*1346.01.07*

Avi stood up and stretched, enjoying the sensation so much that her muscles vibrated in pleasure.

OK, so maybe she was really starting to like having an organic body. Sure, there were inconveniences like stubbing one’s toe, or having to brush your hair, but it was a net positive in her books.

For one, she really enjoyed messing with Joram and his hormone-filled teenaged body. She was sure that he’d get back at her one day, though. But in the meantime, she was having a blast.

With a thought, she changed from her meditation clothes- a very comfortable set of silver silk robes- into her favoured Daisy-Dukes and tank top. She reserved the bikini top for water fights and messing with Joram.

Once changed, she made her way over to the vineyard, checking on the ripeness of the various vined fruits. She really didn’t need to when her many farming droids could do the same, but she found she enjoyed it after having spent almost a thousand years doing it.

She turned towards the fields that the refugees were using to grow food and shook her head. She’d offered to let them use her droids- referred to as golems for their sake- to help them with the workload, but they’d refused. Albeit politely. As much as having something to do helped a person get over trauma, she was sure that they could have done something a bit more… interesting. She would have said “productive”, but what they were doing was the very essence of that word.

No, she’d hoped that they’d pick up crafting or a trade or something. They’d need people to produce their own products, to keep themselves self-sufficient while Joram worked on reconnecting their old teleportation network. Or Kinkade. Or someone.

She was loath to pull Asura off her work, though. She felt that, ultimately, getting her project up and running would be a great boon for Joram’s clan and family.

Avi shrugged and moved on, needing to keep moving. She had more energy than she knew what to do with, so she jogged to Joram’s workshop, waving to the early risers as she went.

She didn’t bother knocking, but just walked right in when she got there. She was then treated to the sight of Joram laying face down on his desk that was now a mess of various books, scrolls, and jade slips.

“Teleportation arrays are hard,” he mumbled into his desk.

Avi smiled and decided to humour him.

“How so? You rewrote the portal for the Heavenly Archive easily enough,” she said, her voice only hinting at the amusement she felt.

Joram sat up and gave her a half-hearted glare.

“That’s because it was based on the enchanting principles that Altaea had taught me. Probably as another clue that she’d made the place,” he said, finishing that thought in a thoughtful tone. “Anyways, the teleportation network that the Clan used are array based, fundamentally different than enchanting.”

“OK?”

“Think of the difference between programming in visual basic and C#. They both use the same hardware, in this case mana, but go about it differently.”

“So, you learn another language. Not too hard given your increased memory and raw processing power,” she stated with a smile.

“Not true,” he said with a frown. “There’s a reason why ‘Array Maters’ spend centuries learning their craft, but most failing to reach the peak of that craft. It is complex.”

“Any worse than figuring out how to mesh Relativity and String Theory?”

Joram just gave her a flat look.

“OK, OK. I was just teasing anyway because you looked like you could use a pick me up,” she said, smiling the whole time.

Joram blushed a bit, turned away, and cleared his throat.

“On another note. Kinkade is just finishing up the first replicator prototype. He managed to figure out how to set up a central database that any replicator can connect to and retrieve any requested pattern.”

“Ooh, nice! I have a whole bookcase full of stuff I need him to [Delve] after you finish helping me,” she said, as she placed a hand on her chest, a coy smile slowly spreading across her face.

Joram’s face burst into flames faster than he could turn away to hide the sight. Avi burst into laughter, tears streaming down her face.

“I didn’t even need the bikini top this time!” She managed to wheeze out, earning her another glare.

“I think I’m busy. For the rest of the decade,” he said, not quite able to hide the pout in his voice.

Avi reigned in her laughter as she approached Joram, then draped an arm around his shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” she said, trying to make her tone as sincere as possible. “Between how fun it is to get a reaction from you,” which earned her another glare, “and my own adjusting to having a biological physiology, it is hard to resist getting those reactions from you.”

Joram peered at her from the corner of his eye before replying blandly.

“So what I’m taking away from what you just said is that you’re going through your own hormonal adjustments and need a way to vent.”

Avi’s mirth suddenly dried up, her eyes widening slightly, which Joram spotted.

