World Seed

Author’s Corner: Yay! Finally hit 100 followers. This makes me a happy penguin. If I have the time today, I’ll type up an extra chapter to commemorate.

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You know, even without the game being as realistic as they are, the Seeds would still be a popular investment. If for no other reason than you can sleep in them, and only require a fifth of the sleep. Other games with a time dilation, you either sleep for the equivalent of eight real hours, or you can’t sleep in game at all.

When I woke up in the morning, I was feeling particularly refreshed, feeling a slight weight pinning down either of my arms. I’d like to say that I looked over to my sides and found beautiful women lying naked again me, but really it was just two annoying birds that refuse to leave me alone. Part of me had held some sliver of hope that they got bored of me and left in the night, but nope, still there.

Either way, they woke up as soon as I started sitting up. I didn’t bother to log out for breakfast this time, choosing just to satisfy myself with some stale bread. I was saving my home cooked meal today for lunch, which should occur around dinner time? It’s all wibbly wobbly, timey wimey. Anyways, back to my magic training, woohoo…

I can’t help but feel like I got ripped off again. While I’ve been here spending days cultivating earth mana, or learning how to change my skin tone, both my father and Jacobs have already passed me in levels again. My father had apparently decided to take up life as a rogue, to best use his psychic talents, well Jacobs naturally went for a mage. My mom also managed to get a class somehow, as a Shadow Stalker. Not sure if that meant she found civilization or just that she managed to train the skills on her own.

Now, since I gave Yin so much ‘attention’ yesterday with training, today I had promised to do so with Yang…

“Celeste… which one is Yang?” At my question, both birds perked up and squawked their usual declaration, while Celeste simply giggled, making an arrow to point to the one on my right shoulder. The one on my left shoulder, apparently Yin, looked down dejectedly at that while Yang happily jumped into my hand. Using her tail feathers to wrap around my arm, she ensured, much to my dismay, that she was not going anywhere.

Now, today I wanted to learn how to make wings, so first thing I did was place my other hand on Yang’s back, which she seemed to like a little too well. Then, using the age-old mana circuit technique, I began searching through her mana signature, focusing on her wings. Unlike ‘normal’ birds, lovebirds possess four wings of equal size. Two wings in the front and two in the back. As I discovered when I ‘found’ these two earlier, the front wings can be folded forward to hide the face as well as aid in flight.

Now, this was not the same at all as simply memorizing the mana fluctuations when an ability was used. It was closer to analyzing the mana signature of an herb, just on a far more complicated level. I could feel every organ, bone, and blood vessel as I attempted to focus my senses on her wings. Unlike Yin, she seemed all too pleased by the feeling of mana coursing through her, and relaxed into my hands.

After a while, I managed to isolate the mana pattern for her wings. Now the trouble was memorizing it. I mean, this was like memorizing a nerve map. If I got it wrong, then at best the wings would not work. At worst, the nerves might attach wrong and bring immense pain. I don’t like immense pain, I find I am allergic to it.

It would help if there was a noticeable pattern to the mana channels, so that I could simply memorize that, but unfortunately it was not the case. So, I spent nearly three hours just going over every detail of Yang’s wings before I was satisfied enough to try it on my own. Naturally, the first thing I did was remove my shirt, so that the wings would not rip through it. The two birds let out whistles after that, which I promptly ignored.

Closing my eyes, I kept the feeling I learned from Yang’s wings in my mind, and focused on my own back. Trying to match the placement, I then began emitting my mana out behind me in an attempt to match what I felt from her. There was an extremely uncomfortable feeling as bones grew out of my back, but I could slowly feel that it was working. Finally, something going right on the first try!

…

Yeah, right. Once I was done, I turned my head to look, and found that I could not see my supposed wings. Then I looked further down, and discovered that I did indeed have wings… I just hadn’t scaled them up to be my size. Sighing, I dismissed the change in my mana, letting it return to its normal flow, before I tried again.

This time, my goal was to copy the feeling, but make it BIGGER. Of course, bigger meant a much greater sense of discomfort, and I was prepared for that! I hope… Either way, after a few minutes of nervous procrastination, I got to work. Yup.. there’s the pain..

Unlike the minor uncomfortable feeling from before, this was full on nerve-wracking pain. I’d like to say I muscled through it and achieved perfect results like some online protagonist, but let’s be honest? Pain hurts! It is one of the best things in the world to break focus, and break it did. I had not managed to make my wings grow out by more than two inches before the pain was too much and I lost control of it, making the new wings vanish.

My third try, I managed to hold on until I was out four inches. Then, nine inches. On my fifth try, I got all the way to the halfway mark before the pain kicked in. Each time, I was able to better integrate it with my own mana signature to cause as little backlash as possible, until finally on my tenth try, I reached the end of the wings. For some reason, once I did so, I didn’t feel like I had to maintain it, rather I just needed to remember to undo it when I was ready.