Chapter 308

  Retrieving Lost Things

  You know, you can have the gift of prophecy and foresight. You can see into parts of the future, realize where things are going to go horribly and irrevocably wrong for you.

  And yet, you can still find yourself in situations like this. Situations where you go and apparently mess up royally.

  Situations where you go and should have seen the writing on the wall. Seen the signs of betrayal coming, and yet, then you still have the audacity to sit there dumbfounded when those acts of betrayal come due and stare at you.

  Yet, that is where I found myself.

  Betrayed by my own daughter.

  Quite masterfully mind you.

  Honestly, I am proud of her in a way.

  In a way that requires retribution and an equally malevolent approach.

  She lured me in, promised me something I knew was too good to be true. A new book, in exchange for a simple task.

  Well, simple was never mentioned. Just a request.

  And like a fool I bit into the poisonous fruit, even getting my reward first. Reading a terrible story about a shiny Fairie, completely different from a pixie, who gets seduced by a traveling artist named Raul.

  Of course, the book was based loosely on real life characters that were in the writer’s life. The Fairie being me and Raul being a living representation of a Lich who is a noted master of Enchanting. Even though in real life the true Lich has a hard time with more complex structures, not seeing how the structures need to be released or at least looped back to avoid damaging simple structures or the components that house the designs to begin with.

  Yes, in two words I can summarize all his new designs, Fire Hazards.

  Worse, those are being published in mass quantities and distributed, where people are encouraged to hand out recreations of the love notes to their significant others.

  Likely a trap of some kind.

  Of course, there is no quest that came up from discovering this, so maybe the system doesn’t think kids burning down the houses of their partners is a bad idea?

  I don’t know.

  I do think we should mass produce the books and send them off to Legrand, you know as a way to help stop the war with self-inflicted wounds.

  Wow, just wow.

  I finally get the quest notification that I was looking for, one that would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that we should ban GlitterBright entirely.

  Of course, the only problem is that I am nowhere near my territory.

  My only hope is that Mallory, sees that troubling quest and acts accordingly.

  At the very least we should get the book banned and likely get Ms. Whittle kicked out of the SLWC entirely. That would be my first suggestion.

  Anything else, well, maybe burn the manuscripts, and purge the memories of anyone who was forced to read that drivel.

  Unfortunately, I need to rely on trusting Mallory to do the right thing.

  Wow, this is kind of fun. Sort of like having an easy button where I now assign Mallory annoying quests to complete. Oddly enough, I feel very empowered by this process, and kind of excited. I can lower the amount of rewards offered to Mallory, knowing that she would not be able to see how much was originally available to her. Kind of an on your honor as a quest sharer that you have the other person’s best interest at heart.

  While I am almost tempted to get rid of the story entirely, I feel that this should be easy enough for Mallory to deal with.

  Just get rid of the books entirely and boom, we are safe. At the very least we should be able to protect our own citizens from the dangers of terrible stories.

  Of course, I cannot do anything to assist in this quest at the moment.

  I can’t even check with Mallory to make sure she is doing the correct thing, I just have to trust that she will do the right thing and ban Susan Whittle from the SLWC, and prevent her from writing again, ever.

  Why is this?

  Well, quite simply put. At the moment I am busy.

  What am I doing?

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  I don’t know.

  Actually, I do know, which is worse.

  I am trying to find my ex.

  Yes, my daughter in her infinite wisdom cornered me and forced me to do one request for her. That request was of course garbage.

  “Mother, my request for you is to go out and rescue dad.”

  As soon as she spoke, I felt a binding line of karma link me to Gwen, basically stating that the quest had been fully sealed.

  Knowing that I had already received my reward, reading a terrible book that can literally cause explosions if you follow it too closely, I was all but forced to complete the task as quickly as possible.

  This is why, even now I am moving west, despite not having a true sense of where I need to go.

  How am I moving? Well simple, I am Teleporting.

  In a way, this re-quest is great, as it all but forces me to think beyond my sudden apprehension towards Teleporting, and just do it.

  Of course, I’m not entirely trusting this whole process, as I now have a bunch of steps.

  First, I open the Arcane Geomancy Teleportation, then cast a Cosmically Cultivated anchor from me and attach it through to the other end of the Teleportation point. Then follow the cord through the Teleportation tunnel that is created and appears where I want to be.

