The team was sitting around Gregory, who should be close to lifting his seal.

  “I will blast him again if he fails.”

  How did you even manage to [Charm] him? Wasn’t he immune to brainwa…charm magic?

  Well, he fell in love with Deca, so that would suggest that he’s susceptible to her charm magic.

  I still can’t believe he tried to do that… Will you be trying to seduce him after this Yv?

  “Absolutely not. The damage has been done. Curse or not. I’m sorry.”

  Pff,, so we will have to find a chick for him. How about we visit Elliana?

  That’s easy for you to say, as you don’t have to be the one to run to the other side of the continent…

  “Let’s find out what the deal is with my divine energy before we go there. Finding my fans would probably be easy. Figuring out how to recharge my divine energy…I’m sorry lil’ bro, you have so much on your plate, but you’re probably the one who has to figure this out…”

  Don’t worry! It's my job as the leader and ehh little brother.

  “So what types of woman is Gregory into actually?” Giana asked.

  Uhh, dunno I was convinced Yv was his type but Yv… could be anyone’s type…

  “Aww, how sweet!” I got hugged from behind and pleasant floral fragrance came from behind me.

  Maybe…maybe he’s into flat chicks! All of you are busty. Elliana was busty. Maybe that was your downfall!

  Not everyone is as shallow as you or me, Raishin.

  Why is it shallow? Our looks don’t fade like humans. Going for looks means we love them for them! Whether they are beggars or millionaires!

  Ehhm wait…you might have a point! Big boobs for the win!

  Aww yeah!

  Raishin and I high-fived.

  “Idiots…” Noelle said as she shook her head.

  Hehe, this idiot will show you how deep this shallow guy can go!

  Holy shit Raishin, you went too far!

  Noelle got red and didn’t say anything.

  So that’s how you counter Noelle. You might be the only person in the world that can shut her up...

  Hehe! Figured it out after a lot of hard work!

  Gregory stopped focusing and stood up.

  I succeeded. The curse is gone.

  “Stay seated Gregory. Let’s wait for half an hour and see if it returns.” Giana said in a stern tone.

  He obeyed and sat down.

  Hehe so Giana controls 2 guys now!

  She doesn’t control me! I control her! I’m the control guy! Look at this! Deca, I will give you a special edition of my Guava ice cream if you stretch like a cat!

  Giana [Transformed] into a cat outfit and stretched out like a cat.

  Lewd…

  Noelle smacked him.

  “What about me sweetie? I want ice cream too!”

  Uhh, make a cute bunny hop?

  I was wrong, Yv controls Agnis!

  Yv made a cute bunny hop and I got to work to make them ice cream.

  Raishin walked up to me and watched.

  Hey Agnis, how are you controlling them if they only have to do a cute pose for you to work your ass off to make ice cream?

  I dropped my spoon.

  Wait! You’re right! I’m a fool!

  The two were smiling happily waiting for their ice cream and chatting.

  But I guess it’s worth it.

  Soft like your ice cream! So, can I have some too?

  How about the ‘I’ll kick your ass’ flavor. Get out of here!

  I chased Raishin away before finishing the ice cream.

  Gregory’s curse was still gone after 42 minutes. It didn’t seem to have removed his infatuation for Giana which annoyed me a bit, but his insufferable self, seemed to be gone, for now.

  There were no issues while carrying toward Saluk.

  We arrived in the sandy city and Giana and I went on duty to get sand out of my tails.

  “Deca, what would you do if I picked up belly dancing?”

  I would support you with all my being. Ugh, I went over this part already, why is there still sand here?!

  “I don’t mind de-sanding though. It’s a moment of bonding.”

  How long would it take for you to master belly dancing?

  “Interested, eh? Maybe a week.”

  Just a week?!

  “Dancing is my thing, remember?”

  I am so lucky. There is still sand here…

  Raishin and Noelle went to draw attention. It shouldn’t take long for Noelle’s cult to pop up. Yv is gathering information and Gregory is looking through archeological sites and visiting musea.

  “Alright, it’s time to switch. I will pick up some dancing. Have fun with Yv.”

  I just wanted to ask…what happened to your fear of being alone, by the way?

  “Hehe, it’s a secret. Giana moved toward the door while dancing. It took her a while as she was still super slow.

  I continued de-sanding my tails and I could smell when Yv arrived as the room smelled like fragrant flowers.

  Hey Yv, I know that you wanted to make things easy for me but…having me do nothing…isn’t this a bit too much?

