World Seed: Game Start (31 page)

Either
way, I was confident in my ability to survive with my current powers.
To my surprise, when I got up to 5% in Dark Affinity, the ability I
had received was actually very useful.

While
I had not been able to meld with a shadow, I was able to create a
ball of darkness in my hand and shoot it out. In my experiment, the
shadow ball had the consistency of tar, and exploded like a sludge
when it hit a tree. Maybe when I became more skilled I would be able
to make weapons out of shadows, but for now it was already a useful
control skill.

Most
of my journey was spent simply gliding, using minor expenditures of
mana with Wind Manipulation in order to send me back up. It wasn’t
until I had flown for over an hour, and my wings were starting to get
sore did I hear the shrill cry of a harpy eagle from above me.

Chapter 28: A Loss
and a Gain

I’d
like to say that I fought with honor, or that I knew what I was
doing, but… Well, you’ll see.

When
I turned my head to look, I saw one of the harpy eagles baring down
on me, its wingspan easily ten meters. Thanks to my inexperience with
flight, turning to look had caused me to veer to the side, narrowly
dodging the massive creature’s claws. However, in the next
moment, a gust of wind blew me back away from the creature.

I
was tumbling through the air, unable to see what was going on, and
only got myself stabilized after about twenty meters. By that time,
the bird had already changed direction, its black feathers flying
towards me and almost completely blocking my view of the
surroundings. This time, it opened its beak and let out a shrill cry,
which rang in my ears and caused my vision to blur. In the next
instant, I felt searing pain as one of my wings were ripped off.

With
a hiss I quickly dismissed Aspect of the Bird, causing me to enter a
freefall. However, at least the pain was gone, and since the damaged
parts of my body were no longer there I did not have any health loss.
Looking down, I was about fifty meters from the ground, so I
hurriedly cast Aspect of the Bird again in a panic while the ground
came closer and closer.

Thankfully
I managed to cast it at the last second, and angled my new wings to
pull up just in time to avoid becoming a pool of gore on the ground.
However, thanks to that short exchange, I was able to somewhat
measure its level. Sadly, as far as I was concerned, its level was
simply ‘run away’. Closing my eyes, I focused on flying
forward as I began controlling the elements around me.

I
could hear the eagle approaching towards me, and feel how the wind
parted for it with no resistance. Before it could catch me, I decided
to act. From my feet, I gathered as much fire mana as I could,
releasing a stream of flame directly behind me. The earth would help
me little in a battle above the skies, but fire is still my friend.
With the sudden unexpected flames sprouting up, the eagle let out
another cry as it changed course, though this one was not meant to
attack me.

A
few moments later, I came to know what its new plan was, as I felt a
shadow descend over me. As that was the case, I stopped playing with
fire, and moved onto darkness. Above and below, my body was already
covered by shadows, making this one of the best times to use that
particular element. Looking up, I could almost see the eagle diving
at me, talons extended for the kill. So what did I do?

…

I
did a barrel roll! Pulling in my wings, I rolled slightly to the side
while having the wind push me back. Once I re-extended my wings, the
eagle was now the one below me, so I dropped a shadow ball on top of
it. When the ball of darkness collided with the black feathers, it
was hard to see what had happened. However, the movement of its left
wing had become slightly more sluggish, indicating that perhaps the
attack had succeeded. Though, restraining a wing meant little when
the enemy could just change how the wind hit it to get the same
result anyways.

So
far, I had used up roughly half of my mana, and knew that there were
just a few ways I could actually win this fight. Maybe if I forced it
to swallow an arrow vine, I could use my Nature Magic to have the
vine grow inside of it, spearing it from within. That seemed like the
best plan, so I pulled a single seed from my inventory, clutching it
in one hand.

Now
it was my turn to dive, and dive I did! Angling my wings, I increased
my speed to the maximum as I flew towards the slightly unstable
eagle… and then I remembered that this thing controls wind.

The
moment I was almost upon the harpy eagle, a gust of wind knocked me
off course, again making me tumble back several meters. Sadly, I
accidentally dropped the seed I was holding thanks to the surprise
reaction. By the time I had myself stable again, the eagle was once
more heading right for me. However, this time its aim was obviously
off, instead moving to fly past me by a wide margin. Must be unable
to properly steer with one wing bound.

