SIMON ARCHER
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
8. Queenie
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
21. Gobta
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
24. Barnabas
Chapter 25
26. Gobta
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
33. Queenie
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
42. Erlking
A Note from the Author
As we approached the portal to leave Jane’s world and return to the Hall of Mirrors, I found myself staring at two hobgoblins dressed in red and white checkered robes, which was a bit odd, to say the least.
“Hello, Adventurers,” they said in unison as the left one stepped forward to greet us.
“We are the guardians of the portal, and we have a simple task for you, should you wish to return home,” he said before the right one took a step forward.
“Yes, for we will offer you a simple test. Should you get it correct, you will be able to return to your world, but should you get it wrong, you will be transported to the punishment world.”
“What is going on, master?” Queenie, the Ant Queen follower I’d acquired when I’d defeated her in my first dungeon, said as she turned to look at me, confusion etched into her pretty face. See, even though she was an Ant Queen, she still looked rather human, what with the perfect hourglass figure, large breasts, and a cute face. In fact, if it wasn’t for the antenna, dragonfly wings, and multifaceted eyes, she could have totally passed for human.
“Gate guardians show up sometimes,” I said with a shrug. “Or at least they did in Terra Forma.” That was the game I played before being recruited on this crazy, insane quest to build my own world, establish an empire, and then ultimately defeat the primordial deity of destruction, Zaxcs. “They will ask us to choose between a portal,
and the correct one will let us leave, while the wrong one…” I shivered. I did not like punishment worlds. They were always exceedingly difficult to live through.
“This does not seem difficult,” Gobta, the Hobgoblin King I’d slain to save this world said. Yeah, he was my minion now too. That was my real power as an Auramancer, to copy the patterns of defeated foes and revive them from Auric Limbo. “We simply ask them which portal to take.”
As he spoke, the single portal the hobgoblins had been guarding split into two.
“Oh, it is exceedingly difficult,” the checkered hobgoblins said with far too much amusement in their voice. “For, from this point forward, one of us will speak only truth, and the other will speak only lies.”
“Oh, okay,” I said as I laughed. “I got this one. It’s a pretty simple riddle actually--”
Before I could finish speaking, Gobta rushed forward and cut the left Hobgoblin in half with his giant flaming sword, and as bits of charred hobgoblin crumpled to the ground in a bloody heap, he turned to the remaining hobgoblin.
“Is he dead?” Gobta asked.
“No,” the Hobgoblin replied completely straightfaced.
“He is the liar,” Gobta said confidently before turning to look at me like a proud puppy. He gave me a quick nod before turning back to the guard. “Which portal is the one that leads us home?”
“The left one--”
“We should go right!” Gobta exclaimed excitedly as he turned back to me, and when he looked like he was going to explain himself further, I waved him off.
“Wow,” I said as I rubbed the back of my neck. “I’ve never seen the riddle solved quite like that.”
“I do my best to serve you, my liege,” Gobta replied before giving me a quick bow.
“That you do,” I said with a smile before entering the portal and leaving Jane’s world behind.
A moment later, after my atoms had reorganized themselves into the proper order, I found myself standing in the small shrine that was my home in my own galaxy. It was basically a giant hallway filled with endless mirrors. However, since most of them were still locked away, only a few actually looked into other worlds.
As always, it took a second to get used to because, in this realm, I was a god, and with that power came a full onslaught of senses. See, in this solar system, there were sixteen planets, a few dozen moons, and too many asteroids to count, and I could know most everything about them, from what atoms were in their atmospheres to more mundane things like the density of the rock beneath my feet or the weight of the ice on the closest planet. There were limits because I was still only level thirty. At the same time, it was always a bit overwhelming to have information suddenly be in my brain, and since I’d been lower level when I’d last been here, the extra information I had access to now took me a couple of extra moments to parse.
I quickly shut down all the extra information coming in before focusing on the new message that appeared in front of the portal to Jane’s World.
You have unlockedtheBazaar tradingworldandcan now use it tobuy, sell,andfacilitatetradewithnew worldsas theirportalsare unlocked.
“Sweet,” I said as I opened my inventory and found I now had a trading crystal that let me access Jane’s world. In TerraForma, using a trading crystal could open a temporary portal to the Bazaar that would allow me to buy and sell items as I went.
Additionally, as I did more trading and unlocked more worlds, the general level of the technology and items available in the Bazaar would increase. That would be good because, in addition to allowing me to upgrade my own gear, as well as that of my followers, I would be able to upgrade the worlds I unlocked easier as well. All that combined together to make me more powerful as the God of this dimension.
“You seem very pleased, master,” Queenie said as she and Gobta came over to me.
Like I thought would happen, they were the only two of my summons here. The moment I’d entered the portal, my massive army was gone, sent back to Auric Limbo, but since I was in my godly realm, it would take no effort to summon any of my followers since I had a nearly unending fountain of Aura while here.
“I am.” I smiled as I thought of all the things we could do with the trading world unlocked. “We will get to see Jane a lot more too.”
“She will like that,” Queenie said with a nod. “I found she was quite fond of you.”
