World Seed Chapter 65: Do-It-Yourself Exorcism, for Dummies!

Author’s Corner: Second chapter of the day! Sorry if it looks a bit iffy for now, writing with a headache tends to slow creative juices, and was too bored not to write! If need be, will go over it and rewrite like I did chapter 49. In the anti, enjoy!I’d like to say that I spent the rest of the night refining Seeds of Wind and Seeds of Earth, but that would be a lie. I didn’t pass out or anything, Celeste just offered a much better solution. “You can make things in your grove now, right? Why don’t you just refine the seeds in there? You should have more than enough to spare of the first five elents.”Realizing that she was right, I begrudgingly accepted the proposal. When I went to my grove and began refining the ground to make a Seed of Earth, I found that a two ter radius sphere was enough to instantly refine a low quality seed. If I increased the radius to three ters, I could refine a dium quality seed within a minute. I suddenly felt like a dunce for always refining them by hand. Although I could not easily bring magical items into my grove, taking them out of it is easy, as I have learned from Yo and Celeste.Though, this wasn’t really a viable option before, since I had only a small grove. Each one would leave a nearly visible impact after refining it. However, now the grove was large enough that I had plenty of room. Though, this only applied to fire, water, earth, wind, and light seeds. It seed that I did not absorb any other elents from Legion, aning I still had to refine the Seed of Dark and Seed of Lightning by hand.Still, now that I knew I could do it this way, I had a better idea. Instead of refining those two seeds outside of my grove, and then having to do the whole combination effect on the outside, I began actively cultivating those two elents, drawing them into my grove and forming the seeds in there. This way, I could do the combination procedure in a controlled environnt. And, worst case scenario where the combining fails? The mana doesn’t rush out into the open, and should just be returned to my grove so I can quickly start over.This took roughly four hours for to refine both dium quality seeds, and then about ten minutes to combine them all into a rainbow patterned sphere. Once that was taken care of, I began pulling the elent seeds I had gotten from the big water sli out, and popping them into my mouth like candy, breaking them down the sa way as when I add a new elent to my grove. With this, I received even more water mana, and could remake the seeds whenever I wanted.The only one that I didn’t do that for was the seed which had a mixture of water and darkness. According to Celeste, it was the Mire Affinity, which I had not practiced yet. I planned to feed this to Yo when he turned into a sli person, and see what happens.Anyways, with that, I ended up having the rest of the night to just relax. I spent it cultivating tal mana until I was ready to pass out again. In the morning, the doctors examined and determined that I was physically fine, and just needed to eat a bit since I had slept so long. I took them up on that right away, and grabbed a bite to eat on the way to the police station. Once I had Celeste back, she told that Yin and Yang were bugging her to let them out now that she could connect to the other bracelet again. I was honestly a bit surprised to find that she could connect to it in the first place when Yang was inside my grove.In the end, I relented and summoned the two of them. Each one quickly assud their ‘ideal place’, with Yin perched on my shoulder and Yang hugging my arm as we walked. Now, let tell you, that was an awkward situation to explain to the police. Telling them that they were both my animal companions, and that Yang had simply evolved in the ga. They seed suspicious at first, as if they thought I might be working with slave traders, but when they saw how ‘enthusiastic’ Yang was they let it drop.After retrieving Yo, I went down to the server room and used Technomancy to connect myself and Celeste to their AI. For the most part, the next bit was a boring cyber battle that lasted all of two seconds before the far more advanced AI overpowered the station’s, and reset it to the default. It was interesting to dive into an AI, though, like floating in a stream of endless code. I wondered slightly if that was what it was like for Celeste to be in my head, but she couldn’t answer.When I told Monte that I had refined all of the items needed for the protective field around the town, he said they were working on getting a length of cable to run a circle around Oakland, but it would take a few more days. He had also put in a word with so other districts to spread the word, so most of the cities on the western coast were looking for druids to set up the barriers. In a few more days, that should extend to every city in the country, and then most likely the world.Though, as a side note, I did offer to Yin to have her quickly train up to her next evolution when we got back to NeoLife, since I could easily refine Seeds of Wind now. It took her a while to decide, but she still decided against it. Still, I gave her a dium quality seed to slowly refine to help her cultivate, and Celeste said that she should be bordering her evolution now.With that taken care of, I walked around with the two birds for a while to show them the city. Normally, this wouldn’t be very special, but I haven’t taken the chance to really show either of them around a city yet since I found them. Thanks to that, they were both very impressed with the scenery. Of course, there were many people that had their eyes glued to Yang as well. Even though won could choose to beco a different race to change their looks slightly, it would not automatically make soone beautiful.After spending a couple of hours walking through the city, I pulled the two of them back into my grove. Before doing so, I asked Yang to practice making staffs out of the trees, and spread the plants out a bit more now that the grove had grown so much. Then, I went back to my house and logged into the ga. Since I was going to be waiting a few days for the police in the real world, that ant I had at least a week or two in NeoLife to train.Once I was back in the ga, I decided to take up a certain subject with Celeste. “What kind of monsters normally spawn in space? And what levels are they?”