World Seed: Game Start (48 page)

Chapter 43: The
Beginning

After
my brave and heroic fight with the evil nature wyrm… okay, so
I was running like a scared puppy the entire time and only managed to
knock it out with a cheap shot that nearly fried my entire body, but
still. After my BRAVE and HEROIC fight, I decided not to stick around
and wait for the cheers of the audience, and left fashionably early.
Once again, I made sure that I was disguising myself with as much
plant mana as druid-ly possible to avoid the detection of the trees
or other monsters.

Every
now and then, I would hear a roar from the distance that reminded me
that I had made a very angry enemy on this planet, and would likely
be spending the rest of the time here running away from it. On the
bright side, forcing myself to absorb so much lightning at once
kicked my affinity up by an extra percentage, bringing it to 8%! But…
I’m not going to be throwing myself into lightning storms just
to raise my affinity like that.

After
flying until the sun finally decided to set, I found a nearby tree to
land on(one I made sure wouldn’t eat me if my mana control
slipped). Before doing anything else, I decided that I would first
fully charge my rifle. Given that the fight might have ended far
sooner if I could have just shot it to death, I no longer put off
charging my only long range weapon. Though, the charging process took
ages, even with my increased mana regeneration.

Three
hours later, and all my weapons were charged. Looking down to my
wrist, I figured now would be a safe time to call Celeste back, and
thus the metal bracelet appeared in my wrist again. Almost instantly,
the holographic woman appeared above the device. “Is it over?
Are you okay?” She quickly noticed that we were still in the
forest. “Did you manage to escape? You didn’t kill it,
did you?”

“
Yes,
yes, sort of, I wish…” I took my time, laughing as I
answered her questions in order. “Unfortunately, a condensed
lightning bolt in its face was not enough to kill it. I took off
while the trees were healing it. Willing to bet that it’s not
very happy with me right now.” As if on cue, there was a loud
roar in the distance, but I guessed that it was moving away from me
since it sounded a bit farther away than the last one.

Celeste
shuddered slightly at the roar, but then let out a relieved sigh.
Afterwards, she quickly looked up to me. “You gained a power
boost, didn’t you? Your mana feels stronger than before.”

I
nodded my head a bit. “Five levels, most I’ve ever gotten
at once. If I had to guess, that should have been at least a level
fifty monster, which would explain why a giant lightning bolt to the
face didn’t kill it.”

Celeste
nodded slightly, still looking slightly worried. “But, it’s
safe now, right?”

I
smiled to her. “Should be. But when we get out of this, I am
going to pass out for a week, I swear.”

She
giggled a bit at that. “Fine, fine, but not until you show me
your world!”

“
Deal.
Now, let’s see about doing some maintenance on these weapons.”
I pulled my three weapons out of my inventory, setting them on my
lap. “It would be good if I could fix them up a bit and
increase their performance. As I just learned, I am not at the level
yet where I can just rely purely on my magic.” As I spoke, I
began to work my Technomancy, searching out any flaws I could find in
the hardware.

“
Yeah…
Okay, I’ll help however I can!” The holographic woman
called out encouragingly, and we searched through the aura of the
first weapon, the beam saber. Now that I understood what the
principles behind the weapon were, it was much easier to look for the
faults. Before, it was just a matter of finding which parts were
unusable, now I could find which parts were not working as well as
they could.

For
instance, the magnetic field generator looked like it was only
operating at around half of its best, which made the blade take more
energy to maintain the same shape. It also gave it the possibility of
failing if energy ran low, and having the plasma explode outwards,
which might kill me as well as the enemy. Unfortunately, I didn’t
have any spare parts to fix it with, so I was at a bit of a loss. If
something were cracked, I could weld it together to fix it. But this
was corroded, likely by the same malfunction that had originally
damaged the energy core.

If
I was able to use metal mana, I could probably fix this… will
add it to my to-do list. I sighed, shaking my head slightly. After
that, I went through the code of the device, having Celeste help me
as I confirmed that none of it was corrupted. I figured that the code
of the weapons would be fine, because they still worked without
catastrophic failures, but always better to check first.

With
that done, I moved on to the pistol, and actually found a crack in
the casing of the energy core. Although it didn’t cause a
constant leak, it likely caused a bit of energy to be wasted after
every shot. Using my Technomancy, I caused the gun to fall to pieces,
with each piece hovering in the air in front of me. Then, I used a
high intensity flame from my fingers to seal the crack. After letting
it cool off, I then had the pieces reassemble themselves into a gun.
I was tempted to fire it to check how much the difference was, but
there was the chance that would attract more monsters.

