Chapter 561: Moonfall VII

Chapter 561: Moonfall VII

I was Immortal. I was, barring a violent death, going to live forever. I was still adjusting my mindset to what that meant, and I’d started to idly doodle out a list of every career I ever wanted to try - basically all of them - and ranked them in order that I wanted to try them in.

High up on my list was [Courier], to my mild surprise. The work itself didn’t sound or feel super ‘me’, but the travel, the outdoors, being able to spend most of my time just running or flying without a care in the world sounded nice. There was also a pretty major ‘lack of responsibilities’, at least compared to what I was currently doing. Someone else to figure it all out, the wind in my hair and a satchel of letters... yeah, I probably would try being a [Courier] at some point. Probably somewhere where I wasn’t recognized and when I had no responsibilities, aka I was on vacation.

My skills offered me a subset of [Courier], letting me move vast quantities of supplies rapidly over a distance. Heck, I’d just transported everything needed to construct a small temple to the moon! I was rapidly shuffling the job way, waaaaaaay down to the bottom of my list. The traveling was great.

Hauling it all out of my [Tower]? Pure misery.

Wood and bamboo were the main building blocks I’d brought out, and a wide variety of tools came along for the ride. Hammers, saws, and far too many nails were a start, but axes, shovels, pickaxes, chisels, gimlets, squares, and more came out. Even some workbenches! One of our dumber, drunker BUILD diagrams had included us ‘bootstrapping’ various tiers of workbenches and construction equipment, until we sobered up the next day and realized we could just... bring it pre-assembled. Our current BUILD plan, before I’d gotten my suit destroyed, called for Iona to quarry as much moonrock as she could to build the temple with.

Our redundancy involved me carrying enough supplies to build an entire temple, and Iona was probably going to go out and mine some rocks anyway. Either way, no matter how I sliced it, no matter how I distracted myself, this was incredibly boring work with long stretches in the middle to regenerate my mana.

Piles of raw clay ended up next to pottery I’d been asked to bring, crystals carelessly thrown next to the rope. Lanterns and candles felt questionable to me, but they were for the aesthetic, and the statues were blessedly hollow. They’d be impossible otherwise. I had my doubts that the paint could dry in the lack of air, there were some sacred trappings, and of course, the thousand and one various ornaments and knick-knacks we’d brought here.

But mostly wood and bamboo. Soooooo much wood and bamboo. According to Vitrovious, we could do some really interesting builds and structures that weren’t possible on Pallos due to the significantly lower gravity. We were interested, but some of the designs ended up so outlandish we had to turn them down. We had no idea how to build them!

[Handy] was a skill I’d planned out to grab when classing up, just a nice little utility skill in my general skills, something that was useful for day to day life, but not anything done frequently enough that it wasn’t worth taking a skill for. Over the years I’d evolved it to [Dexterous and Handy], and our plans had called for it to be the star of the show here, helping us fit everything together and build the temple.

Communication, as always, was key.

“Hey love, I’m pretty sure you want to do the building, right? It’s good for your class?” I asked.

“It’s great for my class.” Iona confirmed. “Pretty sure I’d get a boost for ‘solo building’ the temple as well, if you don’t mind.”

“No, not at all. Gotta ask though, what’s the point? You’re already capped out on class quality for a divine class, any sense in pushing it?”

“Raw levels?” Iona answered. “Skill quality?”

“Oh right, duh, yeah. I’ma shut up now. Oh look! My mana’s ready for another trip.” I vanished for another run, wanting to facepalm but not being able to thanks to the whole spacesuit thing.

It took a few days to haul everything out. We’d tried to be lightweight, but we were trying to make an entire building, and cruel physics made demands of us. We fell into a steady rhythm, once I was no longer concerned about Iona’s revenge for the prank I pulled. Head into [Tower], spend about thirty seconds blowing all my mana teleporting things out, then [Teleport] back into the Argo II to take off my suit and get some cuddles. After my mana regenerated, put the suit back on, [Teleport] out, and repeat.

Iona was clearly going a little stir-crazy.

“Want to take the suit and go for a walk? Maybe a long run?” I suggested.

I could tell that Iona wanted to say yes with every fiber of her being, but she ground her teeth and shook her head.