A sly grin started to spread across his face, setting off her Spidey-senses. But before she could fully withdraw her arm, Joram caught it gently then used his other arm to scoop her up into a princess carry. Now, the shoe was on the other foot; her face lighting up like Rudolf’s nose.

“Come, let me help you with your frustrations,” he said, doing his best Antonio Banderas impersonation. And given just how talented he was at impersonating accents and voices, it was spot-on.

* * * * *

It was Joram’s turn to laugh until he cried.

Seeing Avi’s face as she thought he was taking her over to his bed was priceless. The look on her face when he dropped her into a tub of ice water that Kinkade had obligingly shifted into place for him was even better.

Even the sight of her sitting on a chair, a towel wrapped around her for warmth, her hair still plastered to her face, was great.

“Ah, the time-honoured tradition of cold water to cool someone down,” he finally said as his laughter settled down.

“Touché,” Avi said, teeth still chattering a bit.

“I hope that helps with your uncontrolled desires,” he said, still smiling.

Avi’s frosty glare could have coated everything in the room in a layer of ice.

“Yes, that should do.”

“Good,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “Now, what did you need help with?”

“I think I’ve got [Genesis] right.”

“Oh? You’re ready?” He asked, getting excited.

“Yeah, just need to try it out. I just wanted you there to make sure everything goes smoothly,” she said, grabbing another towel to dry her hair with.

“Yeah, I can do that,” he said, thinking for a second. “We’ll head over to the new cultivation caves attached to the Library.”

“Sounds good to me,” she said as she waved her hand, summoning a slab of purple jade with a meditation mat on it.

“That’s a lot of Sky Nether Jade,” he said, his eyebrow twitching. “Got any more?”

“You know you can check the storage area, right?”

He supposed that was true, and he also supposed that her snippy attitude should have been expected after her unexpected ice bath.

Avi waved her hand again, this time storing the slab of jade into her storage ring. Joram waited for her to stand up again before he placed a hand on her shoulder, shifting them to the cultivation caves he’d finished making last week.

Well, “cave” was a bit misleading in this case. Sure, the cultivation rooms were indeed deep inside of the mountain, but the similarity ended there.

He looked up at the high ceiling of the cavern he’d excavated, then around at the score of buildings found in the several hundred metre cavern. He’d been tempted to fall back on his old Minecraft ways and just go with a squarish design, but had shaken that urge off as a circular cavern was more aesthetically pleasing to him. Especially when the world wasn’t made up of 1m^3 blocks.

This time he’d done an ancient Greek theme. The largest building resembled the Parthenon, though without an alter. Instead of where it would normally be, a small stand was found there, where someone could share their insights into cultivation with anyone who might want to gather there to learn. The surrounding buildings, arrayed in a horseshoe with the Parthenon at the bottom of the “U” shape, were of slightly more practical design.

Each building actually had walls with four rooms each, with a common room in the middle for anyone wanting to entertain. The only other building that wasn’t for cultivation was a mess hall. It was as it sounded, a large eating area with a decent sized kitchen attached to it.

The only incongruency to the theme was the lighting. He hadn’t wanted to bother with enchantments or actual fire, so he’d just wired the place for electric lighting, though he’d been clever about keeping the bulbs as hidden as he could. Incidentally, the kitchen in the mess hall had all modern amenities in it. For power, well, he’d just placed some water turbines in the waterfall at the back of the cavern that also provided whoever would stay here with water.

He hadn’t bothered with plumbing though. People could cast [Cleanse] when they needed to.

Avi nodded appreciatively as he led them to the Parthenon-like building. She studied the friezes and various sculptures that decorated the structure. She paused in front of one, a funny look on her face.

“Is that… Goku?” She asked, pointing to a little boy fishing with… his tail.

“Haha, you caught me,” he said, grinning for all he was worth. “I figured that it was a bit thematically appropriate.”

“Anime is appropriate?” She asked dryly.

”Why not?” He asked with a shrug. “It’s the theme that’s important. They’re all martial artists, great warriors, sages, or cultivators,” he said, showing her many famous images that might have gotten him in trouble for copyright infringement back on Earth. Not all were from anime, though. She spotted many characters from his most beloved video games, as well as others from movies, and a few she suspected came from what he imagined certain characters in his favourite books to look like.

