Chapter 55

Tich noticed that I was silent while we waited for Abi to drop out of hyperspace. “What are you thinking about?”

“The crystals,” I answered. “My father didn’t send a fleet back because it would’ve taken too long to traverse the vast distance, but technology has come a long way since then. It should only take a modern fleet about two and a half to three months to get there. I’m thinking about having Xigios and the Indomitables make the trip, and then I will rendezvous with the fleet just outside of the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy. It should take us what, three weeks to get there, Abi?”

“Just over twenty days,” she replied.

“So twenty days there, a few days to check out the situation and recover the crystals, if possible, and twenty days back.”

Tich chuckled. “I think you’re getting a little ahead of yourself there. There is going to be a lot to do before now and then. It’s safe to say that you’ll have a lot of support when it becomes time.”

I nodded in thanks.

“Dropping out of hyperspace in five ... four ... three ... two ... one ... zero,” Abi said.

As soon as we dropped out of hyperspace the view of the area outside of the ship changed dramatically. Taking up a good thirty to forty percent of the total viewscreen was the nebula that Abi had told us about. It was a myriad of different colors, though red and purple dominated it. Along with the beautiful colors were hundreds of stars, some within the nebula itself and others many light-years behind it.

It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen, and Vixa seemed quite taken by it as well. She had had her eyes closed as Tich stroked her fur, though she opened them when everyone on the bridge went quiet. Even though everyone on the bridge, besides Vixa, was a Scyftan, only a few of them had seen a nebula before. Everyone’s eyes were glued to the phenomenon as we all slowly drifted through space.

The nebula didn’t seem to be moving closer or further away, and the only sign that we were moving was that stars were slowly moving away or towards us. It meant that the nebula was either incredibly big, or relatively close. Or perhaps both.

A small timer appeared on the viewscreen where it wouldn’t obstruct the nebula, showing the amount of time until maintenance would be completed. We would have two hours and six minutes to enjoy the majesty of the nebula before continuing our journey. Rather than take out my phone to take some pictures, I had Abi do it for me. She had hundreds of cameras located all around the ship to give us a panoramic view, so it was simple enough to have her set a good portion of them to record and take stills as we sailed by.

“You never get used to a sight like that,” Tich said softly. “It’s as if someone went around the universe using the remnants of planets, stars and other celestial bodies as paint and space as the canvas.”

It really seemed that way. In the back of my mind I knew it was just a collection of gases and dust that was being illuminated by the surrounding stars, but it was hard to imagine something like that being formed naturally. Hearing movement to my left, I looked over and saw my friends entering the bridge with their parents in tow.

“Oh, wow!” the twins mother, Johanna, exclaimed.

“C’mon Mom, you’re blocking the entrance,” Anja giggled.

“Oh, sorry!” she said, quickly moving further in so everyone else could enter.

“Impressive ship you have here, Jonathan,” Ben’s father, Michael said.

“That she is. I hope you all don’t mind standing, the bridge wasn’t designed to seat so many people.”

“It’ll be fine,” he replied. “We just wanted to get a look at the nebula and Ben said that this would be the best place to see it from. It looks like he was right.”

“Yeah, we started making our way to one of the observation decks but there were lines just to use the teleporters. That’s what took us this long to get here,” Ben explained.

“Well there is plenty of room. Just make sure not to press any buttons and you all can stay as long as you like,” I said.

I was taken up on my offer and we all stayed on the bridge chatting as we looked at the nebula. A few additional people showed up as well, and none of them left without snapping a few pictures or recording it on their phones so they could look upon it later. We did end up leaving the bridge before we jumped back into hyperspace, just so we would be able to beat the rush to the mess for dinner. We had taken a seat after loading our plates with food, just in time for the ship to vibrate slightly, signaling the jump into hyperspace.

“I hope everyone enjoyed the distraction, as short as it may have been,” Abi said, her voice coming over the intercoms again. “We’re over halfway to the Mezotis system and a little under halfway to Veria. We will arrive in the Mezotis system in five days, nine hours, two minutes and fifty-three seconds, or on September 5 at 04:07, ship time. I would suggest setting an alarm if you wish to view the planets as soon as we exit hyperspace. Thank you, and enjoy the rest of your trip!”

“Ugh, why can’t we arrive at a normal time?” Mason groused.