  It is as one would expect a very slow and tedious process. Particularly as I don’t feel the pull of my soul being expanded to the cosmos when I now enter those tunnels.

  In fact, if it wasn’t for the tunnels being held open by my new safety measures, I might be able to easily convince myself that these precautions are unnecessary. But it only takes one slip up to lose a month of your life, as I’ve now learned.

  Also, I can recultivate my Cosmic Energy from the anchor that is created, so I don’t really lose any energy.

  I just lose time.

  Time and the element of surprise. But that is a minor inconvenience, for now.

  Fortunately, finding the dead beat is simple.

  In my finger I am holding a strand of my daughter’s glowing hair.

  I don’t know what color the hair looks like to others, but to me it has a bit of a greenish-blue mixture to it. That is green for life and blue for air and or vision related energies.

  I’m hoping that she is fully delving into her powers of vision and foresight. Getting her to see into the future could be truly beneficial to her in the long run and hopefully help her prevent catastrophes in the future.

  That said, she doesn’t come to be about that aspect of her life.

  Though I have seen her sit in on a few classes, and she is in one of my classes.

  What is she doing? Why isn’t she here to be part of this daring rescue operation?

  Well simple, when I left, I changed both her and Jhonny into the King of the Deolarians and the Princess of the Deolarians respectively.

  You know, only now that I think the thought as one complete thought do I realize how messed up it is that both seem to gender swap for their roles.

  I’m hoping that part of that swapping is so they take their roles and responsibilities more seriously. Making it so they know they are not in their natural forms and will thus act differently from their normal personalities, you know, truly taking on the acting roles and showing a distinct difference between themselves and the roles they are portraying. I think this, and realize I might be just lying to myself.

  That said, it has been a month since either were seen in public and both will likely need to do a lot of damage control in the meantime.

  Knowing that they are taking care of those tasks does make this whole process of going forward, casting my Family Tree Finder (Branches to Leaf Edition) spell, finding the direction that my ex is, and then heading in that direction, a bit easier to stomach.

  While Gwen might have gotten one over on me, I know she is equally miserable right now. Or at least bogged down trying to do damage control as a king of the undead elves.

  I wonder if there is a way to Mass Resurrect all of the Deolarians, but then realize that it might be a waste. I mean death is nothing to be afraid of, and all of the Deolorians seem to be doing just fine. Well, all but Rahul De’Gravitas, the Lich who is trying to spread about anarchic love letter books of destruction, that masquerades as bad romance.

  With this new knowledge, I make a mental note that I need to talk to Rahul.

  Part of me realizes that I should be kind to him, as he continued to teach in my absence, which is why I will not be too demanding when I talk to him about inserting himself into books. Fortunately, he chose a writer I didn’t care for, but there is the chance that he might get to one of the SLWC writers that I truly care for, at which point I might need to make an example that some things are sacred.

  Gentle breeze.

  Oh, who am I kidding, as long as he is just being a moron and not actively trying to kill off our society, I will mostly let this go.

  No, right now, I am just talking a big game, because I know I don’t want to do what needs to be done next.

  Holding out the strand of hair, I see a line of energy trail off into the distance.

  Logically, I can follow the trail, or I can just Teleport to the next location.

  Let’s see, take my time and travel across lands that aren’t infused with traces of my Arcane Geomancy, which given my new evolutionary advancements will cause me to burn and flake like an albino in the desert sands. Or, I can just use one last Arcane Geomancy Teleportation and go to the exact location that Rob is at right now.

  How do I know he is there?

  Well, first the line goes off in that general direction. Secondly, I know that Rob is an idiot, who still even in this version of the afterlife refuses to read the instruction manuals, even if it would save his life. Or at the very least, save him from extreme discomfort.

  Yes, Rob found, or maybe the powers that be allowed Rob to take on my Mythical Race, where he too is now a Cosmic-Purple Eyed Mythical Quintessence Ethereal Colossal Pixie (Co-Progenitor).

  How do I know that this is the case? That Rob is also starting off as a level 1 Mythical level creature? Well, it is right there in the description of my race. I am now a co-progenitor, which I’m assuming means that I can only partly influence how I will be able to evolve in the future. Or maybe it means that Rob and I can have kids, well more kids?