All told, she imagined that it was the single largest monument crated by an otaku.

“Joram?”

“Yes, Avi?”

“I love you,” she said, not a trace of sarcasm or irony to be found in her voice.

Joram looked over at her, noted her moist eyes, then nodded.

She gets it.

*A few minutes later*

Joram used [Modify Matter] to elongate Avi’s Sky Nether Jade to make it more comfortable to lay on. After a few adjustments, it formed to her body perfectly, providing the support one needed for their neck, back, and legs while resting prone for a prolonged period of time.

It also maximized the surface area for Avi, allowing for more contact. Meaning, the effects of the Sky Nether Jade were more pronounced.

They were in a secret chamber he’d installed under the far end of his faux-Parthenon. He had thought it might come in handy when someone was ready to make a particularly difficult breakthrough in their cultivation, or if they needed to create more High Elans. It had felt weird having his mother go through the transformation in his Realm.

“You’re sure you’re good?” Avi asked for the third time, suddenly nervous.

Joram just smiled at her and guided her down onto the bed of purple jade.

“Now, just close your eyes, the rest is up to me,” told her, a nostalgic expression showing on his face.

”Now, you’re sure you’ll have enough psionic energy to finish this?”

“I’m pretty sure that my psionic reserves are larger than even Altaea’s were when she did this for me,” he said calmly. “I even brought the Dust Crystals along to be sure I follow the procedure exactly how she laid it out for us.”

With that said, Joram placed the Dust Crystals around the jade bed, following the pattern laid out in the instructions. It was rather simple, actually.

Avi nodded, giving him the big kitty-cat eyes as she lay there, now garbed in her silver robes.

Joram: M3? I’ll have to put you on hold for a while. Kinkade? I’ll need you to keep an eye on things while I work.

Kinkade & M3: OK.

Joram smiled. As different as their personalities were, they were still all the same person, just different facets of the same gem, as it were.

“Now, close your eyes. Focus on inviting me into your Knowledge Sea, or your equivalent of my office space,” he said with a smile, which also produced a smile on Avi’s face.

Soon after she closed her eyes, Joram felt the invitation come, then allowed his consciousness to flow into her own. Then blinked at the similarity between her space and his old workshop.

The layout was the same, but the contents a bit different. Instead of workbenches with their various tools on the walls and racks nearby, there were workstations, replete with computers, monitors, printers, 3D printers, a CNC machine, and a pinball table.

He couldn’t help but smile.

He looked over to the room on the left and found that it contained shelving from floor to ceiling filled with digital media, from tv shows to movies to video games to music. It was packed. The room across from him, larger than even the main workspace, seemed to contain books, comics, and manga. Then he looked to his right and saw that it was an art studio combined with a music room.

That surprised him. Not that it should have really, because Altaea had loved music and creating art as much as he loved crafting.

And there, standing in the middle of the central room was Avi, looking nervous as could be. He understood that; he really did. For inviting someone to this place was to lay one’s soul bare to the guest. The core of who you were was in there for everyone to see, even the parts you wanted to hide.

Like a certain series involving a Grey billionaire sitting on the shelf over there.

He didn’t know when, or how or why, he’d picked up that series’ epub, but evidently he had.

Avi noticed where his eyes had gone and turned red a second later before Joram just waved it off.

“Everyone likes their own thing,” he said, a paragon of magnanimity.

Avi took that bone and ran with it.

“So, I’ll, ah, just sit here and chill,” she said, taking a seat at one of the desks.

“Well, if you could please manifest [Genesis], we’ll get started,” he said, expanding his senses as Avi nodded.

Then there it was. He watched as the psionic matrix formed and started drawing what it needed from the Astral Plane.

That was when he reached out with his senses, took hold of the Dust Crystals, and began to work.

It wasn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination. He first needed to slow the progress of [Genesis]’s matrix, supplying his own power to keep it stable.

