World Seed_Expansion

by Justin Miller

  “And meet a naked plant lady. But still, awfully big coincidence. But, if this is indeed the same planet, then we should be halfway between the elven homeworld and the Klax, correct?”

  She nodded her head slightly. “That’s right. They haven’t been one of the nearest races to us yet, so I haven’t brought them up. But yeah, they’re about half a year away from this planet.”

  “We won’t be going there anyways.” I shook my head. It wasn’t just because the Klax were a warmongering species, or that they literally bled acid and looked like a monster straight out of a horror movie franchise. No, why would you think that? It’s because we don’t have a reliable means of communication with them. Since they speak in clicking tones, only Celeste would be able to carry on a conversation with them.

  Hearing my reasoning mentally, Celeste put on a knowing smile. “Very well, Captain. Is there anything else you need before I return to my duties?”

  “No, that’ll be all.” I said, before remembering something “Wait, no. I still need you here for a minute. Some research I’ve been meaning to conduct.”

  “On Glenda, right?”

  “....Glenda?”

  “My G-series modular cannon. I named her Glenda.” Celeste smiled brightly, skipping over to me and showing me the thick metal bracer.

  “Yes…. On Glenda. Unless you’ve conducted your own tests?” I looked up at the Deus Ex, who looked away innocently. With a reluctant sigh, I shook my head and asked. “What did you find?”

  “A soul.” She said, starting to show some surprise as we got onto this subject. “Using your Soul Arts, I found that Glenda had a soul. Not only that, all of her enchantments seemed to merge together into one. It was so cool!”

  “And did you get any ideas on how to make our own ‘soul weapon’?”

  Celeste furrowed her brows in thought again, and then gave a slight nod. “If we give an intelligence enchantment to an item, it should be capable of holding a soul. Not an intelligence boost, but an actual intelligence. Take a look, you’ll see what I mean.” She said as she held her wrist out again.

  Nodding, I extended my Mana Sense to observe the cannon in its inactive form. “Her name is Glenda.” Celeste corrected my thoughts. Sorry, Glenda’s state. Like she said, there were various enchantments, but they seemed to be all mixed together. And there was one part of the aura that seemed to be the center of everything else, and was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Well… not quite anything, but I’ve never seen it in an aura before. It looks like… “It looks like a neural map, right? I think this is the basis of her intelligence. Without this, it would be meaningless to give an item a soul.”

  I glanced up at her suspiciously after she said that, and she again looked away before admitting something else. “I kinda already tried. I had Yang make me a bone dagger, and enchanted it with a fire spell. Then, I tried adding a soul to it. The soul went in, but nothing changed. The aura grew stronger after killing monsters with it, so it was getting some experience, but it wasn’t showing any signs of growth like Glenda does. When I kill enough creatures with Glenda, she has the ability to make new effects based on her enchantments. An intelligence enchantment is probably needed for that.”

  I really didn’t know what to say next, so only gave a defeated sigh. “You know, I was really looking forward to doing that research myself…”

  Celeste giggled lightly, but shook her head. “Nope. You were too down lately to do it. If I just waited for you, I didn’t know how long it’d take. And I was really curious. So I checked it out on my own. And before you ask, no I don’t know how to do the intelligence enchantment. I’ve got some ideas, but…”

  “The simplest would be either to create an AI and convert it into a magical formula, or to write an artificial intelligence in runes, right?” I asked, and she nodded. “Either one of those would be hard, but the last one would require an insane amount of mana to activate. Easily the tens of thousands.”

  “Right. I’ve already started work compiling some basic AIs on my terminal. Keeping them entirely separated from the network as a safety precaution, don’t even have the terminal itself connected to the ship’s systems. They are basic, low level learning AIs. Should be around the same level as the one you had in your house back on Earth. The problem is converting them to an enchantment.”

  I nodded my head at that, starting to think on it. “We’ll come up with something, I’m sure.” I reached down and picked up my adorable little two headed dog and put him in my lap. Good boy, Chrome. Good boy. “Is it just me, or are we actively trying to break the system?”

  Celeste grinned slightly at that remark. “Well, it’s just payback. The system did try to break us first, right?”

  Chapter 41 - Children of Science and Magic

  For the record, I have the best girlfriends in the world. Just wanted to point that out there. When I was recovering from my post-traumatic stress, they were there for me. If I needed anything, they would help. And after it was all over, they gave me another gift.

  “Well… you were in that bubble a long time, right?” Sharon said with a slightly mischievous smile. After I nodded, she continued. “So, you must have missed a lot of birthdays.” Another nod, confused as to where she was going with this. “By Celeste’s count, we have a hundred and sixty seven birthdays to catch up on.”

  “Where are you going with this?” I asked, still confused.

  “Well… Yin and I talked about it, and this is going to be a fairly long trip. Plus, we have to make the trip back when we’re done. So, for the next hundred and sixty seven days, you are the birthday boy.” She giggled lightly, while Yin simply nodded, determination showing in her eyes.

