Author’s Corner: Hello everyone! Hope you all enjoy the chapter!

For the next couple of weeks, the journey continued fairly smoothly. There was not another appearance of the abstracts, and I was beginning to think that we just hit an incredibly unlucky cluster. Nonetheless, I continued to train my own abilities, while having Celeste make several more clone bodies. I wanted to give the crew the option to go down and explore planets as well, without having to risk their lives against random monster attacks. Though, we did not create more clone controllers, since I also wanted to limit how many people were gone at one time, for now.

When we arrived at the first ‘possibility’ world on our path, we set up a high orbit around it while performing surface scans. The landmass of this world was brown, so I initially thought that it was barren. However, once the first scan was completed, I saw that it was just the peculiar coloring of the foliage of this world. There were several large insects and things which appeared as giant black spots in my vision. I could guess what those were.. Finally… I saw what looked like dinosaurs.

“Celeste, I don’t think this is the planet we are looking for. Or at least, it doesn’t have the species we’re looking for.”

“Doesn’t seem like it… This planet seems to be in the early Jurassic period. The dinosaurs would be a good addition to Sharon’s grove, and she could populate this planet with her own animals as well.”

I nodded to Celeste. “Run a scan for monsters, let’s see if there is anything big and bad here.”

This scan took a bit longer, since it had to scan for mana signatures as well as creatures. “It looks like roughly one percent of the inhabitants on this planet are monsters. I’m also showing two ‘boss class’ monsters, one at each of the planet’s poles. Your orders?”

I thought about that for a long moment. Sharon did still need to make progress on her quest, so we would be sending down a team. However… with the giant insects, specifically the giant spiders down there, I can’t go personally or else I might rampage. “Sharon, you can pick and lead a team to go down to the planet to work on your quest.”

Sharon responded over the comms. Her and Yin hadn’t had as many chances lately to talk to me in private, since I was in the bridge all the time. However, I would almost always find one of them waiting for me in my room to chat when I retired for the night. “Alright. I’ll take Yin with me, and let her do her quest too. As for the others… How has the research been coming for Yo’s clone?”

I turned towards Celeste, who responded. “I’ve made considerable progress. I think, soon I should be able to finish creating a suitable controller and clone for her. However, it is not yet ready for use.”

“Alright, then can’t take her with me. I’ll take Ackbar, Lorenz, and Saren. They need some more combat experience, and could do with seeing a new planet.”

I thought about that for a moment. Lorenz was… ah that’s right. Lorenz was one of Saren’s subordinates in security. All three of them could be considered as combat personnel, though aside from Ackbar I did not know the classes of the others. “Alright. Have Yin do her thing after you’re done. Don’t want to get caught up in a storm when we don’t know how big it will be.”

“Roger that, captain!”

“I’ll have Celeste meet you at the teleport bay to send you down.” We did have a shuttle, but it was mostly for diplomatic purposes. After all, why potentially waste the resources by sending it down when it might get lost? Now that we have a generator capable of sustaining the teleport without shutting down, we might as well take full advantage of it.

I watched on the screens to view their progress. Since I couldn’t go down directly, this was the best I could do. After a few moments, the groups appeared down on the planet’s surface. According to Celeste, they asked to be placed near some of the larger dinosaurs. When it was time to finish up, Yin could be teleported to an area heavy with monsters to go crazy.

What came next surprised me a bit. Saren and Lorenz pulled out a plasma pistol each and targeted a nearby dinosaur. Sharon simply watched as they shot into the creature that looked like a T-rex with a turtle shell. When I saw that, I had Celeste be on the lookout for large flying creatures.

The Turtle Rex was fairly angered by the repeated plasma shots, but they did not penetrate its shell. However, when the shots landed on exposed skin, they tore right through. This let the two of them quickly kill the rex before it could charge over to them.

Next up was Ackbar. He pulled out a small white crystal, and held it in his hands. The gem began glowing brightly, before a white wolf appeared next to him. That must be the animal that he got from Sharon.

Since I knew how huntsmen worked thanks to Celeste, I knew that both the wolf and Ackbar had to have the same level. Fighting against a rex like that would be suicide, and they seemed to agree. Their target was a large insect about one meter long, with fly-like wings on its back supporting a long, caterpillar body.

Ackbar’s wolf had apparently not evolved yet, nor learned any of Sharon’s cultivation methods. It charged in head first, biting and clawing at the otherwise docile creature while Ackbar himself took out a rifle from his inventory. The only attack that the insect seemed capable of making was spitting a green glob of goo at the wolf, which appeared to cause it some pain. It was probably either poison or acid, both of which we’d be able to treat once they came back up to the ship.

Soon, the caterfly was dead, but the wolf was almost covered in the green goo that it had been spitting at him. Ackbar requested an emergency evac for himself and his companion, and I had Yang meet them at the medbay, telling her over the comms that she would be needed to heal. She didn’t seem that pleased with the idea, but still accepted it and rushed towards the medbay.

Ackbar and his wolf arrived, and quickly went to meet them, while Sharon led the other two around on what could only be described as another one of her ‘recruitment drives’. She summoned a pair of boulder lizards, and had them pin down one of the turtle rexes. Rexi? Rexors? I’ll just keep calling them rexes for now.

