Monroe

Chapter Three Hundred and Five. Searching for a new home.

It probably said something that he was able to pivot back to idea of fighting monsters immediately after having lost, and then regrown, his leg.

That something might not have been positive either. He'd been spending most of his time in his tier seven form, and while he hadn't felt any sort of condescension creeping in towards his lower tier friends, he had to wonder if the decrease in metabolic processes was having some sort of calming effect on him. His leg had barely bled when it had been blasted off, and while he could attribute some of that to the removal of the limb through fire, it had prompted him to check his pulse.

"Trebor, do you know why my pulse is so slow?" Bob asked.

'As you increase your tier, your body becomes more efficient,' Trebor replied. 'Humans, on the whole, are incredibly adaptable, but the downside is that they aren't terribly efficient. Solid food, fluids and air down the same pipe? Humans are forever choking to death. Your faux tier seven form is a half step away from a truly efficient form, where your cells being to utilize minuscule amounts of stamina and mana to function. Eventually, your blood will simply be a conductive fluid, and your vascular system a method of using vasoconstricture to regulate energy flowing through it.'

Bob frowned for a moment, then shook his head. There was no escaping the System, not once you were part of it.

He had plenty of time to reflect on what had happened as Jake slowly but surely tore his way through level sixty monsters.

"What can you tell me about the plant-monster-thing back there?"

'Very little,' Trebor said. 'It appears to be a unique sapient being that occupies the majority of the surface of the planet. I remain unable to query the System for details regarding a specific being, so I'm relying on probabilities. I suspect that it is at or near the maximum tier and level for the planet.'

"Well, I'll just have to hope we don't run into anything else like that," Bob grimaced.

It took fifteen days to reach the next planet. Each day as they drew nearer, their view of the planet became clearer, and by the time they arrived, everyone knew what to expect.

It wasn't quite locked in ice, but nearly. More than half the planet was covered in snow and ice. There were four small patches of land, coastal areas on the equator, that offered temperatures above freezing, but just barely.

"Might as well be Hoth," Dave sighed as he looked over the data from a drone. "There is life in the oceans, although it's hard to tell what, exactly. We know there is algea, and beds of seaweed. The coasts have moss and lichen, but we didn't see any animal or insect life."

"From what we're able to extrapolate, and keep in mind that the software we borrowed from NASA wants a lot more data than we're giving it, this should be spring time on the planet, so we can expect it to get a bit warmer, then cool back down, then get even colder," Amanda added.

Bob looked around the table. No one was smiling.

"Alright, so I'll say it," Bob began, "Hoth isn't ideal. Technically we could survive down there in the Freedom, but we wouldn't be going outside the ship much, and it's possible that winter might necessitate running the shields. Given the environmental concerns, I'd place it only a little bit above Thayland in terms of a resting/delving point, and I'd label it completely unacceptable as a permanent base."

"Yeah, I really don't want to live on an ice planet," Jessica admitted.

"I don't have a light saber or a Tauntaun," Jack added, drawing a laugh from the Thayland crew, who had been bribed and begged into watching the movies.

"It took forty four jumps to find this solar system," Bob warned. "It might take a lot more to find another. So let's tentatively plan on two weeks of jumping, which should give us a bit more than six hundred jumps. At that point, we'll either have located a suitable planet, or we'll have to return to either Hoth or Thayland to grind out enough crystals to keep up the search."

Looking around the table, Bob didn't see any objections.

"Alright, I'll head up front and get started. Jack, will you handle the thrusters?" Bob asked.

"Aye, Aye, Captain," Jack replied with a jaunty salute.

After three days, and over a hundred jumps, Bob felt like he had nearly perfected his modified portal ritual. Then he received confirmation.

Portal Skill for user 'Robert Whitman', User identification code 40816G1407N3210ISS3PM1IO has been successfully modified.

New Skill created under the Magical School of Dimension.

New Skill : Exploratory Interdimensional Portal. This skill allows the user to open a Portal to another, unknown, dimension. The terminus of this Portal will be outside any planetary masses. Functions identically to the portal skill in all other aspects.