  Blah!

  Just thinking about that option makes me somewhat squeamish to my stomach.

  Been there done that, four times, and I am good.

  Heck even the idea of grandchildren and grand puppies are getting to be too much for me.

  Speaking of which, I do need to check on the Pomeranian princess and see how she is progressing. Also, I might need to see if Ms. Kujo finally had enough of Mr. Kujo and kicked him out.

  Mentally, I check and realize that I haven’t seen Kujo, well any Kujo other than Umbra Kujo.

  Hmm.

  I wonder what happened to the others as well.

  Yep, wasting even more time.

  Apparently, the reason why Gwen was so conniving with her request was that Rob was doing very poorly.

  From what I can tell, the Teleiotís apparently found Rob, and took him into their sacred caves. With the caves being completely dark, and only the dreaded Teleiotís able to enter said caves freely, no one would be able to conduct a rescue mission for him.

  As such, Gwen grew anxious, and then finally she grew conniving and got me to go on her behalf.

  Honestly, I can respect the hustle.

  I’m even glad I read the book so we can get it banned. Yeah, things I never thought I’d hear myself say in my lifetime. Glad I read a book so I could get it banned for safety.

  Just thinking about that, a part of me dies.

  Or at least it should, die, or maybe have a restriction on it, something like Warning: Only give these love symbols to your exes that you want to die in fiery explosions.

  No, wait, that is a terrible idea, as that will likely increase sales and all but ensure the kids will read the drivel, and pass along the notes of unrequited love, to their exes.

  Yeah, honestly, this is a no-win situation, which is why I am so glad I have Mallory to blame. I mean, so I can rely on her guidance and ability to maneuver around this delicate situation.

  Also, when did I start thinking of younger people as the kids?

  Man, you go away for a month and have your entire mindset changed, and not necessarily for the better.

  I’m getting too old, apparently.

  Then almost at that exact moment, part of my status appears to show me that I am just overthinking things.

  Seeing the age, I calm down, remembering one of the major laws of BiPrism. Namely the fact that I will be safe, as nothing can happen to minors, even with consent or being married. Meaning I am safe for the next three years, and maybe longer.

  Mentally, I thank the fact that I look younger as that hopefully will save me from anything I might regret, like being forced to spend more time with Rob in the future.

  Realizing that the message was likely a note from the system, the administrators, or maybe just my own subconsciousness, I still take a moment to read it and feel better about myself.

  “Right, thank you,” I say to no one in particular as the mental blue display box disappears from my mind and all I can see are the fields of magic around me. The fellow Teleiotís, who seem to realize that I am here, or maybe that something is here in their territory.

  They are another factor that is likely being used to force me to go.

  I don’t know how the Teleiotís will react after my being gone for all this time.

  It is very possible that they have forgotten me entirely by this point.

  Still, dealing with them will be easy, I still remember their primitive mana language and am fairly certain I can at least speak to them through that means of communication.

  No, right now, it is just me being weak that is preventing me from going forward. From taking the one last Arcane Geomancy Teleportation hop that I need to, in order to complete this journey.

  A journey that I now know, I would never have even started had Gwen not forced me.

  At that thought, I smile.

  I’m hoping this is just her relying more on the blue aspects of Vision related powers that she has. Knowing that I would have been too much of a chicken to move without her all but forcing me with a compulsory pledge.

  If that is the case, then I know I owe Gwen a lot, for I was always too much of a coward to face him.

  I realize that now.

  I was a coward.

  Well, I am still a coward as I am still not even taking the moment to deal with this as efficiently as I could or should.

  “Two breaths,” I say to myself.

  With that, I inhale once. A long slow breath, that I then slowly exhale.

  Then a second time.

  The second time seems to go by far more quickly than the first time, but it is no less calming.

  After the second breath, I feel centered and then force myself to Teleport.

  Poof.

  Only after I leave, do I realize how stupid I just was, as I forgot to use my Cosmic Anchor on the other end.

  Fortunately, I didn’t need the anchor and it was clearly just a waste of time.

  Unfortunately, I found that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

  “Well, hello…”