When I woke up, the room was entirely silent for a moment. An eery silence that made my hands twitch in nervousness. However, soon I heard the background noise from the bamboo fountain, the low hum of the ship’s engines. That helped me to calm down before Celeste’s voice was projected into my mind.

“John, what the hell was that?”

You mean that dream…?

Her voice was shaking slightly, showing how worried she was. “That was no dream, John. I see your dreams. This… I don’t know what this was.”

Ah… so a god really did contact me… Just to confirm it, I opened up my quest window. Sure enough, the quest I had gotten from Malthan in the ‘dream’ was listed there. So… what can you tell me about the Qu’Lopti?

She hesitated for a bit, as if checking her own records. “Nothing. I thought I had gotten information on all of the sapient races, at least basic descriptions and planet coordinates, but I don’t have anything on this race. If what Malthan told you is true, and that you have three years to save them from destruction… Then most likely, by the time of NeoLife, they were a long forgotten, extinct race.”

I let out a long sigh at that, shaking my head. Seems the god of chaos really wants us to mess with the timeline. Hope we don’t piss anyone off with that…

I could hear the AI in my head giggle lightly at that, but she didn’t say anything else. Instead, I allowed myself to go back to sleep. There was still a long journey ahead of us.

About a week after my meeting with Malthan, my dad unlocked his new class. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to regain his former psychic power, the Blind Spot. Instead, he received a different power, known as ‘Recall Steps’. This new power allowed him to teleport to locations that he had previously travelled to. Unlike my own teleport ability, his had a hint of clairvoyance to it, enabling him to travel virtually any distance within the limit of his power.

His new class, which he trained to utilize this ability, is a fighter class known as Blink Fighter. Surprisingly, his class seems to specialize in hand to hand combat rather than weapons, but at the same time he is able to dominate opponents by constantly changing his position. All he really needs to do is run around the battlefield once, and he is able to disorient enemies by striking from all sides.

As for my mom, she was still working to get her class. She wanted something similar to her previous Shade abilities, but was finding it to be extremely difficult. Celeste explained to her that, due to a vast difference in their bodies, a Deus Ex will not be able to cultivate their affinities quite the same as an organic race. While it was possible to do it without a special upgrade, it would take roughly ten times the effort to cultivate the Dark Affinity. So instead, she had my mom buy an upgrade to enhance the cultivation process. Right now, she seemed to be finally at the point where she was able to wield dark mana.

It was another week later when she unlocked her class, which was the same Shadow Stalker class that she had originally possessed. Her class seemed to specialize in hiding inside of shadows before attacking, or controlling the enemy’s shadow to attack. Still, she seemed pretty happy to have her old class back. I asked if she would eventually want to return to being a Shade eventually, but she declined.

“Sorry, John, but I really wouldn’t want to live like that all the time. The senses of Shades are… disorienting for people not used to them. Even after I gained a physical body, I still had the shadow sense. I’d rather be a physical race that just uses darkness abilities like I am now.” That was her answer. And, I could understand it. Especially considering the training that I did during the trip.

For my personal training, I decided to expand on my Element Avatar abilities. As for why… I can train this at any time, but for my Xeno-Shifter powers, I need to find new species to copy from. Even if I can project my senses into Sharon’s grove, I don’t want to study her animals without their permission. That would be no better than the government putting cameras in your house to monitor you just because they wanted to.

Anyways, for my training I wanted to copy the elemental senses. This was something basic that every elemental possessed. I want to say that it was a simple thing to do, and it kind of was… but in order to get it to work, I had to activate my Aspect of the Attuned. Apparently, it took a rather high affinity to gather sense input from the elements.

However, when I activated that sense… I could see why people would be disoriented. The first element I activated was water. Even with my eyes closed, I could feel a very thin mist all around me. I could feel my blood vessels, and the blood vessels of the people nearby. It was… almost like seeing, but not. The information didn’t present itself to me visually, it was just there. How do you explain sight to a blind man, or sound to the deaf?

I continued alternating through my different elements, to get a feel for what each sense felt like. Naturally, I couldn’t work with the Time Affinity, since it was so low. However, the others each yielded different results.

For fire, I could feel the heat of everything around me. For light, it was actually like having a map in my head of the surroundings, complete with color. This was the closest to actual sight out of all of them. For wind, I could feel the air currents, and make out objects by how they obstructed the air. It was sort of like tremorsense, but airborne. The others all follow along that pattern, with me able to sense the element, and make out my surroundings by how it interacts with that element.

After I experimented with my new elemental senses, I decided that I’d save them for special situations. Yes, they are very useful, but I can only use one at a time. And it makes me a bit dizzy if I try to use one for too long, really.

With that taken care of… I began cultivating the Time Affinity. Although I didn’t really want to touch this affinity yet, I would need it if I wanted to make a monster using it. Just to be safe, I had Celeste, Yin, and Sharon with me when I did the cultivation, and even chose to do so with the use of my clone. If it didn’t look like I’d be able to make advancements without another situation like the time bubble from before… I’d scrap the affinity, and find another way to control time mana for making the monster.

