Chapter 1430 - Good(?) Conversations (Patreon)

“Thinking about it, isn’t this technically the second time I’ve lost to the Sword Saint in a system event?” Jake asked, having not really thought about that as much as he probably should have. Or maybe shouldn’t?

“I guess it’s more accurate to say I lost to the Eastbound Monk or even myself than him, but still, he finished ahead of me. At least I won in Nevermore, but that doesn’t mean it feels good, you know?” Jake let out a sigh.

His conversation partner just stared at him, not saying a word as Jake continued.

“Anyway, it does feel kind of good to be back in the real world again. It’s hard to explain, but I feel like I can subtly pick up on the artificial nature of the World of the Exalted Prima. I’m not just talking about the obvious flaws that can potentially be exploited, but something more subtle. Fundamental. A lingering thought in the back of my mind telling me that something is ever so slightly off at all times,” Jake kept rambling mostly to himself.

“When I was in there, I didn’t really think about it much, but being back here, it’s so obvious. Maybe the concepts aren’t perfectly replicated, or it’s the instinctive knowledge that I can’t really die that makes it all feel fake. I really can’t tell.”

Jake fell silent for a few moments, his conversation partner looking about as if trying to find a way to escape, unable to do so before the hunter continued.

“Anyway, enough about that. I actually only plan on staying here on Earth for a little while before heading back to the Order of the Malefic Viper. You know, just to check up on things, but I will leave pretty quickly to avoid too many people knowing I’m excluded from the World of the Exalted Prima. I don’t think anyone would be able to take advantage of my absence, not with Miranda and William there, not to mention the protection the Beacon got, but still, no need to give people ideas.”

The beast still didn’t say anything as he just kept giving Jake a deadpan stare.

“I’ll definitely need to have a talk with the Viper when I get to the Order, but I’m more looking forward to meeting up with Artemis again. I hope she’s available, seeing as she is quite busy with her new work as the ambassador of the Pantheon of Life. Speaking of that, do you have any advice? You seem to have quite a solid understanding of relationships.

The hawk didn’t even give a peep even when prompted, making Jake sigh and nod.

“I get it, it’s for me to figure out on my own, and every relationship is different. Unfair of me to ask you in the first place.”

Hawkie looked around, perhaps wondering when Mystie would finally be back to save him.

“Thanks for lending me an ear,” Jake said with a smile. “Though it frankly is the least you can do. You know, considering what you did.”

He said this while motioning toward the banana musa with a formation drawn by Mystie beneath it to pick up any bananas and store them. When Jake had returned to Earth, the first thing he had seen was Hawkie eating his bananas, looking quite pleased with himself. Asking for a good little chat wasn’t too much to expect from the hawk after that.

Hawkie finally gave him a small screech of complaint, not accepting the blame entirely, arguing that as Jake was absent, the bananas would have gone to waste if they hadn’t been consumed. Not entirely accurate, as the musa consumed the bananas itself to grow over time, so the hawks eating them slowed that process down a little.

“I’m not going to accept any excuses,” Jake shut that down with a smile. “But you do have permission from now on. It’s more about the principle of things, right? Gotta ask.”

The hawk still didn’t seem convinced, though he had endured Jake’s ramblings, primarily because he’d at least learned a little about what Sylphie was doing. As her dad, Hawkie had many questions about his daughter and wasn’t very happy when he learned that she’d also been eliminated from the World Wonder. Not because he seemed to particularly care about her losing the competition; he just didn’t like the thought of her getting hurt, much less dying.

He probably didn’t like that he couldn’t help either. Hawkie and Mystie were both making their way through C-grade at a decent pace, but they had quite some way to go before evolving to B-grade, assuming they would even be able to do so without too much struggle once they reached peak C-grade.

Hawkie and Mystie were not in the elite tier of experts, and couldn’t even be called experts at all. They had been pretty strong in the early days of the integration, but never truly had the talent nor drive to even attempt to become pinnacle beings. In the first place, their reason for wanting to become powerful was to protect their egg and afterward their kid, but now that Sylphie was fully grown and far stronger than them, they had clearly both relaxed.