“I think the entire town found that out,” Gobta said with a grunt before smacking me on the shoulder.
“She is a bit energetic,” I said with a shrug before turning my attention back to my galaxy. Then, with a small effort of will, I teleported the three of us from the Hall of Mirrors. We appeared a moment later on the main planet I’d worked so hard on last time I’d been here. It had taken a considerable amount of effort to fix this planet because it had lacked a spinning dynamo in the center of the planet which meant it had no electromagnetic field to shield it from solar radiation nor had it been dense enough to have much gravity.
Now, though, it felt solid, and since I’d modeled the place on Earth, the gravity felt familiar in a way I couldn’t quite explain. Better still, I knew that both the gravity and the electromagnetic field now being generated by the planet would be more than sufficient to keep any atmosphere I added on the planet instead of allowing it to be jettisoned into space.
“Well,” I said as I smacked my hands together, “looks like we have a lot of work to do, but before that, I think it’s time we gave this planet a name. I’m thinking Ares, what are your thoughts?”
“What does that name mean in your tongue, my liege?” Gobta asked as he looked around. “Red planet?”
“Kinda,” I replied with a laugh. “Back where I come from, there was a red planet named Mars, and this one seems similar enough to it that one.” I smirked. “Besides, Mars and Ares were the names for the God of War, which was what that planet was named after.”
“You wish to name your planet after the God of War?” Gobta asked, clearly pleased. “I think that is a great idea.”
“I agree, master.” Queenie looked right at me. “After all, we must one day face Zaxcs, and there will be no better place to do it than from a planet designed for war.”
“Well, then I think we’re in agreement.” I stomped my foot in the dirt. “I dub this planet Ares.”
“Ares!” They both cried in unison, and I couldn’t help but be strangely excited to begin our next phase of terraforming.
“Well, is everyone ready to get to work?” I asked because there were still a ton of things to do.
While the planet was starting to heat up now that atmosphere could no longer vent into space thanks to the gravity and magnetic field shielding the planet from solar winds and the frozen carbon dioxide and water had started to melt, there really wasn’t enough in the air to matter.
Even with all the carbon dioxide, methane, and other gasses that had been released thanks to all the volcanic activity and earthquakes that had occurred when the planet stabilized after I’d melted the core and mantle of the planet, I could tell we needed to add something like six quadrillion tons of gas to the atmosphere to get to Earth levels. On top of that, most of what we had here was methane. While it was a good greenhouse gas for warming the planet, wasn’t optimal for life. At least, not the life found readily on most worlds. To actually have a usable atmosphere, nearly eighty percent of the atmosphere needed to be nitrogen and another twenty or so percent had to be oxygen, and neither was really in the air currently.
That was fine, though, because I’d sort of expected that.
“What do you want us to do, master?” Queenie said as she studied my face. “Because I can see the plans forming in your mind already.”
“Well, I need you to find me ice.” I gestured at the sky. “We need to find all the easily available ice, and I need to know what kind it is. Then we have to bring it here.” I stomped my foot on the ground.
“Consider it done,” Queenie said, and then I felt the pull on my Aura as she summoned several Scout Ants and sent them out into space to do what I’d asked. “I’ll have a full report soon enough.”
“Great,” I said, knowing she would tell me the moment she’d finished the solar system survey.
“And what would you like me to do, my liege?” Gobta asked.
“Oh, that’s easy.” I smirked. “I want you to move the ice to the designated spots on the planet while I’m sculpting the surface.” I gestured at Queenie as she dealt with her Scouts. “You’ll be in charge of what happens on this planet, while her job is to tell her ants what we need and coordinate the efforts in space since sculpting will take a huge portion of my power and attention.” I glanced from Queenie to him.
“Plus, while Queenie is good with the ants, she doesn’t have a good grasp of what, well, people need.” I smiled at him. “I assume you, especially given your powers,” he was a necromancer, after all, “that you have a really good handle on how the world should work, so I expect you to utilize that knowledge as we terraform the planet.”
“Ah.” He nodded. “It is true I have extensive knowledge of both life and death, but these planets are currently dead.” He kicked at the earth to emphasize his point. “That said, I can help you to plan what we should do here. I will begin my survey of the planet, and if it pleases you, my liege, I would prefer to do that on foot so that I can really get a feel for the place.”
“That’s fine,” I said even though I wondered how long that would take. Maybe not that long since I figured that Gobta could draw on my godly powers to enhance his speed and senses here, just like Queenie could.
“Good luck on your sculpting,” the Hobgoblin King said before he turned and began to walk away.
I watched him go before shutting my eyes and allowing a picture of the entire planet to build in my head. Thanks to the volcanic activity and the earthquakes, the planet wasn’t as flat as it had been. There were definitely some variations of more than a few thousand feet, but I knew we would definitely need some deeper areas to accommodate the ocean. Otherwise, the vast majority of the planet would just be water, and let’s be real, no one wanted to live in Waterworld.