“No, I don’t want to waste our time, and more importantly, every time I get in and out of the Argo is a pain.” Iona was staring out at the moonscape, idly tracing shapes against the clear steel. Her voice was filled with such longing that it damn near broke my heart.

I wish I could’ve redoubled my efforts and done it twice as fast, but the System was a cruel mistress at times. My mana regeneration was my mana regeneration, and no amount of staring at it was going to change anything. I was pretty happy with my decision to pick [Arbiter] in light of its high mana regeneration and my current tasks.

It took time, but eventually I managed to haul out the second-to-last item, leaving Nina’s crate of surprises alone. It didn’t exactly go in last, but it replaced an easily replaceable item.

[*ding! [Teleportation] leveled up! 416-> 417]

[*ding! [Tower of Knowledge] leveled up! 303 -> 329]

Given that I’d gotten maybe half a level total from loading everything into [Tower], I was pleased that the mission and the unloading was worth so many levels.

I ate heartily inside of [Tower], working on regaining some energy and reviewing the supplies we had left. Spares of almost everything, and I was glad we’d packed too much food. We were already running low on some of our favorites. It wasn’t anything that made me the slightest bit concerned that we could be in anything resembling dire straits. More like going to the store, buying a nice salmon filet for dinner, then eating it. The tastiest food went first and quickly, and our tastiest food was out. We still had huge barrels of rice, buckets of beans, stacked loaves of bread, and enough butter to drown in, for a start, on top of the endless fruits, vegetables, and other assorted food. We were fine.

“Alright love, all you!” I flashed into the Argo II, waiting a moment for Iona to get up before switching the suit over. “I’m going to cook something nice, so don’t be too worried if I’m not immediately back.”

Iona nodded.

“Ready moonwalk?” She asked.

“Aye, moonwalk’s a go.” I confirmed, teleporting into [Tower] a moment later. I wandered over to the ‘kitchen’ area - it was hard having stovetops and no gravity, it just didn’t work - and planned out the most obnoxious ‘love you’ meal I could plan.

My dastardly deeds done, my own stomach sated, I returned to reality, sat back in Iona’s chair, and watched the show.

It had been the magic stats that had gotten us this far, but now it was the physical’s turn to shine. Iona was roughly thirty times as fast as a human with the same base characteristics - without her [Vow] coming into play - and given the muscles she’d asked for when I was doing her biomancy, she could lift 25,000 pounds effortlessly, and quite a bit more than that if she put her mind to it. Nothing I’d brought was close to that weight. That was before the moon’s lower gravity kicked in. All of the supplies had been gated by my magic stats versus their weight - uhh, with the lower gravity, I should be specific like the [Nerds] kept telling me and use mass - and every piece she was able to move like a twig.

Goddesses, what a show. She was the epitome of grace and power, all while a fantastic temple to the Moon Goddesses was rapidly made in front of me.

She started off tracing the outline of the temple, marking where each piece would go with a stick in the light dust. She zipped over to the Argo II at one point, and she didn’t even need to ask me to pull out the BUILD document, unrolling it and plastering it to the side of the Argo II for her to read. Then she zipped back, continuing to work.

Blessedly, there was no flooring - what could be better for a temple to the Moon Goddesses than the surface of the moon itself? - and a set of benches were quickly assembled. A warm-up exercise.

Iona wielded a pickaxe against the ground, [Telekinesis] easily pulling the broken-up rocks out. Some sharp thrusts with a shovel ‘smoothed’ the hole - only possible because Iona’s skills reinforced the shovel, but not the rocks - then drove down supports into the holes. Loose rocks were gently tossed in my direction, and I snapped them into the Argo II with [Teleportation]. The skill was doing a lot of work on the entire trip. Bamboo was crossed to make the walls, and the entire thing came together at a shocking speed. Whenever Iona needed a second or even third pair of hands for something, [Telekinesis] saved the day. We didn’t need to worry about objects breaking under their own weight. Iona had a skill specifically for that, and we were on the moon. Gravity wasn’t exactly a big threat.

I tended to Iona’s divine candle as I watched the show. There was something about the sheer competency on display that had me openly staring the entire time.