The Skill will mirror the users Portal skill.

"Well, that's new," Bob muttered. He checked his status sheet, and sure enough, there it was, under the Dimension School.

Further investigation confirmed his suspicions. The skill was the same as his regular portal skill in every way, including threshold bonuses and cost reductions.

"Trebor, any idea how this happened?" Bob asked.

'I believe that through diligent practice, you managed to cast the ritual with enough precision that the System accepted what you were trying to accomplish,' Trebor replied.

Bob nodded. He'd been surprised to receive the notification, but with the kindler, gentler System it made sense. Sort of.

As he cast the new ritual, watching as flows of mana lined up exactly where he'd placed them before, he took a moment to consider the degree of trust he, and everyone else, placed in the alien AI. The System told him he had a new spell, and he just trusted it.

As the Freedom slid through the Portal, he shook his head, dismissing his idle thoughts.

Tapping his armband to raise the masts, he pulled a bottle of water from his satchel and took a sip. The new spell would cut down on the time between jumps dramatically, but the masts were two minutes up and two minutes down, with a minute for the sensors to check for any planetary masses.

The real issue was finding a solar system. He'd asked Trebor if there was any way to work some sort of divination ritual, but the answer had been disappointing. Apparently you could get that information, but only Vi'Radia, Mor'Noctum, Logos, and another diety that Trebor was unable to tell him the name of, existed in all dimensions as the same entity. Sadly, they weren't responsive to layman, or the clergy. You didn't just need enough Divine Blessings to get their attention, you needed to be a higher tier. Which left the crew of the IDSS Freedom out of luck on that front.

So, they were stuck jumping blindly. At least the new spell had the benefit of making sure they didn't pop out inside of a planet. Or the sun.

"Am I going 'round the bend, or was that a lot faster than usual?" Jessica asked as she entered the small cabin.

"It was a lot faster, and the good news is that it'll continue to be so," Bob replied, showing her the System notification.

She read through the screen and sighed, shaking her head as she sat down in the chair next to him. "You know you give the rest of us self-esteem issues, yeah?"

"Hardly," Bob snorted.

"Strewth," she shook her head again. "I know you have a hard time seeing your own worth, but believe me, you're an impressive man."

"Just putting in the work," Bob replied, fighting off the discomfort the brilliant Aussie's close proximity often engendered.

"Can't argue with that," she agreed. "So what does that cut our time down to, if we land in the empty?"

"Call it seven minutes," Bob said. "Just over a third of how long it took previously. Keeping the same schedule, that'll give us another twelve hundred jumps before we need to make the call."

"I think we were all sort of expecting a bit more Star Trek and Starwars from this whole space travel bit, yeah?" Jessica leaned over and playfully nudged his shoulder.

"That whole 'vast emptiness of space' thing does kind of suck," Bob admitted. "My concern is that when we do find the next solar system, it's the wrong kind. G class stars only account for three percent of stars in the universe."

"There are always the K's," Jessica replied cheerfully. "Those are something like twelve percent, so that totals up to fifteen, and that's not so bad."

"Assuming they have planet in the goldilocks zone, and further assuming it's habitable," Bob shook his head.

"Meh, we'll find one," Jessica said confidently. She stood up and stretched, then offered him a hand. "Come on, I came up here to fetch you for lunch, but you went and distracted me with your awesomeness."

It took another hundred jumps before they found another solar system, but this was an A-Type star with three gas giants and an ice giant, none of which were in the goldilocks zone.

They'd stayed to get a clear image of the System, which was beautiful, but there'd been an almost palpable sense of depression on the ship.

That had just changed with jump number eight hundred and one.

"Looks like we've found another solar system!" Dave's voice came through his armband.

Bob blinked and squinted, then yawned. It was the tail end of a twelve hour shift. He took a moment to stretch, then headed down the corridor for the Garden. If it was a G or K type star, they'd definitely be sticking around for a few hours, so he was done jumping for the day.

