“Ahhh hahaha haaa!” Was not what I expected to come from Invicta when I turned up the speed halfway into my fall.

“You ok up there? I asked when she seemed to come up for air, something I knew that she didn’t need to actually do which made it all the funnier.

“How can you move this fast without a massive stream of cr energy behind you?” She asked as the distance between us and the star quickly shrunk.

“Hmm? Oh, that. My alien cr taught me how to do that the last time I absorbed an upgraded cr.” I said as I suddenly realized that she might not know about my secret concerning wood and gold cr. She was part of my little group of AI now and seemed really loyal so I decided to tell her about how the ant in my dream gave me wood cr.

“You already told me that part... you just failed to mention that the entity had infected you with a self-spreading tiny version of itself.” She said before she got a little bit quiet.

“Is it like me?” She asked, her question surprising me yet again.

“What do you mean?” I asked as I caught a hint of emotion swirling around the edge of her smoky existence inside my head.

“Like... “ She said before she got silent again. She seemed to be worried about something so I just laid out how things were between me and my little alien ant creatures.

“Well, I wouldn’t say they were very much like you at all. I have managed to interact with them a few times. They aren’t very conversational to put it lightly… I think they might be originally from a sort of hive. They did manifest once when I got angry, that was a bit concerning. I ended up tearing an evil person’s harvester body apart when that happened.” I said as the memories surfaced with how I had lost control to my rage in that moment. I had wanted what had happened, it had felt good in those moments… yet a part of me was concerned with letting that happen again. I didn’t want to become a monster.

“So they are not like me at all?” She asked as a flow of relief and a feeling like sunlight swept over my head. I couldn’t help but laugh at her antics and how she worried for nothing.

“What?” She said as her personality switched to little shocks and sparkes when she detected that I was laughing at her.

That was the thing that I liked about Invicta. She didn’t seem to have a long game. I guessed it was all part of her having so much less code than the rest of the AI that I had met thus far. Invicta just seemed more simple and with fewer things that drove her to do different things, which in turn made her a pleasure to be around. I didn’t feel the need to try to worry if I could trust her, I just did. I could feel that these thoughts were making her blush and go all misty so I quickly focused on continuing my story about how my little ants had next absorbed gold cr.

“It was really cool to see how they cut apart segments of the new material and then diverged and took it over. The result of obtaining the gold density was a lot more power. Tela, they use something called cr propulsion. My alien cr calls that mode of moving “Jumping”.

I demonstrated by blasting a small pulse off to the side of my teardrop body.

I missed entering the sun entirely as the “Small pulse” sent me blasting sideways suddenly.

“What the heck was that?” I shouted into the void of space as I spun in place to center back on the surface of the sun again.

Came the reply from my alien cr.

“Yes, I know that! What I really mean is, why was it so crazy powerful?”

“So let me get this straight… gold improved your power and it increases the more um exclamation mark, um… hat?, asterisks, exclamation mark I have within a cr at the time?” I asked with steam escaping my ears as I tried to say their name.

“Ok, that makes more sense except for that last part. Thank you!” I responded to my alien cr before I thought to check in on Invicta. She seemed to be gripping onto my brain while I was conversing with it.

“Invicta, did you hear any of that?” I asked.

“Yes… it is so strange! Your brain hears and understands it but to me, it is all gobbledygook while it is being transmitted to you.”

“Is that all you got from it?” I asked.

“Also, whatever density of matter you obtain, the power output will increase until a limit is reached?”

“Yup, I got pretty much the same thing too,” I said as I jog sped us back towards the sun and where we had just expended the blast of energy at.

“Ooo that is pretty.” I heard Invicta say before I spotted something out of place as well. Since we were near the outer surface of the sun when I had tested my jumping ability it appeared that a sloth leech had created a solar flare to exit the mass of the sun to come up and feed on the energy that I had created.

“Huh? What was that?” I asked before the thing, a great big blue fire-tinted thing, physically arrested my movement. I hadn’t even been looking to fly through the solar flare created by the sloth leeches. It had swung quickly, way too quickly, into my path towards the sunspot I had planned on visiting first. I hit something soft and would have described it as though I splatted into something slimy as well if that had been possible. I could feel the leech, very tangible at this very large size. “Ohhhhh I am beginning to understand why that creature had grown every time it was eating sections of the Core,” I said to Invicta as the thing surrounding me began dragging me down towards the surface of the sun.

“Why is that?” She asked, running little scripts of data out of the corner of my eye. She was trying to be helpful while I was encountering and dealing with this thing… that was trying to eat us.