Iona dashed over, opening her mouth and pointing to it. I revealed the meal I’d cooked with an evil grin on my face, and furrowed eyebrows from Iona.

Skewered shish kebabs. Extra-spicy. Burned on the way in, and on the way out!

I [Teleported] them into her helmet, skipping the whole airlock process, and I could read the swears Iona was shouting as she tried to [Telekinetically] navigate them into her mouth.

[*ding! [Teleportation] leveled up! 417-> 418]

The cherry on top! A level for pranking my wife!

She shot me a foul look and I made a heart with my hands, causing her to bend over laughing. I activated my earring, letting me talk to her.

“I was thinking soup next!” I cheerfully told my wife.

“Noooo...” Iona said between hiccups of laughter. “Don’t do it!”

I grinned wickedly, but didn’t get Iona soup next.

Piece by piece, the entire temple came together. Honestly, with all the way it was made easy, it looked like assembling a toy. Low gravity was one hell of a cheat, and it took Iona a fraction of the time to build the temple as it took me to teleport the supplies out of storage.

Whenever I started to think that magical stats were the end all be all of the System, Iona busted something out that reminded me that physical stats could perform equally amazing miracles, that the road not taken was just as valid and potent.

The illusions over the moon made the concept of sunrise and sunset an unknown when we launched, and I’d watched a bright spot in the illusions slowly march across the sky. I assumed it was the sun, and there was some play or counterplay to allowing it to ‘shine through’ a bit. Perhaps it was simply cheaper to do so, or maybe it was part of letting the ‘eyes’ go through ‘phases’, like the moons went through phases.

Iona started to put the finishing touches on everything, and when she had a brief pause, I activated our earrings.

“Hey! Hold up on those windows, I want to replace them with something else.” I said. “A last minute substitution.”

Iona raised an eyebrow.

“And you didn’t mention it to me because...?” It was a fair question. Communication and over communication was the name of the game, and secrets in space could easily get both of us killed.

“Because it’s a harmless substitution Nina asked for. Hang on, let me get it out for you.”

A minute of juggling later, and Iona had a mystery crate in front of her.

“It’s supposed to replace the windows on the right side.” I explained.

She pried the crate open and gasped at what was inside.

“Oh, Elaine, it’s beautiful.” She gushed. I beamed, happy to have been the architect of the surprise.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“I know! Plus, [Tower] storage and all that.”

Iona placed the windows in, then glanced at the divine candle. It had a little more than a quarter left, which looked quite sad.

“I wanted quite a bit more pomp and ceremony to this, but ready for the consecration ceremony?” She asked.

“Hang on, let me get my spellbooks out.” I double-checked my mana, confirming I had enough. Everything I’d calculated said I’d be fine for this next step, but it was another hard to test move, and failing here would be disastrous.

I pulled out three different spellbooks, and flipped them open to the appropriate pages. Technically, I could’ve made a single mega-spell to do what these three different spells were doing, but each one was easy to write in a single, different language, and trying to link them together would’ve been difficult.

I also grabbed a ton of air canisters, my stomach dropping as I saw how much our reserves dwindled with that move. I knew we’d packed three times as many as needed, but it was a little frightening to see them decline so much. I knew I could heal through it all if I needed to, but spending almost two weeks gasping and choking on nothing sounded like a miserable time.

Aiming the atmospheric spell was a little tricky. It was fixed relative to the exact position of the mandala on casting, and I was trying to cover a large volume.

“Ready consecration spells.” I said.

Iona’s eyes unfocused slightly as she prayed, and I was suddenly hit with the sheer weight of the divine. The illusions across the sky flickered out, and the presence of Selene and Lunaris almost crushed me as they manifested themselves.

Once again I could see directly into the divine, the very firmament that made up the gods themselves thanks to [The World Around Me]. Like during the Gladiator Gauntlet, my mind screamed in agony as I witnessed the impossible, twisting visions that no mortal mind could comprehend.

One set of windows was stained glass, and each panel told a story. A girl crying over a collapsed mountain, a stylized Valkyrie on a triceratops. A bloody battle against goblins, a kneeling squire being raised a knight. A fierce battle against a wyvern, and the hatching of an egg. A chance meeting in a tavern, and a single foe standing against seven defeated enemies. A hand reaching out to a small kitsune and a marriage.