“We have that day off if that’s any consolation,” Ben said. “You can go back to sleep if you want.”

“And miss out on exploring the planets a bit while we wait for the dragons to finish unloading everything? You did bring the Grasshoppers, right?” Mason asked me.

I nodded as I finished chewing the food in my mouth and swallowed. “They wouldn’t fit inside of the ship, but we figured out a way to bring them along. They’re secured up on the dorsal hull, pretty much directly on top of the upper observation deck.”

“You’re talking about the shuttles, right?” Anja asked. “Why did you call them Grasshoppers?”

“It was Ben’s idea,” I replied. “The design is based on the Puddle Jumpers from Stargate, but the ones Abi made don’t travel through artificial wormholes. So far we’ve only been using them for short hops, like a grasshopper, so the name fits pretty well.”

“It does. I like it,” Sonja said.

“I imagine you’ll be flying around scanning as many animals as you can,” Ben said. “How did your learning go, by the way?”

“See for yourself,” I said, closing my eyes.

When I opened them again a few seconds later, one eye had a yellow iris with a large black pupil while the other had a lighter yellow iris and a vertical pupil, like a cat. It was a little disorienting for a second since I was receiving different information from each eye, but I quickly got used to it and was able to look around without any issue.

“That’s pretty cool. Is that an eagle and some type of cat?” he asked.

“Eagle and lynx,” I answered. “I can only change my eyes to those of a couple of different animals right now, but if I sat down for an hour or two then I could change my eyes to pretty much anything. Kiri did say that I haven’t scanned anything with really weird types of vision, but once I do I’ll have to sit down with her to learn a bit more. Some brain modification will need to be done so I’m actually able to process what I’m seeing.”

“So have you created any forms yet? Or did you just mess with your eyes, primarily?”

“She had me try out a few things, like swapping out my human arms for dragonkin arms. That required nothing more than resizing the arm so it would be the same size and messing with the veins and arteries a little bit. They didn’t quite line up properly, but I was able to re-route everything and attach them.”

“I also modified my human form to have dragon wings but it will be a while before I will actually be able to fly with them. Kiri had me modify my frame to be able to support them, and then ‘wire’ them up so I could control them. So now I’ve got three different human-hybrid forms. The first of many, I think.”

“What about a form with Scyftan fox tails?” Anja asked. “Then you could scan your surroundings without having to switch into the actual form.”

“It can definitely be done. The tails themselves are pretty easy, but I would probably have to modify my brain to be able to interpret the information I would get from the tails. It’s all done automatically when I shift into my Scyftan fox form, but it isn’t as easy when modifying a different form.”

“What about breathing fire while in your human form?” Ben asked. “I know you can’t do it now, but you might be able to with a slight modification.”

“I’m not sure about that one, actually. I’ll have to ask Kiri tomorrow. It would be pretty nice if I didn’t have to switch to my dragon or dragonkin form to be able to use my different breath weapons.”

“What about your telekinesis? How is that going?” Mason asked.

“I’m up to about twelve pounds now, which reminds me,” I replied, taking the Beacon out of my dimensional storage and then taking three items out of it. “I was looking for something heavier to lift than the ten pound orb I was working with, so I ended up going through my suit’s dimensional storage where these were found. We’ve got a rare chest piece, a rare ring, some Skill Gems to look at.”

“I’d forgotten as well. Do you want to do the chest piece and ring first, while I take a look to see what the Skill Gems are?” Ben asked.

“Sure,” I replied, tossing him the pouch containing the Skill Gems as I placed the other two items in the middle of the table. “Everyone take a look and let me know if you’re interested.”

Gurg’s Shinplate

+24 Strength, Agility or Intellect, whichever is highest.

+12 Constitution

+5% Physical Damage Reduction

+5% Magical Damage Reduction

Enchanted Manaband

Uncommon

+12 Intellect

+10 Constitution

Increases your base mana regeneration by 5 mp/s.

“I pass on the ring,” Mason said. “That chest piece though ... How am I going to roll without my phone?”

“I can add you to the roll, even without you having your phone on you,” I replied. “Anyone else passing on anything?”

“I pass on the chest piece,” Anja answered. “I’ve got a pretty good one right now.”

