World Seed

Author’s Corner: Here we are then, at the top of the page. Yeah, that was pretty much all I had. Enjoy the chap!

I looked down to the bag of marbles in my hand, and debated asking the girls to help me test them. However, that thought was quickly dismissed, for several reasons. If these things had a function like grenades, then it would hurt them far too much to ask that. Worse, if they did something like absorbing souls, then even being in a clone body wouldn’t save them.

Why is this the only one that didn’t come with a user manual!? I sighed, shaking my head. I was told how to activate them, but not what they would do. Looking at the marbles, they all appeared varied in appearance, just like a normal marble collection.

It was Sharon’s voice that broke me out of my concentration. “Wasn’t there something you came here specifically to do?”

“Huh? Oh, right! The experiment!” I had almost completely forgotten that after the appearance of the evil jack in the box and Magical Girl Celeste.

Focusing ahead of me, I released some of my psychic energy. Since I had not been using it with the fight just now, it was already recovered from bringing the girls in here. However, before I was willing to form it into a portal, I quickly made another batch of pills inside my grove. “I need to get a pill bottle one of these days…” I looked down into my hand at the twenty pills resting there.

Anyways, no distractions! I began gathering my energy to a single point in front of me, wanting to start with a small portal no bigger than my fist. Given how much effort it took to make the connection to the Toy Chest, I didn’t want to risk going all out and killing myself by making a portal too large.

To my surprise, the portal established itself fairly easily, no more difficult than the one we had used to come here. I was even more surprised to see a light pouring through the small portal from the other side. “Okay… that was easy… now to see where it leads…” I said as I gradually began to expand the portal. As soon as the pain in my head began to flare up, I tossed one of the pills into my mouth, grumbling because of how many I had already taken in one day.

Once the portal was opened far enough to see what was on the other side, we all looked anxiously in, hoping to see some strange new world. Maybe one inhabited by living toys, given the theme of the power. However… what we saw was the medbay of the Ariadne, precisely where the portal had been that brought us here.

Looking back, I had never even noticed that the other portal vanished when I created this one, since we had moved further away from it during the fight. “So… I guess that means no third layer…?”

“Well… maybe. There’s still one more thing we can do.” Celeste said, having thought of something.

“What’s that?” I looked at her curiously, sincerely wanting to know what else there was that could make the Toybox power more interesting.

“We could always just ask your parents. They still have access to the future, so can’t they just log in, or have one of their friends log in and look up the information about this particular power?”

...Wait… you mean all this time, all I had to do was phone my parents, and ask them to look it up?! How come we never thought of that during the last six months?! Sharon simply tilted her head back and laughed at the simplicity of it, while I sulked over the several months of trying to self-discover cool things about the Toybox.

Opening up my friends list, I wasn’t surprised to say that Jacobs was not registered as available. Either he downloaded into a new robot body and was killed, or he is still in NeoLife. Most likely the latter. I decided to call my dad, since he was the one that had previously been a psychic human. He was more likely to have contacts that could look up the information we needed.

“Hello there, boy!” He said in a rather energetic, albeit digitized, voice. “And what is the reason for this call, hmm? Decided to check up on your old man?”

Not really… I thought to myself. Usually, when I wanted to call to check in, I would do a group call with both him and my mom. “Not this time. I need you to look something up for me, in NeoLife, if at all possible.”

“Hmm.. Your capsule won’t recognize us as owners, so we’d have to find a previously unused one, which is rather hard these days. How about this, you tell me what you need looked up, and I’ll pass it to some online friends.”

“That works too.” It was the Plan B already, so I easily accepted that. “I need research done on a certain psychic power, known as Toybox. If possible, research on another one called Wild Voice would be appreciated as well.”

“Toybox and Wild Voice. Got it. Give me a little bit, and I’ll call you back.” After he said that, he disconnected the call, likely moving to contact his other friend.

Looking at the open portal to the medbay, I just decided to sit on the ground. “He’ll call me back. And since it takes a few hours for me to walk through that… I think I’ll wait.” It was already getting a bit late. Aside from Celeste, there wouldn’t really be any harm in leaving these bodies in the Toy Chest and simply logging out. However, Celeste would need a way out, meaning that we’d need to make the trip anyways. “Or…”

I disconnected from my clone body, and sat up in the medbay. Looking at the portal across the room, I saw the understanding expressions on their faces. Well, on Sharon’s and Celeste’s. It’s really hard to tell the expression of Yin when she’s in her bird form. The same as when I pulled them into the Toy Chest, I simply stuck my hand in the portal and had them grab on while I transferred them to my grove.

Once transferred over, I then pulled them back out of my grove on the proper side. “There, that takes care of that.” Now, the only body left in the Toy Chest was my clone. Really, I could have just pulled my clone out too, but this way I won’t have to go through all that trouble again if I want back in the Toy Chest. I’ll just need to open a portal and log in. Assuming no monsters spawn and kill my body before then. But if the Toy Chest appeared a long time ago, such as when mana spread, and only that one monster existed in there until now, it will probably be a little while before another spawns.

While I was waiting for the call from my dad, the three girls decided it’d be best to go get a shower. Unsurprisingly, it took a little over an hour before I got the call back from him.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.