A trip to the moon.

And a panel of a happy family around a table.

[*ding!* [The Arbiter of Life and Death] has leveled up! 918-> 920. +400 Strength, +400 Dexterity, +800 Speed, +800 Vitality, +1600 Magic Power, +1600 Magic Control, +1000 Mana, +9000 Mana Regeneration from your Class per level! +1 Strength, +1 Dexterity, +1 Speed, +1 Vitality, +1 Mana, +1 Mana Regeneration, +1 Magic Power, +1 Magic Control for being Chimera (Elvenoid) per level! +1 Mana, +1 Mana Regeneration from your Element per level!]

[*ding! [Luminary Mind] leveled up! 804-> 808]

[*ding! [Etheric Aegis] leveled up! 451-> 455]

[*ding! [Event Horizon] leveled up! 701-> 702]

[*ding! [Zenith Everlasting] leveled up! 888-> 889]

[*ding!* [Seraph of the Dawn] leveled up! 894-> 895. +512 Speed, +512 Vitality, +1024 Mana, +1024 Mana Regeneration, +1024 Magic Power, +1024 Magic Control per level from your class per level! +1 Strength, +1 Dexterity, +1 Speed, +1 Vitality, +1 Mana, +1 Mana Regeneration, +1 Magic Power, +1 Magic Control for being Chimera (Elvenoid) per level! +1 Strength +1 Mana Regeneration from your Element per level!]

[*ding! [A Light Shining in the Darkness] leveled up! 750-> 751]

[*ding! [Teleportation] leveled up! 417-> 425]

[*ding! [Repository of the Magus] leveled up! 666-> 675]

[*ding! [Tower of Knowledge] leveled up! 329-> 333]

[*ding! [Reality, Writ As You Will] leveled up! 620-> 621]

[*ding! [Astral Archives] leveled up! 480-> 481]

[*ding! [The World Around Me] leveled up! 365-> 400]

[*ding! [Persistent Casting] leveled up! 730-> 740]

[Name: Elaine]

[Race: Chimera (Elvenoid)]

[Age: 59]

[Mana: 7,959,810/7,959,810]

[Mana Regeneration: 17,422,279 +(54,255,459)]

Stats

[Free Stats: 0]

[Strength: 53,227 (Effectively: 425,816)]

[Dexterity: 77,629 (Effectively: 826,594)]

[Vitality: 251,646 (Effectively: 3,931,969)]

[Speed: 238,878 (Effectively: 4,701,836)]

[Mana: 795,981]

[Mana Regeneration: 1,939,860 (+ 5,425,546)]

[Magic Power: 1,039,313 (+ 47,340,707)]

[Magic Control: 1,038,458 (+ 47,301,762)]

[Class 1: [The Arbiter of Life and Death - Celestial: Lv 920]]

[Celestial Spirit: 920]

[Aurora Curialis: 901]

[The Stars Never Fade: 200]

[Luminary Mind: 808]

[Universal Cure: 920]

[Etheric Aegis: 455]

[Event Horizon: 702]

[Zenith Everlasting: 889]

[Class 2: [Seraph of the Dawn - Radiance: Lv 895]]

[Radiance Mastery: 895]

[A Light Shining in the Darkness: 751]

[The Rays of the First Dawn: 895]

[Radiant Angel's Spear of Obliteration: 330]

[Celestial Dew: 895]

[Sunrise Halo: 895]

[Wings of the Seraphim: 895]

[Six Wings, Six Million Feathers: 895]

[Class 3: [Erudite Archmage - Spatial: Lv 768]]

[Spatial Authority: 600]

[Cozy Reading: 768]

[Teleportation: 425]

[Repository of the Magus: 675]

[Tower of Knowledge: 333]

[Reality, Writ As You Will: 621]

[Astral Archives: 481]

[Endless Pursuit of Knowledge: 768]

General Skills

[Long-Range Identify: 585]

[Dexterous and Handy: 369]

[Companion Bond between Elaine and Auri: 920]

[The World Around Me: 400]

[Oath of Elaine to Lyra: 920]

[Sentinel's Superiority: 920]

[Persistent Casting: 740]

[Tender Gardening: 372]