Now that we had killed the shadowflame mimic, we took Kismet up out of the dungeon. There was no benefit to keeping him here, and we needed to get him out. Though, I was a bit concerned about how to deal with a superpowered child. Even Yo can get out of hand some time, but she sees me as a father figure, so I can keep her in line. How am I supposed to do that with Kismet?

Sharon, as if seeing my conflicted emotions, smiles to me. “Let me take care of him. He’ll probably be more comfortable if I get him used to interacting with people in my grove, and I can set up a darkness area for him if he needs it.” She said as she gave Kismet a piggyback ride. “I’ll let him slowly power up and spend his stat points as he gets used to his ability.”

I nodded my head, agreeing that it was the best plan at the time. Until he can control his power, he is a possible danger to the crew, whether he wants to be or not. If he is contained in a grove, then that danger is minimized. Even an elemental should only have a limited ability to resist a druid inside their grove. “Okay… just be careful.”

She gave me a quick nod, and we soon made it out of the dungeon. “Will do, Captain! Now, why don’t you go check on the Ha’vosh? I’ll take care of things here.”

“Okay…” I looked to Yin. “Want to come with me this time? Might not be much fun, and hopefully we won’t get into any fights, but would be glad for the company.”

Yin looked at me in surprise, but quickly nodded her head. “Sure, John.” She smiled, reaching out and taking my hand. Thankfully, she was still in her human form, so this became easier. Closing my eyes, I used my Earth Manipulation to close up the tunnel to the dungeon. The last thing we need is either the dungeon monsters running wild across the planet or the mist walkers going into the dungeon to level up.

“Celeste, send me and Yin back to the Ha’vosh. Time to speak to Bob again.” While I waited for Celeste to process that request, I began thinking about the fight that we had just been through. That shadowflame mimic boss is ridiculously powerful by normal standards. Without using psychics, or tricks that block line of sight, it is basically impossible to defeat it. After all, who can say they would be able to take on two people with the same power as themselves at once?

From Celeste’s information, floor bosses are supposed to represent the type of creature that lives on the floor below. However, Kismet said that he had wandered around unimpeded until he met that boss. That means that the second floor can’t be filled with more mimics. Was it a rare variant or something? I’d have to do more research into the dungeons once I got back to Hydra.

My only concern now was whether or not the boss that spawned there would be another shadowflame mimic, or if something else would appear. Though, I wouldn’t really be around by then to find out. I could always just leave a message with the Ha’vosh to warn them about the dungeon, and tell them not to enter it until they level up a bit more.

By the time I was done thinking about this, we had already been teleported elsewhere, with a few Ha’vosh standing in front of us. If not for the tech circlet on the head of one, I would never have been able to recognize my good friend Bob.

“Greetings.” He said as he noticed that I was now paying attention. I wonder if that happens a lot with their people, just randomly spacing out in thought.

“Hello. Got the temple built for you.” I pointed back in the direction that the temple was. And then changed to point in the direction it actually was, after Celeste corrected me.

“Many thanks. That was… far faster than we had anticipated.”

I decided not to tell them that I actually already went to the dungeon after finishing the temple. “If you send someone over to become a priest, they can set up a barrier to stop the spawning of monsters. Then we can begin training people as they get new classes.”

Bob shook his head at that. “Again, many thanks. The language is… going slower than expected. It will likely take… two days, in order to get it fully transmitted.”

“I see.” Celeste quickly let me know that, despite their years being twice as long, their days only last twelve hours, so two days for them was only one for us. “My ship will stay in orbit until then, and once it’s taken care of we’ll come back down to begin teaching.” Honestly, I wanted off this planet as quickly as I could get off, because the higher gravity was starting to get to me.

“Understood. If all goes well… I hope to see you in two days.” Bob shook his head again, and turned back to the others.

Shrugging my shoulders, I turned to look at Yin. “See? Not really that fun.”

She just smiled gently, leaning in to give me a hug with one arm. “Still… happy to come.”

After that, we had Celeste beam us up to the Ariadne.There was still the chance that they would be sending people to join us after the training period was over, so I had Celeste start mass producing the psychic inhibitors. As long as they don’t send up more than two hundred and fifty people like the elves did, then we should have plenty. Hopefully.

For the next couple of days, Sharon began learning what Kismet’s powers were. She wasn’t having him practice them, unless she wasn’t able to understand something. After all, someone with level one stats should not be able to use level one hundred abilities. I’ll summarize his powers a bit now.

First of all, he has Dark Affinity at 75%, and naturally has Darkness Manipulation to go with it. He also has Magic Manipulation, though it is only at the beginner levels. No doubt its level will skyrocket once he actually starts practicing.

Next, he has Shadow Magic, also at the beginner level. According to Sharon, the skill description for it says that he is able to use it for even more than the manipulation ability. If I’m right, once he trains a bit, making copies of people like the shadowflame mimic did should be entirely possible for him.

He also has two different skills, each of which I considered very overpowered. The first was called Shadow Armory. With this skill, he is able to create weapons made of shadows. Now, you may think that this is just like the Dark Affinity ability to do basically the same thing. However, there is a key difference. The Shadow Armory weapons he makes can be enchanted with any power he has, or any that he has ‘absorbed’.

