Author’s Corner: Finally, we are out of that forest! Now onto the inevitable aerial battle!

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I’d like to say that I fought with honor, or that I knew what I was doing, but… Well, you’ll see.

When I turned my head to look, I saw one of the harpy eagles baring down on me, its wingspan easily ten meters. Thanks to my inexperience with flight, turning to look had caused me to veer to the side, narrowly dodging the massive creature’s claws. However, in the next moment, a gust of wind blew me back away from the creature.

I was tumbling through the air, unable to see what was going on, and only got myself stabilized after about twenty meters. By that time, the bird had already changed direction, its black feathers flying towards me and almost completely blocking my view of the surroundings. This time, it opened its beak and let out a shrill cry, which rang in my ears and caused my vision to blur. In the next instant, I felt searing pain as one of my wings were ripped off.

With a hiss I quickly dismissed Aspect of the Bird, causing me to enter a freefall. However, at least the pain was gone, and since the damaged parts of my body were no longer there I did not have any health loss. Looking down, I was about fifty meters from the ground, so I hurriedly cast Aspect of the Bird again in a panic while the ground came closer and closer.

Thankfully I managed to cast it at the last second, and angled my new wings to pull up just in time to avoid becoming a pool of gore on the ground. However, thanks to that short exchange, I was able to somewhat measure its level. Sadly, as far as I was concerned, its level was simply ‘run away’. Closing my eyes, I focused on flying forward as I began controlling the elements around me.

I could hear the eagle approaching towards me, and feel how the wind parted for it with no resistance. Before it could catch me, I decided to act. From my feet, I gathered as much fire mana as I could, releasing a stream of flame directly behind me. The earth would help me little in a battle above the skies, but fire is still my friend. With the sudden unexpected flames sprouting up, the eagle let out another cry as it changed course, though this one was not meant to attack me.

A few moments later, I came to know what its new plan was, as I felt a shadow descend over me. As that was the case, I stopped playing with fire, and moved onto darkness. Above and below, my body was already covered by shadows, making this one of the best times to use that particular element. Looking up, I could almost see the eagle diving at me, talons extended for the kill. So what did I do?

…

I did a barrel roll! Pulling in my wings, I rolled slightly to the side while having the wind push me back. Once I re-extended my wings, the eagle was now the one below me, so I dropped a shadow ball on top of it. When the ball of darkness collided with the black feathers, it was hard to see what had happened. However, the movement of its left wing had become slightly more sluggish, indicating that perhaps the attack had succeeded. Though, restraining a wing meant little when the enemy could just change how the wind hit it to get the same result anyways.

So far, I had used up roughly half of my mana, and knew that there were just a few ways I could actually win this fight. Maybe if I forced it to swallow an arrow vine, I could use my Nature Magic to have the vine grow inside of it, spearing it from within. That seemed like the best plan, so I pulled a single seed from my inventory, clutching it in one hand.

Now it was my turn to dive, and dive I did! Angling my wings, I increased my speed to the maximum as I flew towards the slightly unstable eagle… and then I remembered that this thing controls wind.

The moment I was almost upon the harpy eagle, a gust of wind knocked me off course, again making me tumble back several meters. Sadly, I accidentally dropped the seed I was holding thanks to the surprise reaction. By the time I had myself stable again, the eagle was once more heading right for me. However, this time its aim was obviously off, instead moving to fly past me by a wide margin. Must be unable to properly steer with one wing bound.

However, my thoughts quickly proved themselves wrong as the eagle passed by me, the barest tip of the wing brushing against my side.

Cut in half-999 HP

You have diedExp -25%. Exp insufficient for current level. Level -1, points have been deducted from most recently increased stats

You will be unable to log back in for 24 NeoLife hours, exactly 4 hours, 48 minutes.

I could still feel the pain in my side when the Seed opened up to let me out into the real world again, and took in a sharp breath of air. Once again, I was still equipped with my bird wings, so I immediately dismissed them. Gripping the sides of the silver coffin, I slowly sat myself up. One hand went down to my side, making sure that there was no actual wound.

My thoughts drifted towards Yin and Yang, who had been in my inner grove when I died. Had something happened there because of my death? A quick inspection made me sigh in relief, as the grove was unharmed. The two birds were happily sitting on the branches of the enrichment fruit tree, nestled against each other.

However, this did confirm that the grove carried over between the game and the real world. For a simple test, I plucked a fruit from the tree and brought it out in the same manner I would within the game. Though I should not have been surprised, I was slightly startled when the green lights emerged from my body and formed the enrichment fruit in my hands.

Okay… next time I’ll just walk. No earth magic, and I likely won’t attract a land wyrm. I’d rather deal with the wind wolves than those eagles again. I sighed to myself, and got up out of the Seed. I had nearly five hours in the real world, so I had to do something with it.

For my first trick, I checked to see if there was any more news about the new sensation sweeping the nation. I found that the world was adapting surprisingly well. The players of NeoLife were being treated as victims under the Genetic Crimes Act, and able to resume life as normal. Those who were changed into nonhuman forms were even seen with pity. This is because this wasn’t the first time people have had their bodies forcefully changed.