  “Birthday boy…” Yin spoke up, moving to hug me from behind, pressing her weight against my back.

  Okay, I was really liking this so far. “Hope you don’t mean for me to have half a year’s worth of birthday cake.” I smiled to Sharon.

  “No, but you can get your presents.” She added a wink at the end of her words, and thus started my very enjoyable trip to the world of the Ha’vosh. When the girls weren’t occupying my time, I would experiment with my enchanting.

  In all honesty, there was a very easy way to convert the AIs to a magical formation. It just hasn’t been invented yet. I thought back to the Soft Stick that I had seen in NeoLife, which was capable of taking a program from a computer and convert it to a magic formation. If I could create something like that, then transferring an AI to an enchantment would be fairly simple.

  Unfortunately… I had no idea how to do it. After thinking about it for a while, Celeste chimed into my head. “I can make a soft stick, if I get the materials. The problem is that it requires ten grams of mithril. The rest of the materials we have on hand.”

  Okay… mithril. Didn’t I have some of that in my grove? I recalled back to when I was on the elven worlds, and I had noted some mithril in my grove. That was over six months ago, so the amount of mithril should have increased since then.

  Diving into my grove had become more of a second nature to me these days, and I quickly found that platinum vein. As I had expected, the previous five grams of mithril had turned into five ounces. Even if we wanted to create ten soft sticks, this would be plenty.

  Pulling out a small amount of the mithril, I placed it above ground. I was surprised to find the long-forgotten pile of gear on the second grove planetoid. These were all items I had gotten nearly around a year ago fighting Legion. Some of them I had never even-- Is that a soft stick…?

  Seriously, I felt like sulking when I learned there was already a soft stick in the pile of tech that I had randomly deposited there. There were a couple of force field vests, plasma guns, beam swords, even a true laser pistol. I felt a bit depressed when I thought about how long this gear has been in here, completely forgotten.

  Anyways, I pulled the soft stick out with the raw mithril. I didn’t even feel up to refining it at this point. “Eh? You already had one… Why didn’t you say
so?” Celeste delivered the final, critical blow to my self-esteem.

  “Let’s just do this… What item do you want to practice on?”

  “Hmm…” The AI thought about it for five whole seconds. I know, right? Five seconds can take forever! “The magical girl wand! I want to see what an item bestowed by the gods would be like if we granted it a soul.”

  “Okay… but does it have any attack abilities? Well… it might not matter so long as you have it equipped when you fight monsters. I guess it will be interesting.” I walked off to head for Celeste’s room, where she said she had the AIs stored on a terminal. This was actually my first time going to her room since we arrived on the Ariadne.

  When I arrived at her room… to say I was surprised by the scenery would be an understatement. There were books everywhere. She had a rustic looking wooden shelf full of books, and there was another pile next to the shelves. Off in the corner by the bed were two computers. Each had a sign clearly above them, one saying ‘online’ and the other ‘offline’. Guess she wanted to make sure she never mixed them up?

  “What rainforest died for you to decorate your room…?” I asked, still a bit in awe over the books. She must have made a printing press or something for her to print those.

  “Hmm? Oh, Sharon was sweet enough to donate a few trees for me. Now, let’s get started!” The Deus Ex jumped up from her pink bed and walked over towards me. She was wearing a pair of blue pajamas with stars all over them, an outfit I also hadn’t seen before. “First, we need to transfer one of the AI programs over to the bracelet. I can handle that part. After that, you can take the soft stick and copy the program, then use it for an enchantment.”

  After getting my approval for the plan, she skipped over to her offline terminal, and talked to it. “Hey guys~! No time to play right now. Can Chelsea come out for a minute?”

  I was surprised to see her talking to her computer rather than going through files, but what surprised me more was the response. “Aww… but we never get to play anymore.” The voice sounded like a young girl, no older than ten years old.

  “That’s alright, Chelsea. I’m going to move you to a much better home, and then we can play a lot. Deal?” Celeste talked to her in a sweet tone.

  “Alright, mommy!” My brain kind of broke there for a second, but I guess it makes sense. These AI would essentially be Celeste’s children.

  “Good girl. Now, sweety, can you open up your core files for mommy? I need to transfer you real fast.” As she spoke this time, her wrist opened up, and a long wire slowly came out. She then plugged the end of the wire into her computer.

  “O-okay mommy. Here I go.” There was a flash on the screen, but it seemed like Celeste was downloading the files. My head felt fuzzy for just a second as the program was transferred over the mental link, then converted for the companion bracelet.

  After she unplugged herself from the computer, Celeste looked at me with a slight smile. “It’s a waste to just let them wait until they are needed to be activated, so I made a few of them at once and activated them. Now I go in and play games with them every now and then, or read them stories. Chelsea’s a sweet girl, evolved into a personality of an innocent little daughter. Perfect for the magical girl wand, right?”

  “Huh…” I honestly never expected any of that. I figured that Celeste would make a few variations of a default AI program and leave them inactive. But, turning them on to interact with each other would eventually give rise to individual personalities. Even if the programs themselves aren’t more advanced than what I used for my home AI, the personalities would be more varied.