Stepping into the Garden, he took a deep breath, and released it, feeling some of the tension ease out of his shoulders.

There was a reason everyone congrerated here. Their cabins were well appointed, and as Mike had pointed out, overly spacious, but there was something about knowing that you were in the void of space that weighted on you. The Garden, with its sunlight and greenery, helped to ease that burden.

He strolled to the center of the Garden, taking his time. He knew that if there was good news, it wouldn't spoil, and if it was bad news, it could wait.

Walking into the cabin, he found everyone sitting around the table, looking at the image that floated above it. So far, it showed a star with four giants. As he sat down, another planet appeared, this one even further out.

"It's a K type," Amanda told him with a brilliant smile.

"The goldilocks zone of an orange dwarf is a bit closer than our own yellow dwarf," Dave muttered, staring intently at the display that was projected out of his armband.

Bob nodded. He wasn't an astronomer or an astrophysicist, but he knew the basics.

"There's one!" Eddi almost shouted, pointing at a planet that had just appeared in the image. "That's in the zone, right?"

"It is," Jack agreed.

The crew stared intently at the image as more planets began to appear.

"Looks like a busy place," Bob said quietly.

"I count eight outers, and six inners," Jessica replied. "There might still be a couple of planets behind the star, but with as far out as we are, I think we've pretty much seen them all."

"We're kind of guessing here, because NASAs software is definitely running on best guesses rather data, but it looks we have either two or three planets that might be habitable," Dave grinned.

Bob checked the position of the Freedom, and winced.

"I noticed that too," Amanda sighed. "We can get in range to gather more information, but based on their orbits, we're going to have to pick one or the other. Either way, we'll only have the crystals to get to one, and if it isn't suitable, we will have to setdown somewhere and resupply."

"Stars and stones, please let it be habitable," Elli muttered.

"How long until we have a mostly complete image of the solar system?" Bob asked.

"Call it a few hours. It looks like the asteroid belt is pretty beefy," Dave replied.

Looking at the image, Bob nodded. They were, unfortunately, on the wrong side of the belt.

"It looks like we can set a rough course and get moving," Bob rotated the image of the solar system carefully.

"Sooner is better than later," Amanda agreed.

She'd taken on the responsibility of keeping careful track of their supply of mana crystals.

Meanwhile.....

Yllv'ggyn'ulddr stirred. It wasn't slumbering deeply, that had ended when the System had startled it awake, filling its mind with new concepts and ideas.

It wasn't the arrival of the System that roused it.

It was familiar with the manner in which food would appear to be consumed. The System had provided a new term, 'manifestation,' for it.

What had happened was something different. Food had appeared, but in a different way. This food had been different, and more importantly, this food had escaped.

This food had fled above the ground, then disappeared.

For the first time, Yllv'ggyn'ulddr turned it's roots to the sky, and sensed.

Days passed, but it continued. The end of growth for one part was nearing when it realized that the massive sphere it called its own was not alone. There were other spheres.

Yllv'ggyn'ulddr considered this problem. It had grown past the air of its sphere, and found that beyond was impossibly cold. It could survive, of course, but it could not grow. Its roots were forever bound to this sphere.

That did not mean it could not spread beyond them.

Some if its earliest memories were fragmented, as it had sent spores into the sky to spread itself. Some of those spores had traveled to the other side of sphere and begun their grow their. It had not been until Yllv'ggyn'ulddr had conquered the vast waters that it had been reunited.

So. A hard coating to keep the spores viable. A wide variety of spores to ensure it grew regardless of where it arrived on a sphere.

Finally, a long hollow tube in the root structure that stretched to the void. A vast empty sac beneath. The sac was compressed, the enormous quantities of air violently and rapidly displaced, no where to go but up the tube. The spores in their shell expelled in front of the air, travelling through the void now.

It knew that many spores failed to grow, so Yllv'ggyn'ulddr prepared to repeat the process. It began to slip into torpor once more, the process of sending its spores into the void an autonomic process.

It had nothing if not time.