kill it, did you?”

“Yes, yes, sort of, I wish…” I took my time, laughing as I answered her questions in order. “Unfortunately, a condensed lightning bolt in its face was not enough to kill it. I took off while the trees were healing it. Willing to bet that it’s not very happy with me right now.” As if on cue, there was a loud roar in the distance, but I guessed that it was moving away from me since it sounded a bit farther away than the last one.

Celeste shuddered slightly at the roar, but then let out a relieved sigh. Afterwards, she quickly looked up to me. “You gained a power boost, didn’t you? Your mana feels stronger than before.”

I nodded my head a bit. “Five levels, most I’ve ever gotten at once. If I had to guess, that should have been at least a level fifty monster, which would explain why a giant lightning bolt to the face didn’t kill it.”

Celeste nodded slightly, still looking slightly worried. “But, it’s safe now, right?”

I smiled to her. “Should be. But when we get out of this, I am going to pass out for a week, I swear.”

She giggled a bit at that. “Fine, fine, but not until you show me your world!”

“Deal. Now, let’s see about doing some maintenance on these weapons.” I pulled my three weapons out of my inventory, setting them on my lap. “It would be good if I could fix them up a bit and increase their performance. As I just learned, I am not at the level yet where I can just rely purely on my magic.” As I spoke, I began to work my Technomancy, searching out any flaws I could find in the hardware.

“Yeah… Okay, I’ll help however I can!” The holographic woman called out encouragingly, and we searched through the aura of the first weapon, the beam saber. Now that I understood what the principles behind the weapon were, it was much easier to look for the faults. Before, it was just a matter of finding which parts were unusable, now I could find which parts were not working as well as they could.

For instance, the magnetic field generator looked like it was only operating at around half of its best, which made the blade take more energy to maintain the same shape. It also gave it the possibility of failing if energy ran low, and having the plasma explode outwards, which might kill me as well as the enemy. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any spare parts to fix it with, so I was at a bit of a loss. If something were cracked, I could weld it together to fix it. But this was corroded, likely by the same malfunction that had originally damaged the energy core.

If I was able to use metal mana, I could probably fix this… will add it to my to-do list. I sighed, shaking my head slightly. After that, I went through the code of the device, having Celeste help me as I confirmed that none of it was corrupted. I figured that the code of the weapons would be fine, because they still worked without catastrophic failures, but always better to check first.

With that done, I moved on to the pistol, and actually found a crack in the casing of the energy core. Although it didn’t cause a constant leak, it likely caused a bit of energy to be wasted after every shot. Using my Technomancy, I caused the gun to fall to pieces, with each piece hovering in the air in front of me. Then, I used a high intensity flame from my fingers to seal the crack. After letting it cool off, I then had the pieces reassemble themselves into a gun. I was tempted to fire it to check how much the difference was, but there was the chance that would attract more monsters.

Finally, I went on to the rifle. Is there a rule saying that bigger weapons have to get beaten up the most? There were five different cracks I had to seal up in the rifle, including the magnetic accelerator, and the energy core chamber. Aside from that, I noticed that the magnetic accelerator had a damaged connection that I would need to fix later, making it unable to propel the blasts as fast as it should. Maybe if this thing had been working properly, I would have been able to knock down that dragon in three shots. I sighed, shaking my head. After fixing the cracks, I began an age old process of removing rust… with citrus fruits. Retrieving three enrichment fruits from my grove, I used my Plant Manipulation to remove their juice, and sprinkle it over the metal. After letting it set for a bit, I turned my hand into a roughly furred bear paw and brushed at the metal. While not an entirely effective solution, it did help a little bit.

Repeating this process with all of the weapons took more time than I care to explain, but after I was done the sun had began to rise. The rust was not entirely removed from any of the weapons, but I was starting to run out of enrichment fruits, and did not trust any of the vegetation here to be safe to eat. More likely, I’d try to pick a fruit, and the tree would eat me instead.

I decided that the best use of my time at this point would be to continue cultivating. I had five affinities all stuck at 8%, and wanted all of them to be at 10% before I started training the new elements I wanted. And so far, the new elements I was wanting were plasma, magnetism, and metal. I’m sure if I gave it long enough, I’d find more elements that I really wanted to add to the list.

I could most certainly advance my individual elements more quickly if I just focused on one or two at a time, but I wasn’t really in a rush at this point. Having raised my level to twenty, I was now more worried that my skills wouldn’t match up to my level. I didn’t really know what the standard was for power, but I figured that by level twenty I should probably have at least one combat oriented skill at novice rank. While technically, I could use my knowledge of runes to create spells of that level, I’m a druid not a mage. I want to do druid things!