  Anyways! Holding up the soft stick to the bracelet, I copied the program over. We now had the artificial intelligence in a magical form. Celeste pulled out the magical girl wand and handed it over to me. Looking at her, I spoke up. “We’ll need to give it a communication enchantment if you still want to be able to talk to her.”

  Celeste nodded her head slightly. “I can take care of that. I’ll be leveling her up after we’re done, since I have a lot of buffer saved up from the dungeon runs. I’ll transfer some over to her.”

  I agreed to that, and looked down at the soft stick in my hands. Using my Aura Sight, I could clearly see the aura of magic on it that contained Chelsea’s program. Now I just needed to pull it out carefully, and combine it with the aura of the magical girl wand. Looking up at Celeste, I knew that I had to take this very carefully. After all, this was essentially her daughter, and if I messed it up she would be lost. I didn’t know if Celeste kept a backup of her just in case, but I couldn’t really risk it.

  Using the Metal Manipulation, I made a circular indentation in the floor, and set both the soft stick and the wand inside of it. With this, and me filling the circle with mana, that should contain the aura if it tries to break out. Next, I began carefully wrapping the aura for Chelsea’s program up with my mana. I did not want to try to take it piece by piece, because I might put it back together wrong. The only way I could do this was all at once.

  Once I had my little bubble of mana around Chelsea, I very slowly began moving it over to the magical girl wand. I was surprised to find a large empty area of the aura near the plastic heart, and placed the AI aura inside of it. From there, I began grabbing the nearby strands of aura from the wand, and interwove them with the AI.

  When I was done, and sure that I had gotten it as well as I could, I pulled back my Mana Sense to look at what had changed. The pink heart of the wand seemed a little brighter, but aside from that it was normal. Celeste, knowing that I was finished, grabbed up the wand and pulled it into a hug. “There we are, all better now. Do you want to stick around and watch the next part?” She asked the last bit while looking at me, so I nodded.

  Celeste held up the wand, and closed her eyes. At first, I couldn’t tell what she was doing, so I activated Aura Sight again. I saw that a small number of runes were flowing along her arm and into the wand itself. From the ones I saw, I could make out runes such as ‘voice’ and ‘listen’. On a normal item, an enchantment like this would be meaningless, because an item without a mind can’t speak or hear, even if it is granted the ability to do so.

  After the runes were done flowing, she lowered the wand again, looking at it with eyes full of expectation. “You in there, Chelsea?”

  … For a while, there was no answer, and I started to think that I had messed up with my ‘transplant’. Even Celeste seemed to have water forming at the edge of her eyes, before a young and cheery voice spoke up from the wand. “I’m here, mommy! This is so cool. What am I now?”

  “You’re still Chelsea, baby. Still mommy’s little girl.” She spoke softly, stroking the heart of the wand with her fingers. “Now, let’s see about making you even cooler.” Again she closed her eyes in focus, and even without the Aura Sight, I knew that she was transferring some of her buffer aura over to the wand. If this step worked, then this might be the first manmade item with both a mind and a soul.

  Well, sort of manmade. The item itself still came from a god, but we supplied both the mind and soul! I decided to stick around and wait until this was done, but there was not a lot happening. With how still Celeste was being while she transferred her aura over, I began to get fidgety for a minute before she finally finished. Of course, the only indication I had of this was when the wand started speaking again.

  “Oh! Mommy, mommy! I’ve got new options! It’s asking me to choose how I want to level up!” The wand spoke excitedly.

  “Oh? What choices are you getting?” Celeste asked curiously.

  “It’s letting me choose to develop either my mana storage, transformation, or communication enchantments. What should I pick, mommy?”

  Celeste thought it over, but ultimately decided to have Chelsea play with the transformation ability. From there we learned that Chelsea could either design a different transformation power for the wand, or give basic special abilities to Celeste while she was transformed. So far, the only advanced abilities that Ce
leste would get were sonic attacks and the ability to absorb magic attacks.

  For this time, she went with the sonic attacks, but promised Chelsea that they’d play more and get another upgrade soon. It seems that items level up similarly to Deus Ex, but their upgrades are limited by what enchantments they have. Also, after we were done, Celeste did her transformation again to test it out. This time, when she transformed, she looked almost exactly the same as her last time in this form, except the wand had transformed into a microphone.

  “Oh great… first a magical girl, now she’s a pop idol.” I shook my head, resigning myself to this fate. No doubt soon she’d be hosting ship-wide concerts with how she was looking at her new ‘weapon’.

  Chapter 42 - Adjusting

  After leaving Celeste’s room, knowing full well that she was about to start practicing karaoke with her new mic-- need I remind you all that thing is technically a weapon-- I wandered around the ship for a bit. It felt good to get up and just stretch my legs, though I did end up eventually setting a destination for myself. Seeing Celeste and her AI children got me thinking about my own illegitimate offspring.