Magical Engineering

I woke up the next day without my usual sense of dread permeating my brain. It was a welcome change. From the lack of smells, it was possible I was even the first person awake. That meant it was a good time to go track down wherever Chip had slept last night and get an early start on my simulator plans. While I had no regrets at how we spent the day before I needed to get these runs done quickly, in case I needed any sort of extended recovery time. We may only have two floors remaining, but we were running out of time to complete them.

I found Chip asleep on a pile of children in the living room. Apparently, Glorp’s siblings hadn’t made it back to the bus after the party. Alex was asleep on the couch, a book resting on the floor nearby. Quietly whispering Chip’s name, I managed to get his attention without waking anyone up. He dashed across the room and hopped on my shoulder as we made our way back to the garage, stopping briefly in the kitchen for some leftovers. It was better to do this on a full stomach and to have some food sitting nearby waiting for me once I finished a run.

“So, how are you enjoying Earth so far? Making some friends?” I asked Chip, not expecting any sort of real answer. I somewhat missed the days in the Archives when I would wake up to him sleeping on my chest, but I knew he had needed to spend a lot of his time helping Timon keep up the mana reserves for the bus, not to mention he seemed to love the cats, so I wasn’t about to force him to spend the night with me in the garage. As expected, the only response I got from him was some chirps and stealing some of my breakfast.

“Glad you aren’t hating it here, and thanks for being nice to the cats. I’m sure John and Maud really appreciate it,” I said as I scratched him behind his ear, eliciting more happy chirping sounds. I finished up some breakfast and tossed a few more pieces to Chip before I felt ready to tackle the simulator again.

My confidence in what I could handle modifier-wise had held strong, even after a brief discussion with Elody about my thoughts on it the previous night. She agreed the soul ignition was more likely to help me avoid a backlash than it was to make it worse. My body was now channeling soul mana directly, which should, in theory, make the conditions of my initial soul separation much harder to recreate. I pulled up a chat window, hoping it wouldn’t wake Maud up. Was there a way I could send messages to Corey only? I’d need to look into that in the future.