Author’s Corner

“How’ve you been, John?” One of the two robots in mass produced bodies walked up. Although the voice gave it away that he was my dad, both of them looked identical. Five foot ten, with a slender, genderless body, and a grey face capable of basic expressions.

“I’ve been good, for the most part. How about you?”

“Oh, you know, the usual. The world ended, so we became robots. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Now, leaving aside the slime girl that just ran off to play with a little kid, you going to do introductions?” He asked, giving what must have been a meaningful look at Sharon, Yin, Yang, and Celeste.

“Ah! Sorry, sorry.” I looked to the girls, and offered a weak smile. Well, no time like the present… “This is Celeste, my companion AI from NeoLife. She’s now a race called the Deus Ex.”

Celeste waved at the introduction, offering a wide grin to my parents. “Your son’s a real treat, you know that?” She snickered a bit when she added that comment, before letting me continue.

“These are Sharon and Yin, my… my girlfriends.” As I said that, the two girls in question stepped forward and grabbed my hands.

“Your… girlfriends.” This time it was the other robot, my mother, that spoke in a doubtful voice. “Our son, who rarely leaves the house, who earns his money playing video games for a living… has multiple girlfriends.” Although she said it like that, her voice quickly turned into one of amusement.

“And a slime girl daughter.” Celeste spoke up, as if offering helpful advice.

“A daughter, too?” They both asked in surprise, and I sent a mild glare to the Deus Ex. Real delicate, Celeste…

“By a technicality…” I said with a sigh, and then began explaining how I had created Yo with my mana, and a drop of my blood. Then, I took her with me until she evolved, and she ended up taking that kind of mindset.

“What about this one?” My dad asked, looking towards Yang. “Is she also a daughter?” There was a hint of amusement in his synthesized voice.

“Ah… no, that’s Yang. She can be considered as Yin’s sister…” And of course, that led to me having to explain why they were two completely different species, including the fact that Yin was really a bird that was simply capable of taking on a human shape.

“John…” My dad looked at me for a long moment. “Your life became really weird lately, didn’t it?”

“Yeah… you could say that. I think the god of madness had a say in it.”

No, this one is all you.

I blinked in surprise as I saw the message, but did not bring it up. Naturally, Celeste saw it through my eyes, and smirked in my direction. My dad just shook his head, letting out a robotic sigh. “Well… I guess we really can’t be too surprised at this point. The little queen already told us some of your adventures, and how you’ve been helping people. I guess it’s time for us to tell you a bit about what’s been going on since you left?” He looked over to my mom thoughtfully, who nodded her head.

“After you left, the race to create the first colony ships was started. Each ship was built to hold up to three million people, ninety percent of which would enter cryo-sleep to save resources during travel. Now… I’m guessing you saw how big the ship was in orbit when you arrived.” After I nodded my head, he continued. “From our projections, Earth’s resources can’t handle the creation of more than fifty of those ships. That’s taking into account metals respawning over time. After that point, the rest of the people on Earth, assuming there would be any left, would have nowhere to go, because the monsters would become too rampant to mine and build.”

I did some quick math with those numbers. The Earth’s population was a little over four billion before NeoLife, with the population becoming more manageable than in the past due to people being able to virtualize. But fifty ships, carrying three million each, that only totals up to a hundred and fifty million people. Not even ten percent of the world population would be able to get a ticket.

My dad seemed to notice the thoughts running through my head, because he nodded slightly. “I know, druids are able to store people in their groves, and that option was explored as well. There are only a few ways to guarantee yourself a place on a ship, and one of them is to be a druid with a grove capable of sustaining life. But even then, at most one in five people became a druid, and most groves can only hold around thirty people. With the best case scenario, that’s an extra eighteen million people on each ship. Realistically, about ten million.”

“Either way, most of the population has to be left behind. There’s just no way around it. We only got a free pass because we helped in the construction crews, and you were someone that helped out before you left by giving cloning technology and an accurate star map. When we heard the conditions for how to pick passengers, we found the Montgomery’s. We heard about how you helped little Tessa before, so we didn’t want that to go to waste. Thankfully, Beth hadn’t played NeoLife yet, so we urged her to do so, and become a druid.”

At this point, Tessa’s mom stepped forward and took over. She looked the same as before, and even still wore the bracelet I gave her to cultivate the Wind Affinity while Tessa was an elemental. She traced her fingers over the bracelet, showing a gentle smile. “Maybe because of this, I was easily able to become a druid, and bring my little girl away from that place. Thank you, John.” She gave a deep bow, her eyes starting to water before she stepped back.

“Ah.. no, it’s nothing.. I just wanted to help.” I said awkwardly, still not used to scenes like this.

“Well, anyways,” My dad continued with a chuckle. “Since the star map was made public, everyone knew that the closest two worlds to Earth were the elf planets and the halfling ones. Since we are closer in appearance to the elves, the first ship was scheduled to come here. By now, they should have also already arrived at the halfling planet.”

I nodded my head, looking curiously at my dad. “I heard that there were some… problems when the ship first arrived?”

