The next six weeks were… how to put it gently… They were hell. My own personal, living hell. In these six weeks, I learned things about myself that I never knew. Things about myself that I never wanted to know.

For instance, I found that I am no longer capable of doing nothing. I mean, I am not physically capable of it. For years, I have either always had something to keep me busy, or I would quickly find something to do so. And I never questioned that! Keeping busy made me happy. But once I slowed down… To put it mildly, I was a wreck.

That is putting it very mildly...

Shut it, Malthan! Anyways, where was I? Oh yes… It wasn’t so bad the first couple of days. It actually felt rather nice to take a break and relax. But after that, I began to get twitchy, unable to stay alone in a room for very long. I found myself roaming the halls, talking with anyone that would listen just to have something to do. Repeatedly I tried to offer help with the upgrades, but due to a lack of training it that area I was turned down.

A few times, I sparred with Kismet, until he stopped accepting the matches. I mean, he is the most skilled shadow manipulator we have, but sparring loses its purpose when I can just shut him down with brute force at any time. Playing games with Tokemi helped for a while, but I kept trying to distract myself with mental exercises during it, so the games quickly became less fun.

Finally, I turned my desperation for activity towards the Gerin system. Over the course of six weeks, I managed to clear out eighteen dungeons, get rid of three world bosses on uninhabited planets or moons, and set up six anti-spawn barriers. Even that really only took five weeks, before Maeve reported that there was nothing left for me to help with.

“Oh come on, there has to be something.” I pleaded to the hologram of the High Queen, who sighed dramatically.

“Sorry, John. All of the dungeons that are left are the ones that we use to train our men. With your help, the last of the cities we had been working to protect now have the spawn barriers. Aside from that, there are no other boss monsters that we have detected in the system. There’s just nothing left for you to help with.” Maeve replied, shaking her head. This was not the first time that we had this conversation, but it was probably going to be the last. Before, she had to ask each of the other High Queens for jobs that they could give me, but now we had run out of people to call.

“Maybe I can scout out potential worlds in other systems, or enchant some items for the queens.” I paced back and forth, trying to come up with something to keep myself busy. I could already feel my palms starting to shake, my nerves kicking in.

“We’ve already got a couple of scouting ships patrolling nearby systems to look for suitable worlds. As for enchanted items… I appreciate the sentiment, John. I really do, but we have people working on that. The safety of the queens is naturally a high priority, so we have hundreds of elves devoted to exactly that task.”

I shook my head, trying to offer up an argument. “But--”

“John.” She spoke in a more stern tone. “You’ve done enough. Your ship should be ready in just a few days. After that, you can go back to the war. Our equipment is taken care of, but what about your crew? I’m sure some of them are lacking protective gear, and they’re going to need it on the front lines.” By the time she finished speaking, there was a knowing smile on her lips.

And that’s how it came to this, with me spending my last week of vacation pumping out magical weapons and armor. I finally had something to do with all of the bows, staves, and leather armors that Yang had been producing in her free time.

Of course, I still spent time with my wives, and Yo and Tokemi. But during those times I would be keeping my mind busy, planning out what enchantments I would make for each specific crewmember, and who I would give intelligent weapons to. Given my breakthrough in understanding sentience, I no longer required Celeste to risk one of her children in order to create an ego weapon, as I was able to create one on my own now.

Sadly, there were still times when I was left just sitting around. Either I was waiting for more items to be brought to me to enchant, or as was the case now… I ran out of crew members to make gear for. I had thought about using my free time to cultivate my elements these last six weeks, but that felt a bit redundant. After all, with the ring and staff combo, my elements were able to cultivate themselves. Any increase that would be gained by my own efforts would be negligible.

Are you sure you don’t have any quests I can do in the neighborhood? I asked my final hope, Malthan. As long as it didn’t take me out of the solar system, I was even willing to run errands for him for these last few hours until everything was completed.

For the Nth time, John, no! There aren’t any quests related to my domain that you could do within the Gerin system for the next three hours.

I couldn’t help but curse under my breath. When had I become so restless? Back on Earth, I spent entire days just lazing around, pretending the outside world didn’t exist. Now I could barely go a few hours without trying to find something to occupy my time.

“Uhm, about that…” Celeste spoke up inside my mind, quickly attracting my attention. However, before I could even think anything, she hastily added. “No, I don’t have anything I need your help with.”

“Okay… then what did you want to say?” I asked, lowering my head.

“Well, I think I know what caused this little… Can I call this a malfunction? I really want to call this a malfunction.”

Should I take offense to that? I feel like I should take offense to that!

Shut it, Malthan. “Okay… go ahead.” I urged her, happy to at least have a conversation of some importance to occupy myself.

