After waiting for a while, and deciding that Lex’s situation was stable, both Celeste and I were immediately relieved. Honestly, this whole thing had been one big gamble, so it would not have surprised me if everything blew up in my face. The theories behind it were all solid, and there was no real reason why I should have failed other than unknown variables. But, given past performance, unknown variables are a constant problem. “I need a vacation.” I muttered under my breath, glancing towards Celeste next to me. “Mind letting the girls all know that we’ll be heading down to the planet? It’ll give everyone some much needed time off the ship, and you already said why Lex should go down.” Celeste nodded with a faint smile. “Right. I’ll be right back.” To my surprise, she actually left the room to physically inform them. I had expected her to just call people on the comms while staying in the room. Or for her to even ask why I didn’t do just that. Really, it was just because I felt a bit too tense at the moment, and didn’t want to worry them unnecessarily. Well, it’s not like she isn’t always with me if need be, anyways. I thought to myself, not sure whether Celeste was currently paying attention to my thoughts. Looking to Lex, I decided to ask what had been on my mind since I identified him. “Lex, you listening?” It took a moment before the young voice replied back to me. “Yeah, just working on this mana thing. Is something wrong?” His voice seemed to panic at the last bit. “No, nothing like that. I just had to ask, do you know anything about your abilities? They aren’t quite what I originally put in that ring. And then there’s one that I don’t know anything about.” Again, I was met with silence for a brief period. “Well… If you mean the element ones, everything started to shift when you were giving me that little world. I don’t really know what happened, but I ended up with that.” “And the Elemental Integration?” That was the part I was most concerned with, as I couldn’t be certain where it had come from. “Shortly after you put me in the ring, this strange voice asked me to pick an upgrade. But, before I could choose one, you started giving me that world. When I checked again, I just… had it. Maybe… maybe you gave it to me by accident?” Yeah, right… Malthan! I called out in my mind. I know that nothing I had done should have given him an entirely new enchantment. Maybe modifying his previous enchantments to condense them, but not adding something new. And, since he didn’t select the option, that left only one choice.

ヾ(°∇°*) What’s up, my boy?!

I froze for a moment as I looked at the screen that appeared. Deep breaths… God of Chaos… expect random… Just an hour or so ago he had completely forgotten about me, to the point where he forgot to give me a system window, but now I get this? Explain the Elemental Integration thing… Please. I am still dealing with a being of unknowable power. Politeness would be wise, if a bit forced.

(ΦωΦ) Hmmm… nope! You could always buy that information from the temple, but I don’t feel like telling you right now!

Are you high on something right now? Even for Malthan, this was getting kind of ridiculous. Maybe he’s just having a random mood or something?

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) I could be high on a lot of things right now. I think. I’ve never really tried. Σ(‘◉⌓◉’) I should go try that! See you in a week or so!

