Author’s Corner: Oh sleep, how I long for thee.

The days went by fairly quickly after that. While I was training, another week had gone by. During this week, I had been focusing almost entirely on training my Magnet Affinity and Plasma Affinity, making sure I got both of them up to 10%. Before you ask, yes I made seeds of each to put in my staff. Now that there are a dozen element seeds inside this staff, it seems like there isn’t really room for many more.

I thought about merging them all into one, but Celeste let me know quite plainly that it would explode in my face, and take my face with it. Apparently, even though you can fuse five of the basic elements to get an Essence of Nature, or all seven to get a Breath of the World, adding in others wouldn’t work. Certain element seeds would be able to combine to create new items, but I didn’t have the right ones at the moment. If I merged plant and animal seeds, I would be able to get a Life Pellet, which supposedly contains pure soul essence. I asked Celeste if that meant a druid could simply refine those and level themselves up easily, but she said that trying to absorb a Life Pellet like that would overload most people’s auras, making them explode.

Oh, while I’m thinking about it, Yin managed to use up those Seeds of Wind I left for her. A few days into my training, Celeste told me that Yin had successfully evolved into a Gustwing. When I looked into my grove, I found that the formerly small bird was depressed. This wasn’t because she was weak or missed her old form or anything like that… It was because she got bigger. Yin was now about three and a half feet tall, and looked like an eagle with pure white feathers. On the top of her head were three black feathers that offered a sharp contrast with the rest of her body.

But since she was bigger now, and her talons had become sharp, she knew she wouldn’t be able to perch herself on my shoulders anymore. At least, that’s what Yang said. When I asked for Celeste to give me more information about gustwings, I learned quite a few interesting things.

Gustwings are monsters, and like most monsters they have a magic ability. In Yin’s case, she is able to create blades of wind from her wings as she flies, or launch them at people by beating her wings. Their feathers and bones are a lot stronger than most birds, giving them increased defense, but they can still easily fly by controlling the wind around them.

Now it was time to discuss how she wanted to evolve next. Since Celeste already had all of the information for her evolution path, she listed each of the basic evolutions, and what would be required to take them. The main requirements to evolve again were either 50% with Wind Affinity, or 30% with both wind and something else, or level fifty. There were also other evolutions that became possible if Yin was fed certain materials, but those were insanely expensive so we ignored it.

The main thing that Yin wanted from her evolution was the ability to take a sentient form like Yang, to nobody’s surprise. Celeste simply smirked while informing her that about half of the evolutions she could take next would get her the ability to change into a sentient form. Of those, her favorites were the silverwing hawk, the roc, and the stormbird. The silverwing hawk was the form she would get if she had at least 30% Wind Affinity and leveled up to fifty, and would give her increased wind powers while turning her feathers razor sharp. However, the reason it was her favorite was because it was a small bird, so she would be able to ride on my shoulder again.

The roc was the largest of the three options, and required her to get 50% Wind Affinity before level fifty. It stood nearly ten meters tall, and was commonly used as a flying mount. It seemed that she enjoyed the idea of me riding on her back like she had been doing with my shoulder. A roc was also exceptionally powerful with wind, able to create small tornadoes by beating their wings. At higher levels, a roc was able to create hurricanes if angered.

The final option, the stormbird, was roughly the same size as Yin was now, but required her to have 30% of both Wind and Lightning Affinities, with at least 15% Water Affinity. This was arguably more powerful than even the roc, which was why she liked it, as a stormbird was able to control the weather on a small scale. They were also extremely fast, to the point where they could turn their bodies into lightning to strike at someone or cross vast distances. Although it was the least physically powerful of the group, it was easily the strongest in terms of magic.

