Chapter 954 - Right around the corner (Patreon)

“[Lap Pillow] skill activate!” Lily says as she gets on her knees and puts my head on her legs. Her fingers weave into my hair, massaging my skull and sometimes gently scratching it so I can feel her nails.

I forcefully open my eyes, thankful for this distraction, even as the majority of me is dealing with the evolution. I look up at her only to catch her looking down at me.

“There is no such skill,” I say seriously.

“Are you 100% sure of that, though?”

I hesitate there, coming to the conclusion that she is correct and there is a chance, even if really small. Still, I don't feel like acknowledging it out loud and just look to the side.

Her fingers continue to massage my head, and her smile grows bigger due to my silence, but slowly disappears as she talks to me. “It is annoying to watch you here in such pain and knowing I could make it all disappear. But as you said previously, it would interfere with your evolution, as you need to be aware of that. You know, maybe one day I will be able to just wave my hand and fix all these things. To turn you into a mana elemental, corgi overlord, or whatever you wish. To simply snap my fingers and create a body with a proper mana heart for Dennis.”

“Give it a few years.”

“I have to be patient.” She gives a sigh and then, out of nowhere says, “I want to watch a horror movie with you.”

The sudden absurdity of that makes me chuckle, and I look back up at her. “Would there even be anything to scare you?”

“Why scare me? Would you like me to tremble in fear and snuggle up to you for help? So you can become my prince on a white horse?”

“Let's not push it too much,” I snort. “And what man doesn't like to feel strong and brave? I am a simple man, and this would be flattering. But you, Lily Chen, have seen worse things, and I highly suspect no horror movie on Earth would cause you to so much as blink, even those lazy ones with a crapton of jump scares. So why a horror movie?”

“I don't know, it just passed through my mind, and I realized I never saw a horror movie like that, and I was always scared to watch them alone. I bet Izzy has some on one of her USBs.”

“The true horror here is the piracy that teenager casually dabbles in.”

“We will report her to the authorities once we return to Earth.” Lily nods seriously and taps against my head with her nails, giving me time to process another wave of changes that she continues to observe closely as well. “What kind of movie do you think we could watch and enjoy?”

I give that question a bit of thought, as well as think of how much she might be learning from my trait evolution, and almost for free. I'm truly being scammed here and abused by group 4 members as of late.

“I just realized that Lord of the Rings might not be as rewatchable anymore, after all we went through and all places we've seen,” I say.

For a bit, we both remain in sad silence.

“I never flew on a plane before,” Lily says.

“Me neither.”

“Do you think it would be fun now?”

“Couldn't you turn yourself into a plane or something? With engines and all.” I ask as the thought suddenly occurs to me.

“I think you overestimate me.”

“With such overpowered skills as [Lap Pillow]? I don't think so. If you think about it, what is more complicated: regrowing the entirety of your body, creating fake hearts, looking into the genome of the clone of a genuinely Immortal Ruler, or some simple plane blueprint?”

That causes Lily to fall into silence before she mutters, “I hate how I sometimes know what you say is bullshit, but there is some logic to it so I can't just wave it off.”

“See.” I smile and close my eyes.

“Oh, here we go! That was close!” Lily blurts out quickly, grabbing my head tighter.

It causes me to quickly open my eyes again. “What?”

“You almost got yourself killed, so I used a bit of my healing.”

“But I haven't noticed anything.”

“And that is the exact reason why you have me.”

“You could be lying to get into my good graces?”

“Even better graces than I am in currently?” she snorts.

“I guess.” I almost feel like smiling again, this time noticing that it is happening more and more often as of late.

That causes my mind to spiral into another wave of thoughts as to why it might be, and I come to a simple conclusion.

I still have a hard time showing my emotions because of how I grew up. Plus, and I should not lie to myself, it just seems to be a part of my personality. I cannot just blame everything on my environment.

But recently, with the constant fear of dying hanging over my head, worrying about being awkward takes a back seat, and it's gotten much easier to open up. Well, sometimes. In the right group of people. In a way, how silly it is, the closer I'm getting to my death, the more “human” I am becoming?

How tragic, and how silly.

“Can you continue to talk to me?” I ask Lily, searching for a distraction from the evolution.

“You know I can,” she pats my head. “So, do you have any preferences, or whatever comes to mind?”

“Let's say you are a normal human, back on Earth, no System and all. And by some mistake, you got one billion, with a big B sitting in your account.”

“Oh, I see,” she muses a bit, and even without looking, I can tell she is smiling. “I would first find an accountant and tax it.”

“Yeah. Let go of me, right now. Stop talking, satan.”

“I'm not sure what sort of income it would be, but it's safe to say that around half of the money would be gone.”

“I said let me go. If some of my buds in Beyond ask, I do not know you.”

“And after that... I don't know, probably about 10 or 20 percent of it would be gone too, as I would surely get scammed by my accountant.”

“I said, stop talking, I'm concentrating on my trait. I am in terrible pain.”

