Author’s Corner: As promised, the end to the training montage has arrived!

The next few days passed relatively quietly, since I no longer had as many jobs to work for the police. There was another elemental, a fire one this time, but it turned out to just be a salaryman who didn’t realize that becoming a fire elemental would mean losing his ability to communicate. I did check in with Tessa, and was relieved to find that her mom had taken money out of their savings to have her take a race change. I can’t imagine how she found an altar of the gods, because I hadn’t seen one yet.

Of course, after thinking that, Celeste told me that there had been a small church in nearly every town I had visited so far, I just never paid attention. Still, it was good to see that Tessa had turned back into a human. When I asked, she said that her mommy had told her that she could pick any human type she wanted, so long as she did pick one. So now, Tessa is a human psychic like my father was. I didn’t really understand what the psychic powers she possessed would be like. but the important thing was that she wasn’t an elemental anymore.

Tessa’s mother had tried to thank me, by paying me or giving back the bracelet I had enchanted for her. Although I had a money issue myself, I couldn’t justify taking money for returning a little girl to her mother. As for the bracelet, I really didn’t have any use for it, so I insisted she keep it. At the very least, it would let her raise her own Wind Affinity to the point where mine was at when I enchanted it.

On the subject of affinities, it took nearly a full week for me to get 10% in all of my elements, but I did eventually manage it. I also felt like my older affinities, like earth and dark, were getting closer to breaking through to 11%. The fact that they hadn’t done so after all this time reminded me just how slow passively cultivating would be.

Now, you might be wondering, but Celeste did her own learning during this time as well. For the first couple nights after I did the implant surgery, she stayed up and constantly recording information from the tv. On the second night, she learned a lot of information regarding druids, and more specifically regarding Xeno-Shifters. My line of thinking had been off from the very start.

Although I needed a bit more mana to become a magical beast or a monster, really I could substitute my affinities for the extra mana, and focus all of my efforts on my Mana Manipulation skill. Celeste even found a handy calculator to determine the mana cost to shift forms based on their complexity, mana density, and my skills. From what she figured out, my wolf form would only cost half as much mana now as it did back when I first learned to use it. If I relied on my affinities, I could even easily change into a lesser orthrus.

Naturally, she couldn’t get any auras from the internet, since I had to study those myself. But with this, I had a benchmark for when I’d be able to do a full race conversion. Mana Manipulation at at least Intermediate level would be needed with my current mana pool. With how I was right now, turning into a monster wouldn’t be hard, as long as it was a monster attuned with one of my elements. This also meant that my dragon form could be done more simply if I supplemented my mana with elemental mana. Though, after the second night, I restricted her to only studying every other night, because my eyes had started to hurt.

Anyways, I had gradually been running out of funds, since I had been staying in this hotel for roughly a week now. As such, I had to once again get a job. With my skills in engineering and technomancy, I was able to get a job at the starport again, however this time I didn’t have a handy partner to help. I did, however have Celeste, who was more than happy to flaunt her downloaded knowledge.

When I asked why she hadn’t simply given me the information, she said that it wouldn’t be very fun that way. Also, the time it would take to give me the information would require my entire concentration for several hours. She was able to process it much faster than I was, so information that took her a minute to ‘download’ would require an hour for me to do so safely.

Now, I had spent a full two weeks working as a mechanic at the starport, and during this time I had managed to train another affinity to help me out. The affinity this time was metal, which allowed me to control metal with my mana. It wouldn’t let me turn silver to gold(yet, I was hopeful that it could eventually), but it would let me fix broken components and remove rust. I did the same thing to my three weapons as well, finally restoring them to their peak efficiency.

Onto my grove, that had shown a considerable increase lately, with all of the mana I passively take in. Over the last three weeks, the grove had grown to a startling 35 meter radius. The secondary grove I had set up had also grown, until it had a radius of 10 meters. With the addition of metal mana, there were even tiny veins of iron and copper that would appear in the center of the grove after I absorbed mana.

Before you ask, I naturally made a Seed of Metal and put it in my staff of the elements. I even had to replace my plant and dark seeds, because they had been refined to medium grade. Although Celeste had discovered the method to do so, I had yet to refine a medium grade seed of my own. From her information, it would take the equivalent of twenty five thousand mana at my current level of skill. With that, I would have to focus for nearly seven hours just to create a single one. I’d rather wait until I could do so more quickly.

Although I hadn’t gained a level from working, I had gained other things. Most notably was the money, which I got from both working the job and harvesting the metal from my grove. Altogether, I gained roughly half a gold, which I considered to be a pretty good deal for just that amount of work. If I kept at it, I could easily earn enough to get a full gold within the shortest amount of time.

Finally, it has been about four days in the real world, and the Adventurer’s Guild already had tens of thousands of members. Practically every city had an ‘adventurer’, or had one living nearby that could rush over in case of an emergency. After talking with her, I was surprised to find out that Sharon had not become a member. Then again, with her personality she wouldn’t really want to fight the monsters. She had long since surpassed me in levels, likely from training her skills, so the only times that we were able to chat was thanks to the friends list. I was a bit disappointed to learn that she lived in Europe in the real world, so we would probably never meet outside of the game. That thought made me laugh a bit, since I found it easier to meet her when we were on different planets than just different continents.