“Hmm… The big monsters, ones with a level over two hundred, are hunted down as standard policy when a system is colonized. But there are several smaller species that can be quite troubleso, like the stellar fish or void caller. Wait.. are you thinking what I think you are? Why am I asking that, of course you are. And the answer is no, you shouldn’t do it. At least, not yet. Maybe when you train the Gravity Affinity, and already have a fairly decent Plasma Affinity. But right now, that would just be suicidal.”“Damn…” To be honest, I had thought about quickly training my Plasma and Gravity Affinities by flying out to the local sun to cultivate. That should have an even greater effect than I received when I cultivated on the jungle planet. Though sadly, the idea was firmly rejected. “So my best bet is still to farm monsters here, huh?”“Right. And now that you have the Scythe Mantis arm, you can work on getting another animal. What kind of trait do you want next? Or would you rather focus on getting experience for Yin so that she can evolve quickly?”“I’ve already got several layers of armor, and natural weapons. My eye covers sensory abilities.” That made rember sothing, so I decided to upgrade my ears before I left the town this ti. “I think at this point, I’ve gotten what I can get from animals, unless I go for things based more on appearance. Are there any magical animals with useful abilities that I can copy on this planet?” With my Aspect of the Armored Beast covering both my skin and bones, and Aspect of the Hunter giving my diamond-like claws, I didn’t have much else to gain from the more mundane animals. Maybe if I found an animal that was especially good with speed, but this was a planet where everything had integrated with rocks, so that was unlikely.“Hmm… there is the silver moth. It’s a fairly rare insect on this planet that consus ore and refines it into silver thread. You don’t have a thod of making tal threads yet, so that might be useful for you. There is also the cliff tiger, which is able to dive into the ground and swim through it faster than most animals on this planet can run. It can’t breathe underground, so it has to do this in short bursts.”I thought about it for a few monts before answering. “While silver threads would be cool and all… I wouldn’t really be able to do much with them but sell them. Yang’s a crafter, but silver wouldn’t really qualify for the Nature Magic crafting thod.” With that decided, my next target would be the cliff tiger. Earth swimming would be a good defensive power and movent ability. “Do cliff tigers have sothing like tremorsense to detect what is on the ground above them?”“Nope, but they typically don’t stay under for more than twenty seconds at a ti. So a tremorsense isn’t really needed. There are other animals on this planet that do have that sense, but they are mostly back in that forest where--”“Nope, not going back there, fuck that.” I didn’t even let Celeste finish, knowing what she was going to say. She smirked wryly to as I vehently denied that plan. “Not worth it for a new sense. I can just have you keep an eye out for any other animals that we co across that fit the description.”If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.Celeste laughed lightly, but agreed to that. “So, are you going to get the new affinities first, or level up Yin?”I considered that, but ultimately it was more important for to get Plasma and Magnet Affinities. Yin could level up even if I left her alone in the grove by training her Wind Affinity, so she might even be done by the ti I finish. Just to be sure, I went into my grove and refined five dium quality Seeds of Wind and put them near her, leaving the instruction with Yang on what to do with them.As a fun side fact, all of my 10% affinities finally increased to 11%, and water even increased to 12% thanks to all of the seeds I broke down in the hospital. That boosted my mana recovery a bit more, which helped out. Anyways, in order to gain the Plasma Affinity, I planned on borrowing from my beam saber, until Celeste spoke out. “Actually, before you do that, there’s sothing else you need to take care of first. Didn’t want to bother you about it unless it turned into an issue… and well.. I think it’s going to turn into an issue now.”I paused, just as I was about to grab the beam saber from my grove. “What is it?”“The soul fragnts you absorbed from Legion. They’re starting to fight against the filters I made. You’ll need to purge them before they can break out and try to take over.” This little tidbit of news made my eye twitch slightly. “Sorry, I know I should have told you sooner, but I figured that you wouldn’t want to use the new skill, and didn’t think they’d be able to put up a fight this soon.”Deep, calming breaths… “Okay… do you have any idea how to do it?” Thanks to the initial sliver that had given the skill, I had a faint idea about how to use Soul Arts, but since I hadn’t practiced it yet I couldn’t confirm. Celeste, on the other hand, has had the equivalent of weeks(at her processing speed, at least) to study the hints on how to use the skill.“I might. It should work kind of like your shapeshifting, but several levels deeper. This isn’t the form or appearance of an aura that you are ssing with now, but the actual composition of it. And right now, there’s not a buffer zone for you to get rid of the soul fragnts without sacrificing skills, so you’ll need to pick sothing to give up, and gather it all together. If you were more skilled with this, maybe you could purify the soul fragnts, but for now purging them is the only safe option.”“I got two levels from them, so I need to give up two levels worth of skills, right?”Celeste confird my thought, but added on sothing else, which did not help at all. “Yes, and no. The amount of experience you got would be the sa as levels one through eight, rather than just one and two. It’ll still only set you back a couple levels, but that is an important bit of information.”