Once I got the picture down, I slowly rearranged the pieces in my mind, modeling it off the peaks and valleys of the Earth so we would have deeper oceans, a lot of plains for growing and settling, as well as some rockier areas for mountain biomes.
Then I took a deep breath, knelt in the earth, and called upon the power over earth I’d gained when Queen Mab had gifted me the title ofTheColdandDark.As my earth power into the ground, I felt Aura begin to flow out of me and spread into the ground beneath my hands in an ever-growing wave. It slowly washed through the surface of the planet until I’d created a basic framework with my Aura similarly to how I did it when I made my Auric Armor. Then I interposed the image of how the planet looked in my mind into the crude Aura construct I’d just made and used more power until they were seamless copies.
“Now for the fun part,” I said as I took a few deep breaths even though I didn’t need to breathe and there wasn’t any air, anyway. “Time to transform the world.”
Earth magic burst out of me as the whole of the planet began to rumble and groan. My Aura surged with godly might as I forced the stone beneath the ground to grow and change shape. Strain filled me, and as sweat grew on my brow before instantly evaporating to join the atmosphere, I knew one thing to be true.
This was going to take a while.
Thanks to the increased speed of sculpting when using my earth magic in conjunction with an AuricArmor matrix… say that ten times fast… I was basically done reshaping the planet’s surface when Queenie and Gobta appeared beside me, both gesticulating wildly.
“What’s up, chuck?” I said, glancing at Gobta as I let go of my hold on my power and wiped away the non-existent sweat on my brow with the back of one hand. “And chuckette?” I turned my gaze to Queenie.
“Master,” Queenie started before throwing an angry glare at the Hobgoblin King, “This idiot says that the methane ice we’ve found on the blue planet…” She pointed into space, and instantly, the image of a bright blue planet about four back from where we were, appeared in my mind’s eye. “... shouldn’t be used because it’s dangerous.” She rolled her eyes. “Can you believe this madness?”
“No,” Gobta said, trying his best not to appear as agitated as he was. “What I said was that most life cannot breathe methane, andit will also mostly go into the atmosphere once it's melted because it isn’t liquid under normal circumstances, so we really need to find normal water to fill the oceans.”
“Who needs to breathe?” Queenie poked the hobgoblin king in the chest. “You think that’s air you’re breathing now?” She threw her hands up in exasperation. “See what I’m dealing with?”
“Yes,” I said with a nod. To be fair, they were both right. We did need water as well as a bunch of other stuff, but we could also use
the methane to help increase the greenhouse gasses on the planet and move the temperature more toward the habitable range.
“My liege,” Gobta said, breaking my concentration, and as I turned toward him, he gave me a conciliatory smile. “I merely want to suggest that we go to the moons that orbit the ringed planet and begin there.” As he spoke, once again, two moons popped into my vision. “They both have actual water ice, as well as a bit of nitrogen ice.” As he spoke, the image drilled in on the larger of the moons where I now saw one of the scout ants pawing at a frozen sheet of ice. “And we have reason to believe that there’s actual liquid water beneath the ice.” He shrugged. “Since we need to remove all the ice anyway, we may as well start there and see what’s down below--”
“And when we all get eaten by a giant subterranean sharktopus creature, I will dance on your grave, necromancer, mark my words,” Queenie exclaimed violently. “Also, that ice is much more difficult to collect.”
“Ah,” I said as I considered their words. “Like, okay, here’s my thing.” I looked at both of them in turn. “We need like two quintillion tons of water to fill the oceans I’ve sculpted.” I gestured at our surroundings. We were standing in what would one day the bottom of the third, and deepest, ocean on our planet, and it would get even deeper once we added water and the weight of the ocean caused the ground to compress even more. “So, if we melted down all the ice on both the planet and the two moons,” I once again settled my gaze on each of them for a long moment, “how much would we have?”
“We can’t be sure until we’re actually mining out the ice, master.” Queenie threw up her hands helplessly again. “While the planet weighs about one hundred sextillion tons, which is more than enough to fill these oceans,” she shot a glance at Gobta, “the planet is mostly a gas giant, and we don’t know how much of the ice is actually easy to mine, assuming we can take it all and not totally disrupt the planet itself.” She looked back at me. “Something you expressly forbade.”
“The same goes for the moons,” Gobta added before Queenie could say more. “Though we have a bit better of an estimate there
since those aren’t gas giants. We think half of their weight is probably ice, and each moon weighs about one sextillion tons.” He shot a glance at the Ant Queen. “Either one would still give us more than enough ice to fill these oceans andhas the added advantage of not being horribly toxic.”
“That assumes we mine out every last chunk of ice, and again, sharktopus below the surface?” Queenie sighed.
“I think we both know that the correct answer is to get the easiest chunks of ice, bring them here, and then go from there?” I said.
“Yeah…” Gobta said as he scratched his cheek and looked away. “The thing is, that will only get us half what we need, so if we go that route, we’ll need to mine some of the other, less lucrative planets.”