The nest part was what he considered the trickiest part: touching her soul. Now, he was reasonably sure that Avi did indeed have a soul as she’d told him that she’d been made with a part of Altaea herself. So, that checked out.

It was the: “You’ll feel it once you find it” that really got him in the instructions. He wasn’t sure if Avi had read through them herself or not, but if she had…. Well, maybe he wasn’t very talented in that field….

He quickly discarded those thoughts and concentrated on “feeling” for that familiar presence.

*3 days later*

Joram was exhausted. He’d long since cosey’d up to Avi on the jade bed, hoping to keep up his psionic reserves. He’d also hoped that proximity might help him sense her soul, but that was an apparent dead end.

On the other hand, it was an extremely effective distraction.

So, the next thing he discovered was that if he manifested [Schism] again, it actually helped. The efficiency of thought-to-power point ratio had gone up. It took less psionic power to keep [Schism] going than it took for him to hold [Genesis] steady himself while distracted by searching for Avi’s soul.

He sighed.

The rest of what needed to be done had long been queued up and ready to deploy once he found her soul. That had actually been easier.

Joram turned his head and stared at Avi’s face, mere inches away from his. It was amazing how different someone looked when they slept. Well, not that she was actually sleeping, but in a deep meditative state that she couldn’t come out of until he finished up here.

He reached out and moved a hair out of her face, knowing that it would have driven him to distraction if that hair had been tickling him.

Then he blinked and just about kicked himself, remembering what Avi had told him: “I’m still part of you, you know”.

Joram closed his eyes then, retreating to his little “office”. Once there, he looked around. He didn’t know what he was searching for though. His gaze stopped on the chair Avi usually claimed while they visited there. So, he reached out his senses and examined it.

It was a chair. No traces of anything except his own mind.

He looked around some more, again uncertain. Had it just been a silly thought? But she had been so certain that he, in turn, was certain there was something there.

He sat down at his desk and absently booted up his laptop. Which really just amounted to it turning on because it wasn’t a real computer, but a mental construct representing his innate abilities. He glanced over the icons on his desktop, but didn’t see anything helpful. So, he then opened “My Computer”, clicked on the “C” drive, then started opening up various directories.

It didn’t take him long to find a folder called “Altaea Virtual Intelligence: A.V.I.” under his “Psicrystal” directory. Which, according to how Avi had explained her existence, made all sorts of sense.

He was about to click into the folder when a stray thought stopped him.

Would this amount to an invasion of privacy for Avi more profound than him rummaging around her Mind-Space workshop? Just him seeing that she had that edgy series on her bookshelf had embarrassed her incredibly. Would poking around this folder be even more intimate?

He sat there, his resolve wavering back and forth for a long time before he finally lifted his hand off the mouse and just sat there staring at the screen. This was exactly what he’d been looking for.

Joram then focussed on the folder, using every fiber of his being to feel for his connection to her very soul.

Then he had it.

It was such a marvelous experience that he almost lost his connection to her as his concentration wavered. But he firmed up, fixing his attention on her.

He didn’t know why, but he wasn’t surprised to see that her soul looked exactly like her, just a bit translucent. And it glowed slightly. Huh. She was even wearing the same clothes that her physical body was wearing.

From there, he took hold of her by the hands and guided her… to her body. Not that it wasn’t already there, but he somehow pulled her closer to the… surface? He was terrible at explaining this.

Suffice it to say, he managed to get her soul where he needed it to be to get started. Then he activated the queue of powers he’d set up.

He watched with his new “Spirit Vision” (better name pending*) as her spirit and physical body began to merge. He had no words to describe it beyond that woefully inadequate word: merge. But that’s what they did. And as her body and soul merged, he also released [Genesis] to complete its sequence.

It was fascinating watching her become gestalt while also sensing a small world being born in her soul.

And he felt like he’d been put through a press, so drained was he.

But he smiled. It was done. All that remained was for her being to finish stabilizing and her world to solidify.

He opened his eyes, looking for any outward physical manifestation of her changes, but couldn’t find any at that moment. Did she, too, have to have some sort of epiphany that unlocked her planar side like he’d needed? Or was that something she just needed to activate manually? Maybe he needed to do it?

