Author’s Corner: It amused me to no end that more people were talking about the OP effect combination that’s built up, rather than the traumatized fox loli xD

I glanced at the staff, getting a feel for the amount of mana it generated. As expected, it was pretty sweet, but I’d worry more about it later. For now, I put it in my inventory and reached down for Tokemi. “Let’s get back to the ship, alright? Then we can work on helping you.”

The loli looked at me, and at my offered hand, before slowly removing herself from Yin and moving towards me. Once she was next to me, she grabbed onto my hand and seemed to refuse to ever let go. I could only smile at that and shake my head, before tapping my comm with my other hand. “Ariadne, this is John. Beam up all lifeforms at my location.” I made sure to specify, since Tokemi hadn’t been recognized as part of the crew by the others yet, and I didn’t want to have her left down here.

Celeste, as soon as you get that program done, I want it on a soft stick. No time to waste here. The Deus Ex nodded as bright lights surrounded us. The engineer on duty in the teleport bay, a very feminine looking male elf, nodded to us as we appeared, but made a surprised expression when his eyes fell on Tokemi beside me.

“Captain, that is?” He asked curiously, likely not understanding where the girl could have come from.

“I’ll explain later.” I shook my head, since there were more important things. Again I tapped my comms. “Sharon, meet me in our room as soon as possible. We’ve got an issue.” As I spoke, we left the teleport bay, and each went our separate ways. Celeste went back towards her room so that she could work on the program, and Yin moved towards the cargo bay, likely to resume watching over Yang.

After that, we headed towards the medbay, so that I could get out of my clone and into my real body. Naturally, I removed my new staff from my inventory first, and placed it on the lap of my real body. Tokemi seemed confused how there were two of me, but after I gathered time mana in my hand, she believed that it was still me and seemed to relax. Well, until Tessa’s mom suddenly sat up with a gasp not far from me. Likely, she had just been killed in a dungeon.

Surprised by the reaction, Tokemi shivered, and seemed to teleport behind me. Time mana surged in the area briefly, and as she appeared behind me I noticed that the rest of the room had slowed down to a great degree. However, that lasted for only a moment before time began flowing like normal again.

Looking over at me, Beth chuckled awkwardly. “Sorry about that. Hey, who’s that..?” She asked as she looked at the baishiro girl behind me.

With a sigh, I repeated the same answer I had given the engineer before, and hurried off to my room. With the staff in one hand, and Tokemi in the other, we quickly arrived to find Sharon nervously waiting just inside the door.

“John, what happened, did something go wrong, is Yin okay? Wait, why is there a naked fluffy loli hiding behind you?” Sharon’s worried questions slowly faded off as she also noticed Tokemi’s existence. Though, her energetic personality seemed to have startled the girl into hiding behind me again. “It’s okay, I’m the cool mom.” Sharon smiled widely to Tokemi before I had the chance to answer her, kneeling down to look at the little girl.

“She’s… the result of my quest. Tokemi… say hello.” I tried to nudge her forward, but she shook her head desperately, clinging to the leg of my pants.

Naturally, this caused Sharon to pout. However, she quickly thought of something. “Well, why are you letting this little cutie walk around naked, John? Come on, come on, let me show you some magic~.” She waved us in, though the white fox girl still clung to me for safety.

Once we were inside, I got to see Sharon’s tailoring skills in action for the first time. “Let’s see.. I’ve got just the thing for you.” She waved her hands forward, and a white light shined from her chest. The light formed into a thin thread, which stretched out and danced in the air. Under Sharon’s control, the thread turned in on itself and began weaving a pattern. Then, a second white thread joined in, and a third.

Tokemi watched, her fearful gaze slowly turning into one of awe as she watched the threads dance and spin in the air. Even if she did not understand what was happening, she could appreciate how nice it looked. But slowly, the strands of white came together to form a full shape, that of a short dress, sized specifically for the baishiro girl.

Although it was not very extravagant, it was enough to impress her. So, when Sharon grabbed the dress from the air and offered it up to Tokemi, the girl was only too happy to accept it. Though… she didn’t seem to know what to do next and just hugged the dress to her chest. “So soft…”

Sharon giggled, reaching down and petting Tokemi’s silver hair. “It’s called a dress. You’re supposed to wear it. Would you like some help putting it on?” Tokemi looked up as Sharon spoke, relaxing into her hand. After a minute, she nodded her head slightly.

Sharon smiled, helping Tokemi into the dress. There was even a convenient hole in the back just big enough for her to fit her tail through. When they were done, Tokemi hugged her chest with her hands and made a soft sigh. “Thanks… mom?”

The other girl seemed to freeze up slightly at that, before a goofy grin spread on her face. “Oh, you’re so cute!” She said, reaching down and wrapping her arms around Tokemi. However, this sudden action startled Tokemi again, and she vanished as a rush of time mana flooded into the room. The next thing I knew, she was trembling on the floor, crying into my pants leg. Sharon, surprised by the action, turned and leveled a hard glare at me. “Explain, now.”

I couldn’t help but gulp slightly, not having expected Sharon to have such a strong reaction to Tokemi. “Like I said… she’s the result of my quest. Her race is known as Baishiro, and from what I can tell… she gathers time mana like a vacuum. You… know what that means.”

Sharon nodded slowly, though kept her glare on me. “You better have a way to fix this.”

As if waiting for that moment, there was a knock on the door. “It’s me.” Celeste called out from the other side. “Is now a good time?”