“The Hobgoblin King is correct, master,” Queenie said with a sigh. “We wouldn’t have enough even if we collected the nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and methane ice contained within the ice ridges in the glaciers of the last planet in the system--”
“It’s not a planet,” Gobta was quick to point out. “It doesn’t dominate the neighborhood around its orbit.”
“It is a planet since it has its own orbit and was made spherical based on its own gravity,” Queenie said in a way that made me think they had also had this argument before.
“It’s okay,” I said before the two could lunge at each other. “I’m not a planet either.”
“Of course you are not a planet, master.” Queenie gave me a confused look before looking at the Hobgoblin King who merely shrugged in a way that suggested he had nothing.
“Anyway,” I waved off the current conversation because, despite the common beliefs of certain space-faring arena games, jokes weren’t better when explained, “unless you two plan on, I dunno, dragging an entire planet or moon here, somethingIhaveexpressly forbidden,we need to just collect the easy ice.” Only as I said it, an idea occurred to me. “You know, I remember reading an article where NASA found lots of pockets of frozen ice just out there in
space.” I tapped my chin in thought. “I know we looked at comets and asteroids and stuff, but have we looked for frozen clouds?”
“No, master.” Queenie shook her head. “We barely completed the surveys of the planets, moons, and larger celestial bodies. There is much left to explore.”
“Okay, then.” I nodded. “Gobta, can you coordinate bringing the easiest ice here, prioritizing the ones made of water, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide, while Queenie begins the search for frozen pockets of ice in space?” I smiled. “Because for that, we can just toss it on down and don’t have to mine.”
“Your will shall be done, my liege,” Gobta said with a bow before hustling off to coordinate with the miners.
“I am sorry, master,” Queenie said when he had left. “I should have thought to check the surrounding space.” She sighed. “I was just so excited when I surveyed the ice giant because it contained more ice than we needed.”
“And it still may be what we need to finish up here,” I said as I moved in and kissed her on the forehead. “But I don’t want to completely ravage any planets if we don’t have to, because, eventually, we’re going to colonize every single planet and moon in this solar system, even the gas giants.”
Queenie took a step back as I spoke, her multifaceted eyes wide. “But master, how is that possible?” She shook her head. “On the big gas giant, there are many layers of gasses, and none are at all close to habitable, and the core is not big enough--”
“So, you’ve been wondering why I’ve been really big about using as little as possible from the actual planets, and instead have focused our efforts mostly on asteroids and comets?” I asked, and when she nodded, I continued. “Well, terraforming a gas giant would normally be impossible because it’s really hard to survive there.”
“I am not following, master,” Queenie said with a helpless look.
“Well, you and I have no problem surviving there.” I smirked. “So, what we will do is go to the core and add mass to it, enough to support more, then we add layer after layer of rock and metal to it until we actually have a real planet’s surface.” I shrugged. “It’s
basically what we did here,” I stomped my foot for emphasis, “but many times over.”
“Ah!” Queenie’s eyes got bright with understanding. “So we will need a lot of material if we wish to terraform those planets, and if we use it all on planet’s like this one…”
“Yup, that becomes a lot harder to do.” I smiled brightly at her, and she flushed slightly.
“Thank you for explaining it to me.” She gave me a determined nod. “I will find the ice clouds, so we do not need to ravage any of the planets.” Then she leaped into the sky, and as I watched her go, I smiled.
Sure, we hadn’t even completed this planet yet, but we would soon enough, and then? Well, then we would do the moons and the other easier planets. I grinned. Then we would do the gas giants. It was something I had theorized about doing in Terra Forma but had never actually been able to because of the limitations of the game itself.
Here, though? Well, here I was a god, and I was going to try my hardest to terraform every last planet and moon that I could because at the end of the day, Zaxcs was coming and the more habitable worlds we had, the stronger I would be when I faced him.
Still, first thing’s first, now that the Ares was sculpted, and the ice would be on the way, I had one last thing to do to make it really habitable. I had to fix its orbit. Currently, the planet was in an elliptical orbit around the system’s star. While that meant that the vast majority of its seven hundred day trip around the sun was well within the Goldilocks zone of the system, the band of space where the heat of the star would allow water to remain liquid, there was a hundred and fifty day period where the planet would be a few million miles outside of that.
So, basically, I needed to change the elliptical orbit of the planet to a more circular one so that it wouldn’t have those two periods of time where it was outside the band of space where it could easily sustain life.
That had been impossible to do when I’d first entered this solar system because I’d been level one and the aura requirements to
change the planet’s orbit had vastly outstripped my meager Aura pool. Now though, I was a level thirty Godling, and I had enough Aura to do just that.
So, I took a minute and focused on my godly toolbar, and as I did, the skill I wanted popped up into view, only unlike before it wasn’t grayed out because I didn’t have the Aura requirements. Now, it could be used, and for a mere cost of just over half my Aura.
Smiling, I took a deep breath and focused my will as I selected the skill. As I did, the entire orbit of the planet beneath my feet filled my vision as a shimmering blue line that stretched out of the planet in either direction.