Today, I was planning to take the shuttle to Gallen 3, the neighboring world in this system which would have a better hunting ground for me. Thanks to my two weeks of work, I had earned a ten percent discount on the faire, but still needed to pay thirteen and a half silver. Compared to the cost of going to another system, it was extremely cheap, but it still made a hefty dent in my wallet.

Once on the shuttle, I let myself relax, focusing on my inner grove and investigating my ‘animal’ companions. I wasn’t sure why, but Yang had yet to get the last two levels needed for her to evolve. Yin, naturally had yet to do so as well. As for Yo, I had to scold him before to not drain all the water mana from my grove, because he had started to make it shrink. However, his current body was roughly four meters wide, so he was far more imposing than that little goo ball I had first created.

I had considered creating slimes with the dark and plant seeds I had refined, but really the memory of acid and my time fighting the dark and water slime(Celeste later identified it as a Mire slime) stopped me. I could do so later at any time, but first I wanted to finish training Yo so that I knew what to expect.

“Thank you for choosing to fly with Gallen Starliner, taking you anywhere and everywhere in the Gallen system.” A hostess’s voice came in over the intercom as I strapped myself in. The flight time was estimated to be around three hours, since the two planets were currently at opposing points of their orbit. With a deep sigh, I pulled up my character and skill information windows, wanting to check out my total earnings from my training period.

NameFalenel HulettRaceHalf-Elf(Woodland)TitlesVengeful Heart, Amateur Brain SurgeonFame0Level 2112%ClassDruidSub-ClassWild ShaperDeityMalthanHealth160/160Health Regen0.25Mana850/850Mana Regen0.72Strength15Wisdom85Agility21Intelligence86Dexterity22Charisma10Vitality16Luck20Points Remaining0Earth 11%Fire 10%Wind 10%Water 10%Lightning 10%Light 11%Dark 11%Plant 11%Void 10%Metal 10%

SkillsMana Manipulation - Novice Level 8: 5%Nature Magic - Basic Level 5: 0%Wind Magic - Beginner Level 7: 5%Archery - Beginner Level 3: 1%Dagger Mastery - Beginner Level 5: 11%Wild Luck - Basic Level 7: 0%Sketching - Basic Level 6: 60%Herbology - Basic Level 5: 12%Gathering - Beginner Level 6: 6%Alchemy - Basic Level 5: 3%Mana Signatures - Intermediate Level 1: 9%Cooking - Basic Level 3: 55%Flight - Basic Level 1: 0%Aura Sight - Intermediate Level 2: 12%Technomancy - Intermediate Level 3: 21%Programming - Intermediate Level 4: 5%Runic Language - Intermediate Level 8: 50%Enchanting - Basic Level 2: 30%Engineering - Novice Level 1: 16%Maintenance - Basic Level 9: 13%Dodge - Beginner Level 1: 20%Swordsmanship - Beginner Level 3: 20%Marksmanship - Beginner Level 9: 13%Energy Weapons - Beginner Level 5: 3%

“Finally, time to go and train with actual combat!” Celeste appeared, ‘sitting’ in my lap, smiling at me. She was the biggest reason for most of my skills improving as much as they had, since she fed me some of the information that she had downloaded. Stuff like new alchemy recipes for the herbs that I had found on the jungle planet and the ones from Hascion, or teaching me several thousand new runes. Although she didn’t teach me everything on the subject, she assured me that it should be enough for the foreseeable future, and she didn’t want to overload me too soon.

I could only chuckle at her antics. Although her personality was still fully formed, and she would display the occasional bit of adult wisdom, she still enjoyed acting like a kid a lot. Of course, every time I thought about that, she began pouting. It was still cute, and made me want to pat her on the head.

The flight to Gallen 3 was largely uneventful, since the security in this system was high enough to prevent pirates . There were no freak meteors, no sudden explosions, no Klax invasions(it surprised me how quiet that race had been lately). We just flew through the system for three hours from one planet to the other. Though really, the view was amazing. We got to see passing planets like one would see a city from an airplane. We even got to see the star up close, thanks to the shuttle’s shielding. Unlike Earth, the Gallen star was a blue dwarf, which itself was quite a sight to behold.

As we approached the planet, I could see that it looked quite similar to Earth, with the majority covered by blue water, and the rest being green continents. Well, that’s what I thought at first. Then I learned that the blue was really the land, and the green was the water. There was some mineral mixed into the water that turned it green, and so it had to be filtered before it was drinkable, according to Celeste.

Still, roughly three hours after launch, we had entered the atmosphere of a new planet, and were finally going to be able to begin training. “Thank you for flying with Gallen Starliner, and have a safe stay. If you require special services, please see a terminal upon exiting the shuttle.” The hostess’s voice rang out again as everyone began to get up and move out. Now I could finally train my Plasma and Magnetism Affinities, while my animal companions trained to evolve.