  Yv sat down and helped me de-sanding. “Giana, Noelle and I had a talk and a topic was that you do too much. You get into trouble and are tired so often because of that. Not because you’re our leader, means that you have to do everything.”

  But doing nothing is…

  “Good for your mental health! Giana has been paying attention, you know. You might be good at hiding it, but she knows that you’re stressed. We will still rely on you for things only you can do, but for the things we can also do…let us do that please.”

  I see. You might be right. So I’ve noticed…the intensity of your pleasant smell is it…

  “Yes!” She shook my tail and a lot of sand fell out. “Why don’t you make magic to de-sand your tails?”

  Giana finds it a moment of bonding and will charm blast me if I do that.

  “It does give us time to talk to you, yeah. So ehm… I've meant to ask before but… is there something you can tutor me in?” She asked bashfully

  With [Illusionary Dagger]? You might not react well to toxic behavior though…

  “Well… I know that’s how your race is, so it shouldn’t be so bad right? And I want to be of help!”

  You already are but… maybe the things about spirit vessels. You are somewhat related to spirits, it might be useful for you to know but…it’s not pleasant having over a year of research crammed into your head, its more than what Giana got. I might even fry your brain…

  “What if you does it while I’m in my rabbit mode?”

  Hmm, that might work. I want you to think it over. There is no going back once I start.

  I am happy that she is interested in the knowledge, but it might hurt her. I want to include her, though. I could cut it in pieces. The spirit vessel had 3 parts. The ‘Mind’ section would obviously too much as it would be what Giana got. I would keep it at the ‘Body’ which is already a lot.

  “I think I’m sure, but I will think about it.”

  So, what do I do with my free time? Looking for the cult is taken care of by Noelle and Raishin. Giana and Yv are handling gathering information. So, does that mean I can do whatever I want? Time to work more on [Morphi: Foxfire Lunacy].

  Is it possible that you guys have found some sort of cheat code?

  “Cheat code?”

  I have more time now to speed up my plans of making sure we don’t get fucked the moment a god appears.

  “So because we make things easier for you, it will make it more likely for us to survive? It sounds similar to another point we concluded in our girl talk!”

  Do you talk about other people?

  “Oh we’ve talked about Raishin and Gregory too. Also, about other things, but we all know that when we get in trouble, the burden will be on you, so if we can get you to focus on doing that better.”

  I feel like I’m getting spoilt…

  “Is it bad, though? If there is an option of you getting stressed out and us getting killed off by gods or you getting spoiled and us surviving. Is it a bad to want to increase our chances? Also, the more time you have, the more you can help us to make sure we can contribute.”

  Ok that makes sense. I will be counting on you guys in making life easy.

  Another part of my skill got completed. I had drawn inspiration from my spirit core and rearranged the morphi to resemble it. I had it in front of me, and it was calming to look at.

  “What is it? It looks…calming.”

  That’s the point. Spirits have a core; Giana has 2 for some reason. Maybe I’m the strange one to have just 1, but I’ve drawn inspiration of it. It is done. I’ve sent some clones out to readjust the big circle.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “So another step of us being safe. What is the next step?”

  Probably beat up someone with [Wind Rope], [Boss music], [Solar Stream] and perhaps a [Silver Torrent] created by [Illusionary Daggers].

  “What would even live long enough to survive all that?” Yv shook more sand out of another tail.

  Wait… something more important. How do you do that? I’ve checked the tails you shook out and they’re sandless.

  “Well, you won’t let me help you de-sand your tails if I tell you.” Yv started on another tail.

  To answer your question, demi gods or stronger. Maybe some unknown race that’s tough. It doesn’t have to be one target, though.

  “Oh…so are we going to get in trouble?” Yv shook my tail and a mountain of sand fell out.

  Well yeah, but now I feel like I can complete things on time. The Gregory problem solved, I have time to work on things and I don’t have to continuously dump mana in the mana circle. We just need to stay safe for 3 days. Anything that appears after that is so fucked.

  “Doesn’t that mean well get into trouble within 3 days?” Yv asked as she cocked her head.

  As long as it’s not a demi god or higher, do we even need to worry? I can still run for 3 days.

  “Running until we can beat it…I see.”

  I tried to find out how Yv was de-sanding my tails so fast and efficiently, but I couldn't figure it out. Is it a 4t specialty? Isn't that an extremely niche ability? She shook my tail and sand streamed out of it like what happened to my other tails.

  Is this witchcraft?

  “Don't you mean Mishacraft?”

  Doesn't sound as good.