Then I reached out and grabbed hold of that image, and I compressed each side of the ellipse until I had a more circular orbit that stayed in place while keeping an eye on the Aura requirements to shift the orbit. Casting the spell had taken just over half my Aura, and with each tweak I did, I felt more energy drain out of me, which was why I hadn’t tried this earlier. If I had tried this when I’d first come back from the training dungeon, I may have had enough Aura to cast the spell, but I wouldn’t have had enough to create the perfect orbit. Worse, if there had been an issue with the orbit after I was done, I might have to try again, and I knew from experience that every single time I altered the orbit of a planet, the chance for everything to go tits up increased dramatically.
No, in Terra Forma, it was always better to do things in one shot because recovering from a mistake could be difficult, if not impossible.
Fortunately, I was smart and had waited until I had double the Aura I needed, so now, it was just a matter of spending the time to make the orbit of this planet perfect, and since my followers were busy finding ice for Ares, I had nothing but time.
“Well, that took a lot less time than I thought,” I said when I’d finished adjusting the planet’s rotation because Gobta hadn’t even delivered the first spec of ice. A quick look through the godly tether linking me to him let me know that he was still scraping surface ice off the two moons orbiting the large gas giant and had another few days of that before he’d be ready for me to move the ice here.
A look at Queenie told me something similar. She had moved into the asteroid belt to locate water ice but so far hadn’t found much worth noting, and what she had found had been marked. So, I spent the next few hours grabbing those asteroids, transporting them to Ares, stripping off the ice, and then moving the rock back into space for later.
That said, even all that had barely been enough to give me a modest lake where my smallest ocean was supposed to go.
“Guess there’s nothing to do about that but wait for Gobta,” I said as I looked around, and as I did, my eyes settled on the moon orbiting Ares. “Hello, there.”
A moment later, I stood on the surface of the moon, and as its information popped into my head, I smirked. This was the reason I’d chosen to start with this planet because, despite being close to a quarter of the size of Ares, it was a lot less dense, especially after all the work I’d done on the core of my own planet.
This would make it perfect for creating useful tides on my starting planet, but that was also one of the problems with terraforming it. See, if I increased the mass of the moon so that it had the gravity to hold in its atmosphere, well, that would change its density and throw off everything I’d done on the starting world. Some of that could be solved by just moving the moon further away to compensate, but that wouldn’t fix the problem of the tides drastically changing if I succeeded in restarting the moon’s dynamo and increasing its rotation.
That was a whole other ball of wax to contend with, but as I stood there, I realized I had a great idea because I was a god and wasn’t limited by pesky things like technology.
“Hey, Queenie,” I said as I tugged on the link between us with my mind. “Got a second?”
“Yes, master. Do you wish me to come to you?” It was always a little weird when I heard her voice in my mind via the link, but not so much that I wanted her to travel across the solar system to have a conversation.
“No,” I said with a shake of my head that she couldn’t see. “I just want you to tag all the asteroids with a ton of iron in them.”
“That will not be a problem, master. I have already marked many of them on my personal map in case you needed to know for later.” As she spoke, the information about several of the asteroids in the belt she’d been surveying popped into view. “Will that be enough, or will you need more?”
“That should be fine,” I said with a laugh as I looked at the numbers suddenly swimming around in the minimap. “I only need a trillion or so tons.”
“Would you like me to have that amount brought to you, master?” she asked, and while it was enticing, it wasn’t like I had anything better to do. And besides, I could teleport.
“Nope, I have it. You’ve been a lot of help already. Let me know if you find the water.”
“I will, master.” With that, she went back to work.
I did too, and after only a few minutes of teleportation, I’d transported my trillion tons of iron as well as some nickel and
molybdenum close to the star and put it into my tungsten dish. It was strange because when I’d used this dish to melt down gazillions of tons of rare metals, it had seemed small, but now, with just over a trillion tons of iron ore in it, the dish seemed downright massive.
Then I spent the next little bit making a bowl full of molten stainless steel that I then transported to my moon.
Taking a deep breath, I called upon the same power I’d used when I’d sculpted the planet earlier and visualized a giant shell around the moon. Then I poured my molten steel into my Auric mold. It was slow going because, well, liquid, and I had to take care to control the cooling with my cold power, but eventually, I’d encased the moon in a one-meter thick shell.
“What is that?” Gobta asked, surprising me as I put the finishing touches on my shell world.
“It’s the beginning of a shell world,” I said as I turned to find him standing there covered in frost. “See, I can’t really change how the moon rotates or its mass or anything and not affect the planet we’ve been working on.” I gestured to my left where my red planet loomed large and in charge in the distance. “But I was thinking about it. If I put a big shell around the moon, I can then do stuff inside, like heat it effectively and keep the atmosphere inside.”
“Not to say this is a bad plan, my liege,” Gobta said as he moved over and rapped his knuckles against the shell, “but what if a big rock hits it? Then everything inside will die.”
“Well, yeah, that is a problem.” I laughed. “Right now, the shell is just a meter thick sphere of steel, but in the future,” I spread my hands wide, “it will have another seventy meters of dirt and rock on top, which should keep the random space debris from puncturing it.”