Finally,
I went on to the rifle. Is there a rule saying that bigger weapons
have to get beaten up the most? There were five different cracks I
had to seal up in the rifle, including the magnetic accelerator, and
the energy core chamber. Aside from that, I noticed that the magnetic
accelerator had a damaged connection that I would need to fix later,
making it unable to propel the blasts as fast as it should. Maybe if
this thing had been working properly, I would have been able to knock
down that dragon in three shots. I sighed, shaking my head. After
fixing the cracks, I began an age old process of removing rust…
with citrus fruits. Retrieving three enrichment fruits from my grove,
I used my Plant Manipulation to remove their juice, and sprinkle it
over the metal. After letting it set for a bit, I turned my hand into
a roughly furred bear paw and brushed at the metal. While not an
entirely effective solution, it did help a little bit.

Repeating
this process with all of the weapons took more time than I care to
explain, but after I was done the sun had began to rise. The rust was
not entirely removed from any of the weapons, but I was starting to
run out of enrichment fruits, and did not trust any of the vegetation
here to be safe to eat. More likely, I’d try to pick a fruit,
and the tree would eat me instead.

I
decided that the best use of my time at this point would be to
continue cultivating. I had five affinities all stuck at 8%, and
wanted all of them to be at 10% before I started training the new
elements I wanted. And so far, the new elements I was wanting were
plasma, magnetism, and metal. I’m sure if I gave it long
enough, I’d find more elements that I really wanted to add to
the list.

I
could most certainly advance my individual elements more quickly if I
just focused on one or two at a time, but I wasn’t really in a
rush at this point. Having raised my level to twenty, I was now more
worried that my skills wouldn’t match up to my level. I didn’t
really know what the standard was for power, but I figured that by
level twenty I should probably have at least one combat oriented
skill at novice rank. While technically, I could use my knowledge of
runes to create spells of that level, I’m a druid not a mage. I
want to do druid things!

With
that in mind, I spent the next several hours practicing my
cultivation, not raising a single percent in any of my elements even
though I felt myself drawing closer. After a few hours, I felt a new
energy around me, something I had never felt before. Looking at my
inventory, I found the signal beacon and took it out. It seemed to be
radiating this energy while vibrating. “Looks like it’s
time to go.”

“
Finally!”
Celeste spoke up from my wrist. “We’ve been waiting
ages.”

I
smiled down to her, nodding my head slightly as the energy continued
to surround me. After a few moments, it began condensing into a
visible shroud of light, and the nearby plants apparently took notice
of the new mana. Before the light completely blocked out my view, I
saw branches and vines surging towards me. Thankfully, this seemed to
be a summoning spell, and the plants didn’t have time to skewer
me.

A
moment after I was completely shrouded in light, the light just as
quickly vanished. I now found myself sitting inside a large domed
building, atop a giant runic circle surrounded by several dozen
people. Some of them were nothing but corpses, with either slash
wounds or missing limbs, while others like myself were fully intact.
Most people had some form of injury, though.

Standing
around the circle were several people in mage robes. Each one was
holding a large gem similar to my staff’s mana gem(though
likely containing far more mana). A few had passed out, and were
being carried off by nearby personnel, while others simply walked off
to find somewhere to sit. Finally, there were people dressed in
official uniforms, mostly elves, that walked up to the group of
rescued people. “I’d like to have your attention,
everyone. We understand what has happened to the various ships you
were all riding on, and we apologize. We had no way of knowing that
the Klax would decide to take up such hostile actions.”

There
were various murmurs from the summoned crowd, as only a few agreed
with the representative. Obviously, nobody would be happy if they
were suddenly attacked, and this guy got saddled with the PR. Now
that we were here safely, though, I decided to dismiss my plant-like
angel wings. Almost instantly, I felt the result of going two days
without proper food. Although the mana had been enough to sustain me,
it had not filled my stomach.

“
Now,
I would appreciate it if you would all take a moment to speak with
the officers here to go over things. While we are aware of the
general situation, any details you can provide would help.” As
he said that, he waved towards a line of men in similar uniforms, who
stepped forward in unison. Shrugging, I moved up to my feet, one hand
on my stomach which was demanding food. “Now, I’m sure
all of you are worried, but we will be reimbursing you the cost of
your trips so that you may get food and rest until you are ready to
move on.”

Dad?
Why’s he messaging me? I shrugged my shoulders and answered the
call, speaking as quietly as possible. “Yes? What’s up,
pops?”

“
You
online right now?” His voice sounded a bit worried, catching me
by surprise.

“
Yeah,
why?”

“
You
should log off and check the news as soon as you can.” Again, I
was surprised by his statement. Part of me considered just logging
out right now, but falling over asleep in this situation would not be
the best thing in the world.