No one else spoke up, so four of us would be rolling on each item. I started with the chest piece first, adding Mason and then opening it up to everyone else. As soon as Ben and Sonja entered, I hit the button to roll. It ended up being not even close. I rolled a ninety-six while Mason, Ben and Sonja rolled at fifty-one, forty-eight and fifty, respectively.

“Grats, Jonathan!” Anja cheered.

“Thanks. Okay, the ring next and then we’ll get to the Skill Gems.”

I left Mason out when I restarted the roll, instead opening it up to everyone else immediately. This time it was a lot closer when I hit the button to roll. Ben and I weren’t even close to winning, but it was nearly as close as it gets for the twins.

“Here you go, Anja,” I said, sliding it over to her.

“Thank you,” she said, putting it into her dimensional storage.

I put my new chest piece back into the Beacon and then looked over to Ben. “Have you figured out what all of them are?”

“Just finished,” he answered. “We got two duplicates, which are Levitate which does exactly what it sounds like it does. Aside from those, the other nine are all different, and none of them are useless ones either. Well, one of them is useless right now, but it won’t be, eventually.”

“Why is it useless now but it won’t be later on?” Sonja asked.

“It’s Ravage, a Tier C skill that you use in conjunction with a pet. None of us has one right now, but when we do it will be a nice skill.”

“I think we hold off on rolling that one then. The first person to form a bond with a pet will get it, just so it doesn’t remain useless if the person that gets it doesn’t form a bond right away,” I said.

“That’s fine with me,” Sonja nodded.

Everyone else assented, so Ben put it back inside of the pouch and we moved onto the remaining ten Skill Gems. The first three were rather boring ones, being the two aforementioned Levitate Skill Gems, as well as a Water Walking Skill Gem. Ben and Anja claimed the two Levitate Skill Gems, while the Water Walking Skill Gem went to Mason.

The most exciting Skill Gem out of the bunch was probably the Minor Attributes perk which grants an additional Attribute Point per level, applying retroactively. Both Mason and I had the Tier A and Tier D versions, respectively, so we passed on it. It was a relatively close contest, with Anja rolling an eighty-eight while her sister rolled an eighty-one and Ben rolled a seventy.

Next up was the Minor Hemorrhage perk which allows each attack to apply a stacking bleed on the current enemy. It disappears if you switch from one enemy to another, but it allows some consistent damage to be done, even if the person with the perk is forced to back off. Anja had it already and Ben wasn’t interested, so it was down to three of us right away. It was my lucky day, it seemed, as I rolled twice as high as the next person for the win.

“Minor Multistrike is up next,” Ben said. “It grants a four percent chance to strike an enemy again whenever you deal damage. I don’t think it works with spells, so I’ll be passing on it.”

“I’ve got it already, so I pass as well,” Sonja said.

I looked over to Mason who just nodded, so I added him to the roll and opened it up so Anja could join. As soon as she did, I hit the button.

“Ooh, close one,” Anja said. “Congrats, Mace.”

“Thanks,” he said, receiving the Skill Gem from Ben.

“Okay, the last spells are probably not worth rolling on, because they line up decently with different members of the group,” Ben said, sliding two Skill Gems over to Sonja. “Those are Cyclone and Arcane Shot. The first one creates a vortex of air that deals damage over time, and can trap enemies inside, assuming you can keep up with the mana consumption. The second is one that deals magical damage based on a combination of your ranged damage and your intellect, scaling with the latter rather than the former.”

“This one is Aura of Frost, so I’ll be taking it, leaving this one for last,” he said, learning Aura of Frost as he picked up the last Skill Gem. “It’s Curse of Pain, a spell that does periodic damage as long as mana is spent to maintain it. The damage and mana cost scales with how long it is active, so on boss fights it can be particularly deadly, especially if it ends up being a long one. I figured I would leave this one up to you, Jonathan.”

“I’ll probably get more use out of it in the short term,” I said, holding my hand out for it. “Which brings up something else I need to say.”

I quickly learned the skill and then looked around the table to my friends. “So as much as I would love for us to stay at our current power level, we can’t. Not with everything that has happened and everything we have learned in the last two and a half weeks. The universe is larger than we had ever imagined and it isn’t a very safe place. There was already one assassination attempt and there will undoubtedly be more.”