Now, they seemed to mostly care about progress due to their inherent instincts to still hunt and improve, which everyone kind of had, and a desire to stay in Sylphie’s life as long as possible. They were also, in large part, coasting on the Records of their daughter and Jake. Without those bonds, Jake wasn’t even sure they would have made it to C-grade, and even if they had, that would certainly have been their limit. Now, they had at least had a shot at B-grade, though that would likely be their limit unless something drastically changed.

That thought did make Jake a little sad, though he didn’t show it. Despite not interacting often, Hawkie remained one of the people Jake considered friends, and even now, with a massive gap in power, the hawk still treated Jake the same as he had back when he was teaching him how to fly. Likely in part because he knew that was how Jake wanted things to be.

Getting up from the steps of his porch, Jake stretched and yawned before giving the hawk sitting on the railing a smile. “You take care of yourself, alright? I don’t know when Sylphie is back, but work hard. I know she wants to see you two, and it would be embarrassing if you can’t even keep up with a hundredth of her flight speed.”

Hawkie screeched in protest, though he probably knew the hunter was right. Jake had considered saying a tenth of Sylphie’s speed, but even if they reached B-grade, they likely wouldn’t be that quick. She was a fast little bird after all.

Feeling good after he had a nice chat with Hawkie, Jake headed off and checked out other things, many of them primarily due to his own curiosity. Rick, the troll, was still having a good time in the underground caverns beneath the forest, and the temporary leaders Miranda put in place before leaving for the World Wonder seemed to be doing a good job.

The city of Haven had also grown yet again, becoming more and more of a metropolis every time Jake saw it. Everything seemed peaceful as usual, besides some guy yelling in a corner about how Miranda and Jake were actually rulers from the Ninth Hells who’d come to turn Earth into the tenth hell, with everyone around ignoring the guy.

Seeing the sphere that had once housed Arnold’s lab on Earth, Jake considered paying the scientist a visit but ultimately decided not to. Looking up at the moon, he saw the guy was still working hard on terraforming the place, and while Jake did have some things he wanted to ask his resident mad scientist, he decided none of them were pressing. Well, besides maybe one, but he reckoned Villy would likely have a better idea.

With nothing else he needed to do on Earth and no immediate issues for him to deal with, Jake headed to the Order of the Malefic Viper as planned. He had started to feel a little nervous whenever he traveled through the void after that one time they got ambushed, but nothing happened this time around, and soon after, Jake appeared on the lawn of his residence back in the first universe.

He’d barely had time to take a breath before a presence appeared behind him.

“It’s been a while,” Jake said with a smile as he slowly turned around and saw his familiar Patron standing there, looking a bit puzzled.

“Not really,” the snake god shrugged. “You’ve had longer random alchemy sessions than you’ve managed to survive in that World of the Exalted Prima. At least I assume you died, as I can’t see any other good reason why you would be back here, though even then, I find it questionable. Aren’t you only supposed to be banned from that place for a month? Unless something is different if you die within this Central Domain or even the Palace of Abundance.”

It wasn’t surprising that the Viper had some information about what was going on within the World Wonder. Several members of the Order had probably died and then sent someone back to report on the event. Of course, without people who had been able to take part in the antechamber fights, much less the final battle between those who won in the antechambers, the god couldn’t know everything.

“I’m excluded for a year, which is part of the reason why I returned now, but don’t worry, I’m not at risk of complete elimination,” Jake said to alleviate some of his Patron’s thoughts before he shared what had happened. He skipped a lot of details and mainly focused on what happened inside the Palace of Abundance, as the Viper clearly knew about the Inner City and Outer Garden in great detail already.

The Viper was very curious when he heard about the Majordomo and the Abundant Emperor, and listened with interest as Jake explained how he fought Azal, the swordfighter from the Dao Sect, and finally the Chosen of the Heartsoul Daolord.

Moving on to the Q&A in the throne room, Jake included whatever information had been shared there, not hiding anything. He didn’t know if something he found insignificant would be viewed differently in the Viper’s eyes, so he tried to make sure to cover it all.

