World Seed

Author’s Corner: Reading through the comments of the last chapter, the animal companion has been decided! Rejoice, for it is not a bunny!

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The process of growing my Earth Affinity was extremely slow, given that I had to pause every now and then to recover my mana. That’s not even taking into account the occasions when I lost focus and the connection faltered. Though, once it increased from 2% to 3%, I noticed it was slightly easier to maintain the link. If I had to guess, I’d be able to maintain it without worry about my mana costs at 5%, and be able to maintain it with little to no effort at 10%.

Still, just that 1% increase took three hours. I ended up staying there the entire night, focusing on that connection with earth mana. Every now and then, I would talk to my parents or Jacobs while waiting for my mana to recover, but for the most part that time was spent entirely focused. From 3% to 4% took another six hours, after which I was too tired to focus anymore and could only pass out on the ground.

When I awoke, I was too hungry to focus on cultivating mana right away. Remembering what had happened before, I decided to log off to eat. With my Seed opening, I noticed that it was no longer dark outside, meaning that I had played until morning. Of course, with the time dilation, that was still over two full days in the game.

Getting up, I did a quick set of stretches, because I had basically laid in a bed for the last ten hours. Surprisingly, my body wasn’t tense at all. I pretty much felt exactly as I had before logging out. “Damn, that game is almost too realistic…”

I shook my head, heading down to the kitchen. Even in the most vivid of VR games, there was always this feeling that let you know the world around you wasn’t real, no matter how much your mind tried to tell you it was. You could get stuck in an illusion of your real life and still easily know you were in the game. But with NeoLife, it was the opposite. Despite the bloodthirsty horned rabbits, the magic, and everything else pointing towards it being a fantasy, it felt real.

Making myself an omelette, I took the chance to enjoy a full breakfast for once. Food synthesizers were commonplace, where all you had to have was the ingredients and the recipe, and the machine would cook for you almost instantly. However, to me, food just always tasted better when it was made manually. Probably my mom’s influence, as she had always insisted we never use such devices except for emergencies. Such emergencies included Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other holidays when there were too many people coming over to properly cook for everyone.

Once I had eaten my fill, I cleaned my dishes and got onto the internet. I wasn’t in a hurry to get back into NeoLife right away, knowing that I’d spend hours just cultivating earth mana once I did so. Instead, I looked to see if there was any new information posted on the game. Since I managed to get to level 10 through luck, with my lack of skill, others should have easily surpassed me. The question was whether or not they had posted the information.

Looking through various forums, I ran a search for information related to Sub-Classes and deities. As expected, there wasn’t much information on either, at least not definitive. From the posts I found, there were at least dozens of different deities, and it was impossible to tell how they were assigned to people. Two people, both fighters wielding two-handed weapons, could have two completely different deities assigned to them.

As for Sub-Classes, from what I could piece together, a Sub-Class was a step below Advanced Classes. Basically, you choose your Sub-Class to gain the skills needed to unlock an Advanced Class. Like with regular classes, you could still gain the skills without taking the Sub-Class, but they were more difficult. The most common examples on the forums were different kinds of Mage Sub-Classes, such as Necromancers, Evokers, or Summoners. There wasn’t any information how to obtain a Sub-Class, just that when you met the requirements, you would get the option to get it, and you could only have one.

Shaking my head, I went back to my Seed to get back into the game. There was practically no information on Druids, since people preferred more tech-oriented classes in the game. So naturally, there was no information about what Sub-Class I needed to get the Xeno-Shifter Advanced Class, or how to obtain it. I could only obediently follow Jarl’s instructions. However, once I was back ingame, a window appeared in front of me that made my eye twitch reflexively.