In the end, Yin decided to choose the path of the stormbird, despite knowing that it would take longer to cultivate the three affinities than it would to obtain either of the other evolutions. When I had Yang ask, she said the reason was because if Yin became a roc, she would not be able to fight with me if I went into a small area like a cave. At the same time, although a silverwing hawk is able to ride on my shoulder, she feels that it was the weakest of the three options. As such, I instructed her to begin cultivating Water Affinity in my grove, and gave her a low quality seed to start with. I’d need to absorb more lightning mana before she would be able to cultivate that properly, but it wouldn’t be too hard.

Finally, a couple of my affinities increased again, Dark and Plant Affinity rising to 12%. But now that I had weaponised my Plasma Affinity and got it to be self-cultivating, it was finally time to go out and train. Even though I was only able to create ‘cold plasma’ for now, it was still hot enough to cut through iron like a knife through butter.

Exiting the city, I summoned Yin, Yang, and Yo out around me. Although Yang was a noncombatant, I didn’t want to lock her up in the grove all the time. “That, and you think she’s hot.” Celeste grinned, walking backwards while in front of me. Well, not like she needs to look where she’s going when she’s only a mental construct. And for the record, Yang is hot. “Yeah, yeah. Well, we’re heading to the mountains this time, so that you can level up while getting the cliff tiger’s aura.”

Immediately, a map appeared in my mind, and I groaned depressingly. “It’s a hundred kilometers away. You never said anything about that part.” With a sigh, I called Yo back into my grove, and was about to use the Aspect of the Bird when I remembered something. Calling Yin over, I took a moment to copy her new aura, adding the gustwing and all of its traits to my list of possible transformations. Once I was done with that, I grew the new single pair of bird wings, and took off into the sky. Honestly, I felt like flying was so much easier with just two wings than four.

Seeing that I was going airborne, Yin and Yang took to the skies to join me. “Where are we going now, Master?” Yang asked as she flew near me, easily able to match my speed since she had spent her whole life doing this.

“We’re heading to the mountains off in the distance.” Even in the air, it was just barely possible to see the tips of the mountains. “I need to level up, so that we can get you a skill upgrade, and Celeste a body.” I could feel the AI becoming happy as I said that, even though she already knew it was part of the plan.

“Skill upgrade…? Oh, you mean so that I can make crafts better?” Honestly, she was still speaking better than she had been originally, but would still mess up at times.

“That’s right. Speaking of… Celeste, are there any flying monsters we need to be careful with?”

The AI chose to manifest as a hologram above both mine and Yang’s wrists. “When you get closer to the mountains, you will need to watch out for the stone wyverns. Your plasma attacks should be able to hurt them, but none of your other magics will be useful. Aside from them, the only other flying creatures on this planet are the insects. Thanks to the mineral changing the local wildlife, birds were never able to properly evolve. The closest would be a stonewalker, which is a flightless bird in the far south able to cover their bodies in a stone armor.”

“Ahh… Anything else we should know about while we’re at it?”

Celeste smirked wryly to me. “Well… if we went towards the coast, you could see a land shark. They have basically the same ability as a cliff tiger, but they can breathe earth mana and have a tremorsense.”

That made me pause for a bit. “Land sharks? Then why are we going after cliff tigers?”

“Well… because cliff tigers are a hundred kilometers away… whereas land sharks are five hundred kilometers away. You’d need to go through six other cities before you reached it. Going this way, you only need to pass by one other city, which is about halfway to the mountains.”

Hearing that, I let out a long sigh while continuing to fly towards my goal. “I wish there was something like teleport points between big cities.”

“Ah…” There was a slight noise from the AI. “Well… there actually are, but they take about twenty silver to use, so I figured flying would be easier. Besides, we also had the goal of leveling up during this journey, which would be wasted if we just went and took a shortcut. Besides… don’t you want to test out some of your new abilities?”

I chuckled lightly as she said that. I hadn’t actually been able to test my plasma attacks yet, since a hotel would frown upon destroying the room. Looking down to the ground, I saw a small pack of wolves running across the blue plains. “True…” I looked over to Yin, and had Yang translate. “You’re not allowed to fight for a while, until you get at least 10% in both Water and Lightning Affinity, alright? Otherwise, you won’t be able to get the form you want.”

