Hopping Celestial Fox

Turning into her true form – and it also was Mom’s true form, unlike mine – had apparently gotten completely rid of the virus… or whatever had been causing the headaches. Even when she transformed back, the headaches wouldn’t return again.

I was relieved that Mom wouldn’t be turning into a fish zombie anymore. It was good… but also bad. With Mom being made immune, it also meant that – as much as I cringed admitting it – we had lost our test subject. And since we wanted to keep the portals secret as much as possible, we didn’t want to find another infected person to experiment on.

But from what we had learned from Mom, we at least knew that mana seemed to hinder the effects of the virus, and whatever true form did, seemed to get completely rid of it… or at the very least, made us immune to its effects even if we were carriers.

Curiously, the helmet device had actually detected something when Mom had first transformed, surprising Elyssa. A sudden spike of magic which immediately dissipated into nothing. Oddly enough, transforming back and forth after learning the skill didn’t produce the same spike of magic anymore. Not for Mom, not for anyone else.

Something about that felt a little unnerving.

It implied that the initial transformation did something extra. Something fundamental had changed about us, maybe. What exactly, though…? Not even Elyssa knew.

The other implication was that the magic systems from two completely different worlds were somehow connected. But Casey assured us that she’d had no idea how RLO’s magic system worked when she designed hers, so it just brought up more questions about the portals and their nature.

Regardless of that, we now knew of a method to make someone completely immune to the virus, so Casey just had to try and replicate those effects into some kind of magical tool we could use on everyone in our world.

Casey sat at her desk with her novel’s file opened while Elyssa stood nearby and tried to explain the mechanics of the true form skill in detail to her. In the meantime, the rest of us sat around in the living room, admiring Mom’s new beautiful form.

“You know, this feels kinda unfair,” Frank mused. “I’m a cow, Casey’s a rabbit, Wi’s a bird, Renee’s a fox, and Mrs. Chrona’s a friggin’ dragon?”

Mom gave him a wry smile.

“What can I say? Dragons are known to be protective, right? I’m very protective of Renee.”

“Mama dragon,” Frank confirmed with a sage nod.

“Dragons are supposed to be mythical creatures…” Wi murmured. “I can’t believe I’m talking to one…”

Frank quirked an eyebrow at her.

“Really? You got to meet the goddess of creation and you’re astounded by a dragon?”

“Don’t call me goddess of creation,” I grumbled.

He smirked.

“I meant Casey! You’re more like the goddess of… reality? Life? Hmm…”

I grunted in annoyance but didn’t refute him. Instead, I changed the topic.

“How can you be so carefree again? Just a few minutes ago, you were panicking about the virus,” I reminded him.

“Well, Casey’s brewing up a miracle solution now, so everything will be fine, right? No need to stress ourselves over it anymore.”

“While I think you’re right that stressing ourselves is pointless, we shouldn’t be celebrating before we actually solve the issue,” Mom reminded him. “What if it doesn’t work? Or something unexpected happens?”

Frank shrugged.

“Then we’ll deal with it when the time comes! We’re smart and have a goddess… no, two goddesses on our side!” he said before shooting me a grin.

I gave him a deadpan stare and replied with the driest, “Sure,” I could muster.

Wanting to change the subject again, I glanced at Wi, who still looked vaguely uncomfortable.

“So… How are you doing, Wi?” I tried asking. “Are you alright? After the whole… spider thing?”

She blinked at me in surprise.

“Oh, yes. I’m fine.” She nodded but didn’t smile. “I’ve been learning magic since then, so I should be more useful next time.”

I gave her a nod, but couldn’t help but feel like she was uncomfortable with me. Did she hate me as well? It didn’t seem like it, but…

“Hey, you should totally show them!” Frank interrupted my thought. “I think your magic is cool!”

Wi pursed her lips.

“Didn’t… Casey say that using magic in this world is bad?”

He shrugged.

“Eh, we can clean the mana up after everything is done. No biggie, right?”

“I don’t know,” I muttered with a frown. “I have a bad feeling that something will go wrong. There’s still that dream I had, remember?”

Frank’s expression suddenly fell.

“Ah, shit. I forgot about that.”

“Dream?” Wi asked.

I blinked, realizing that I’d never mentioned my dreams to Wi. Had nobody told her?

