Author’s Corner: Happy Double Release day!

After the call ended with the High Queen, Queen Talia let out a long sigh. “We are sorry about High Queen Maeve. She’s a bit eccentric, but she really is quite capable, and has only the welfare of our race in mind.”

I could only chuckle softly at that. “It’s not a problem. But… I take it that’s why you dismissed the guards?”

“Right, right… She always puts up a serious face when others are around, so she asked us to make sure that was not an issue during this call, as a show of respect. Personally, we think she should take it more seriously. It’s the fate of our race, after all… Please don’t take her jokes too seriously…”

“No, it’s alright.” Sharon said, waving a hand quickly. “Besides, there’s not much else for us to do while we wait, Queen Talia. Do you suppose that we could look around to see what animals your world has?”

At this time, Celeste chimed in inside my head with a somewhat wicked laugh. “Oh… I did a scan to learn about their wildlife… She is going to love this…”

If you could just scan for it, why are we bothering to have someone show us around!? I retorted mentally. Talia however, simply nodded her head, clapping her hands loudly. A moment later, a few guards opened the large door to the throne room. “Have one of our hunters show Sharon Bradbury around the woods, and let her experience the wildlife. What is it you would like to do, John Hulett?”

I thought about it for a moment, and shrugged. “I could set up a ward around this forest for you, so that monsters don’t spawn inside of it anymore. It won’t stop them from wandering in, or remove the ones already here, but it should help.”

“We would appreciate that. What do you require to make it happen?”

I looked to the little queen. “I would need a glass sphere, about this big..” I measured it out with my hands to show how large I would need. “And I need a circle drawn around the forest. Alternatively, if you have someone take the Priest job at the temple, they can pray to the patrons there and ask them to shield the area.”

While the priest method was not feasible back on Earth due to religious conflicts, the way Sharon worded it here made them readily adapt these deities as part of their current religion. In that sense, what was impossible back on Earth could potentially be the easiest solution here. The queen thought about it for a moment, before nodding. “We will personally take the Priest position, and ask these patrons to defend us. We believe that doing so will show that we are completely sincere. Furthermore, we would ask that every generation of queen in these woods take the position of Priest for this same purpose.”

I wasn’t really sure about that, but the logic was sound. Even if I can’t count on Aria to be useful, I can hope the other two are. “Alright, then I’ll take a look around. I’ll probably fly around for a bit to make sure that there are no more fights breaking out.”

“Very well.” Talia nods, and Sharon is escorted out by an elf with a large bow on his back. Presumably, that is their hunter. “We ask that half of the royal guards accompany us, that they may be granted a class as well. The other half shall defend the realm according to their normal duties.”

I didn’t bother sticking around after that, and directly left the castle. “Celeste… there aren’t big you know whats in these trees, are there?”

“No sir, it is safe for flying! But… don’t go too far north. Just a warning. Probably best not to fly too high above the treetops either.” The AI quickly responded in my head.

“Please don’t tell me that it’s the closest ‘calamity’.”

“It’s not the closest calamity.”

“You’re lying to make me feel better, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“...Thanks… Just… warn me if it heads this way.” I mumbled under my breath, causing several elves nearby to look at me strangely, backing up to put distance between us. “Guess I’m not flying. Is there enough power on the ship to teleport up?”

“Barely. It’d drain almost all of the power on the ship. It’d be best if you just found somewhere to log out, and help resupply the ship’s generator while you’re up here. I could theoretically refuel us by flying at the sun, but at that distance we’d lose the connection with the clone bodies. Since that’s the case, it’s best for you to do so yourself.”

I nodded my head, and looked around. Since this wasn’t anything too important, and wouldn’t take too long, I cancelled my Aspect of the Bird, and sat down against a nearby tree before ‘logging out’ of the clone. Back on the ship, I lifted the headset and examined my surroundings. The others were all still plugged in, so Celeste and Yo were the only ones here to greet me.

The slime girl tackled me before I even had the chance to stand up from my seat, giving me a strong hug. “Welcome back, Papa!”

“Yeah… Has any progress been made for creating a slime clone?” I looked to the AI, who let out an exasperated sigh, shaking her head.

“You’ve been down there only eight hours. I’ve barely had time to run the first round of tests. Give me a bit more time before you ask for results. However… I’ve managed to come up with a way to synthesize more slime, similar to what makes her body. The problem is that without a slime core, it’s just a bunch of useless goo. I need to figure out a way to make an inert monster core, that way we can transplant Yo’s soul into it when she does the cloning process.”

“Any idea how long that will take?” I ask the AI, who grumbles something under her breath.

“No… Thankfully, I don’t have to do much work with the ship, so my attention isn’t too divided, at least. I’ll let you know when I get a working theory. For now, could you go fill the generator? I didn’t have enough spare upgrades to get ones to generate plasma freely like you can do.”

I nodded my head at her, and walked off towards the generator. Once I had spent enough mana to completely refill the ship’s engine, I went to the bridge. “So, what can you tell me about these boss monsters?”

Celeste smirked at my question, having followed me back to the bridge. “Well, I’ve only got reliable information on two of them from what I downloaded in the future. Another one has fairly detailed reports that I was able to put together to make a profile, but the last three have unknown abilities.”

On the screen, a large wolf was displayed against a green background, but its entire body was made of clear ice. “This is known as a frozen tundra wolf king. Bit of a mouthful, but not without reason. It’s a large scale monster that only spawns in thick ice climates. This one spawned at the northern pole of the planet, and seemed to wipe out the city that was positioned there within five hours of its appearance. Its body is bigger than this ship, and likely more powerful.”