“Our current power level isn’t a match for what is out there, so I’ll be purchasing a set of Skill Gems when we get to Veria, assuming they aren’t insanely expensive. If I can get a good price then I will get a set for each of us, but I need to pick one up for myself at a minimum. I need to ramp up the speed at which Abi is growing and make it much, much harder for people to kill me. Unfortunately that will end up making dungeons absolutely laughable for us, at least until we get to higher level dungeons when things start evening out a little bit.”

“Not true on how easy it will be,” Ben said. “There isn’t any restriction on what level you need to be to enter a dungeon, it’s just not a good idea to go into a dungeon that is much higher level than you are, unless you’ve got the perks that you’re talking about. Legendary Jack of All Trades effectively increases a person’s level by five times. So we’re level thirty-five now and could fight enemies at around level one hundred seventy-five. We wouldn’t be able to do it well until we got some better weapons, but we could do it.”

“We would also be much stronger than you would be if we had a set of perks,” Anja chimed in. “I think we would get an immediate six hundred percent boost, while you don’t even get half that right? Because of the way multiplicative stacking and your bond with Abi works.”

“You’re right,” I nodded. “I would only be getting a two hundred sixty-four percent boost to my stats, but that would increase by twelve percent every time Abi grows. The six hundred percent boost will happen for me once Abi reaches rank fifty, and then it will increase even further as she continues to grow.”

“You know, each of us getting a set of those perks does have one pretty damn nice upside,” Ben said. “We could go into a level one hundred dungeon which wouldn’t be very hard, and we could level up Siphoning Shot and Siphoning Strike without running into the same issue that we did last time. I think I’ll also pick up Siphoning Bolt and then all of us could take advantage of it.”

“Everyone but Anja, but that’s easy to rectify. You bring up a really good point though. I’m really surprised about the lack of pushback though,” I said.

“What do you mean? Everything I’ve heard sounds perfectly fine with me. It would’ve been nice if Ben shared that little tidbit about there not being anything stopping us from entering much higher level dungeons,” Mason said. “In all seriousness though, we kinda knew this was coming. I think the only reason that you weren’t advised to get them sooner is that there was a timetable to keep.”

I nodded. “I think adding the legendary versions of Jack of All Trades, Attributes and Intellect would increase my mana regeneration by almost eighty times. With me generating that much mana, it should take Abi less than seven hours to accumulate enough mana for her twenty-fourth growth. If I didn’t learn the perks then it would take about twenty days at my current regen. I’m not sure how that will change our return time table. I’ll have to talk to my parents about that.”

“We’re staying on Veria for about two weeks, right? I don’t think you’ll have any issue, especially because you’ll be able to sleep in your Seotross form on the way back. Abi would be about five days into a nine day growth cycle, so those four days needed will quickly triple or quadruple. You’ll also be able to leave Precognition active constantly because the mana regeneration reduction won’t have nearly as much of an impact.”

It was getting pretty hard to hear without shouting to each other, so I looked around and saw that the mess was completely packed and there were still people filing in. Many people had just grabbed plates and were standing along the edges of the room while they waited for tables to open up.

“You bring up some good points. We should probably get out of here, though. We’ve been hogging this table long enough as is,” I said, standing up and heading over to drop off my dishes.

When I looked back, I saw a big group of people swarming the table we had been seated at, almost like a pack of piranhas closing in on some food. Since my friends had tiny rooms that they had to share, I instead invited them over to my room which had plenty of room to spread out and relax. We ended up discussing our plans for our time on Veria while we watched TV. A few days were planned for us already, but we would have seven or eight days to ourselves.

It was well past midnight when my friends headed off to their own rooms, having put our heads together to find out what we wanted to do. We had decided right off the bat to divide our free time evenly, with half of our time dedicated to checking out Pygmaean dungeons and the other half dedicated to checking out what Veria, and the surrounding planets, had in store.

Veria happened to be the Pygmaean homeworld, but it was by no means the only habitable planet in the system. There was another planet and a small moon that had been terraformed about two millennia earlier. They all had their own attractions, but the moon was probably the most interesting of the three.

Alade was a moon that was in perpetual winter, which meant that it was a prime attraction for those who enjoyed winter sports. There were plenty of large frozen lakes, but those were primarily used for fishing rather than recreation. There was really no limit to the amount of stuff I could bring, so I ended up filling Abi’s dimensional storage with as much stuff as I could.