Author’s Corner: Well, first I would like to throw a shoutout to blitflame1 for finding/making a new cover picture and putting it in a review. However, the link given did not work, so if you would be kind enough to repost it either in this thread or sending it directly to me in a forum message(not sure if your messages are enabled or not so putting this here so you’ll see it) and I’ll update the image! As said when I first got it, that was just something I obtained from a quick google, so I am more than happy for an upgrade!

Next up! Vote on what path you want to see Yang take! I’ll leave this one up to you guys, just like Falenel’s class selection was!

Congratulations! You have successfully evolved an animal companion!The lovebird Yang has evolved into a Winged Demi-Elf.

Winged Demi-Elves possess a strong bond with nature, more so than even other demi species. This is due to them not only having been transformed by magic from an animal, but also from the hereditary link to nature that comes with being an elf. Thanks to this bond, any nature related skills will be easier to learn and master for the Winged Demi-Elf.

“Master?”

Don’t turn around, don’t turn around, don’t turn around. I closed my eyes tight and refused to move. One thing that terrified me more than giant stone spiders, a lovebird in human form. Celeste, wanna scout this one out for me?

I heard a tired sigh from the AI. “You know that I can’t see anything unless you see it. Sorry, but you’ve gotta bite the bullet on this one. It’ll be like ripping off a bandaid, just have to get it over with quickly.”

Fine.. fine.. traitor. I heard a slight giggle as I thought that, but slowly opened my eyes and turned around. I’ll admit, Yang looked far more attractive than I had initially imagined. A nearly perfect hourglass figure, ample bosom(which it didn’t help that she was curiously lifting up and playing with as she tried to figure out what it was), and long golden hair that went down to the middle of her back.

Similar to my own set of wings when I first transform, hers were a set of four white angel wings, which would each be longer than her body if she spread them out fully. When she noticed I was looking her way, she smiled happily and dropped her twin peaks to put her hands clasped in front of her. “I’m like Master now, yay~!”

Spoiler :

Behold, Yang

I gulped slightly, and after a thought Celeste thankfully began censoring what I was seeing. Thank you, oh glorious AI. Even if she was now a beautiful woman, she was a bird two minutes ago. You don’t have thoughts like that about someone who was a bird two minutes ago.

“Well, you do.” Celeste snickered slightly, standing in my view next to Yang. I was immensely thankful that I was the only one that could see or hear this.

“Master? Is something wrong?” Yang looked at me in concern, tilting her head cutely.

“Uhm… no, nothing’s wrong. Sorry, just caught me by surprise. Anyways, I need to send you and Yin back into the grove for now. I’ve got some stuff to take care of and then I’ll call you back out once we get back to town.” I said as I looked over to Yin, who was glaring jealously at Yang. After a moment, she swooped down and landed on Yang’s head, pecking her beak against the demi. Of course, a lovebird’s beak is blunt, so it didn’t do any real damage, but still.

“Owies!” Yang brought her hands up quickly to cover the pecked spot, before running over and hiding behind me. With a sigh, I sent her into the grove, and then did the same for Yin. I was sure that Yin was going to continue tormenting her for a while even in there, so I could only helplessly shake my head.

“Okay… now, I still need those herbs…” Thankfully, none of them were fruits found on trees, so I wouldn’t need to climb up and get attacked by spiders. I still had to worry about the ones on the ground, but I quickly ran through the forest, running at my top speed while Celeste watched for signs of any of the herbs.

In under five minutes, I had killed another six giant insects, but had gathered one of each herb that Celeste had listed. In total, there were six. Two weeds, two flowers, and two berries. Each one had their own distinct patterns, and with the knowledge Celeste gave me there was no chance of me mistaking them for anything other than what they were.

With that out of the way, I turned towards the direction of the town and ran at my fastest possible speed out of the forest. This time, I didn’t care whether anything got in my way, I would just run right by it even if it meant I’d only get out one or two seconds sooner. Never coming back, never coming back, never EVER coming back to this forest.

I kept running, and running until well after I had left the forest. I ran until my legs felt like they couldn’t go any further, then finally allowed myself to rest, roughly ten minutes out from the city. I was breathing heavily, my legs feeling like they were about to explode, but I was out of that fucking forest, and I was never EVER going back!

Laying back, I cancelled all of my Aspect transformations, and began letting my stamina recover. One of the new recipes that Celeste had given me for my herbs was a stamina potion, but there was a warning with it that overuse could create an addiction. Because of that, I had never bothered to make it. I did not want to get myself hooked on some strange potion.

“So… ready to make pills?” Celeste sat on the blue grass beside me, showing none of the exhaustion that I felt.

“Gimme… a few…. minutes.” I groaned out each word, taking the herbs I had gathered out of my inventory and planting them all in my grove. None of these were poisonous, so I planted them on the larger primary ‘planet’. Though no, it was still nowhere near large enough to consider as a proper planet. Planets are more than a few dozen meters thick, even Pluto. And people STILL aren’t sure if they can really consider Pluto as a planet.

Well, since I had only taken one of each herb, I began actively gathering plant mana around me and feeding it into my grove to rapidly grow and spread them. About ten minutes, and nine hundred plant mana later, I had managed to get patches of each herb growing, with berry bushes popping up near my trees, and the weeds growing together with the flowers. “Okay… now I’m ready.”

“Cool! Well, let’s start with something basic, a beginner health pill. Same ingredients as the potion.”