The screen shifted again, this time showing a giant stone man. “This is a mountain golem, one of the largest forms of stone golems that can spawn. Obviously, they don’t compare to a lunar titan, but it is still not something to underestimate. This one is fairly passive unless provoked, and its weakness is its slow movement speed. However, in close range, it is able to reshape its skin to attack anyone that tries to climb on it. Rather than attacking a city, it destroyed one simply by walking through, trying to find a quiet place for itself to live.”

“Neither of the two so far are likely to be affected by any bioweapons that the elves might deploy, since they are made of ice and stone respectively. However, this one could be.” The screen shifted to display a green dragon, standing proudly on four legs with its wings fully extended. “This looks to be a lesser green dragon, if I’m putting the information together right. It attacks with a peculiar kind of breath weapon, green flames that will cling to any surface, and burn for six hours without fuel. From the elven reports, nothing could put the flames out until the time had expired, at which point they go out by themselves.”

“Since the elves aren’t familiar with magic yet, I don’t have enough information to tell you if this is a magical attack, or just a peculiar chemical. If it’s the latter, it’s entirely possible that your ability to control flames would be useless against it.” With that, Celeste ended her presentation.

“Do you have any other information on the remaining two dragons, or the giant spider…” I really didn’t want any information on that last one, but since it was the closest to where I currently was stationed, I needed to know.

“All I can tell you about the other two dragons are their colors, black and yellow. Otherwise, their physical appearance resembles the green dragon. There weren’t any reports filed about their attacks, so I have to assume that they knocked out the local communications before they attacked. This could indicate either luck, a natural ability, or intelligence.”

“Let’s hope they aren’t that smart..” I grumbled slightly, knowing that the bad news came next.

“As for the spider… well, I won’t go into too much specifics. However, in the area surrounding the city that was destroyed by it, there is merely a giant web covering everything, with countless other spiders of varying degrees of huge. The boss monster has been resting at the heart of the web ever since we hit orbit.”

“We can nuke it from orbit, right? Please tell me that we can nuke it from orbit…”

“We should be able to… However I am not positive that it would solve the problem. Since I don’t know the characteristics of the smaller spiders, they may be capable of burrowing underground to avoid detection or damage. If that is the case, and these are its children, then over time any that survive in this manner will simply grow to this size on its own.” Celeste had a worried expression, her brows knitted together as she thought about this.

“Okay… so nuke it from orbit, then go in and perform a deeper scan to look for survivors. If there are any, nuke again. Repeat process until they all die.” This was very simple to me. If one shot didn’t work, keep nuking until they were all dead.

“That… could work, but there is no guarantee we’d catch them on the scanner, depending on their size and ability to hide themselves. I’d suggest we take care of that one first, and keep an eye on the area while we deal with the others. If there is any signs of movement before we’re done, we just have to revisit the scorched earth strategy.”

“I like the scorched earth strategy. Let’s stick with that one.” I nodded my head rapidly. This was a very good strategy to use against giant pests that consumed everything in their path. “Now… onto a much better topic. You said that there was interesting wildlife to be found here. What did you mean?”

“Ah!” Celeste suddenly began grinning from ear to ear. “About that, it should be right on time.” She closed her eyes, likely doing another scan, before an image appeared on screen. I saw Sharon, being led around by that elven hunter, though at the moment she was running ahead… and dived head first into a giant white wall of fluff.

“Is that…” Slowly, the image zoomed out, showing me a rabbit…. a thirty foot tall rabbit. “I think I just broke…”

Celeste giggled off to the side. “And that’s only a young one. The adults can reach nearly double that size!”

“Error… sanity not found… Why does this exist…” And more importantly, will it hold the same grudge against me that Sharon’s rabbits do? Am I going to be glared to death by a fifty foot tall bunny?

“If it helps, their wolves are only the size of puppies, and eat grass and weeds. It’s the rabbits that eat meat.”

“The food chain has been flipped. This feels wrong on so many levels…” I fell down into my comfortable captain’s chair, unable to take the shock of this news. To me, this was more painful than almost any of the information I had heard today. After all, I’ll have to live with those things in the future! Giant, carnivorous rabbits…

“So wrong, and yet so right for Sharon.” Celeste chuckled, as the screen showed Sharon absorbing the giant fluffy creature into her grove. No doubt she had either already found another one, or was going to do so soon.

“Well, can you tell what’s going on with the High Queens?” I tried to change the subject towards something safer. This was one of the rare cases where politics qualified.

“Ah… well… I may have hacked into their calls… I didn’t want to say anything about it… She was just too fun to watch!” Celeste smiled at me, before continuing. “Maeve, though that’s not her real name, already called the other High Queens to discuss the information we sent. They’re still chatting now. And before you ask, Maeve is her ‘given title’. While normal queens keep their birth name when they ascend to the throne, the High Queens instead get an inherited name. For Gerin 6, that name is Maeve. The others are Kalira for Gerin Prime, and Melris for Gerin 3. That’s how they distinguish their planets, rather than fancy names like Mars, or Uranus.”

“Doesn’t that only apply to the planets they colonize, though?” I glanced at her, confused.

“Why would they need special names for planets they don’t use? That’s their view on it. Stars will have names, but planets are the children of the star. As such, they are addressed how they are. By the way, I looked up their information, and found Sol on their star charts. Their name for it is Espior, and apparently the name loosely translates as ‘dim child’.” Celeste was giggling like a lunatic by the time she finished telling me that.