Author’s Corner: Here ya go, folks! Have another chapter, and enjoy!

After retrieving my broken giant hammer and putting it back in my grove, I flew off with Yin and Yang. Yang glanced back towards the scene we just left with a sigh, before shaking her head. However, she does not complain about the wholesale slaughter of the monsters. Maybe in the future, it’d be better for me to keep her in my grove when I’m fighting?

“No, she just needs to get used to it.” Celeste spoke up in my mind as I had that thought. “Hiding her in your grove won’t help with that. She’ll still know that you’re doing it, especially when she makes weapons and other items out of the bodies.”

I nodded, and once we were out of sight of the rock beasts, I descended to the ground. Part of me wondered if it would be possible to use my Xeno-Shifter abilities to become a Deus Ex… And I thought it might be worth a try after we ‘upgrade’ Celeste’s body. Taking out the soul gem, and the fifteen monster cores of the rock beasts, I once again began the process of refining the souls into one pure soul.

Each soul took roughly fifteen minutes, and there were fifteen souls… man, this took a while. Guess it’s a good thing we slept first after all! A few hours later when I was done, I pulled Celeste out of my grove and had her open up her chest. The white plastic split apart at the center to reveal a complex pattern of glowing blue wires, at the center of which was a small hole the size of the gem that the golem had given me. “Well… here goes nothing.”

With a sigh, I slipped the gem into its socket and had her close her chestplate again. “Alright!” Celeste spoke to me in my mind while the robot body seemed to power down. “Now I’m just letting my aura adapt to the presence of a soul. Should be done just about…. now!”

As she finished speaking, the robot lifted its head up suddenly. Her eyes were darting back and forth rapidly as if reading. “Ooh, so many options. Alright, here we go. This should be good to start!” With my Aura Sight active, I could see her aura surging a bit, and at the same time her body itself began changing. The white ‘skin’ slowly began expanding, crawling along until it covered her entire body.

Once her body had been covered by the smooth white skin, it changed pigment just slightly to look more realistic. If not for the lack of hair, she might look like a regular woman when she put some clothes on. Soon, purple hair began sprouting up from Celeste’s head, which surprised me. I could understand skin giving the sense of touch, but what purpose could having hair give? “It’s for cosmetic purposes!” The AI cried out in my mind.

The next change was her back, as two purple metal strips seemed to grow out of her in straight lines. On closer inspection, these were containers, and each one released three large pink protrusions that gave it the appearance of wings, further reinforced by the five smaller strips of metal that descended, hovering just below the upper portions. Just as I was beginning to question it, Celste spoke in my mind again. “Don’t worry, they’re able to be stored in my upgrade inventory when I’m not using them.”

The next big change was pink and purple armor growing out of her hands and feet. While the hand armor was sleek and formed a metal bubble around the back of her hand, the feet armor was more rigid, looking like wide armored boots you would see in an old mech anime. Then similar armor began to grow around her waist and along her sides and upper arm. Finally, a pink cloth began materializing and connecting her arm armor with her hand armor, and a dark brown one covered her torso.

When she was done, Celeste opened her eyes, which had changed to match her new hair color, and looked down at herself. “Very cool… Totally worth the points.” Her face was much more animated now, able to properly display her smile and the widening of her eyes.

A bit curious, I decided to ask a question. “How many levels’ worth of points did all of that cost…”

With a wry grin, Celeste answered me. “Three for the upgrade inventory, two for the wings, one for the armor, one for the cosmetic change, four for the increased mana capacity and efficiency, and three for the additional senses.”

My eye twitched slightly as I heard that she essentially spent nineteen levels for cosmetic changes and the ability to fly. “But… that’s not even really armor. It covers almost nothing.”

Celeste laughed lightly, stretching in an obviously seductive manner to show off her curves under her skintight armor. “I know, right? If I upgrade it again, I can either get more physical coverage, or an energy field. But with this, at least I can fly back with you guys. If need be, I can upgrade the wings one more time to give me some extra speed to catch up.”

I sighed, shaking my head in resignation. “Alright, well let’s get heading back then.” When I said that, she nodded happily, fully extending her wings. The various protrusions all let out a gentle pink light before they lifted her into the air. I could see that a similar light was also being emitted from her boots as well, likely to act as stabilizers. Dispelling my other Aspects, I grew my wings and took to the sky with Yin and Yang so that the four of us could all fly back to the city. Or, at least, that was the plan.

Incoming call from Sharon.

That message appeared after roughly ten minutes of flight time, confusing me. However, it’s not like I didn’t enjoy talking to her. She was pretty much the only other druid I had met, aside from my teacher. “Hey, Sharon, what’s up?”

“Falenel… I’ll never get used to calling you that since I know your actual name now.” She giggled cutely, and I could see the Deus Ex that was flying alongside me send me a mischievous smirk. “Anyways, are you in a position where you can log out?”

“I will be in a little while, flying to a city at the moment. Why, what’s up?” With a thought, Celeste pulled up the local and real time. Although it was daytime here, it should be night where Sharon lived in the real world.

“It’s… hard to explain. Something’s happened to the moon.”