“Ah, so it is like when you fill castle walls with earth to make them harder to penetrate.” The Hobgoblin King nodded, clearly pleased. “So, will you need additional water for the moon as well?”
“Yeah, but it’s not a hurry unless you’ve found a lot of water.” I gestured toward Ares. “That’s the priority.”
“Well, that is why I have come,” he said before forming his face into a very carefully neutral expression. “I have scrapped most of the easily accessible nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and water-based ices up
and placed them in orbit around the planets. You should find them marked on your map.”
I looked, and sure enough, there they were. Little packages of ice floating around a couple of moons and planets.
“That’s a lot less than I’d thought it would be…” I said with a sigh. It was less than a third of what we needed our planet, and we still also needed an atmosphere.
“Yes.” He frowned. “Most of the ice we found is either badly contaminated with hazardous chemicals, like acid that could burn through a man, or are made of methane.” He shrugged. “However, I believe there are a number of celestial bodies still waiting to be identified. If you wouldn’t mind, I would like to assist Queenie.”
“That will be fine,” I said, but before he went to do that, I decided to utilize the workers I’d assigned to him since I’d be turning my attention to the ice he had marked on my minimap. It wasn’t much, but it was definitely enough to get started, while this was mostly a side project. “While you’re doing that, can you have your minions begin bringing dirt and other regolith to the shell? They need to add around seventy meters of the stuff.”
“Is there any specific composition required for the dirt?” Gobta asked as he looked around. “There several asteroids and assorted space debris we can use around here to do it quickly, but if you require more specific materials…?”
“Whatever will be fine. It’s mostly there to act as a cushion for space debris while having enough mass for the gravity of the moon to act on it and keep it in place.” As I finished speaking, he nodded to me and then his eyes went a bit distant, which let me know he was ordering his minions around through the godly link.
“It will be done, my liege,” he said with a bow. “Will there be anything else?”
“Not until you find me some water,” I replied and left him to go do that while I spent the next few hours gathering the accumulated ice and adding it to my smallest oceans.
It was a little hard to do because I tried to keep it separated. I placed all the water ice in a separate section from the carbon dioxide
and nitrogen ices, so that I had an idea of what we would have once I was done.
Only, as I was doing that, I had a wonderful, awful idea.
“Hey, Gobta,” I said as I placed the last of the Hobgoblin King’s ice in the third ocean and watched it not melt. While the planet was a fair bit warmer than it had been, it still didn’t have much of an atmosphere because we hadn’t added any gas. “Can you shoot me the detailed planetary survey specs you did earlier when looking for ice?”
“Yes, my liege,” he replied in my brain from his location millions of miles away from me. The godly tether between us pulsed, and a moment later, a ton of information hit me like a dump truck. Fortunately, I knew what I was looking for because I remembered something from my cursory survey of the system I’d done when I’d selected this planet.
A second later, I was looking at the specs for the third planet in the system. Like the planet I was currently on, it inhabited the Goldilocks zone, but just barely. Unlike my current planet which was at the very outer edge of the zone, this planet was at the inner edge and only required minor adjustments to its orbit for it to remain within the habitable space.
The problem had been, and still was, the atmosphere. Unlike my current planet which had no atmosphere, this planet had way too much. About ninety times too much, in fact. That was in addition to not having a moon at all, having a slower rotation than necessary, and having a partially cooled dynamo. All those problems were fixable, of course, but it had been too difficult to deal with when I’d been lower level. Hell, for all I knew, they still were.
The thing was, right now, what I needed was atmosphere, and maybe there was a lot easier way to get it than combing the solar system for ice to melt down.
I appeared on the planet I’d dubbed Aphrodite a moment later, and as I stood there on the rocky surface, I realized how hot this place was. I mean, I’d known it was toasty intellectually of course, but it was totally different now that I was standing on the surface
and enjoying the balmy eight hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit day.
“Guess this makes sense because Aphrodite was pretty damn hot,” I said as I wiped my brow with the back of one hand and used my godly powers to get a better idea of the planet’s composition.
Thankfully, there wasn’t a lot of poison in the atmosphere. I’d been worried there would be lots of acid and whatnot like Venus was back home, but fortunately, this planet just had a lot of carbon dioxide.
“Alright, lungs, don’t fail me now,” I said as I accessed my godly toolbar and selected the skill Capture Atmosphere. Like most all the skills in my Godly toolbar, the cost was based on what I was trying to do. In a world where there was literally almost a hundred times as much atmosphere as there was supposed to be, stealing some turned out to be relatively easy because it only took eighty percent of my Aura to do it.
So I cast the spell and inhaled. As I felt my lungs expand to nearly monstrous proportions, I kept feeding Aura into the spell for two reasons. One, I wasn’t sure where the air was actually going, but I’d always assumed it went into some kind of pocket dimension that required Aura to keep open. The second reason was less obvious. See, I only wanted to inhale carbon dioxide, oxygen, and water vapor, so I had to use Aura to filter out any other pollutants.
After all, my body was a temple.