However,
my thoughts quickly proved themselves wrong as the eagle passed by
me, the barest tip of the wing brushing against my side.

I
could still feel the pain in my side when the Seed opened up to let
me out into the real world again, and took in a sharp breath of air.
Once again, I was still equipped with my bird wings, so I immediately
dismissed them. Gripping the sides of the silver coffin, I slowly sat
myself up. One hand went down to my side, making sure that there was
no actual wound.

My
thoughts drifted towards Yin and Yang, who had been in my inner grove
when I died. Had something happened there because of my death? A
quick inspection made me sigh in relief, as the grove was unharmed.
The two birds were happily sitting on the branches of the enrichment
fruit tree, nestled against each other.

However,
this did confirm that the grove carried over between the game and the
real world. For a simple test, I plucked a fruit from the tree and
brought it out in the same manner I would within the game. Though I
should not have been surprised, I was slightly startled when the
green lights emerged from my body and formed the enrichment fruit in
my hands.

Okay…
next time I’ll just walk. No earth magic, and I likely won’t
attract a land wyrm. I’d rather deal with the wind wolves than
those eagles again. I sighed to myself, and got up out of the Seed. I
had nearly five hours in the real world, so I had to do something
with it.

For
my first trick, I checked to see if there was any more news about the
new sensation sweeping the nation. I found that the world was
adapting surprisingly well. The players of NeoLife were being treated
as victims under the Genetic Crimes Act, and able to resume life as
normal. Those who were changed into nonhuman forms were even seen
with pity. This is because this wasn’t the first time people
have had their bodies forcefully changed.

A
couple decades back, there was another game. It was the one that I
mentioned used nanites to reshape the human body in order to match
the character. At first, victims of that were treated as freaks. By
the time it was exposed, there were already fifty thousand people
changed. That was not a number the public could just ignore, but at
the same time they couldn’t easily accept people that looked so
different. Despite our cultural advances over the last millennium,
humans still had a prejudiced nature.

However,
the people in question were truly not at fault for what happened to
them, and some were even the children of politicians. As such, the
Genetic Crimes Act was established, stating that anybody who has
their bodies altered due to genetic manipulation against their will
shall be protected by the law. Discrimination against them was
considered a felony.

Now,
many people had already lived with someone that had been altered in
such a way by that event, or even grown up with them. This made the
world far more prepared for what the Seeds did, to the point where
there was only the briefest acts of violence when they were first
revealed. Even with the protection of the law, people who did not
know what happened might think a monster was attacking them.
Thankfully, there were no fatalities among the Seed players.

That
said, there were currently two conflicting opinions on the subject of
the Seeds and NeoLife. One party said that the game was bringing
nothing but trouble, and that people should not play it for fear of
inviting true monsters upon us. The other party believed that true
monsters were already coming, whether we liked it or not, and the
only defense we had against them was to play the game and grow
stronger.

With
that taken care of, I shut off my computer while shaking my head, and
moved downstairs. There were still four and a half hours remaining,
and I needed to do something constructive with my time. I did a brief
experiment and tried to check my status window as I would in the
game. To my surprise, the blue lights I had first seen very gradually
wove themselves together to form the window, as well as the normal
menu. Although, obviously the logout button was absent.

I
nodded slightly, the losses having been within my expectations. My
lower mana regeneration was probably because of the mana being so
thin here. However, the rest of my time had to be spent trying to get
stronger, advancing my magic in some way. The mana here was still far
too thin to properly cultivate, so I did the next best thing. On the
counter in my living room was a flash drive, it was a cheap one I had
bought to store holo-vids on, and only held a petabyte of data, but
that was enough for my purposes.

I
moved back up to my room with the flash drive in hand, and sat down
next to the Seed. Like Sharon said, the mana seemed slightly denser
next to the large machine. Though the drive itself did not contain
any mana, by placing it near the Seed I was able to see how mana
interacted with it. At first, the mana just washed over it, like it
wasn’t even there. However, after a few minutes it began to
show a slight reaction.