There was a brief pause, before the gustwing gave a slight nod of her head. Until then, she would act as Yang’s bodyguard, making sure that the pacifist demi was not hurt. With that taken care of, I swooped down towards the ground, while creating a magnetic field in front of me. Once I had that formed, I began using my Plasma Generation to fill it with plasma. About two hundred mana later, I had a large, glowing red ball of energy in front of me.

Since magnetic fields naturally restrained plasma, I didn’t have to use too much mana to contain the sphere of fiery death. All it took was me focusing on it, and I would be able to maintain its shape. By now, the diamondback wolves below had naturally noticed my presence, and were running off to escape from the enemy they couldn’t reach.

Test number one, determine the control speed and maximum distance. Making a tiny magnetic bubble in my death ball, I pulled out a smaller amount of plasma, then shot it off towards one of the wolves. The speed was considerably slower than my pistol, but given that I was controlling it myself, it was the equivalent of a homing shot. However, the magnetic field faltered just before impact, causing a small explosion of energy that barely singed the wolf.

With that, I was able to determine how fast I could move one of the spheres, and the distance that I could control it. Unfortunately, that distance was still too little to work as a good ranged weapon, so I moved on to test number two. This test was to try to replicate the firing process of my plasma pistol.

When my plasma pistol fires, it creates a magnetic field in the barrel of the pistol, and fills it with plasma. The magnetic field then rapidly rotates and compresses, before opening up at one end to cause the plasma to go flying out. This gives the weapon a maximum range of about a hundred and fifty yards, before the bolt of plasma begins to dissipate. For the record, the rifle uses the same methods, but stronger compression, rotation, and more plasma.

For this test, I made another tiny ball of death, and brought it in front of me. Shrinking it down and elongating it, I began making it rotate, one end pointing at a fleeing wolf. It was at this point that I learned the value of always having a second magnetic shield around myself when dealing with plasma. When I released the magnetic field surrounding my bolt of energy, I messed up and released it from the wrong end… meaning that the plasma bolt tore straight through my shoulder.

That's not how you look cool for the ladies.-80 HP

“Gyaahh!!!!” I cried out, quickly throwing away the rest of the plasma ball so that I could focus without further risk of injury, and then bringing my hand up to heal my shoulder(unsuccessfully, I might add. Pain is great at breaking concentration). Yang was scared by my sudden scream, and flew over towards me with watery eyes, as if afraid I might have killed myself. And to be honest, I would have if the other end of that bolt was aimed at something vital.

I wasn’t able to maintain flight while focusing on healing the gaping hole in my shoulder, and ended up crashing to the ground below. Yin and Yang both landed next to me, the latter leaning down and trying to prop me up while my body was racked with pain. Celeste seemed to have been teaching her some things, because I felt a warm sensation spread through my body, the wound slowly closing up.

“She doesn’t have the talent for real alchemy, but I taught her how to use her magic to heal, at least. She was quite eager when she found out that it could help you recover from injuries.” Celeste appeared in front of me and spoke with a relieved smile. Thanks… Having a backup healer will probably save me loads of pain. “Hey now, don’t go taking this as a sign that you can just get hurt more often.”

“Is Master okay now?” Yang asked cautiously, still using her magic to mend my nonexistent wound, having already fully healed it through repeated application.

“Yeah, I’m fine, thanks.” I reached up and pat her head gently, making her smile happily. At the same time, there was a loud, shrill cry next to us, as Yin yelled at the wolves. Apparently, they decided that being on the ground made me an easy target, and started rushing over. Yin gave a single beat of her large wings, and nearly-visible blades of wind sailed through the air, tearing into the ground in front of them to serve as a warning. After a series of yips, they turned around and ran off, their tails literally between their legs.