Finally, he got to the last battle. Villy looked at least a little proud when Jake told him about defeating Aishalstromoz, and he looked downright pleased when the bet was mentioned.

“An egg from the Regalflight, or perhaps from another Dragonflight. Either way, not a bad deal. They’re very protective of their eggs, after all. I also can’t see them cheap out on the egg, though I do wonder which talented parents who may have struggled to successfully get one for millennia would give up their egg to be used in the mad experiments of the Chosen of the Malefic Viper,” Villy said with a big grin. “I do find myself a little saddened you didn't lose, as that would have been downright hilarious. Still waiting on how you lost, by the way. Can I at least guess it’s related to the Eastbound Monk?”

“It did,” Jake nodded, knowing he’d have to cover this part of the event too, no matter how much he wanted to avoid it. There were simply too many important things that had happened. He skipped some details but included that the Eastbound Monk had used an incredibly powerful Transcendent Artifact, and in response, Jake had stimulated his Bloodline as much as he could, ultimately getting a bit drunk on his own power and accidentally ripping the world apart, destroying himself in the process.

When Jake was done, the Viper looked at him for several moments with a deadpan expression.

“You know, there were a lot of important details in there I really want to touch more on. The details of the Transcendent Artifact were clearly skipped over; having items that can increase stats without backlash is quite astonishing and not something that could exist in the real world. The Eastbound Monk is clearly quite a character and apparently knows more about this unknown faction who attacked you in the void, and the fact you could rip apart the simulated world says a lot about its structure. However, all of that pales in comparison to the sheer hilarity of you blowing yourself up by accident,” the Viper said, his face morphing into a giant grin.

“Oh, here we go,” Jake sighed.

“At least there weren’t too many witnesses, because, man, wouldn’t it be fucking embarrassing? Not just for you, but for me. The great Chosen of the Malefic Viper, killed by his own stupidity. Like, I can see you fucking things up by playing around with that special Bloodline energy of yours while trying to improve skills, but in this instance, you did it just to see if you could, huh? Well, congratulations, Jake, you successfully tore a simulated world apart. Should I expect you to next experiment and see whether you can survive in the void while still in B-grade? Spoiler warning: you can’t, but I’m starting to question whether you’d attempt it anyway if you start feeling a little too good while high on your Bloodline,” the snake god just didn’t give Jake a break as he kept talking, clearly finding it way more hilarious than Jake.

“Did you get it out of your system?” Jake muttered.

“Not even close. I’ll have to share with Duskleaf, and I think we should put together a list of things you shouldn’t do just because you think you maybe can,” the god chuckled. “But alright, we can move on. I do wonder, though, this is a system event, right? You dying because of the world's flawed design and being eliminated doesn’t seem right. Am I correct in assuming you destroying yourself wasn’t the end?”

“It indeed wasn’t,” Jake confirmed before proceeding to explain how he ended up meeting the Exalted Prima. At this point, he did leave out some details he’d cover later as he went over things like the Wheel of Samsara, but for now, he had another thing that also bothered him a lot.

“Seems like despite your complete and utter fuck-up, you ended up coming out of the event okay,” the Viper said with a nod. “I won’t even comment on that finger of yours or what you should do with it. Whatever happens is entirely dependent on you, and quite frankly, despite my majestic genius, I’m not that familiar with virtual worlds. This is kind of the first time in the history of the multiverse it’s been done, after all, at least as far as I know.”

“Yeah,” Jake nodded slowly, having some ideas already, though he didn’t quite feel ready to share any of them. “But before I get to any of the other topics, which I’m sure will take quite a while, I have one quick question you might have some insight into...”

Jake reached into his spatial storage and took out a certain little item he’d loved for a long time, yet for some reason, had forgotten until very recently.

“How come this didn’t appear inside the simulated world, and perhaps more importantly, why did I forget I even had it in the first place, only remembering its existence after getting out?” Jake asked, holding up his beloved void lollipop of infinite Perception.