Even though I was a god here, the constant use of Aura combined with inhaling for a long period of time caused me so much strain that I collapsed onto my knees. It was strange because, even though I didn’t need to breathe here, I just desperately wanted to exhale all of it and take a few normal breaths.
I knew deep down that this was just my weak human body trying to work in a way that didn’t make sense for a godly body, and I’d also done this hundreds of times in the game, but there was a realness to it now that I wasn’t prepared for.
Even still, I pressed on, inhaling like I was Superman and there was a fire in desperate need of putting out while keeping my eye on the gauge in the left corner of my vision as it filled up.
At a quarter of an atmosphere, my vision started to blur.
At half, I was shaking so violently, I thought my bones would break.
At three quarters, I was sure I’d explode and get splattered all across the surface of the planet.
And at ninety percent?
Well, my vision went back, and as I was about to collapse onto the ground from exhaustion, I suddenly felt a pulse in my godly tether.
“You can do it, master,” Queenie said, and though her voice was nothing but a sound in my head, the belief in me that she had was enough for me to grab hold of the rocky earth with my hands and push myself back into a sitting position. “Just a little more.”
I knew she was right. If I pulled this off, I would save us months, if not years of effort.
So, it had to work. No matter how much it hurt.
So, I sucked with everything I had, inhaling so hard, it would make Kirby proud.
And then it was all inside me. It happened so suddenly, I didn’t quite know the where and when of it all. One moment, I’d had my eyes on the gauge while Queenie screamed encouragement. The next, well, it was just done, and I was full in a way I couldn’t quite explain. Even still, the pain of it was maddening to such an extent that I knew there was no way I’d be able to teleport back to my planet.
Fortunately, though, I didn’t have to do that. As I collapsed to the earth while focusing on not releasing all the air I’d sucked up, I felt Queenie’s hand on my cheek.
“It’s okay now, master,” the ant queen said as she knelt down beside me and pulled me into her lap. “Let me do the rest.”
As I nodded, she picked me up and leaped into the air. While I knew we were racing through space with mind-numbing speed as everything sped by in a big blur of light, it still felt like forever because I was trying my damnedest to keep my lungs from exploding.
“We’re here,” Queenie said, and as we touched down on the surface of Ares, I realized I’d been so focused on not dying, I had completely lost track of where I was.
Not that I cared though because releasing the breath I’d been holding for the better part of my life was the single greatest pleasure I’d ever experienced. Afterward, I couldn’t do much more than sit there while Queenie held me tightly.
“I can’t believe you did so much with a single breath,” Queenie said as the air whooshed out of me in a rush that ripped across the empty landscape of Ares. “I knew you were powerful, but this…” She gestured across the horizon. “It’s beyond all imagining.”
“And this isn’t even my final form,” I said with a laugh after the last dregs of carbon dioxide vacated my lungs and joined the planet’s fledgling atmosphere.
“I cannot even imagine what that would be like,” Queenie said as she stroked my brow with one hand. “But I think you’ve done enough for now.” She smiled at me. “For now, you should rest. You’ve spent a huge amount of Aura, and it will take time for you to recover.”
“You know,” I said as my eyes started to close on their own because I was suddenly ridiculously tired. “I think that’s a great idea.” I reached out and squeezed her hand. “Would you mind staying with me while I sleep?” I smiled up at her. “I’m pretty comfortable.”
“I would like nothing more, master,” she said and then kissed me. “Sleep well.”
“My liege,” Gobta’s voice echoed in my head, awakening me from my slumber, and as my eyes slowly opened, I realized I was still in Queenie’s arms, though she was asleep as well and had cuddled up next to me. “I have good news and bad news.”
“What is it?” I replied while stifling a yawn so that I wouldn’t disturb Queenie.
“The good news is that I may have solved our water problem,” he said in a way that made me think there was a major problem because he didn’t sound very excited about it.
“And what’s the bad news?” I asked as I extricated myself from Queenie’s arms and then covered her with one of the blankets I’d gotten when we were on Bazaar, Jane’s world. I knew intrinsically that she didn’t need the blanket, but it still seemed like the right thing to do. Sure, the planet had become warmer, especially since I’d added atmosphere, but it still hadn’t acquired quite enough solar radiation to hit a temperature level I wouldn’t classify as deadly cold.
“The bad news is that it seems to be guarded by a giant space kraken.”
I’ll be honest, it took me a couple of seconds to parse what he said properly.
“Did you just say the water is guarded by a giant space kraken?” I took a deep, carbon-dioxide-laden breath. “Like as in a humongous alien squid?”
“Yes.” Gobta didn’t explain further, so I did the obvious. I used our godly link to look through the Hobgoblin King’s eyes and found myself looking at a glinting icy meteor hurtling straight for Ares. Only this wasn’t just any meteor because it was the size of a small planet and had tentacles reaching out through the ice and swatting at the air like it was looking for something to eat.
“Fuck,” I murmured as I teleported to the Hobgoblin King and stared at the thing with my own eyes, and even though a bunch of information popped into my head, I didn’t quite need it to understand what this was.
