NOVEL NEXT Chapter 101 – The universe’s divine revolutions
Chapter 101 - Sirius-ly calm and peaceful interlude in the puniverse
🙞❤︎🙜
When I first teleported out of the Chitinous Caverns, I felt fine, but the next day I slept for twelve hours straight because of the accumulated fatigue of fighting monsters every day. The adrenaline wore off and I spent the next three days just sleeping, eating, and resting.
I wrote an abbreviated report about what had happened to me and sent it to Shuye. My Farm Guide sent back word that he was glad I was fine, and that was that.
Life returned to normal.
With one tiny addition, of course.
“Look, this is my new pet, isn’t she cute?” I held out the yellow slime for my apprentices to inspect. “She’s going to be very useful!”
Lari, Kharli, and Mo exchanged puzzled glances.
“Here, pet her on the head,” I said.
None of them made a move.
“Teacher, is this some sort of joke?” asked Kharli.
The three of them were frowning.
“Hey, she’s not a demon. I know she’s unusual but actually, you know the god of the mines had a slime pet, and this is the pet’s offspring. So it’s fine!” I was quite disappointed by their reaction.
“Chu?” The slime strand on the top of Cutie’s head formed into a question mark.
I pulled her back and cuddled her in my arms. “Never mind, I’ll take care of her myself. Come.”
Waving an arm as an indication that they should follow me, I made my way to the northern side of the courtyard house. There I chose a place ten feet away from the house’s wall and built a [Slime House] on it.
Pet houses were not included in the building limit since they were considered part of the house. The [Slime House] was a pretty little cottage that looked like a wooden doll’s house painted in pastel pink, mint green, sunshine yellow, and baby blue colors. Above the door was a wooden signboard that had the words “Slime House” carved on it in curly letters. However, since it was written in English, the people here wouldn’t be able to read it.
The ceiling was eight feet high and the structure was around eight feet square with an earthen floor half covered in colorful flowers. The east and west walls were lined with shelves that contained pots while the northern wall contained a pet slime bed and play area with perches at five different heights. The door was at the south wall which also contained a treasure chest where pet toys and accessories could be kept.
“Chu! Chu, chu chu!” My pet was quite excited and bounced around her new house, her slime strand in the form of a lightning bolt.
“Slimes eat flowers, so let’s plant these flower seeds in the pots,” I said.
“Yay! More Exp!” said Mo. She was the first to take the seeds from my hand and start planting.
The other two exchanged glances. Kharli shrugged.
“Exp is exp,” said Kharli.
The two of them followed suit and it didn’t take long for us to finish. I showed them the square metal grill on the northeast corner of the floor.
“This is where Cutie will…do her business. The ‘product’ will be collected in a slime tank which we can use as fertilizer later,” I said.
I had been disgusted by the mountain of brown goo in the mines, but now I regretted not collecting some of it to use later.
Lari mumbled something under his breath that I didn’t quite catch.
What was up with them? I thought they would like the slime, but they were acting weird. I guess coming back with a weird pet was too much for them to handle.
“Okay, I’ll leave my pet here. Let’s go plant some trees!” I was sure they would get used to Cutie in time.
***
Tonight I decided to sleep under the stars. During my underground adventure, I had very carefully not thought about the fact that I was stuck under tons of rock, but now that I was above ground, I appreciated open spaces a lot more than I did before.
The girls didn’t want me to sleep outside alone, so they would be staying a short distance away from me to give me some peace and quiet.
I set up a large tent with a plush outdoor carpet and two big beds for them before I went off to make my own campsite. Unlike my apprentices, I didn’t want a tent. I wanted to sleep out in the open, so I set down a bivouac sack or bivy sack, stuffed a sleeping bag in it, and sat cross-legged down on it.
It was ten o’clock at night, and it was cold here in the grasslands. I put on a jacket and enjoyed the vastness of the land and the open sky. The moon, full and radiant, cast a mystical glow over the landscape, and as I inhaled the crisp night air, I rejoiced in my hard-won freedom and the austere beauty all around me. The brown and green grasses that covered the land were gently ruffled by the night breezes and the insects buzzed continuously.
Above me, a starry canopy of stars blazed like multicolored diamonds scattered across black velvet. I was casually stargazing when a System popup disturbed my quiet musing.
[Study the stars?]
[Yes] [No]
What was this? Oh yeah, I forgot about Astrology!
I mentally clicked on the [No] button because I was here to sleep, not get Astrology exp. At least, that was what I told myself. My gamer side, on the other hand, wouldn’t let me rest until I tried it out. A few minutes after I rejected the System prompt, I called up the Astrology screen again and clicked on [Yes].
A telescope materialized in front of my divvy bag and, with a sigh of exasperation at myself, I got up and used it to study the night sky.
The System gave me a Star Map as a guide to where to point the telescope at. I picked the Celestial Cowherd since it was a beginner constellation, and spent the next hour trying to find it.
It was kind of fun to look through the telescope at the stars. When I finally found the star I was looking for, I received a small amount of exp.
Through the telescope, I stared at the white star that shone brighter than its neighbors. Legend said that the stars were gods, and this one was supposed to be the heavenly immortal who was in charge of the divine cattle.
Were the stars just flaming chunks of rocks or gods?
I moved on to the next target, the Weaver Girl Constellation, which was on the other side of the sky. Its main star was the northern pole star while the Cowherd’s main star was the southern pole star.
The Cowherd and Weaver Girl were star-crossed lovers who only met once a year on the seventh day of the seventh month when the magpie god made a bridge spanning the sky for them to meet.
I got a bit more exp when I found the star and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was enough for me to level up.
[Congratulations, you just advanced an Astrology level!]
[Your Astrology level is now 2.]
Wow, who knew that stargazing gave Astrology exp in this world? In the game, one had to buy and read books to level it up. The skill was basically created as a money sink.
Every day that players played Adventure Incarnate, they got more and more in-game gold which made the existing currency decrease in value. After all, high-level farmers were able to make tens of thousands of gold every week through selling their products to non-player characters or NPCs.
Therefore, in order to give those high-level players a way to spend their money and reduce the amount of coins in the game, the developers made the Astrology skill. Players had to buy Astrology books for ridiculous amounts of gold to level it up.
The most annoying thing about it was that Astrology gave exp and stat bonuses that stacked, but only after spending 10 million gold. To level it up to 99, one had to spend 200 million coins. I remembered that a few of the wealthy elite actually welcomed the new skill as a way of using up their billions of gold and possibly reducing inflation in the game.
Obviously, everyone else hated the skill yet couldn’t resist the lure of getting +20% more exp and stat bonuses.
I put the telescope away and snuggled into my sleeping bag, chuckling at the diabolical nature of the Adventure Incarnate devs. Those guys were pros at trolling their own players with annoying but irresistible new content. I fell into a deep, peaceful sleep, dreaming of frolicking in a jungle with a cute blue dragon.
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