“Alright…” I took a quick glance at my skill list. “I can give up Dagger Mastery, Archery, and Wind Magic since I have the affinity to imitate that one. How much is that all worth?”“At your current levels of mastery… Almost there. You won’t need to sacrifice a full skill to finish it off, just a little bit of one. I’d suggest so of the runes I taught you, because they won’t be very helpful for the near future. About nine hundred or so should do it.”I nodded, and could easily think of a few such runes that I wouldn’t need. I an, I’m unlikely to need to use the rune apple, headache, li, or sunflower any ti soon. “Okay, so how do I do this?”“First, focus on the skills you want to eject while scanning your own aura as deeply as possible. You should feel certain areas light up. Think of this as defragnting a computer, you’re rearranging your aura to put the skills together.” Following her instructions, I closed my eyes and scanned my own aura with Mana Sense, going as detailed as possible while thinking of Wind Magic. A dozen tiny areas lit up in my aura, and I tugged at each one to gradually move them along the streams of energy, like playing a complex maze from a dozen different positions.Once the little sections joined together, I did another sweep to make sure nothing else was lighting up. When I felt that bundle of energy, my mind was filled with everything I knew about Wind Magic, and all the practice I had done with it. Next, I did the sa thing for Archery and Dagger Mastery, moving them all to the sa position I had put my Wind Magic. To my dismay, and Celeste’s amusent, there were only two or three lights for Archery that I had to move. It was like even my aura was teasing about how bad I was with my bow.Finally, I thought of nine hundred different runes, and found that this was for the most part the easiest. Although it was nine hundred runes, they were almost all clustered in one area, so I just had to move them along to join the man bundle I had been establishing. “Wouldn’t this an, that if I lost an arm or a leg, I’d lose any of the skills that were in that part of my aura?”“I don’t think so. Maybe the skills flow around when you’re active, so if you lose a limb they just retreat back to your main body? Anyways, now that you’ve got the skills together, I’m going to slowly lift the filters I placed on the mories and personalities. I’m going to do it just one at a ti, so this will take a while. However, if I did more than that, you might lose yourself before we finished. Keep a close eye on your aura, and whenever a new section lights up that doesn’t feel familiar, push it into that sa cluster you just made, then pull it out of you with the skills. It should feel a little like having blood drawn, I think.”“Not liking the ‘I think’.”“Cut so slack, I’ve only been able to study a small amount of information for this skill and make theories for the rest. Consider this first one a test run, it’s one of the weakest personalities you absorbed.”Right as she finished saying that, I felt sothing off in my aura. Oddly, it was down near my foot, but it was like a different presence entirely. When I focused on it to draw it towards the skill cluster, I got a flash of mories from a little alien boy. They were too fragnted for to catch any thoughts, and the only emotion he felt was fear. I quickly pulled that soul fragnt up through my aura, until it reached the skill cluster, before matching it up with a few of the runes. It seed confused by that, and just waited before I ntally grabbed it and pulled it from my aura.There was a not inconsiderable amount of pain, quite a bit more than I would get from having blood drawn! “Sorry!” Celeste called out in a worried tone as my aura slowly closed the gap from where I had pulled the soul fragnt out.New Ability Unlocked!Exorcise Spirit - Soul Arts - ★★This ability allows you to identify foreign spirits within an aura and exorcise them from the host body.Next, she released the ntal blocks on another fragnt, causing another section of my soul to light up. This one was an elderly woman, and I had a theory as I drew her towards the cluster. She was only releasing the ntal blocks on the personalities, not the souls themselves. Since she had no control over my magic, she naturally couldn’t seal the souls. So, the souls should already be inside my aura roaming freely, but when she releases the ntal blocks, the personalities find their way back to the fragnts, lighting them up for to find.This process continued for a while, and I lost track of how many tis I exorcised a soul fragnt from inside myself. Every now and then, I would catch a mory from the souls as I was gathering them, but it was usually only the mont of their death. So people say that there are only two things that nobody rembers, their birth and their death. However, each and every soul fragnt I exorcised clearly felt the fear and mory of their death. I didn’t know where the souls would go after they were exorcised, but the re fact of their existence led to believe that there was sowhere for them in whatever afterlife there was.By the ti I was done with the last soul, which I had to reassemble from two dozen different pieces before I could send it off, the sun had already set outside. Though, I still wasn’t tired thanks to the differences in ti from the real world to the ga. So instead, I confird with Celeste that the souls had all gone, and my aura was my own again. I still had the Soul Arts skill, but thankfully I had lost the knowledge on how to do the original ability that had co with it. In the sa way, I had lost all of my mories regarding training with the bow and Wind Magic, or how to properly wield a dagger. I still knew what mories I had lost, just not their contents. Like how you can rember the na of a movie, but not who was in it.Celeste still has all of the mories from her perspective, but they wouldn’t help in getting the skills back. Though, she assured that I did not lose anything important, and that if it beca relevant she would let know. To my surprise, I actually only lost one level, but my affinities increasing probably helped with that.Now, with that out of the way, I finally went to what I actually wanted to do in the first place, and pulled out my beam saber to begin cultivating Magnet Affinity.