“Cr propulsion energy is food to these things,” I said as I felt and could observe my little teardrop being forced into the middle section of the large worm-like creature. We splashed into the surface of the sun a moment later.

“And it gives them physical properties…” I said in astonishment as I noted the flames of the sun rippling where the mutated sloth leech had impacted the plasma.

“Oh… that does make a lot of sense. The whole inner surface of the core is continually providing cr propulsion to keep the sun-centered in place. Not only that but any bots or cargo being moved would provide energy. Wait… we can see?” She nearly screamed into my ear when we broke through the layers of the blue dwarf.

I chuckled at this, knowing that it was an ability from my alien cr that wasn’t available to the Tela. “Yeah, my alien cr can see differently than normal. They hate and fear the void of space but can see through the fire and plasma of a star.”

Oddly enough, I wasn’t afraid at all for my safety. I think my dying several times inside Haoolla Defender had dampened that fear quite a bit. I had begun to feel the Alpha cube in a small corner of my mind just a little bit more over time. It was a reminder that as long as it existed, I would have a second chance.

The mutated sloth leech sank a great distance into the sun, probably expecting me to expend more delicious cr energy to escape its stomach’s hold. I couldn’t feel any damage happening to my gold cr or any increase in pressure that might harm me. It appeared that feeding this thing had simply manifested it and allowed it to grow at an incredible rate.

I had a little surprise in store for it, however, courtesy of my time getting eaten and killed in the game. I separated little segments off of my surface and flexed my newly formed Blade Barrier, letting them encircle me in a ball of deadly gold cr.

Ah, crap. - I managed to think as I realized what I had just done too late. My Blade Barrier spun up, all powered and moving with this strange energy that the gold held, chopping and dicing the massive leech around me to bits. Bits that didn’t die, they simply fed off of the new source of #!&^^ energy and grew, getting chopped up again, and growing again.

I turned off my Blade Barrier as fast as I could, which was entirely too late. I had created so many new leeches around me and fed them this new energy, allowing them to all grow and manifest as a blue fire slug roughly the size of a full-grown dog. There were some lucky ones the size of a horse sitting at the edge of where my Blade Barrier had managed to spin.

“This is so gross! Why are you making more of them?” Invicta asked.

“No reason, I just thought I needed a nice leech bath. You know… because getting one from the inside of one wasn’t good enough” I said sarcastically as I began edging slowly through the mass of bodies around me. Making sure to not let a peep of cr energy out. None of them stopped me, which I thought was very strange. They did seem to be trying to find me, seemingly by how they were moving in random directions. They seemed to not be able to see me like they had when I was returning to the sun. Could #!&^^ mutate them to be able to see? I didn’t know. It was the only thing that made sense however since I hadn’t been using cr propulsion when it swallowed me. Would suck to be anyone flying close to this star in the future though. - I thought as I finally managed to get far enough away from them to feel Invicta let out a sigh of relief.

Off in the distance, through the blue layers of the sun around us, I noted the multiple spires of extra dense matter that made up the sunspots of this blue dwarf. George had said that stars like these were not harvested for cr simply because of the fact that they were ancient and contained too many sunspots to mine cr safely. Too many deaths had occurred when miners had accidentally gotten too close to one of the jagged and unpredictable shapes below the surface layers. Tela cr miners couldn’t see once they entered the corona of the sun, simply having to use GPS navigation to display their depth and location.

This was not a problem for me as I could see everything clearly. Well… through a blue haze of the liquid solar matter around me. I could feel raw cr flowing around my teardrop shape but wasn’t interested in the mud density that my alien cr me informed of.

After a little while of moving through it, I didn’t even need my alien cr to tell me what it was… I could simply feel it against the surface of my cr body.

“So… you are sure this won't kill you?” Invicta asked as we neared a section of the sunspot that looked like the roots of a tree. “You know because we haven’t gotten to see if I would survive if you use your Alpha key.” She said, making me freeze in place.

Now I felt stupid. I had put her in possible danger back there with the mutated leeches and hadn’t stopped to think about her for a second.

“Aww, that is such a sweet thought,” I heard her soft wind-like voice in my ear before she chuckled a little bit, breaking the mood. “Tutor made me backup myself before heading out with you. I mean, yes I might lose the memories of this trip with you, which are priceless to me by the way! But I won't be gone gone.” She said as I began to understand that she was just messing with me, always the little sparkling storm.

“Ok, glad that I won't lose you. Let us just focus on the task at hand harvesting cr.” I said as I began roving around the branch-like sections that made up the sunspot. Testing the surfaces as I went. Yup, pure and raw gold cr.

