Hopping Celestial Fox

“Sooo… Wanting to murder a dragon aside…” Frank spoke up. “We agreed on a deal, right? Is there anything else or are we free to go save the world now…?”

I glanced at Frank, still a bit pissed at the dragon.

The crystal in exchange for Elyssa and Mom staying with him for a bit, and the staff for our help with saving this world. I still felt uneasy about leaving Mom and Elyssa behind here, even if it was just for a few days. But then again, we were getting the tools to save our world in exchange.

“Umm, can I ask one more thing?” Wi suddenly spoke up, interrupting my thoughts.

I blinked and looked at her. As did everyone else.

“Something wrong?”

“You said that I’m supposed to learn the seeker arts at some point,” Wi reiterated whilst glancing at Casey. “You also said that if you two weren’t here, Cradence would take me as an apprentice right away.”

“That is true,” the dragon once again spoke, returning to using his magic rather than his actual maw. “You are the chosen hero of the goddess, destined to save the world, after all. I would have been a fool if I didn’t want to nurture your potential.”

Chosen hero of the goddess… That wasn’t even wrong, was it? That was kind of what it meant to be the novel’s protagonist.

“Then why didn’t you suggest it?” Wi asked, curiously, rather than pleadingly.

The dragon gave me a side-eye and I immediately realized the problem. He had been about to ask to take Wi under his wing as well, wasn’t he? But now he was wary of my wrath.

I huffed.

“Casey, can you… use the staff to cure the plague? Are you… good enough with magic yet?”

Casey pursed her lips.

“Probably? I’m still a beginner, but… Well, the main issue is that my mana absorption rate is poor, so I can barely muster enough mana for a simple spell. But that shouldn’t be a problem with a tool that’s already jam-packed with mana like this.”

I nodded.

“So… if Wi were to stay with him as well, you would be able to use the staff to save our world?”

She frowned at the staff laying on the ground – where Cradence had dropped it at some point during my outburst – and said, “Let me hold it and get a feel for it.”

The dragon didn’t complain as Casey walked up to the staff with the crystal still attached, reached down, and picked it up. She stood there for a moment, gazing into the crystal in a daze. Then she turned back to us.

“I think yes, but let me just try it. Cancel your true forms for a second, please,” she requested as her own bunny ears faded and her hair went from white to blond again.

I frowned and exchanged a look with the others. Mom looked uneasy, Wi was frowning… Frank just shrugged and turned back to his non-bull self. The others soon followed, returning to looking like humans again. I reluctantly changed back as well, but not before giving Cradence a warning glare.

Surprisingly, Elyssa also changed, after seeming to contemplate it for a moment. Her eyes grew bigger, and her skin got wrinkly and dyed sickly green. Her ears stayed long… which now held a completely different meaning.

She finally looked like the old woman the game had classified her as. But more importantly than that… she looked like… a goblin? That… I hadn’t expected that at all. And from the surprised looks, the others hadn’t seemed to either.

“It is the body I was born with,” she said in a voice that sounded nothing like she usually did. Higher pitched, more guttural, and almost as if she was a very heavy smoker. She then glanced at me with a wry smile. “Like you, I’m not very fond of it. There’s a reason why I worked so hard to develop that skill.”

I was floored. Of course, it made sense. What better motivation to develop the true form skill than having a body you yourself didn’t like?

But hold on…

“You can… remember that? Didn’t you say that your earliest memories were in that hut in the golden woods…?”

Elyssa stopped and her already wrinkled forehead wrinkled even further in thought.

“That is true… I had said that before, didn’t I…? Odd. I hadn’t even realized that I remember more of my past now. Hmm…”

Hadn’t even realized she knew more… That reminded me of Casey.

“Anyway! Um…” Casey interrupted. “I was going to test the divine crystal on all of us. But since the effect is similar to the true form, it probably wouldn’t have done anything, so I had us transform back.” She nodded to herself. “I already checked a potential future where Wi would have tried it in various ways and it’s safe.”

Checked the future… Casey was abusing her goddess powers in interesting ways.

Cradence dragon-huffed again, probably thinking the same thing.

“Alright, hit me, doc!” Frank stepped forward and spread his arms wide. “Lay into me!”

Casey gave him a deadpan stare… before pointing the staff in his direction and ‘laying into him’ as requested. A bright surge of white magic emerged from the crystal like a shark emerging from the sea and stormed in Frank’s direction. Before he could yelp, the whole magical construct – that felt oddly alive – surged past him and dissipated as it hit the wall behind him.

“Oooh, shhhit… Okay. I’m good,” Frank exclaimed as he patted himself down. “Actually, I’m more than good! I feel great! Amazing, even!” He grinned back up at Casey before getting thoughtful. “Not as great as my true form, though.”

Appearance-wise, Frank hadn’t changed at all. That was good. The point was to end the zombie plague without causing mass chaos.

“As I said, I hadn’t been able to perfect it yet,” Cradence reminded us before glancing at Casey. “Regardless, it is an impressive amount of control for a supposed magic beginner. I suppose it would come naturally to the goddess.”

Casey huffed.

“I designed not only these tools but the magic system itself. It would have been embarrassing if I couldn’t even do this much with several days of practice.” She looked at me. “Anyway, that was the lowest setting. What really matters is turning that into a bigger area of effect.”