  She started on a tail that Giana and I had de-sanded. It just looked like she was combing through it with her hands for 2 minutes and then shook my tail. Not a lot of sand fell out, but there was still sand.

  I give up, I have no idea how you do it.

  Yv smiled and started on the next one.

  Oh I should do my dimensional pocket routine. I've slacked on it for quite a while…

  “Oh, can I join you?” She asked as another tail lost sand.

  Uhh it will be quite boring for you. It will only feel like 5 minutes for you if you stay here.

  Yv put up her puppy face, or more rabbit face up.

  It seems you don't care…fine, just don't complain when you get bored. We'll go after all my tails are de-sanded.

  We hopped in my dimensional pocket after Yv worked her magic.

  The first stop was the section that had the Cnidaria seeds growing. I had forgotten about them again and only 8 plants were alive.

  For fuck's sake, I keep forgetting about these things…

  “I haven't seen these before. What are they?” Yv touched a plant who shot seeds at her. A jellyfish-like thing flew out of the seed, attaching to Yv’s face, zapping her and paralyzing her.

  “Aagh!”

  Yv was getting chain cc'ed as more seeds exploded, sending jellyfish like things at Yv, zapping her and slowly poisoning her.

  Hahaha, you're just like Raishin! That's what happened to him too.

  I turned Yv into an ice cube and shattered the plants off her, before thawing her.

  “Ugh, what was that?” She asked as she was applying nature energy to herself.

  It has poison, will you be alright?

  “It seems weak, I should be fine.”

  Well I don't have to explain them now as you've experienced what they do. I keep forgetting about them, so the plants keep dying.

  My tail used water Dragonvein and watered the plants.

  “Interesting…I didn't know you liked plants.”

  I'm neutral to them. It's time for one of my MVPs.

  We went over to the field of Dawnlights.

  “I thought they were endangered! You have so many of them!” Yv said and started to run around carelessly.

  Yv wait! Most of them are…

  She stepped on a fully primed Dawnlight, which exploded in light and sent her flying into me.

  Oof. Of all the places you had to get sent flying into me…

  “Sorry…bad habit…”

  I had to pull Yv in, as she seemed in some sort of Raishin mode, where she will set off anything she gets close to.

  That side is with oversaturated Dawnlights. Don't go there unless you want to get blasted. These are normal, we need to go there for the freshly sprouted ones. They need some light.

  I took the stance to create [Fire Dragon Dance] and had bright yellow dragons fly over the Dawnlights, causing them to take in light.

  “Are you saving their population?”

  Uhh no. They're weapons. Those there are if I need to do light elemental damage. The normal ones to light up dark places or to fuck with shadow users, and these…well these just sprouted. At least you helped spread seeds by having some explode.

  “Oh…interesting how you turn anything into a weapon. What's up next?”

  An important plant. I would probably be dead without it. Follow me.

  Yv followed, and we reached the field with phoenix flowers.

  “Another endangered species. I will stay away though…it looks like everything is on fire.”

  Well, that's because they're on fire, they feed off fire. Back off a bit.

  Yv stepped back. I gestured for her to go a bit further. I then shifted to my phoenix side and blasted the field with phoenix fire. The flowers seemed to love it. I went back to my 9t self afterward. Yv couldn't get close, so I went to her.

  Now that those flowers are burning, it's time for some stretching.

  The scene changed and a large body of ocean water appeared.

  This is where all the ocean water goes that enters my dimensional pocket. It's time to practice underwater combat. You might have issues using [Sasa Veridia] underwater. This is the perfect moment to practice.

  “This is crazy…but maybe you're right.”

  We spent 3 hours practicing and fighting any illusion I could come up with. I was relatively fine, Yv was exhausted.

  Let's relax a bit.

  The scene turned into an illusion of my home in the jungle. Yv rested while I went through the long list of things I had stored and deal with problematic items.

  Some food was close to spoiling despite having them cooled and on a slower temporal rate. These were meals I stored when I was a brat in Hourai. It had been hard for me to eat it, as it was one of the few things I had left from Hourai. Besides that I had a phoenix feather from Yuna, very valuable, but I'm not going to part with it and the first knife I ever used to peel potatoes.

  It was only in these moments that I got homesick, which was weird. We haven't lived there for very long.

  My tails put a priority on eating food from Hourai first to make sure it doesn't go to waste. Yv had fallen asleep, so I decided to nap too.

  Yv was still asleep after my 6-hour nap, so I went over to my next part of my routine.

  An illusion of Azu's lab appeared, and I worked on improving important skills. The setup wasn't complete but expedited the process of altering the magic circles.

