Chapter 949 - Frogs (Patreon)

Neither Lily nor mini Kindness are moving now, so as I make my way through the destruction, I let out a slightly annoyed sigh. This is especially true as I look into the distance and see the airship we arrived on doing its best to escape this place. It has already picked up a nice bit of distance.

Of course, I have a mark placed there, and teleporting back would be as easy as a single thought, but I can already imagine the annoying conversations or an atmosphere full of fear.

So, I pick up mini Kindness and carry her over my shoulder until I reach Lily, where I come to a stop. With another sigh, I drop the clone onto the ground, take off my jacket, and put it on Lily before hoisting her onto my back. With a bit of effort, I drape her hands around my neck and hold onto her legs to keep her in position.

Mini Kindness is meanwhile just lying there, and I muse over what to do about her. With a light shrug that forces me to quickly readjust Lily so she doesn't fall, I create myself a long tail made of mana that coils around mini Kindness's ankle, and I drag her behind us as I begin to walk.

I know I could throw the clone into a volcano, I could drop it from orbit onto my high school, or I could let a meteor smash against her, and not much would happen. It is grown from an Adjudicator, which is, of course, a much weaker version of the original Kindness, but still extremely durable. And after the real Kindness took a liking to possessing this clone, it has continued to change from whatever those possessions did. Not to mention Lily's own dark magic arts.

Yes, I do feel a bit awkward dragging what looks like a six-year-old girl like this, but at the same time, I realize it doesn't damage her at all. I find this internal conflict of mine amusing and continue to muse over it further.

When I readjust Lily again, she wakes up and shakes her head as if to get rid of dizziness, quickly realizing where she is.

My gamble hasn't punished me. I was worried that upon awakening, she would get spooked and tighten her arms around my neck with such force that she would guillotine me. Thankfully, no such thing happened, and upon realizing her situation, she slightly fixes her position and holds her arms around my neck gently.

But a small part of me really seems to think that it would be, in some sort of way, really funny if she guillotined me that way.

I feel her body slightly tilt as she looks back at mini Kindness and the destruction behind us. There is no comment about the clone, but she expresses her thoughts on the destroyed landscape.

“I can't believe that giant, ant shaped kaijukakalulu did that,” she mutters.

"Black ant," I add.

"Black ant," she confirms as a direct eyewitness to what happened here.

Meanwhile, the two remaining healing marks on me activate, thoroughly erasing anything that is left of her previous attacks and healing me, with further healing being supplied by Lily herself.

During the entire fight, she hadn't even thought of removing these healing marks. They were just there, on the brink of activation, always ready to heal me in case something went wrong.

It is a silly thing to do, she should have just thrown everything at her disposal against someone like me. Yet, it just fits her.

“We have our stuff on the airship,” she notes.

“Yeah, I will teleport there later to grab it quickly. I thought of trying to make some kind of plane or something out of my mana instead of that boring airship.”

“You don't strike me as the type to be good at the aerodynamics it will require.”

“I will brute force it with more kinetic energy. If I get annoyed enough, I will just make it a cube.”

“We can do that,” she says with a soft chuckle that I feel against my ear, before she adds, “Your constitution dropped by another point.”

“I'm surprised you noticed.”

“It's not that difficult.”

“I guess, Ms. Healer.”

For a while, we continue to move in silence, and out of boredom, Lily starts playing with my hair, pulling on the strands or just poking my head.

Something stops me temporarily, and I turn my head slightly to see mini Kindness stuck in a bush, so I pull harder, dragging the clone out of it. I almost get back to walking, but I realize that by looking back, my face and Lily's are really close to each other, and she is intently looking at me.

“What?” I ask her.

“I'm sorry.”

“Here we go,” I say as I start walking again, and Lily tugs on my hair.

“I got scared, and I felt so helpless, and I still do. And you, being you, just do your thing and continue to push forward. I just didn't know what else to do.”

“I thought it was something like that,” I nod.

“Yeah,” she whispers, and she increases her hold around my neck slightly before adding, “I promise not to do it again. I won't question it anymore, and I will continue to believe in you and support you as much as I can.”

“As much as it would make some things simpler, having just a yes-man around me would be annoying,” I say.

“Oh, you don't have to worry about that. I won’t forget to look down on your poor knowledge of healing magic and body modifications. I just promise not to pry and to trust you.”

“Are you worried that I will throw you away if you don't do that?”

She temporarily freezes, and the tugging on my hair stops before it returns at the same pace as before. “I think you wouldn't do that.”

“Correct. So, what was that thing with possessing the clone?”

“Kindness always does that, and I thought I could too. So once we got onto this floor, I worked on it, relying on the fact that she wouldn't be possessing the clone here.”

“But how?”