He was pondering those questions and the mechanics of everything they’d just done when he noticed Avi’s eyes flutter, then open.

She stared up at the ceiling for a while, her forehead slightly wrinkled as she thought. It took a few minutes, but then she seemed to realize that he’d joined her on the jade bed and turned her head to regard him.

Their noses were practically touching as they lay there, starting into one another’s eyes for a few minutes.

He was loath to break the moment, but knew that they had work to do, so he finally spoke.

“How does it feel?” He asked, genuinely curious to know. It had taken him a while to fully adjust to that fundamental change to his being.

“I like the cuddles,” she said, a mischievous glint in her eyes.

He reached his hand up and flicked her in the forehead, causing her to wince in pain.

“Please be serious,” he said, turning away to hide his burning face and to separate himself from her before she realized what those words had done to him physically.

She didn’t say anything else, just smiled as she got up and stored the jade bed away into her own Realm once he’d also stood up.

“Back to work,” he said, taking her hand without looking her in the eye and shifted them back to his Realm.

* * * * *

Sulia was bored. There was only so much meditation one could do before they needed to be up and about.

Joram and Avi had left last week, saying something about needing to help with Avi’s “next evolution” or something ridiculous like that.

What she really worried about, though, was that he was off exploring his new teenaged body with Avi’s distinctly mature body.

It wasn’t odd for a cultivator to choose a much younger partner. Man or woman.

She knew that they’d known each other for much longer than Joram had been in the clan- a thousand years!-, but she still thought of him as her little boy, only eight years old, never mind how he looked.

Sulia sighed, trying to let all that out with the air in her lungs. It wouldn’t do her any good to worry about it. Joram would be how he’d be. She just hoped that he wouldn’t fool around and hurt Xixi in the process.

Which brought her back to the present.

In her musings, she’d made her way to one of the common rooms in the first castle Joram had built for the Clan’s refugees. There she found little Xixi playing with her sisters Elodea and Seldanna, as well as Zaleria, with Zanth helping out, Tillia’s parent supervising the whole thing. She smiled as she watched them play.

She wondered how long she’d have to wait once they were all grown up to see their children. Joram and Xixi were still engaged, and if she was reading things right, Xixi still very much wanted to be with Joram. She didn’t know where Zanth would land, but was resigned to him likely finding someone outside of their community. It was surprisingly hard to find like-minded people in a world that valued strength over most else.

Sure, the Waeryn Continent was more disposed to academic learning, but they still weaponized it. Who knew more spells, who could cast higher tier spells, and what not. There was also the divide between distinguished family lines and “commoners” which also bothered her. Even in the Clear Knowledge Clan there’d been some of that in the form of favouritism for those more closely related to the matriarchal line.

She shrugged. They now had the chance to really change things in the clan. How they operated, how they thought, their core philosophies; everything.

With that nice thought in mind, she made her way to her family.

* * * * *

Joram’s light-hearted feeling drained away as he sat beside his great-grandmother listening to the quiet beeps of the life support system she was attached to.

He could now sense her soul, and was relieved. Even if her body and mind were in tatters, her soul was OK. He didn’t know if that was a constant throughout the multiverse, souls being... resilient? He wasn’t experienced enough to even think of them as immortal, but he liked to think that.

He hadn’t noticed it at the time, but he had somehow advanced enough in his cultivation while helping Avi that he was about to breakthrough the bottleneck of the 4th Tier and ascend to the 5th Tier at any time. He’d wanted to see Grammy before he broke through, eager to see if his “Spirit Vision” (better name still pending!*) would give him any new insights into her condition.

He was glad that he’d come. He now knew that he wanted to use [True Resurrection] on her because [Astral Seed] would just replicate her body as it was at the time the Power was manifested. Maybe a new revision of that Power was in order.

He shook his head as he stood up and looked down on the woman he’d looked up to for most of his life. He bent over, kissed her on the forehead, then shifted back to the chamber under the faux-Parthenon…. Otaku-non?

Bah, I’m terrible with names, he thought as he deposited his own slab of Sky Nether Jade and shaped it to be more comfortable as he sat cross-legged on it and closed his eyes.