  Yv woke up at some point, but I didn't notice exactly when. Most of my effort went into attempting to move most of my skills to a morphi format.

  “I don't understand anything what's going on…”

  Told you it would be boring for you. I will be doing this for 3 more days. You can do something else if you want.

  “No, I'm fine. I find it important to know what you do exactly because nobody seems to really know that, which is odd.”

  I just don't talk about it. There's nothing to brag about.

  “Well, I think it's impressive.”

  Not much progress was made, as this setup didn't work great for the morphi format. Most skills if not all would benefit from being rewritten from scratch, which was a massive undertaking. Maybe another time.

  It had been 4 days of attempting to make it work to no avail.

  “Did you do it?” Yv asked out of curiosity. She seemed tired from staying up for 4 days.

  You're not used to staying up so long, are you? How long can 4t go without sleep?

  “Just a week. I might need to train my body for that.”

  It would help you a lot. Well, you go sleep while I practice some Dragonvein and then do some blacksmithing.

  “But I want to watch…” Yv’s ears drooped.

  Aren't Giana and you always telling me to take care of my body? You go do the same! Chop chop!

  A bed appeared for Yv while I went over my rarely used skills. [Dragonvein: Phoenix Dance] was too strong to be practical, and it turns everything around me into a soup. Fire [Dragon] is slightly stronger, but I have more control over what burns and what doesn't when using fire [Dragon].

  Most of my lesser used techniques have a similar problem. They get power crept or I just forgot.

  My skill set is quite simple. I get better at using skills that get used frequently, which makes me more likely to use them again. Makes sense, but those I forget get left behind. I don't use [Dragonvein: Hurricane Path] as often as [Dragonvein: Waterfall] while they're functionally the same. One has a wind element, the other water.

  These weekly, weeklong dimensional pocket visits are to make sure I don't get rusty on those skills. The whole point of this is actually to not get rusty.

  I might have to use [Dragonvein: Phoenix Dance] or [Dragonvein: Hurricane Path] to defeat a god one day. What if I fuck up and die because I was too lazy to not practice? That's unacceptable! That's one of the dumbest ways to die!

  3 hours passed and I was breathing heavily. Yv was still sleeping but seemed to have issues with my battle noises.

  I cast a soundproof barrier around her and started blacksmithing.

  My first real chance at blacksmithing since Feshahn. I would start with gauntlets for Noelle. It would become a magical weapon, so I would start with a weapon I'm familiar with. I don't know how to make a hand cannon for Yv, and we still have to decide on a weapon for Giana.

  The base was simple but the magic core was an issue. It needed 2 lesser cores; one for each hand. It could allow for different abilities for different hands. I hadn't thought of suitable abilities, so I let the project rest. I would have to ask Noelle for some suggestions.

  Daggers weren't needed anymore, nor swords.

  Oof, did I make my blacksmithing skills redundant by replacing it with magic? What would I need it for after I finish the weapons for the idols? Commissions? That's it? A bit depressing. I could still do it for fun, as beating metal puts my mind at ease.

  Yv had woken up and observed how I created random items or strange looking daggers for 2 days.

  Now to work on poisons! Then we sleep, and then it's time to go back!

  “Everyone must be wondering where we went… Giana must be upset.”

  Why? Barely 5 minutes would have passed for them, nobody would have noticed.

  The scene changed, and I ingested a drink with diluted poison, real poison.

  I'm so behind on getting certain poison immunities… I also need to make a batch of Millennial Foxbite.

  I got to work and Yv sat down next to me. “Can I try too? While not my specialty, I know some things about poisons.”

  I nodded and gave her some tips. She had a concerned look on her face when she noticed that I turned my blood into a poison.

  It didn't take long, so I used the remaining time to create more blue Scoville Nightmare extract, [Flour Time Bombs], mustard and boiled poison aka boiled milk under the unaware species.

  That's done! I ran out of flour, so I'll have to buy that, so let's have a 6 hour nap and then go back.

  “And you do this every week? No wonder you're always tired!”

  Well I'm supposed to do it every week, but I slacked on it since I got out of that black hole. But besides that, yeah, I get lazy and skip it once in a while but mostly. It has kept me alive and will keep me alive.

  We went to get our nap. Yv didn't seem tired, but she still went for it.

  We hopped out of my dimensional pocket into the AA room.

  “That was eye-opening!”

  It was just a dimensional pocket trip…

  I hid my tails and dressed up for the sandy outside.

  Let's buy flour before I forget.

  “Do they sell flour here?”

  Only one way to find out.