“It is a bit difficult to explain. I created something akin to a parasite made of a perfect copy of my spinal nerves and attached it to the clone. I have also left some body changes recording marks on the clone to observe how Kindness possesses it, so I tried to mimic that. And a few more things. If you want, I can go into detail.”

“You bet I want to hear that.”

In reaction to that, Lily cheers up and straightens a little, and her voice regains more energy as she begins to explain all that she has done, excited at every question I ask her about it.

A few times we even argue, as in my immense cockiness, I straight up tell her it would probably work better if she did it a different way. That also turns into entire conversations where we argue over hypothetical situations.

It turns into an hours-long conversation as the two of us, attendees awakened to the system not even four years ago, act so wise and knowledgeable. We say things with such confidence, not even properly understanding a tenth of what there is to learn.

Just the typical foolish confidence of youth, or a frog that thinks its lake is all that there is while there is an entire universe out there.

We continue to travel using the map toward our previous goal, rumored to be the epicenter of the kaiju appearances. Then again, all of that happened over 300 years ago.

Still, I think that once we get there, I will know. That is due to the fact that the Demigod and I became so interwoven during our mental battle.

I don't think we need to hurry, so we don't.

Lily spends that time examining mini Kindness, and I often help her. Though I can't see as much as she can, I'm curious, and Lily just likes to talk about it.

In exchange for that, she has to endure my excited hypothetical rambling as we talk and work on my own preparations to force a trait evolution. But she doesn't seem to mind it that much either.

All these preparations are done with room to include whatever we find of the Demigod, though if I get the feeling that nothing fits, we won't use anything, and the parts of that body will find themselves in Beyond auction houses.

Sometimes we spar, though none of it is to the extent of our previous fight. I also continue to work on my eyes, mainly with the intention of mastering them as much as possible before evolving the trait.

Passive mode is easy enough to handle, though it requires some effort and Nerdthaniel constantly filtering out the sheer amount of information.

Active mode puts much more pressure on me, though I suspect there might be some really exciting applications further down the line. Something like maybe not having to touch people to use a certain skill of mine, and doing it all through my gaze with the Noumenon Pupils in active mode.

As for how far down the line it is? I have no idea. There is a chance that it is not possible. Maybe [Jüdrajil], as a prototype skill with such an effect, straight up requires touch.

But something tells me it is possible. Call it a vibe, a gut feeling, or whatever. I just think my pupils and my mind will allow that.

A week passes, then another. And then a full month.

We learn that Group 4 has killed one of the kaiju, which are now without that anti mana barrier, though their bodies are still extremely durable and heal insanely fast. And apparently, it is likely they have multiple brains and hearts that keep them alive even when their weaknesses are destroyed.

I personally think just using the Blackie Orbital Strike, or BOS as I lovingly call it, would work, but I do understand that they tried to come up with a way that would allow everyone to gain some juicy level ups.

And so one more month passes as we reach our destination, during which another kaiju falls to Angry Kittens.

Such slacking off would normally be ridiculous with the timeline I have set for myself, but ever since we started approaching this place, I have been getting that feeling of familiarity.

And then there we are at the top of the mountain, looking toward a huge crater in the distance entirely filled with water that, due to how deep the crater is, looks completely black. And by deep, I mean deep.

It is possible that over 300 years, some earthquakes buried parts of it, but this is likely a tunnel multiple miles wide and hundreds, or even thousands, of miles deep, going straight down. And there are multiple ones around, some similarly filled with water, others entirely buried.

On our way here, we didn't even meet that many kindred, as they seem to actively avoid this place, with the exception of what they see as weirdos going there once in a while to study their past or whatever happened. Though due to how small the groups are, that knowledge is rarely properly passed down.

They just decided not to dwell on their past and continue to adapt to the world they live in.

When we reach one of these holes, we stand on its edge, and I give it one more look. After so much time here, nature has started taking over and even partially hiding it. There is a forest nearby, some sort of plants float across the water-filled crater, and there are even some brave animals on the opposite side drinking water from it.

There is a probe that I have been creating for such a case. It is a tempered mana construct that, due to my experience working on an ego I plan to give to The Chestplate, has something like, well, an ego lite? Or should I call it a lesser submind? In the end, it's just akin to a fancy logic core, set to react to stimuli and preprogrammed to do its task.

I could probably separate one of my subminds and force it in, but they have other work to do, so this will suffice. Plus, the probe is barely as big as my hand, so my subminds would not like it.

Funnily enough, the amount of mana I squeeze into it and temper, along with the extra mana I give it so it can power itself, is massive. I mean, kaboom an entire city massive.

But it needs it. The more mana, the better. For the drilling, for the sensors, and also for a bit of kinetic energy so it can ram through obstructions. And by a bit of kinetic energy, I mean also enough to kaboom a city.

I create a few more, with each of them having a mark on it so I can teleport to it. I drop them into the water to observe them quickly disappear, and then we look around to set up a nice place for camping here.

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