At that, he chuckled awkwardly, looking away. “There may have been a bit of a measuring contest. The officials weren’t too happy to learn that they didn’t necessarily have the biggest stick. Apparently, there were some people, that we’re calling human supremacists, that believe it is our right to subdue other races because we had the benefit of the Seeds. They preach about a new empire for humanity built by the ‘unification’ of other races under our rule. And unfortunately… one of them was on our ship.”

“They saw a little ship in orbit, and had it destroyed as a show of power. But then, three battleships arrived with laser cannons aimed at us, and the threat of poisoning their atmosphere to selectively eliminate humans if we did not stand down.”

“And that’s why the ship is still in orbit, and most of the people haven’t come down yet.” I nodded in understanding. Though, I was a bit surprised that the elves had so many preparations. Not only had they adapted the technology from the orbital cannon to some of their battleships, but they also made preparations to make their planets uninhabitable to humans if they still dared to make a move. I could only attribute this to Maeve, who likely understood that not all humans would be helpful to their people.

“Exactly. Actually, there is no restriction on who can or can not come down to the planet. It’s just that most of them are too fearful of what the elves said to risk it. There are quite a few that were more than happy to come down. After all, unless a war breaks out, this could be one of our new homes in the near future.”

As he spoke, he seemed to remember something. “Ah, that’s right. There were even a few people that showed an interest in joining up with a traveling crew, though so far not many people have the skills to build a ship. Since we’ve gotten here, there was only one other ship that was completed and launched, but contact was lost with it soon after. People who were on the friends list of the ones that left said that they died, so they likely ran into a monster or something.”

I shivered as I remembered the abstracts. If the ship that launched from here was unlucky enough to run across a small patch of them, then it was no wonder that they didn’t survive. “Yeah… not exactly friendly out there in some areas, if you don’t know what to look for.”

Still, this meant it was possible that we would be obtaining a few human crew members! Or, we would at least be getting people that were originally human. What they were now was anyone’s guess.

All of a sudden, my dad looked over towards Sharon, seeming to be inspecting her. “So… back to you, John. Bird girls, slime girl, robot girl… is she evolved from something we should know about?”

Sharon grinned wickedly, and before I could assure my dad that she had started out as a pure bred, 100% human, I felt a surge of magic from her. Closing her eyes, a horn grew out of her head, with an all too familiar spiral shape to it. Her ears gradually shifted, moving to the top of her head and elongating, before her entire body began to sprout white fur.

How… what… why… Is everything I know a lie!?

Sharon looked at me, still grinning, and winked playfully. However, my dad let out a sigh of resignation. “And add a bunny girl to the list. John, is there something we should know about?”

“I.. I don’t even… Sharon?”

“Ah, don’t worry, Mr Hullet. I’m just your average, run of the mill elf.” She giggled lightly, bringing a paw up to her mouth.

“Well, pardon me, Sharon. But, you don’t really look like one right now.”

“Oh? Whatever could you mean?” Feigning ignorance, Sharon looked around, turning to look at herself, displaying a fluffy white tail that appeared when she transformed. However, soon she was turning back into an elf. Looking to me, I finally understood what was going on when she said “Surprise.”

There was only one surprise that I had been waiting to get from her… “Your new class ability?”

She nodded with her mischievous smile. “Beast possession. I can temporarily merge with any of my animal companions, and gain their abilities as they would be at my level.”

“That…” I thought about all of the different animals in her grove, all of which counted as her companions. “That is an overpowered ability.”

She raised an eyebrow at me accusingly. “Says the man that can copy any ability of a race he studies. At least I have to go all or nothing.”

“...Touche.”

Watching us, my dad decided now was a good time to clear his throat. Or he would have if he had an organic throat. “So… she really is just an elf?” When I nodded my head, he seemed a bit relieved at that. I swear, dad, I’m not just some pervert that likes monster girls.

“Anyways, like she said, I’m a shifter as well.” I wasn’t sure if I had told them about that before, but he only nodded in response. “And I can shapeshift other people as well. If you’d like, I can even make you human again, or a Deus Ex like Celeste.” I waved a hand towards the girl in question, who smiled. “Either way, you’d be able to gain abilities and levels again, so I’d strongly recommend it. I could even make you an elf if you wanted.”

My parents both seemed to be thinking about that, but it was my dad that answered first again. “Well, I’d like to be a psychic human again, to be honest. If I manage to keep my old psychic ability I had before, that would be best.”

I honestly didn’t know what to tell him about that. I do a lot of shapeshifting, and my Toybox power never goes away, but I’ve never been downloaded into an entirely new body to try it out with before! “I can’t make any promises about that, but I can turn you back into a psychic human and we can see what you get.”

I once again realized how important it was to have someone like Celeste around. Doing random experiments to try and confirm your psychic power could be disastrous. Imagine trying to tap into someone’s head with telepathy, only to crush their brains with telekinesis. Or trying to use farsight to project your vision across the room, only to teleport your eyes out of your head. That’s not even taking into account accidental discoveries by people who release their power in a fit of rage, and can destroy their surroundings.

My dad nodded at that, and then turned to my mom with a small smile on his robotic face. “What about you, Mary? Shade wasn’t an option, so you probably can’t turn back into your old NeoLife character…”