“One last question and then I will let you harvest to your heart's content?” Invicta asked as I drew near to one of the thicker roots, preparing to let my alien cr flatten out and begin harvesting.

“Mmmm…. sure. Ask away.” I said.

“Is taking baths important to humans?”

“Yes, indeed. Why do you ask?” I asked.

“Ok, when we get back to the habitat I can give you a shower then.” She said in a cheery innocent voice.

My embarrassment knew no limits as my mind imagined what that would look like before realizing that she could see what was in my head. She laughed the entire time as I worked at letting my alien cr absorb and assimilate the total 12 million CR that they could expand into. Even my alien cr seemed to find my embarrassment funny for some reason.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up you two,” I said as I inspected my new amount of 15 million CR. I was becoming and growing into a more formidable size the more cr that I collected. Sure, I was only roughly the size of a toddler at the moment but it was a lot better than being a tiny barbie doll.

I directed my cr to begin to harvest more gold cr so that once my replication limit increased again, they could continually increase in size and begin plating the surface of my habitat.

Curious about something I separated 1 million CR from the main body of my mass and kept my mind within it. I wanted to use the other 14 million as I had done with my Blade Barrier, but this time I wanted to dedicate it to creating a remote-controlled miner to harvest and carry the raw gold cr up to my orbiting habitat while I went off and explored.

-Mental Designation accepted: Remote Miner-

Now it was my turn to laugh as I watched the 14 million CR cut a truly sizable chunk of gold cr out and speed off to rendezvous with my habitat once it came back around. I could feel my cr moving away from me and could mentally track it completely as if I had a monitor installed in my brain. Part of it was from my alien cr assimilating the technology of the Tela and the other part was from Invicta being as helpful as she could by displaying anything that I thought I might need to know in the corners of my vision. Yes, her teasing was something that I wasn’t used to, but I couldn’t disregard the awesome features she brought to light by being able to monitor my mind.

I smiled and noted that these thoughts made her happy. It made me wonder when she would switch and shock me again to get back at me pleasing her.

“Hey! You are not supposed to figure that out!” She said grumpily.

“Ah ah ah! You said that I could have silence while I mined and harvested.”

“But… but…”

“And since I am still mining and harvesting I expect you to keep your word,” I said with a big grin. “It doesn’t matter that I used my key to harvest for me while I wander around.” I finished with, hearing the sounds of thunder and lightning off in the distance as she was displeased with me.

I laughed as I explored the massive rootlike structure spearing upwards from the core of the star. “I am just teasing Invicta, you can speak as you like.” I relented, just having fun with her for making me so embarrassed earlier.

“Thanks. I really appreciate it Kevin, and that you wanted to take me with you.” She said softly after a little while.

“You're welcome. Thanks for wanting to come with me too. It is nice having you as company.” I said as we inspected the huge craggy structure. It felt like I was moving around branches the size of Jupiter. The scale was hard to compare when dealing with objects, suns, and other super immense solar bodies. Needless to say, I was really glad that this wasn’t a maze or I would have just given up with the distances involved.

Something had been bothering me when I had tested the density of this blue dwarf’s sunspot. It too had come away as raw gold cr. I wasn’t greedy, I knew that gold was amazingly powerful and dense, I just wanted to see if I could discover something new to harvest.

“Hey Invicta… how do the gloves of the Last Tunneler work?” I asked as I began to grow excited as an idea formed inside my head. I was distracted for a moment when I came around a side of the sunspot that was resting right at the edge of the star’s corona. Down a few layers into the intense heat of the sun, there was something round lodged inside a crack in one of the branches and above it, just outside of the soup of the sun there was a structure of sorts attached to the sunspot. “What is that?” I asked as I zoomed closer to the structure, intending to check out the odd sphere afterwards.

“Ooo it looks like a Leva nest!” Invicta replied as we drew nearer to the oddly built structure. It was the strangest nest I had ever seen. It looked like segments of an egg carton crafted out of a dark gel-like substance. The nest was broken apart as though something had tried to destroy it after the fact, great chunks were gone with jagged parts cut roughly in places.

“Wow. Usually, it is really hard to see these things since they are laid just under the fires of the sun to help their eggs obtain the most heat before they are hatched by the mother. Her mate eats the nest and reforms it for future nests.” She said as she caught my thoughts that were wondering why the next was in such bad condition.

“So… is that what I think it is then?” I asked as I looked down at the little object that seemed to have gotten away from the edge of the nest.