“I, uh… Whenever I open a new portal, I tend to have a very vivid dream afterwards.” I stopped and frowned. “Well, I’ve only opened two portals so far, but… From opening the portal to your world, I had a dream about being injured and hiding from a giant spider… And it actually happened the next day. Exactly as I had dreamed about it.”

Wi stared at me with wide eyes. She then glanced at Frank and he gave her a noncommittal shrug.

“The first dream I had still hasn’t happened. But it was about me, Frank, and Casey fighting a giant octopus boss from the other world, so…”

“So, you’re assuming that no matter what happens, you’ll have to do it anyway because the other dream was precognitive…” she concluded.

“Yeah…”

“You didn’t see anyone else in the dream, have you?” Mom asked with a frown. “A dragon and an owl flying around maybe? A blond hooded woman using magic?”

I shook my head.

“No, that’s why I’m so concerned… Well, Elyssa probably wouldn’t be there with us since it could be dangerous for her to go back to that world, but neither you or Wi were there… for some reason.”

She pursed her lips.

“Something happens to us? Or is there a reason why we can’t enter that world, either?” she mused.

“I wouldn’t think so… Elyssa can’t enter it because she’s technically an NPC and the devs could do something to her.”

A moment of silence followed as we all thought about it.

“Well, shit,” Frank tactfully concluded. “I guess the two of us and Casey will need to go have a training montage or something, then. No way we can beat that boss like this.”

I grimaced, but part of me felt excited about training to become stronger.

“Oh, yeah! By the way, I wanted to ask.” Frank turned to Mom. “Since you’re a dragon, can you like… fly and breathe fire and stuff?”

She blinked.

“I’m not sure. I can move my wings, but I somewhat doubt they are strong enough to let me fly.”

“I can fly,” Wi said, lightly flapping her own wings that were noticeably smaller.

“Hmm… Well, I’ll have to try it then.” She looked back at the bulge on her back. “I’ll probably need a different shirt or something, though…”

“Okay, we’re done,” Casey announced as she entered the room. “There wasn’t much free space, though, so it’s pretty far away.”

“What do you mean?” Frank asked.

Casey tapped some buttons on her holocard and an image appeared above it. It was a giant world map marking various locations like the Urlow’s Northern Frontier keep, the elven forest, and so on.

“Since I made a whole world map some time ago, it was hard to fit in more locations without disrupting what already existed. The secret wizard’s base was already pushing it, so I had to make an abandoned draconic laboratory underground over here,” she explained while gesturing at a mountain range.

“Why not just make another secret wizard base right next to the old one?”

Casey looked at him in disgust.

“Because that’s terrible writing.”

“Who cares about writing?” Wi scoffed. “We’re trying to save your world!”

Casey startled for a moment before shaking her head.

“No, I mean… I have to make things believable. It’s even more important now that it’s all real. Continuity is crucial. And it wouldn’t make sense for another wizard to create a base right next to the other one because they would have inevitably run into each other and we would have already known about the other’s base since we already ransacked the first one.”

I was stunned for a moment.

It made… sense? If this was a story, she could probably still spin it somehow, but an odd feeling nagged at me now.

“Then how do you know that the abandoned laboratory will work?” I asked.

“It’s far enough. And we haven’t been anywhere near the mountain range,” she replied with a shrug.

“But how do you know it will work?” Frank asked, a curious glint in his eye. “Like, how do you know that making the lab closer won’t work?”

Casey looked offended for a moment. She opened her mouth, but then stopped, looked up at the map’s hologram, and stared.

“... Do you have an intuition for this or something?” I spoke into the silence.

“I…” Casey’s eyes got wider and wider as she continued to stare at the map, her eyes darting around. “I… do?” she whispered. “What the heck…? I can tell which edits will work and which ones won’t now.”

Everyone stared at her.

“I can even tell exactly why certain edits wouldn't work! I can tell what consequences the edits that can work will have!” She stumbled back in shock. “How?!”

There was a moment of stunned silence as everyone stared at the shell-shocked girl.

“It seems like you really have become the goddess of this world, Casey,” Elyssa said into the resulting silence.

Casey looked at her in dismay.

Frank then raised his hand as he glanced at me.

“So, uh… Once we’re done saving the world, can you also make me into a god, Renee? That would be pretty rad.”

I was too stunned to groan at his words.