“So as I said, good news and bad news.” Gobta looked over at me. “Shall I prepare the troops?”
“Yes,” I said even though I wasn’t sure it would matter because this thing was a Tartaran. They were basically giant monsters that lived in space and consumed all that came near it, and they had the annoying habit of showing up at the worst possible times.
I knew from the game that, deep within that icy meteor, we would find a tooth-filled maw capable of biting a moon in half with ease. I knew because I had seen it happen more than once.
“As you wish, my liege. I shall get Queenie as well, and then perhaps we can figure out how to deal with the monster.” With those words, Gobta sped off, and I let him.
Sure, I could have just resummoned Queenie to my location or teleported to her, but I needed time to think. While the Tartaran’s name was light yellow, signifying it was within a couple of levels of me, they were always way more powerful than their level indicated.
Still, there was always a way to beat this thing. Unlike normal monsters that could be defeated by depleting their health and Aura, Tartarans could only be killed by locating their weak spot, a glowing chink in their otherwise impenetrable armor, and exploiting it. Otherwise, no matter how much damage we did to the creature, it would just regenerate. The problem was that the monster’s Achilles heel wasn’t immediately visible, which meant it was within the huge ball of ice rocketing toward me.
“I suppose the first thing we need to do is figure out where the weak point is,” I said as I focused my vision on it, but just like in
Terra Forma, my godly abilities didn’t seem to work on the monster. If they had, I could have looked through the ice and found what I was looking for, but unfortunately, I just couldn’t. That was rumored to be because they were actually some kind of Eldritch abomination from some kind of other-worldly dimension, but whatever the reason was, it didn’t change the facts.
Worse, as I extended my hand and tried to exert my godly powers on it to, I dunno, rip it out of the ice, my efforts failed, a fact made more annoying by the message that flashed across my vision.
Enemyresistancetoohigh.Yourspellhasfailed.
I wasn’t too surprised, but it was still annoying.
“Well, fuck,” I muttered right before Queenie and Gobta appeared beside me with almost sixty of my other creatures. There were several giants, dire bears, elite goblin warriors, and soldier ants, as well as a few other creatures, and as I surveyed my force, I couldn’t help but think that it wasn’t big enough.
Still, it was a lot better than having to take on the thing alone.
“What would you like us to do, master?” Queenie said as she narrowed her multifaceted eyes at the creature zooming toward us. That was an excellent question because as crazy as these things looked in Terra Forma, this Tartaran looked a billion times more massive and formidable in the flesh… and we hadn’t even seen its final form yet.
At the same time, because we weren’t in a game, there was a considerably larger space to deal with this problem outside the box, and thinking outside the box was my specialty. The main problem was that I needed more data about the thing. Every Tartaran was a unique entity, and so if you didn’t do some scouting, you were up shit creek.
“Let’s probe this guy’s defenses,” I ordered. “Queenie, direct your ants around to one side of him. Gobta, take the other. Just harass it, go for some fly-bys, see if you can prompt a response out of him.”
There was no hesitation from the mass of monsters arrayed out before me in the void of space. As my orders passed through Queenie and Gobta, my little army split into two clouds of god-Aurainfused beasts and arced through the vacuum toward the comet-
sized kaiju. The Ant Queen was on the heels of her half of the army, dagger in hand, but Gobta hesitated a moment and cast a glance back toward me.
“And what shall you be doing, my liege?” Though it might have seemed like backtalk to a lot of people, I saw the glint of pure curiosity in his hobgoblin eyes.
“Hmmm…” My voice trailed off for a moment as I mulled it over, and then my AuricSensepicked up exactly what I needed. “Think I’ll just throw a rock at it.” I didn’t give the Hobgoblin King a chance to answer as I turned toward the nearby-in-the-cosmic-scale asteroid hurtling through space.
Despite the name, ‘space’ wasn’t as much of a void as advertised. There were tons of debris, space dust, and random crap littering the universe, and with my expanded godly powers, they were all ready for me to use weapons. In a way, it reminded me of the start of this adventure where I fought giant ants with rocks… this giant ant was just a planet-eating tentacle monster, and the rock was part of a planetoid. Still, while the scale changed, the principle was the same.
I teleported beside the asteroid as the first line of skirmishers descended on the Tartaran. I had already steeled myself for a barrage of drains on my Aura as those massive tentacles started to wipe out my forces… but it didn’t come. Through the tendrils of Aura, I felt a mix of surprise and frustration through Queenie and Gobta, and as I moved to intercept my intended projectile, I could see why.
Though my forces were doing a full-court press on the cometsized creature, their assault wasn’t even bothering the thing. Savage ant bites, raking bear claws, a barrage of infused arrows from the hobgoblins, none of it was penetrating either the hide of the tentacles or the icy shell around the Tartaran. Even Queenie’s deft slashes and Gobta’s twin blades, Sparkle and Burningdeath, were barely even scratching it. Their attacks were like spitballs against an Abrams tank, probably because, according to my Godly Vision, the outer layer of ice on the Tartaran’s shell looked to be significantly harder and denser than the stuff just beneath.