The second power, the one that compliments the Shadow Armory, is the Shadow Arsenal. With this, he can create a shadow area that absorbs magic attacks thrown at it, and gives him instinctive knowledge on how to replicate that effect with either Shadow Magic or Darkness Manipulation. To test it out, Sharon had him dump a few points into intelligence to up his mana, and then had one of her animals send a weak poison spell at him.

The result, he learned how to make a curse spell with his Shadow Magic that mimics the effects of the poison. Now, between that and the Shadow Armory, he can potentially make unbelievably strong weapons. The limiting factors of these two skills are that they can’t create/absorb an effect higher than the strength of the skill being used. So, he can absorb a very weak poison spell, but not a fireball spell one level higher.

Still… that is a terrifying combo. According to Celeste, that’s not even something that shadowborn typically have. They are born with a high Dark Affinity, but don’t usually have inherent Shadow Magic, or any of his other skills. Those were probably his special boss skills. And fighting a boss able to do that… probably more scary than fighting the shadowflame mimic.

Moving on, though. As I suggested to Sharon, she has started to bring out some of the fully evolved animals from her grove to work various areas of the ship. In total, ten came out, while the rest chose to stay in her grove for now. I’m sure that, in time, more will come out as they evolve. But until then, we have ten new crew members. Like with Yin, I gave each of them the psychic power surgery.

The only power that emerged which was truly unusual was Demona, the wolf shade. She was the one that Sharon brought out when the bats did quite a bit of damage to me in the dungeon. Her psychic power was called Domain. Quite simply, she is able to establish an area around herself, where she has a high degree of control. Telekinesis, teleportation, pyrokinesis, cryokinesis, from what I understand, it is all possible within her domain. However, right now her domain only extends an inch from her body, which severely limits the use for the power until she trains it. For now, she is learning from Celeste about piloting, and hopes to be the go-to pilot for small craft like shuttles and fighters.

I had expected there to be some opposition from the crew when it came to evolved animals suddenly being added to the roster, but they handled it surprisingly well. Maybe they were already used to it thanks to Yin and Yang, or maybe they had just expected it to happen sooner or later. Either way, the sooner that we got the rest of the facilities of the ship crewed, the faster that we could see what other cool things we could add. I know I was looking forward to being able to put in a hologram room or a fighter bay.

On to the new ship that we found in orbit. By the next day, Celeste had already downloaded all of the information from its computer, and had begun disassembling it with her construction drones. Although most of them were busy making the gadgets for the Ha’vosh, she was able to spare a couple for this.

During these two days(local time, still only one day by our standards), I was focusing on training my elemental affinities by creating element seeds and then absorbing them.Tis a long and painfully boring process, but one that offers much benefit in the long run. For now, I was focusing on my Plant Affinity, while messing around with some of the unique plants that Celeste had brought me while we were at Hydra. I won’t go into detail about them now, but I’ll bring them up when they are relevant later.

After the two days were up, Sharon and Yin both joined me as we went back down to the planet. I felt a bit bad for not sticking around and helping rid them of the mist walkers for good, but that was not really possible. I don’t have the ability to stop monsters on a global scale, and even if I did they could just spawn again anyways. The best I could do was to show them how to take care of it themselves.

When we got down to the planet, Bob was waiting at the temple with a group of Ha’vosh. Most notably was one wearing a fine purple suit. Why purple, who knows… Anyways, what surprised me was that it was this new Ha’vosh that did the talking.

“Greetings… I am leader.” I could tell that he hadn’t had much practice speaking verbally yet. “You have helped Ha’vosh. Why? You do not… know Ha’vosh.”

I tilted my head curiously. I really shouldn’t be surprised that the leadership of the planet had these questions. It is pretty basic stuff. “Why not? We come from a distant planet where we had advanced warning of these changes, so we thought we would go to other planets in order to help them.”

It seemed like the leader guy didn’t really understand what I meant, but locally Bob seemed to do some psychic translating. “I see… Charity, is it?”

Well… I never really thought about it like that, but maybe? “Sort of? You’re in trouble, we can help. Seems like common sense for us to do what we can.”

And again, he needed translation assistance. Most likely, he had no idea what ‘common sense’ meant. That tends to be the case with leader types, I think. “Ahh. This one you call ‘Bob’ tells me of the ‘noblesse oblige’.” Okay… did not think Bob got that bit of info, but sure. “It is… unusual concept. Still, we would… appreciate, any assistance you could give us.”

“The assistance will be fairly limited right now. Normally, we would upload the information we have to your computers. However, the systems you use, if any, do not seem to be compatible with ours. Unless we get the chance to study your system and figure out how to translate it over, we’ll only be able to give you the most basic training.” Thankfully, it was Sharon that pointed this out in my stead. I should let her come down here to do the talking more often. Maybe make her my diplomatic ambassador? That would be a cool title for her.

“That… is a problem. We will need time to… come up with a solution.” The Ha’vosh rested his chin on his hand in thought, his four eyes blinking rapidly. “It would be… helpful if you could… begin the training in the… meantime.”

I nodded my head, agreeing to that. That’s what we’re here for, after all. “I’ll need any Ha’vosh that go through with the training to wear the inhibitor like Bob is wearing, to ensure the safety of my people.”

He didn’t seem to have any problems with that, so now for training a species, round two! That reminds me, we should probably check in on the robots after we leave here on our way back to the elves. See if they’ve become less tyrannical.