With that in mind, I spent the next several hours practicing my cultivation, not raising a single percent in any of my elements even though I felt myself drawing closer. After a few hours, I felt a new energy around me, something I had never felt before. Looking at my inventory, I found the signal beacon and took it out. It seemed to be radiating this energy while vibrating. “Looks like it’s time to go.”

“Finally!” Celeste spoke up from my wrist. “We’ve been waiting ages.”

I smiled down to her, nodding my head slightly as the energy continued to surround me. After a few moments, it began condensing into a visible shroud of light, and the nearby plants apparently took notice of the new mana. Before the light completely blocked out my view, I saw branches and vines surging towards me. Thankfully, this seemed to be a summoning spell, and the plants didn’t have time to skewer me.

A moment after I was completely shrouded in light, the light just as quickly vanished. I now found myself sitting inside a large domed building, atop a giant runic circle surrounded by several dozen people. Some of them were nothing but corpses, with either slash wounds or missing limbs, while others like myself were fully intact. Most people had some form of injury, though.

Standing around the circle were several people in mage robes. Each one was holding a large gem similar to my staff’s mana gem(though likely containing far more mana). A few had passed out, and were being carried off by nearby personnel, while others simply walked off to find somewhere to sit. Finally, there were people dressed in official uniforms, mostly elves, that walked up to the group of rescued people. “I’d like to have your attention, everyone. We understand what has happened to the various ships you were all riding on, and we apologize. We had no way of knowing that the Klax would decide to take up such hostile actions.”

There were various murmurs from the summoned crowd, as only a few agreed with the representative. Obviously, nobody would be happy if they were suddenly attacked, and this guy got saddled with the PR. Now that we were here safely, though, I decided to dismiss my plant-like angel wings. Almost instantly, I felt the result of going two days without proper food. Although the mana had been enough to sustain me, it had not filled my stomach.

“Now, I would appreciate it if you would all take a moment to speak with the officers here to go over things. While we are aware of the general situation, any details you can provide would help.” As he said that, he waved towards a line of men in similar uniforms, who stepped forward in unison. Shrugging, I moved up to my feet, one hand on my stomach which was demanding food. “Now, I’m sure all of you are worried, but we will be reimbursing you the cost of your trips so that you may get food and rest until you are ready to move on.”

Incoming call from Dravin

Dad? Why’s he messaging me? I shrugged my shoulders and answered the call, speaking as quietly as possible. “Yes? What’s up, pops?”

“You online right now?” His voice sounded a bit worried, catching me by surprise.

“Yeah, why?”

“You should log off and check the news as soon as you can.” Again, I was surprised by his statement. Part of me considered just logging out right now, but falling over asleep in this situation would not be the best thing in the world.

“Will do so soon, thanks.” Since he told me this much, it was probably not something he could easily explain to me, so there wasn’t much point in asking.

I quickly made my way over to one of the officers, who nodded and led me out of the room, and into an adjoining room with a single table and two chairs. From there, he asked me various questions, such as who I was and which ship I was on, followed by what happened to the ship. I was in a hurry to get out of here so that I could A) get myself a bite to eat, and B) find out what’s wrong on the outside.

Of course, I had a fairly good idea what was going on once I left, because the officer said something that made me freeze in my tracks. “Take care of yourself, and happy new year.” Once he said that, I immediately remembered what day it was, the day that the Seeds would be released to the world.

Suddenly, my stomach seemed like a secondary matter as I found a bench to plant myself on before moving Celeste to my grove and logging out. I nearly threw the lid of my Seed off as I got up, heading to my computer while bringing the AI bracelet back. Just as I was sitting down, a blue window flashed into existence in front of me, with none of the slowness it had previously shown in the real world.

Mana integration is now at 100%, welcome to the Genesis of a new world.

Over the following days and weeks, monsters will begin spawning randomly. It is suggested that people take measures to prevent monsters from spawning within their homes or places of business. We at Manifest Industries apologize if this is an inconvenience.

A quick search showed me that this message has already appeared for everyone in the world, whether they have logged into the game or not. Looks like it’s really started now…

Author’s Basement: And with this, Arc One: Genesis has been completed! Stay tuned tomorrow for the beginning of the second story arc, which will be more focused on the real world problems faced by the actions of this game.