Author’s Corner: Insert witty banter here. Behold my rapier wit! Also, sorry for the chapter being later than usual, had to go back through the story to write down the timeline. Accuracy is very important!

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Looking over to Sharon pouting because I was no longer a fluffy wolf made me smile wryly. I had the feeling that she really did try to befriend every animal she came across. I looked once around the pond, and noticed that Jarl wasn’t there again, so decided to sit down and chat with Sharon for a little while until he got back. The only thing I was still here for was to see if I needed any additional training before I was ‘released unto the world’, so to speak.

Honestly, I felt I was already far stronger than I had previously been, before I received my druid abilities. Even if accidentally, I managed to kill three fully grown bears, when before I would have run away while emitting a rather foul odor. Anyways, talking to Sharon! Must not get distracted.

“So, you really seem to like animals, huh?” I smirk over to her as I watched her pet the fluffy white menace of my early days.

She nodded her head happily, looking over to me. “That’s right. I’ve always wanted a pet, on the animals in this game are just so real… They’re so adorable.”

I chuckled, thinking about that. “I take it you’re not virtualized, then? It’s pretty rare for someone your age to go through the process.” I wasn’t really sure how old she was, but given her looks and personality I figured she couldn’t be much older than twenty, at most. And most people who became virtualized were in their thirties at least, people who had already experienced some of what the world had to offer.

She nodded her head. “Yeah, that’s right… I take it you know about what’s been happening with the Seeds, huh?” At that, she looked over at me, making my smile dryly.

“Yeah, happened to my own, too. Even got a special call from the police to verify the information.”

She seemed a bit surprised at that. “Ah, so you too, huh? Small galaxy.” She smirked slightly, making me chuckle in response.

“Well, thousand starter Seeds, I figure that with all the races out there we might be the only ones that chose the wood elf home world. And we can count ourselves lucky that neither of us chose something too far from human.”

She giggled slightly at that, then looked down to her chest. “Yeah, but elves have their disadvantages as well….” After saying so, she blushed slightly, focusing her attention on petting the bunny. My guess was she had a larger chest before, but being an elf shrank it. Elves with large busts must be truly rare.

I couldn’t help laughing at her reaction, which only made her face even more red. “Hey, look at the bright side. At least you still only have two arms, two legs, and one head. I imagine that once the rest of the Seeds are released, with the information known about the races being real, almost nobody will pick a non-humanoid species. Though, someone might play a drake just so they can fly around as a dragon.”

She thought about that, and nodded her head. “Yeah… though with magic entering the world, you never know… Some people dream of being something else.”

“Well, they’ll get their chance. I think the world is in for a big change.”

Again, she nodded her head, and brought up a point I hadn’t considered. “I looked around a bit, and the Seed seems to be the source of magic, at least in my house. It was always slightly denser around it than anywhere else. If more Seeds appear in the world all at once… wouldn’t it be like what happens when we add an element to our grove? The shock of adding it all at once spreads it out to make it a natural part?”

I blinked a few times as I thought about her words. “If that did happen, then the mana in the real world would be at least as dense as here. Jarl said that monsters were spawned out of pure magic in the world, so monsters might appear out of nowhere. Magical beasts would also be able to start evolving, though they’d have a slower time of it…”

“Right… I think, once the Seeds activate… one of two things will happen… either a single, tremendously powerful monster will be created to balance out the mana… or a bunch of small ones. Either way is bad for us…” She looked down to the rabbit sadly.

I nodded my head at that. If what she guessed turned out to be true, and the shock of a large amount of mana made our world naturally generate and adapt to it, then either of those would be the best case scenarios. Worst case, both happens, and it keeps happening.

It was at that point that Jarl decided to come back, noticing the depressed mood, and looking at me. “Did you ask if she was a vegetarian?”

I blinked again at his question, before laughing lightly. For some reason, that seemed to help. “Sorry, stopped by to ask you a couple things.”

Jarl nodded his head, seeming to have expected this. “You wanted to know if there was anything else I need to teach you before you go off on your own, right?” For the third time in just a few minutes, I was left briefly speechless, making him smirk. “It’s pretty obvious, given your growth. Actually, both of you are about ready to move on. I’d suggest that Sharon stay a little longer, until she is able to house some of her animals in her grove first. Once you’re in the city, you’ll need your animal companions to either remain in your grove, or wear special collars that show their status. It’s how people recognize them as not being wild.”

That sounded pretty realistic to me. I mean, a wolf won’t stop looking like a wolf just because you tame it. After seeing me nodding my head, he continued. “However, it’d probably do you good to stay here for a few more days as well. Right now, your grove should count as just a small garden, but if you cultivate for a couple of days, it will be big enough to start growing more herbs.”

I thought about that, and had to agree. Right now, I was barely able to hold a few herbs in my grove, so it was inconvenient if I were to go to another planet where the basic herbs were different. And there was no real penalty for me in waiting a couple more days. After all, I’d only been in the game three weeks, and there were still two more before the Seeds were released.