“So your most optimal state. Anyway, and you know how it is, some distant family and friends would start appearing out of the woods, and due to how I am, they would surely pull quite nice sums out of me. There is a high chance the money that I would give to them would need to be taxed, and I would take that on me.”

“It hurts, it physically hurts.”

“Yeah, then get that stupid smile off your face, Nat.” She taps on my head and pauses. “But let's say we know each other in that situation, and that I would give you 10 or so million. What would you do?”

“How cheap. Cash?”

She chuckles. “Let's say all cash… or maybe half of it in gold?”

"Gold? Wouldn't that be heavy?"

“You wouldn't take the gold to buy groceries,” Lily laughs, and her fingers dig a bit deeper into my scalp. A cool wave of her healing washes over my brain again, numbing a sudden spike of pressure inside my head. "Now, answer the question, Mister Nathaniel Gwyn. Ten million dollars. American, not fake Canadian ones. Cash and gold.”

“I would probably bury the gold. It feels like a universal tradition and something that you should do,” I say after a moment of thinking. “And with the cash... I don't know. Buy a small house with a nice view and a very tall fence. Really good internet too.”

“You are so boring,” she sighs, but she sounds amused. “Ten million dollars and your first thought is to become a hermit with good Wi-Fi.”

“At least my first thought isn't to pay taxes.” I spit that curse word out.

“You don't seem like someone who has had to deal with them until now.”

“Just the thought of them makes my insides boil.”

“That might be the trait evolution.”

“Possibly.”

“Or perhaps your mana deficiency. I promise to help you find a cure one day. We will get you thousands of stat points of mana. Tens of thousands. A whole shiny new organ to constantly pull mana from entire solar systems. So, what else would you spend money on?”

“Is this your variation of luring a kid into a van with candy? Because it is working. And what else?” I keep my eyes closed. “Fancy cars sound boring, though I guess it could be fun for a while. Big mansions need cleaning, and that means people, as I would totally not do that. Maybe a really good mattress.”

“A mattress.”

“A really good one,” I insist. “Like, sleeping on a cloud type of good.”

“I guess after sleeping on manatex mattresses for so long, that makes sense,” she concedes, her nails gently scratching behind my ear. “But you wouldn't buy anything fun? Nothing crazy?”

“My manatex mattresses are the best, and one day I will be selling them for a lot. Imagine if I put thermal cubes into them. A heated mattress. Or the sort of cube that would cool them down. I would pay for them to make for me one of these fancy rooms with a real tree growing in the middle.”

“Yeah. You would be bad at spending money. I guess you just need me to spend your money for you.”

“Half to taxes, the other half to Lily Chen,” I snort. “Sounds like a scam to me.”

“The best scam,” she agrees cheerfully.

“I could end up worse,” I agree in the end.

“Much worse. How is the trait?” Lily asks me.

“I will tell you more once the evolution ends, but it seems powerful. I think the System is buttering me up.”

“You and the thousands of other people you mentioned previously.”

“Saying it that way doesn't make me sound so impressive.”

“I won't do it then, but Nat, your constitution dropped again. Three or four points?”

“Three. It’s scary how accurately you can tell.”

“Your low constitution is scarier. I can sense the mana inside you, your Ignition Heart, and the kinetic energy reserves you always keep around. And I simply cannot understand how you can keep it all under control inside a body like yours. Constantly. While talking, while fighting, during the evolution, and while sleeping. Do you... do you really need to push yourself that far?”

This time it is me who takes a while to think of the best way to answer, and I let the silence stretch before opening my eyes once again.

“I think I need to do it,” I say simply in the end, though there are so many different ways I could answer.

“I won't ask why.”

“Thanks.”

Days turn into weeks, and I rarely return to Beyond, using the time to get used to my evolved trait and working on things I haven't had time for due to constant preparations for fights and other things that happened.

A few times we meet with the other members of Group 4 and even spend some time in thought acceleration, where we share knowledge and traits. This time there is no uninvited guest, and it all goes without any trouble, to the point that once it is done, we stand around awkwardly, searching for an enemy about to drop on us.

As part of my preparations, my Mana Tree continues to change. The more water I pour on it, the more I feed it, the more powerful it becomes, but always forming according to my will. And due to that, it is now much smaller.

Currently, it is just a small tree planted in a pot, only reaching up to my chest. And even to Sophie and Tess, it looks like just a normal tree. It does not matter how intently Tess looks at it, or how much Sophie focuses on her senses.

The same goes for Min-Jae, whose yellow gravitational eye also sees it like a normal tree. But most importantly of all, I constantly badger Izzy about it, and though sometimes annoyed, she helps me.

It might seem a bit weird of me to ask that of her. For her to use [Empathy] to search for the tree, or for anything just a tiny bit triggering her skill, but I still do it. And she doesn't sense anything at all either.

Obviously, I take her level into consideration and don't rely on just that, continuing to work on improvements.

At the same time, I continue working on the Chestplate, which is close to being completed, and I'm confident that not long after the tournament it will be ready to house a special ego that I built for it. An ego that is using Redacthaniel as its base.

And just like that, the fourth tournament is suddenly right around the corner, just a couple of days away.

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