Thankfully, I did not require the use of a formation this time, as I could clearly since time mana now if I focused. Gradually, I began pulling the mana into my body, while circulating it and releasing my own time mana. Opening my eyes, I saw the girls watching me, almost perfectly still. I was about to panic, until I saw the bamboo fountain at the corner of the room. It was still moving, albeit at a little less than half speed, so I knew that they were just not moving very much.

New Ability UnlockedFast Time - Time Affinity - ★★★★★★

The most basic aspect of Time Manipulation. By gathering mana on yourself or others, you are able to accelerate their personal time, making them perceive their surroundings in slow motion.

I had to admit I was pleasantly surprised. My Time Affinity wasn’t even near 10% yet, and I already had a six star ability for it. Out of curiosity, I stopped my cultivation briefly, and tried to do the reverse on the bamboo fountain, preventing time mana from interacting with it. Although it wasn’t perfect, the bamboo fountain still appeared frozen.

New Ability UnlockedSlow Time - Time Affinity - ★★★★★★

By blocking the time mana from a certain point, or controlling its flow, you are able to greatly slow a creature or object's time. This makes them see the world as if it had been accelerated.

“John?” Sharon looked at me with some concern, having not noticed what I did to the fountain. “Is everything okay?”

“Ah… sorry, yeah. I was just testing something.” I relaxed my control on the time mana, and the bamboo fountain returned to normal. It took roughly four hundred mana to hold the bamboo fountain in ‘stasis’ for ten seconds, so I still needed quite a lot of training before it was ready for practical use.

Returning to my cultivation, I continued to focus on improving my control over this mana type, though I was only able to make myself do so for an hour at a time. After that hour, I began to feel a sense of panic rising in me, causing my hands to shake and cold sweat to appear all over me. A few moments later, I felt a hand placed over mine, and when I opened my eyes, I saw Yin smiling gently at me.

Seeing her smile… seemed to calm me down a bit. My hands stopped shaking, at least. But I wasn’t going to push it. It would take me time to get used to time mana again, and I still had plenty of that.

Regardless, I kept my training. For an hour, I would cultivate the Time Affinity, and then I would take a break for a little while to cool down. Sometimes I would play with the girls, sometimes I would talk with the crew, sometimes I would just sit around and bang my head on the wall. Okay, that last one was only because the girls were all busy, and I got really bored. It only happened once, I swear! But, this was roughly what my stats looked like by the time I got back to Hydra. Thankfully, I had been able to regain my lost levels by farming ettins in my spare time.

NameJohn HulettRaceWood ElfTitlesVengeful Heart, Amateur Brain Surgeon, Spider Slaughterer, Starship CaptainFame25,000Level 750%ClassDruidAdvanced ClassXeno-ShifterDeityMalthanHealth460/460Health Regen0.77Mana2000/2000Mana Regen13.73Strength20Wisdom200Agility26Intelligence200Dexterity37Charisma35Vitality46Luck20Points Remaining0Earth 31%Fire 28%Wind 27%Water 28%Lightning 25%Light 25%Dark 28%Plant 25%Void 25%Metal 25%Magnetism 25%Plasma 25%Gravity 25%Time 9%

When we got to Hydra, I had the crew run a scan to see if anything had changed while we were gone. We could still be considered fairly close to Earth, so it was better to be careful. And the caution paid off.

“Captain, I’m picking up multiple boss-class readings. Most appear to be dungeon bosses, but there also seems to be a single roaming boss.”

I nodded my head at the report. “Put it on screen.”

After saying that, a holographic screen appeared at the front of the bridge. Displayed on it, was a giant, six tailed wolf with white fur and four eyes. It appeared to be running along the surface, the nearby trees coming halfway up its legs. A white haze was emitted from its breath every now and then, but something gave me a bad feeling. “What is its location?”

A few moments later, I found out what was worrying me… The scenery on the screen seemed just a little too familiar. “It’s about ten miles to the north of your lab, Captain… heading south.”

“Celeste, can you use the scan information to identify its level?” I hastily asked while standing up, making my way towards the medbay before getting her answer.

“Not accurately. I can tell you that it should be in a little lower than level two hundred, but not by much. Your orders?” Her voice was serious, and I was suddenly glad we made it here when we did.

If the boss monster managed to attack my lab, and eat all of the elemental seeds that had accumulated there, it might be able to undergo a considerable power-up. Especially since this one seemed drawn to that location, judging by how it moved. “Assemble both teams. I want Sharon, Yin, Yo, you, Amy, Nathan, Clara, Sam, and Brian assembled in clone bodies. We’re going to do a boss fight.” I knew that Celeste herself couldn’t get a clone body, but in the worst case scenario I could get her a new Deus Ex body, so long as her AI consciousness was still safe in my head.

There wasn’t enough time to charge and launch an orbital strike to kill the boss, and I couldn’t guarantee that I wouldn’t hit the lab. I was not sure what would happen if a bunch of element seeds exploded at once, but I doubted it would be anything good. “And tell the crew to charge the main cannon. If we can’t defeat the boss, blast it from space.” At least with us delaying it, it buys time for the charging of the cannon, and with it staying still, the lab is less likely to be hit.