Error… does not compute… rebooting brain. “Sorry, what?”

“Yeah… it’ll be easier if you see for yourself.”

“Alright, I’ll hurry this up then.” Closing my eyes, I activated my Aspect of the Mana Leech to attune my wings to wind mana, and used the extra mana input to increase my speed as much as I could. The three girls seemed surprised by the sudden acceleration, but they were easily able to keep up. Though, Celeste’s wings seemed to glow slightly before the lights emitted from her wings became more intense.

“Good. By the way, are you still at that planet you got rescued to?” With that, we had a bit of smalltalk while I was flying. When I told her about one of my companions evolving into a humanoid, she was surprised and asked how I did it. I didn’t know what the conditions would be for her own animals to evolve, so I just told her that she should be able to find out if she consults a terminal.

By the time I had gotten back to the city, Sharon had already logged back off, saying that we should meet up the next time we are in the same solar system. It’d be interesting to see what new tricks she learned as a druid focusing on her animal companions. Quickly making our way to the hotel, I went ahead and put everyone in my grove so that we could transfer over to my world.

After logging out, I saw that it was indeed still daytime for me. So naturally, I wouldn’t be able to see if there was anything wrong with the moon by looking outside. Instead, I booted up my computer and had it run a search for world news relating to the moon. Almost immediately, a holographic video was brought up for me to see. While it wasn’t live, it had reporter commentary about what was happening.

“Now, this just in. The cause of the disturbances in the ocean have finally been traced to a source. Many have feared that there was a giant monster lying beneath our waters, but the truth may in fact be more terrifying.” A female british reporter spoke up on the hologram while the image showed the moon. There seemed to be an abnormal amount of large cracks in it, and they appeared to be spreading.

“As you can see, there have been changes within the moon itself. Now, until now none of these changes had been visible on the surface, so we were unaware of them. Watch here, as the changes begin to really reveal themselves.” Suddenly, the cracks grow wider, large chunks of rock breaking off. However, the moon wasn’t shattering with pieces falling to the Earth… it was standing up.

The large stone chunks formed into massive arms and legs, as the moon itself seemed to become a giant golem. The golem turned its head towards the screen, or towards the Earth, with glowing red eyes before it simply flew off. The night sky was now missing one great big celestial object. “We have decided to name this creature a Lunar Titan, and label it as a planetary threat should it ever return. In the meantime, scientists have already begun speculating the long term ramifications of an Earth without a moon. We’ll have more information for you as the situation develops!”

As the hologram turned off, I sat there with my mouth hanging open, various pieces of information I had gathered clicking into place one by one. Legion had been writing a space shanty in the blood of his victims, and he knew the end was coming. Speaking under my breath, I recalled the words I had once heard. “For cast your eyes up to the skies, the moon has danced away…”

I had heard those words the first time I was on a ship, the Nostromo. At first, I had thought that they were referring to how a moon is a bad celestial body to use for navigation, and to trust the stars instead. I had never imagined that it was a warning, or a reminder, that the moon would literally abandon us. And, if that’s true, doesn’t that mean that the ‘game world’ is simply the future? The year 3016 A.G… After Genesis… The word that had been shown to the entire world at once.

Then, in that case… the Cradle of Life, the First Journey… should all be from Earth, right? Every race claims it was them… but how many different alien species exist on Earth right now? But… then… the Cradle of Life was not an occupied world in the game, it had become a dungeon planet, where ships would be destroyed just for approaching it. Doesn’t that mean, if we don’t leave soon, more giant monsters will spawn and wipe out all other life?

You have discovered the truth about the Cradle of Life. +15 Intelligence

I couldn’t be the only one thinking about this. Anyone who’s heard the legends and the song should know. This isn’t the end… this is just the beginning of the changes. Most likely, there would be a global focus on space exploration now, using the technology we are able to retrieve and adapt from the game… No, from the future.

“Wow… I did not see this coming…” Celeste spoke from over my shoulder, as much surprised by this as I was. “I mean… an ocean slime I could understand, but this? I haven’t seen a record of a Lunar Titan or whatever, but maybe they just aren’t near the Gallen system..”

As I was staring at the screen, still at a loss, other posts began appearing on the internet. More large monsters were beginning to spawn around the globe. The sphinxes of Egypt were coming to life, the Statue of Liberty walked off her island, and loud roars could be heard near the himalayas. “So much stray mana has been going to giving birth to the Lunar Titan, that it was stopping the other large monsters from spawning…” The AI added in a mildly terrified voice. “Now that it’s done and gone, they will keep appearing.”

It had been strange that only relatively small monsters had spawned so far, as if it was letting us adapt. If we are the center of mana in the universe, as the situation would seem to indicate, there should have been giant monsters spawning left and right, each no smaller than the nature wyrm that nearly killed me on the jungle planet. But all we’ve gotten were the small ones, like slimes and minotaurs.

The Dungeon Planet, Cradle of Life, has been created in your vicinity. It is strongly advised that you vacate the area.

Author’s Basement: Now to see how many people have been paying attention all this time and figured out what was going to happen beforehand! Also, for those that want a picture reference for Celeste, see below!

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