I called her in, gently picking Tokemi up and holding her to my chest. Although she was reluctant to let go of my leg, she latched on to my chest as soon as I was holding her.

“Celeste, what’s going on?” Sharon looked at the Deus Ex, having none of her usual playfulness.

“John wanted me to write a program for him, so that he could help Tokemi with her ‘issue’.” As she answered, she walked over towards me and handed me one of the familiar soft sticks. I wasted no time in downloading the program and applying it to myself with my Technomancy.

New Program InstalledTime Sync

This program is constantly active, and cannot be turned off without entirely deleting it. At any point, if time mana levels spike in the vicinity of the owner of this program, they will begin actively drawing that mana in at their greatest speed, or until the flow of time mana ceases to exceed normal limits. When time mana becomes more scarce, they will stop absorbing time mana.

I nodded as I read the window describing the program, handing the soft stick back to her, instead using my hand to gently pet Tokemi’s back. She seemed to relax slightly at the touch. Sharon, seeing this, just let out a sigh. “Okay, let’s try this again. To make sure I understand, the ‘new species’ you created for your quest became a fox loli with time hiccups and unbelievably soft hair. I got it right so far?”

When I nodded my head to her, she continued. “And to top it off, these time hiccups happen any time she is even remotely surprised. I’m guessing you don’t know how long they last, either. For her, I mean. Dammit, John, she could have spent a week latched to your leg just now… Now I feel terrible.” She sat down on the bed next to me with another sigh.

To my surprise, one of the hands that were latched onto my shirt let go, and instead slowly reached over to grab Sharon’s. Evidently, I wasn’t the only one surprised by that, as Sharon herself turned towards Tokemi. A small smile appeared on her face and she reached over to hold Tokemi’s hand. “Don’t worry, munchkin, I’m not upset at you. Mom was just being a big idiot.”

Tokemi sniffled slightly, but nodded her head. “Sorry…”

“Ohh… you’ve got nothing to be sorry for.” Sharon’s smile became a bit wider as she talked with the little fox girl. “You’re the most adorable thing on this whole ship, and I’m happy to have you here.” She reached over to give Tokemi a hug, though more slowly this time. Unlike before, the loli did not shy away from it, and even used the arm that wasn’t holding me to return Sharon’s embrace. “Hey, you like soft things too, right?” She asked Tokemi, whose eyes widened while she nodded her head.

“Yeah…”

“Alright, then watch this.” Sharon winked, moving away to get out of the hug and stepped up off the bed. Soon, her body began glowing white, before her body was covered in white fur. Rabbit ears appeared at the top of her head, and a bushy tail appeared behind her. “Now I’m super soft~.”

Tokemi, watching this, had her eyes opened wide, practically sparkling as she saw Sharon turn into an anthropomorphic rabbit girl. Her other hand let go of my back, and she slowly climbed down to the floor, before walking over towards Sharon. Hesitantly, she reached out and stroked a hand along one of Sharon’s offered arms. “Waa…. so soft….” Soon, she was latched onto that arm, rubbing her cheek against it with a content smile.

Naturally, hers wasn’t the only smile in the room, as Sharon had another one of her goofy grins on her face. Celeste, meanwhile, was laughing in the corner with a hand over her mouth. Seems like, to her, Sharon’s maternal actions were quite funny.

“Celeste, can you schedule a meeting for tonight at dinner? I want to introduce Tokemi to the crew, and let them know that we’ll be leaving soon. I had planned for this to take longer, but… what ever goes according to plan?”

Celeste smirked knowingly, nodding her head. “How long do you want to stay here before we head to our next stop?”

I thought about it, looking down towards Tokemi. “Let’s give it two weeks. That should give more than enough time for everyone to prepare, and take care of any unforeseen issues.”

“That works.” Celeste nodded again. “I was going to have to go dungeon diving myself to get some of my levels back, once I have my grove made. Two weeks… I should be able to squeeze in a couple days of diving at the end, as long as you provide me with the essence to make the grove. That’ll save a good chunk of time.”

I didn’t have a problem with that, and agreed to her request. Then, while Sharon and Tokemi were busy rubbing their cheeks against each other, I decided to check out my other gains. Specifically, I sent my mind into my grove to see how it has changed. This was the first time in a while that I had actually, truly taken a good look at it. Normally, I would just give my grove a passing glance and place or take what I needed from it.

Inside my grove, I looked around as a disembodied energy. If I had brows, they’d be furrowed right now. This level of growth is a bit too much, isn’t it? Not only did I have twice as many planetoids, half of which were barren rocks with lakes on them, but the planetoids I had also gained a good bit of size. The radius of each one seemed to have increased by at least a third.

And then there was the void area. To call its growth explosive would be an understatement. Based on my understanding, its reach had actually tripled since evolving to the Stellar stage! The furthest rock from the star was a full five thousand miles away, and it was only halfway to the edge of the void area. Five thousand miles may not sound like much, but consider the scale. The largest planet in the grove had a radius of five miles, and the sun had a total radius of twenty miles. If this keeps expanding at this rate… I might be able to place my second solar system sooner than I had planned.

Before I pulled my mind out of my grove, I located what was likely one of the causes behind my grove growing as fast as it was. On that largest rock, where I had the portal to Sharon’s grove, hundreds of humanoids and beasts were sitting down and cultivating. I could sense elemental mana coming off of them, fueling this period of growth.

When I finally exited the grove, I found that Tokemi and Sharon were still giggling happily and cuddling against each other. Behold, I have found two companions in their quests for eternal fluffiness.