A couple decades back, there was another game. It was the one that I mentioned used nanites to reshape the human body in order to match the character. At first, victims of that were treated as freaks. By the time it was exposed, there were already fifty thousand people changed. That was not a number the public could just ignore, but at the same time they couldn’t easily accept people that looked so different. Despite our cultural advances over the last millennium, humans still had a prejudiced nature.

However, the people in question were truly not at fault for what happened to them, and some were even the children of politicians. As such, the Genetic Crimes Act was established, stating that anybody who has their bodies altered due to genetic manipulation against their will shall be protected by the law. Discrimination against them was considered a felony.

Now, many people had already lived with someone that had been altered in such a way by that event, or even grown up with them. This made the world far more prepared for what the Seeds did, to the point where there was only the briefest acts of violence when they were first revealed. Even with the protection of the law, people who did not know what happened might think a monster was attacking them. Thankfully, there were no fatalities among the Seed players.

That said, there were currently two conflicting opinions on the subject of the Seeds and NeoLife. One party said that the game was bringing nothing but trouble, and that people should not play it for fear of inviting true monsters upon us. The other party believed that true monsters were already coming, whether we liked it or not, and the only defense we had against them was to play the game and grow stronger.

With that taken care of, I shut off my computer while shaking my head, and moved downstairs. There were still four and a half hours remaining, and I needed to do something constructive with my time. I did a brief experiment and tried to check my status window as I would in the game. To my surprise, the blue lights I had first seen very gradually wove themselves together to form the window, as well as the normal menu. Although, obviously the logout button was absent.

NameJohn HulettRaceHalf-Elf(Woodland)TitlesVengeful HeartFame0Level 1278%ClassDruidSub-ClassWild ShaperDeityMalthanHealth120/120Health Regen0.2Mana400/400Mana Regen0.14Strength12Wisdom70Agility20Intelligence45Dexterity19Charisma9Vitality12Luck14Points Remaining0Earth 7%Fire 7%Wind 8%Water 7%Lightning 0%Light 7%Dark 7%Plant 7%Luck 2%Madness 2%

I nodded slightly, the losses having been within my expectations. My lower mana regeneration was probably because of the mana being so thin here. However, the rest of my time had to be spent trying to get stronger, advancing my magic in some way. The mana here was still far too thin to properly cultivate, so I did the next best thing. On the counter in my living room was a flash drive, it was a cheap one I had bought to store holo-vids on, and only held a petabyte of data, but that was enough for my purposes.

I moved back up to my room with the flash drive in hand, and sat down next to the Seed. Like Sharon said, the mana seemed slightly denser next to the large machine. Though the drive itself did not contain any mana, by placing it near the Seed I was able to see how mana interacted with it. At first, the mana just washed over it, like it wasn’t even there. However, after a few minutes it began to show a slight reaction.

I kept watching, waiting to see what would happen with my Aura Sight. My computer was much closer to the Seed than the flash drive had been downstairs, but I would rather experiment with something easily replaceable. If it worked on the flash drive, then I could try with my computer.

After nearly a full hour, something happened. The flash drive began emitting its own mana, in small amounts. However, this was plenty for me to see its aura forming. Since the aura is appearing from scratch, I thought it might even help me memorize and recreate the process.

I kept staring at the flash drive, constantly working my Aura Sight to memorize every detail as the lights formed into a hard pattern. Reaching out, I touched it with my Mana Sense to fill in the gaps, until an hour later I had fully memorized the aura of the flash drive. Looking over to my computer, I extended my Mana Sense towards it, searching for a similar aura.

I did manage to find it, which I assumed to be my computer’s fifty exabyte hard drive. However, the pattern was more complex, likely to be because it allowed for far more data storage. I took my time memorizing this aura as well, another hour and a half. By the time I was done, it was just under two hours left before I would be able to log into the game again.

I debated with myself, should my first experiment by attempting to mimic a data storage device, or to alter it? After some time, I decided to go for the former, but with an additional precaution. A flash drive by itself is useless. You also need an input device. For that, I would need a camera and microphone. Thankfully, my computer has both.

Again, I reached out my Mana Sense to my computer, attempting to isolate the aura of the camera. Once I had it, I traced it back to the motherboard, then the hard drive to study the connections, and then took in the full aura. For the most part, there were similarities between it and my own, though the ones in the computer were more complex, less natural. Likewise, the connections between the microphone and the motherboard were very similar.

For my first experiment, I focused on my right eye. Gritting my teeth, I prepared myself for an intense pain if this didn’t work. With my brain as the motherboard, I began altering the connections between it and my eye, and then my eye itself. While the shape of the eye remained the same, there was a clear uncomfortable feeling from it, like I had an eyelash stuck inside. This persisted for several minutes until I finished the process.

New Spell Unlocked!Cybernetic Adaptation: Eye - Technomancy - ★

By copying the aura of a camera, and adapting your eye to mirror it, you are able to store visual information recorded in your altered eye, at the cost of mana. Information storage is limited by your brain's capacity. Information retrieval dependent on brain’s ability.

Mana Cost: 50 to shift, 30/second to record.