“Yeah, yeah, I remember.” She had only recently put the pill creation method in my head, so it wasn’t like I had forgotten. “Just make sure to track my magic usage. I’ll need to know how I messed up when I’m done.”

With a resigned groan, I sat up on the ground, and pulled out some blood weed, and a few fireflower petals. Then, I got to work on the process of refining the pill. First, the fireflower petals were lifted up with my Plant Manipulation, then surrounded by flames that reduced them to ash. Next, I sent a bit of water in to mix with the ash while maintaining the flames, making sure to hold the medicinal properties of the petals and not let them be damaged.

However, halfway through the process, my control slipped and I could feel the petals become useless, their medicinal auras being consumed by the fire. “Too strong with the fire. Remember, burn the physical form, but leave the aura in tact.”

I nodded my head to Celeste’s instruction, and tried again with another set of petals. This took a lot more concentration than when I was simply mimicking plasma to charge my weapons, as I had to both restrain and shield the medicinal properties of the fireflower while burning its petals. In total, it took me eight tries before I was ready to move on to the next step, where I tossed the blood weed into the mix and performed the same treatment, while simultaneously shielding the fireflower aura.

Since failing at this part meant having to redo the entire thing, it took me a total of twenty tries before I had managed to burn both herbs to ashes while mixing in a bit of water and keeping their auras safe. Next, I used my Plant Manipulation to separate and condense the ashes and water into nearly two dozen tiny pellets while dismissing the flame. This was easily the least challenging part of the entire process, with no real penalty for failure as long as I did not carelessly destroy the auras.

With that taken care of, I held out my hand as twenty tiny pellets fell into it, the entire batch small enough to fit in the palm of my one hand. At the same time, there was a considerable increase in my Alchemy, which shot up by a full two levels. Naturally, I wouldn’t see these gains again for just making a beginner pill batch, but since it was my first time, it was not unexpected.

“Good, good! Now, let’s move on to mana potions, since they require two herbs and the juice of the enrichment fruit.” Celeste nodded happily beside me, and I groaned, thinking about all of the herbs I’m literally burning through to practice. If not for my ability to rapidly grow and repopulate my grove, my supply would quickly diminish! This is probably a specialized druid method because of the amount of materials needed for practice, rather than just the magic!

“Probably, yeah.” Celeste nodded again at my thoughts, agreeing with them. No rational alchemist would burn through this many ingredients unless they had a surefire means of recovering them.

Anyways, with the health pills taken care of, we moved on to mana pills. The process was almost exactly the same as before, but this time instead of water, I used the juice of the enrichment fruit. That also meant I had to safeguard three auras this time instead of just two, although the juice was a bit more resilient since it was a liquid. In total, it took me about thirty-five attempts before I had refined two full batches of pills. Though, I felt like I was getting better.

As a test, I went back and refined another batch of health pills, and it only took me three attempts to get it right. Next, I continued by making a stamina pill batch with four herbs, then a basic healing pill batch with five, a novice healing potion with seven, and then I was finally ready to make the most complex recipe I had. This final recipe was a pill which should recover both health and mana, each at the level of a novice pill. However, this recipe took a grand total of nine herbs, four of which I had acquired from the jungle planet, and another three I had gotten from this forest.

It was already getting fairly late, since I had literally gone through over two hundred attempts in total to refine pills, but I wanted to get this done before I went back to town. From what Celeste told me, I would only need one batch of ‘elixir pills’, together with what I’ve already refined to get the one gold and twenty silver needed for the companion for Yang and upgrades on both. This actually made me quite happy, since it meant that I was able to produce over a gold’s worth of products in a single day. I had also received a rather pleasant notification from the system as well, which made me look forward to heading back to town.

Mana Manipulation has increased to Intermediate.

Now, once I find someone willing to let me scan them, I should be able to completely change my race with a bit of practice. And no, I’m not going to scan Yang for that. While convenient, she has no racial abilities I’m lacking. Her one trait that is different from myself is her wings, and I’ve already copied those.

Now, since I had gotten considerable amount of practice already, I simply had to let my mana recover for a little while before I got started. At this point, shielding the auras individually was not a problem, and I may even have a 100% chance of success if I did the beginner potions again. Now, the hard part was splitting my focus between all the different auras and elements to maintain them properly. Think about it, nine medicinal auras that I needed to shield each from fire mana, while slowly mixing them with water mana. That was essentially doing twenty seven different things at once.

Which is why I took the herbs one at a time, rather than toss them all in together. Managing three things at first, then steadily increasing it as I became more comfortable was a slower but more effective method. My first attempt failed on the sixth herb, so I had wasted around six minutes, and it took me fifteen attempts in total before I had refined a batch of pills. By the time I was done, the sun was long since gone from the sky, and I was treated to a rather interesting scene.

When I looked up, I saw a phenomena which was commonly known on Earth as the ‘northern lights’, a myriad of colors flowing like ribbons across the night sky. Likely, whatever mineral this planet was so rich in that the grass and sea switched colors also had the effect of causing this display at nights. And it was rather beautiful to watch.

“Oooh… pretty.” Celeste smiled next to me after I had given her the chance to see what was going on. After she spoke, I got up and slowly walked towards the town, more than ready to rent a room for the night. By now, the plant population of my grove had been severely reduced, and I would need to focus my plant mana for at least a whole day to recover all of what I had used for my ‘pill tutorial’.