That, and it was getting pretty dark out by now, as today had been a fairly busy day. After eating another enrichment fruit, I cultivate my Plant Affinity for about an hour before falling asleep. By that time, my Plant Affinity had managed to rise another percent, and my grove had expanded by half a meter.

The next two days, I decided to actively cultivate my Dark Affinity, after seeing the increase that had happened in my grove when I added plant mana and considering that I’d need it eventually anyways. Likewise, Sharon was also cultivating the same element, since a day/night cycle was important for her animals. On the second day, after I had increased my Dark Affinity to 7%, I condensed the Seed of Darkness and ingested it.

Immediately, I meditated to allow my consciousness to enter my inner grove, and found it rapidly expanding, while a sliver of darkness fought back against the light, until each covered half of the tiny sphere. Unlike what I had been expecting, the grove expanded a total of four meters, bringing its radius up to 12 meters. Maybe it expanded more because what I used was a primary element, instead of a secondary one like plants?

I thought about it, but I had no way to really test it yet. The only remaining element from the ‘big seven’ was Lightning Affinity, which I currently had 0% with. Still, this let me plant a few more herbs in the grove, since my surface area tripled. Even with the ‘ground’ only being a third of the grove itself I still had a good sized garden. Not to mention that I felt like I could adjust how much of the space the ground took if I wanted… I didn’t do that, though, because it likely needed that space for other reasons, such as recycling the air.

I did, however, plant an enrichment fruit tree, stilleaf, maple blossom, and heart grass in my grove while I was there. I wasn’t too surprised to see that there was grass covering the entire grove, though it had been spread a bit thin from the sudden expansion. Now that I had all of the basic herbs from this forest planted in my grove, I was ready to get moving. Well, I would be after sleeping one more night. Until then, I would poor as much mana as I could into growing the enrichment fruit tree more quickly.

The next day, I made sure to add Sharon to my friends list so that we could keep in touch after I left. To my pleasant surprise, I had managed to constantly poor a steady stream of mana into the enrichment fruit tree until it had grown large enough to bear fruit. While I would never have been able to do this if I did so all at once, I had instead devoted just enough mana to growing it that my recovery rate would cover it. After a few hours, the tree had already been fully grown.

After that, I had Jarl instruct me on how to store Yin and Yang inside my grove. With that taken care of, I closed my eyes and activated the Aspect of the Bird to grow my angelic wings. I had a simple plan at this point, just get as far as I could for now, and then find somewhere to rest. If I managed to make it all the way to the city, that’d be great. If not, I had another plan. Either way, I wanted to start practicing my Technomancy as soon as possible. While I would much prefer to practice on technology of this world, I could just as easily do so with devices from the real world.

Sharon seemed rather excited when she saw my bird wings, and even tried to reach out to touch them. However, by that time I was already launching myself into the sky, bringing myself just over the tops of the trees to reacquaint myself with the surroundings. Nothing had visibly changed, so I took off towards the single shining city on the horizon. According to Jarl, it was known as Landfall, the capital of this world and the site of the initial colonization.

Since Jarl had already known that I planned to leave, he gave me some information to help my travel. The giant birds I had noted when I first flew up were known as harpy eagles, and were magical beasts capable of using wind and sound magic. Apparently, the reason that he would often randomly disappear would be to deal with these and other magical beasts attempting to invade the grove.

According to Jarl, the harpy eagles weren’t too much of a threat, so long as I didn’t allow them to surround me. There were two other races of magical beast that lived on this planet, which he called Hascion. The first were the wind wolves, which were simply wolves capable of increasing their speed with wind and shoot wind bullets from their mouths. The second was the one he urged me to be cautious of, and was the reason that I was flying even despite the harpy eagles.

The second race of magical beast was the land wyrm, a gigantic worm-type creature that rarely attacks large caravans. While Jarl is able to prevent it from attacking his grove by controlling the land around it, I don’t have the same kind of confidence. As you can imagine, the land wyrm is able to use earth magic for various purposes, and is attracted to any significant shifts in the ground. It registers such things as either food or a potential mate.

Either way, I was confident in my ability to survive with my current powers. To my surprise, when I got up to 5% in Dark Affinity, the ability I had received was actually very useful.

Darkness Manipulation - Dark Affinity - ★☆

This ability allows the user to meld with, manifest, and manipulate shadows.

While I had not been able to meld with a shadow, I was able to create a ball of darkness in my hand and shoot it out. In my experiment, the shadow ball had the consistency of tar, and exploded like a sludge when it hit a tree. Maybe when I became more skilled I would be able to make weapons out of shadows, but for now it was already a useful control skill.

Most of my journey was spent simply gliding, using minor expenditures of mana with Wind Manipulation in order to send me back up. It wasn’t until I had flown for over an hour, and my wings were starting to get sore did I hear the shrill cry of a harpy eagle from above me.