She then held up the staff, closed her eyes, and made the crystal glow even brighter than before. Before I knew it, a wave of light surged through me and I couldn’t help but gasp.

It felt like using the true form skill for the first time again, just not as extreme. But in a strange way, it made me feel better than my not-true form, even if just for a moment.

When the feeling abated and I reopened my eyes, everyone was looking at me again.

I frowned.

“What?” I muttered.

“You, uh, turned into your ultimate galaxy form for a moment there,” Frank explained.

“Huh…? Really?” I asked, my voice sounding surprisingly acceptable despite me being in my default form.

“Yeah. You like… skipped over your normal fox form and just straight up turned celestial. It was pretty cool, not gonna lie.”

I stared at Frank… and transformed into my not-true form. Try as I might, I couldn’t recreate the same sensation I’d had when I’d apparently gone all the way to my actual true form.

“Right…” Then I shook my head. “Anyway, we have what we need, right? Shouldn’t we get going? It’s going to take a long time to get back.”

Frank quirked an eyebrow and held up a ruby seed.

“No, it’s not…?”

I blushed. I’d completely forgotten that we could just teleport back with these.

“Right…”

“We do have everything we need though, so…” Casey glanced at Cradence from the side.

“Elyssa Grandoul, Emily Chrona, and Witheriel Urgrounorkath–” I blinked at Wi’s full name conveyed as a memory of the sound rather than pure information “–shall stay with me to help me with my research and, as an act of solidarity, I will also help with their magic studies and exploration of the capabilities of their true forms. Renee Chrona, Cassandra Warren, and Francis Brown will go back to the higher realm and resolve the issue of the ongoing epidemic. Once the issue is resolved, we will reconvene and make our arrangements to stop the Ragnarok.”

He moved his eyes over each one of us.

“Are we in agreement?”

He made it seem as if he was asking everyone, but something told me that he was primarily asking me.

I still wasn’t comfortable with leaving Mom behind, but…

“Sure.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

“Let’s do this!” Frank shouted and held out his Ruby seed.

I glanced over everyone as well and my eyes once again stopped on the blue portal floating in the middle of the massive magical circle that I’d been ignoring this whole discussion. My last minute curiosity got the best of me and I asked, “By the way… I wanted to ask… Where does this magical circle lead…?”

Everyone glanced where I was pointing and I saw Cradence grimace.

“There’s a portal, isn’t there?” Wi asked, making my eyes widen in surprise as I whipped my head around.

“You can see it?”

“Uh? No, I’m just guessing.”

“Oh… Well, yeah. There’s a portal there… But it’s different.”

“Different, how?” Frank asked as he looked between me and the middle of the circle.

“It’s not purple. It’s blue.” I pursed my lips. “I have never seen a blue portal. All the ones I’ve seen were purple.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Huh… A new type of portal? Where could it lead…?” Frank mused.

The resident dragon looked… disturbed at the news of the portal, for some reason.

“Oh shit…” I heard Casey swear.

“That circle… doesn’t lead anywhere. It’s an exit teleportation circle only, that I’d never gotten around to cleaning up,” he said, slowly, and carefully.

Exit only? From where…

“It’s the one the Truth Seekers used to come back from the future,” Casey finished.

My eyes went wide at the implication.

“Oh shit! You mean that the blue portal leads to the future?!” Frank voiced my thoughts.

Time travel?

As shocking as it was, it would actually make a disturbing amount of sense. After all, my dreams allowed me to look into the future, didn’t they? Since both the dreams and the portals were part of whatever powers I had…

“It could be something else,” Casey said, playing the devil’s advocate. “We won’t know until Renee opens it.” She glanced at me. “But we don’t have time for that right now! We need to go back and solve the zombie virus problem!”

“Right… Right. Yeah, we should stop getting distracted,” I said with a nod.

Casey nodded back to me, grabbed her ruby seed, and threw it into her mouth. A moment later, she vanished in a swirl of ghostly flames.

I immediately followed suit and saw Frank do the same. But just before he popped the seed into his mouth, his eyes widened in realization.

“Wait, hold–!”

But it was too late for me to hear what he had to say. Flames already swirled around me and I found myself back in my room next to my potted plant.

I had an uneasy feeling. What had Frank tried to say?

I immediately whipped out my phone and asked that in our group chat. Frank was offline though. I couldn’t imagine an entirely different world would have a working connection, after all.

I waited for several long seconds before Frank finally came online and immediately called us.

I accepted the call.

“Frank, what’s wro–” Casey began, but Frank cut her off.

“Guys, I just realized something seriously bad!”

“Slow down. What’s wrong Frank?” I tried to placate him, but I couldn’t shake off the gnawing feeling of having forgotten something.

“It’s just the three of us now!”

“Umm, yeah I guess so…?”

“No! Casey! It’s just the three of us! Just like in Renee’s dream thingy!”

The massive pit suddenly settled in my stomach.

I’d completely forgotten about the dream. I’d forgotten that we’d all been wondering why it was just me, Casey, and Frank fighting that octopus monster.

But now that we’d left everyone else behind with no easy way to contact them – and I doubted Frank had told them his suspicions before he teleported after us – it was just the three of us.

The crystal wasn’t going to work, was it?

…

Why did I feel like a lemming blindly walking to my doom?