“Well, you see…” She hesitated, as if trying to find some way to approach the topic. “I think it has to do with your little… accident a few years back on Hydra.”

Ohhh… Yeah, okay, that makes sense.

No it doesn’t! “What do you mean?”

I heard a sigh within my mind, before she continued. “When you were trapped for a hundred years within the time bubble. I think it might have had a lasting effect on you that we never noticed. A bit of trauma that didn’t heal.”

I knit my brows together as I thought back to that event. I had considered myself to be completely recovered from that. I mean, the only real change I felt for a while was how I would panic if the room was too still. But even that got better after a couple of years, thanks to Sharon and Yin and a bamboo fountain we put in the room. Though, thinking back to it now, it did make a sort of sense.

As far as I know, that incident was the last time I had ever really done nothing for such a long period. I would spend weeks just thinking to myself and trying to get a feeling for time mana. And when Celeste had made herself shut down for a while to pass the time, I had truly been alone in my thoughts.

“Okay… so, maybe that is the cause. Even if it is, it’s not like we can do anything about it, right?” I mean, apparently this has been going on for five whole years, and I had only really noticed it now.

“Well, we could put you through some therapy, and it might help in the long run. But, for the short term… No, I can’t think of anything that would help.”

I nodded slightly at Celeste’s words, taking a casual glance at the counter of my workstation to make sure that there wasn’t anything else I could enchant and hadn’t noticed. “And it’s not like it is exactly a bad thing, right? I mean, I am being productive. Nothing wrong with that.”

“Well… That’s not entirely true.” She said, and I could feel that she was shaking her head. “Yes, you are being very productive, but after a certain point that makes you neglect your relationships.”

Well, if that didn’t feel like a bucket of cold water being poured over me, I don’t know what would. And she did have a point, one I realized long ago. Because I kept so busy, I couldn’t spend as much time as I wanted with Sharon, or with Yin, or Tokemi, or anyone else. And now that I had all the time in the world to spend with them, I couldn’t take my mind off trying to find things to work on.

“Oh…” I said simply, lowering my head again. The only solace I could find was that they were so understanding. Now that I took the time to think about it, they had every reason to just drop me for all but ignoring them these few years. Maybe they understood the cause of this all along, and just didn’t want to bring up the past trauma?

“I don’t think they figured out what caused it, no.” Celeste said, shaking her head. “But they definitely noticed the change. And, while I can’t say that they enjoy it, this is one of the benefits of having two wives that also love each other.”

I nodded my head slightly at that. Could I make it up to them? And if so, how? This wasn’t something that I could just fix on a whim. Even Celeste said that there wasn’t a short term solution. Mulling over that thought, I decided to check my grove, seeing how much time was left before it went to the universe stage.

Time to completion: 00:09:02:38:12.21

Aside from the timer, the first thing I noticed was that the black hole had already swallowed the entirety of my grove. Even the void itself had been eaten up. All that was left now of my grove was that single black hole, packed dense with all of the combined mana and matter that had existed in my grove, as well as all of the mana that I had absorbed over the last several months.

Of course, this also meant that Sharon’s grove should be entirely gone now as well. And she probably doesn’t even have access to it anymore. For the next nine days, it would be a bit hard to consider her a druid, aside from her animal companions.

Malthan, are you sure that--

For the last, time, I’m sure! There is no quest that I can give you at this time! Stop asking! If it makes you feel any better, I can pull some strings and see if I can get you a bit of insider information, would that make you happy for the next few hours?!

...Maybe. After thinking that, I had to wait for a few minutes, tapping my foot against the floor rhythmically as I thought about what that meant. Perhaps it wasn’t really against the gods’ rules to share that information, but it was considered impolite to do so without consulting the god in charge of that domain?

Okay, finally. It cost me an extra seat at poker night, but I got the approval. You better be thankful for this. While I love playing strip poker with those beautiful goddesses, that doesn’t mean I want to invite some wrinkly old man to the game.

Yes, yes, I’m very sorry for your loss. I nodded my head repeatedly, trying to get him to spill the beans on what information he had for me.

Tsk. Anyways, I am not able to tell you much. But, I can say this. When your grove evolves, have Sharon close by. It won’t do any harm to her, and that way it will give both you and her the greatest benefits. There, happy?

I nodded my head again, actually very happy to hear this piece of news. The evolution of my grove had been a frequent thought for me over these last six weeks, as the deadline was constantly growing closer.

“So… how much time until the upgrades are done?” I asked, noticing that I had again run out of topics to keep me distracted.

“Haahh… Two more hours, John.” Celeste said with a small sigh.