What? Wait, no! Bad god, no running off to get high, I need you to explain this to me! I tried to get his attention, but it was no use. Is he seriously going to try for a week to get high?! The fuck is wrong with the God of Madness?! Oh… wait… I silently facepalmed, before turning back to Lex. “I’ll figure something out about that ability.” Not sure how, since my gold reserves went down a black hole… Wonder if Maeve would be willing to give me a loan? And wait… if Malthan is gone for a week, does that mean I won’t be getting any new system prompts for a week? How does this shit even work?! I knew that my item creation prompt was apparently something that he sent me, or else he purposely delayed it to prank me. Right now, I wasn’t sure which was the right answer. If it was the former, then I feel sorry for the gods that have to constantly send out those random information windows all the time. If it’s the latter… I really want a chance to beat Malthan up someday. Either way, there was not much I could do at this point. With a wave of my hand, I pulled Lex from the ground, causing the ring to fly over and land in my palm. “Alright… let’s get ready to head to the planet. It has been… too long since we had a proper downtime. One that did not result in a murderous rampage, at least.” Thankfully, there was no response from the ring, which I slipped on my finger. After clearing up the last few signs of the enchantment process that remained in the room, I went ahead and left to go see if Celeste had contacted the girls yet. I really did not want to go down in my clone this time, but given what happened last time, I couldn’t find a realistic reason not to. We may be on friendly territory now, but the Qu’Lopti world might as well be considered a planet I owned with how they treated me, yet I was nearly killed there. In this case, paranoia was a necessary caution. Walking through the ship, it did not take me very long before I came across Sharon and Yin, who seemed to be hurriedly heading towards my quarters. With a smile, I called out to them before they could run too far. “Hey, Celeste already got to you, I take it?” Yin nodded silently, while Sharon replied with a smile. “That’s right. The others are already getting ready. We were just going to grab some clothes to change into.” “You planning to use the clones?” I asked, curiously. The two girls looked at each other, exchanging a bitter smile. “I don’t want to… I mean, I trust the elves, but we already found out that the Empire can set up spies anywhere. For all we know, there might even be one in our crew. Because of that, Celeste has been setting up some extra security measures.” Sharon said, shaking her head and choosing not to elaborate further. While I was a bit concerned that there were extra security measures in place, Celeste spoke up in my mind to clarify things. “Sorry, everything’s been busy lately, so I forgot to tell you. I asked the girls not to say anything, in case of the worst case scenario. The only people that I can be absolutely sure about are you and Sharon, because of the special links between you and me, and the one between you and her. I imagine that it would be harder to impersonate someone like Yin, who is an ‘enlightened’ monster, but the possibility still exists.” That IS my wife you are talking about, you know? I said inwardly, earning my a small chuckle from Celeste. “I know. And, if nobody tries to sabotage the ship or its crew, none of the defenses will activate. I only wanted to be ready in case the worst happened.” I could understand that… though, I did think that our crew was safe. After all… we haven’t really had the chance to land for them to be abducted and replaced until now. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that it’d be easier to get to any of the High Queens than it would have been to get to our crew. “Well… who all is coming on our trip? You said the others were getting ready too, right?” Sharon nodded her head when I asked that. “Well, there’s Tessa and Tokemi that practically begged to join us when Celeste mentioned it. So Tessa’s mom is coming too. Aside from them, your parents wanted to stay on the ship for now. Apparently, your mom is working on a new technique at the moment. So, it’s just us, Yo, Yang, and Celeste.” I gave a brief nod when she said that, though I might have twitched slightly when she mentioned that my mom was working on yet another technique. If I didn’t have the cheat of overwhelming raw power with the elements, I’d… need a lot more techniques than I have. I considered stuffing my cheat items into my inventory, but that wouldn’t really solve anything. I still need to work on my techniques whether I have the items equipped or not. Thankfully, I did have a technique up my sleeves, assuming I was able to get an understanding on how consciousness worked with Celeste’s AI children. A self-sustaining army of elementals was… quite the appropriate ‘technique’ for me. Okay, so maybe I’ve given up on subtle control, alright? I’m about as subtle with my magic as a meteor impact, and I can accept that. Pulling myself out of my own self-deprecating thoughts, I looked to the girls, only to see that they had already left to go to my room and grab their clothes. “They walked off around the time you were thinking about nerfing yourself.” Celeste’s voice chimed in my mind, making me twitch slightly again. “What? Everyone else has all these awesome abilities… I’m a Xeno-Shifter druid, for crying out loud, and I hardly do anything related to my own class.” I cursed under my breath, turning around and walking towards the medbay. “Aside from shapeshifting into a combat form in almost every battle. And studying every offensive, defensive, support, or movement power organisms have that you encounter. Did you think that you would be constantly shapeshifting as a regular trait when you picked the class? If anything, none of what you have now would be possible if you didn’t first get the understandings of auras that you got because of that class.” Celeste spoke in a relatively harsher tone now, making me falter in my steps. “Yes, you use the elements to fight more than your own shifting. But, that cannot be considered a fault in your strategies. Rather, you have yet to encounter a creature that has abilities that would be more useful than your elements to copy. Don’t sell yourself short, John, you use your abilities decently. Maybe not to the best they could be, but you specialize in what you specialize in. You have great control over your shifting, so it’s okay for you to brute force the elements.” Her tone turned a bit more supportive towards the end, as if she was trying to console me after a strict lecture. I could only nod my head in response. I knew on some level that she was right. Though, I didn’t feel like I had really done the best I could with my shifting. Even among Sharon’s companions, there were many with interesting abilities. I had already copied most of them, but had yet to figure out how to combine them into a better battle form than the one I currently used for fights. “Oh, and one more thing.” Celeste began, and I let out a groan, thinking there was going to be a sequel to the rant. “Once your grove hits the next step, you will probably have a lot more opportunity for your shifting. I mean, it’s supposed to be its own universe, right? I imagine that includes natural life developing. If you can get enough time to pass in your grove, you might have hundreds, or even thousands of boss level monsters to study.” Strangely, that seemed to cheer me up. I wasn’t entirely sure what would happen when my grove evolved. However, judging purely by the requirements, some things could be determined. Like she said, there was a good chance that life would be able to develop in my grove. With my Time Affinity, I might be able to speed it up enough that monsters and magical beasts are abundant. At that time, I could get practically any ability I could imagine, as long as it existed somewhere in that universe. Of course, this all relied on me having the universe grove, and right now that was still quite a ways away. At this point, it was unclear whether or not I would even get to it before the final battle. I wanted to just take time off from the war to let my grove finish evolving, but leaving the New Human Empire to continue their plans that long would be the equivalent of surrendering the war to them altogether. I got off track again, didn’t I? I thought to myself as I arrived at the medbay, opening it to see the others already inside and waiting for me. The only ones not present being Sharon, Yin, and Celeste. “Well… I guess it’s time for a vacation, after all.”