Anyways, the two giant lizards pinned down a turtle rex and she walked over to it. The creature seemed furious at this turn of events, trying to snap its giant jaws to bite at either of the creatures restraining it, or Sharon herself. However, the shape of its shell prevented it from turning its neck far enough to bite the lizards. As for Sharon, she stayed just out of reach.

She simply stood there, letting it bite at her, waiting for it to calm down. After about ten minutes of trying, and failing to get her, the rex gradually brought its neck back towards the shell, its limbs doing the same. It seemed that if the creature couldn’t get her, it wanted to make sure she couldn’t hurt it either. However, she simply began talking to it.

Since she wasn’t speaking into her comm, I wasn’t sure what she was saying to the dinosaur. However, she continued talking, occasionally nodding or shaking her head while Saren and Lorenz watched with confused expressions. Eventually, the turtle rex gradually poked its head back out, while Sharon walked forward. I saw her petting its large head, as if saying it was a good boy, before it vanished in a stream of blue lights that rushed into her body.

Her recruitment program continued like that until she had recruited two pairs of turtle rexes, two pairs of giant condors, and two pairs of mammoths. Although, they had to teleport to a different part of the planet to get the mammoths, since they were not native to the region they initially went to. After getting the three animal types, she found an area to place two dozen rabbits, another for a dozen wolves, some snakes, and finally a pair of large crows.

With that taken care of, they teleport to another region, but with Yin joining them this time. Surprisingly, Yin was in her bird form from the moment she arrived, and her body began to glow as she shot up into the skies. The area they appeared at this time was the one most densely packed with monsters in the entire planet, so there was no doubt that she was going to go for a super-sized storm.

A separate screen appeared that watched Yin as she flew into the clouds. Her body began hovering, wind and water rotating around her as sparks flew off her body. Her eyes closed as she began channeling her magic, drawing it in with her cultivation techniques and sending it back out with her racial powers. There was no immediate effect, but after five minutes the clouds around her began to darken. After ten minutes the storm began as a heavy rain with intermittent thunder. After twenty minutes, Sharon and the others were called back because the wind was beginning to grow too heavy for them to stay there. At the half hour mark, the effects became visible to us from the ship, without even using the scanner to watch.

Dark, swirling clouds slowly gathered at Yin’s location, gradually spreading out as she fed the storm, and the storm in turn fed her. After roughly an hour, the storm seemed to be at its peak. Small tornados had appeared beneath the clouds, lightning striking along the surface randomly. Looking at Yin in the small ring of calm weather at the center, she seemed to be struggling to maintain the storm at its current size. Even still, her offensive power in terms of area attacks had already completely dominated the rest of our group.

“Yin, that’s enough.” I sent a message to her through the comms, which Celeste assured me would still work given her position. I could tell how difficult it was for her to maintain this storm, because every now and then her head would whip from side to side with a pained expression, while her wings trembled.

She stubbornly held it for another five minutes before the lightning around her body faded. The storm gradually shrank down, but looked like it would take a long time before it completely faded away. If she had cast it over the ocean, perhaps it would have become a true hurricane, and no longer need her to fuel it.

After she let go of the spell, Celeste immediately teleported her back up to the ship. Out of concern, I rushed to the teleport bay to check on her. There were too many things that could go wrong from overusing your abilities, as I had personally experienced. Thankfully, when I arrived she was just out of breath, already back in her human form.

“I’m fine.. John…” She panted out, soaked from head to toe. I did not purposely pay attention to it, I swear, but her dress clinged to her body a lot more when it was wet, nearly having the same effect as a white shirt. Must not look, must not look… Okay, so I looked. Happy?

Yes.

Oh, nobody asked you, Malthan! Go back to your ogling!

Well, if you insist. The goddesses of beauty and breasts are looking for someone to judge. If you ask real nice, I might even give you a peek.

Stop! No, don’t! I am doing my best to avoid looking at the girls I already have around me. And I’m not doing very well with that either!

I did ask if you wanted advice, you know? But noo, you rejected it.

Who would want advice from the god of madness?! You’d just end up telling me to sleep with them both!

...What's your point?

...You were, weren’t you? Dammit, knew I shouldn’t have expected anything else from a god of madness..

I've got a bet running with the god of harems to see how long you last. He says you don't have what it takes to run a harem. Come on, don't you want to prove him wrong?

No, no I do not. I will take the advice of the wise elder and not attempt to take the harem route. At this point, I’m not even surprised that there is a god of harems.

Well... fine. At least you aren't one of those guys naturally surrounded by a harem but completely oblivious to it. Though your own rejection is annoying in its own way.

I’m not sure if that is a compliment or not. However, while I was chatting with Malthan, I forgot that my line of sight still led directly to Yin. Naturally, she did not know that the view was being covered with the blue screens of the god talking to me. I could see her cheeks redden as she spoke out softly. “John..?”

“Huh?” I blinked and looked at her, realizing that it must have seemed like I was staring.

“If you wanted to look…” I shall ignore the rest of that, as I quickly moved back towards the bridge. Everything was fine now, nothing to see here.

Hahaha! Man, I was wondering how long that'd take. Totally worth it. Now... where were we, ladies?