§
One hour and forty eight minutes had passed on Huade, while I spent seventy five days in Sky Ocean.
Still no answer from HR. It’s annoying being left on hold.
I had no fear of blood hunger taking me over at this point, and my vampire hormones were at last stabilizing. This form was apparently the best for my babies and my body refinement though, so Immortal Mother still insisted that I not transform or do any magic yet. My life as a vampire mermaid continued.
Feeding once a day meant taking in blood at a far faster rate than I normally would do without using excessive magic, but it seemed that the increasing density of pneuma in my body from the body tempering methods I was now spending most of the day and night doing allowed me to do so. That’s how it was possible for Austrydhur, my flaxen-haired teenage elven beauty (well, she’s actually just over a hundred) to become my Servant as well. But once per day remained the limit.
My three maids arrived without Amelia and her crew this time, bringing me breakfast and a demand. Pirkitta was upset that she’d missed out on ‘returning the favor’ when Khortys had been allowed to do so!
I won’t go into details. Suffice it to say their demands were met. After which, I made Austrydhur my Servant as well. After which, the other two continued.
I’m so glad we were finished before Amelia arrived.
§
One hour and fifty one minutes had passed on Huade, during which I had been seventy seven days in Sky Ocean. The Nanas learned the cat form from their grandma, and now Grandmother’s ‘house’ was infested with cats. Well, not really infested, but I awoke to them frolicking, ambushing each other, chasing butterflies and generally being cats. Actually, what woke me up was when one of them pounced on my waist as they played.
HR? Nah, nothing. Maybe I have no line to her anymore.
The mortals arrived from their quarters in yukatas and ditched those before joining me in the water! Amelia had declared the swimsuits useless, since I would disrobe when I fed anyway, so they didn’t bother with them! With naked beauties surrounding me, I gave up on my raiment as well.
Needless to say, despite the fact that I was sort of pushing myself to feed (because, as a vampire, it would benefit my body tempering) I soon had no trouble growing my fangs. Six slender elven lovelies, plus Amelia whose fairy blood apparently concentrated in her chest, tend to have that effect on me. Yeah, no trouble at all.
§
One hour and fifty five minutes had passed on Huade, while I had been eighty days in Sky Ocean. I still want answers, but I’ve given up on HR.
I had already worked my way through all six maids and made them skip a day (while again saying no to Amelia) but now, Immortal Mother arranged with Kanon for them to begin visiting the training hall when they weren’t visiting me. They could add additional days to their time and spend that time doing interesting things. She also reminded me that my Servants only needed about a week, so Khortys got to spend her second time with me right away. By the time I went through Pirkitta and Austrydhur again, the non-Servant maids would recover enough in the training hall to feed me again, so the daily feedings could continue unabated.
In the middle of feeding me, sneaky Khortys tried to ‘repay the favor’ right in front of everyone! I had to firmly take control of her hand. Maybe in front of the maids was okay, but I was not going to do that in front of Amelia!
§
One hour and fifty six minutes had passed on Huade, during which my stay in Sky Ocean stretched to eighty one days.
Immortal Mother, who joined me on my swims by adopting the Elder aquatic form as well, praised my progress and declared me ready for the next stage.
“I can do bipedal form now?” I asked with hope.
I was really getting tired of Grandmother’s ‘house’, the lake and fountain pool, you know? Sorry, Grandmother.
Maybe Immortal Mother, who certainly has full control over her appearance, liked the white jade skin thing just a little too much. Her color remained perfect and unbroken from her forehead down to the tip of her flukes, with the exception of rosebud lips and a pair of rosebud tips. She had pulled herself out of the water onto one of the boulders that stick out of the main lake as perches for Grandmother after one of my ‘moving meditation’ sessions. A porcelain mermaid with raven-black hair and glittering black diamond eyes made for quite a picturesque view. I do have a knack for getting born to beautiful mothers.
I was floating on my back nearby, because the surface of the water was calm enough we didn’t have to return to the fountain pool to do this. It was another of my exercises, but not one I needed to remain silent for, so we were talking.
“Hm. Actually, I want to hold off on that. This form is better for you to handle the next step.”
“Can you possibly explain why, Mother? It’s quite frustrating to just keep hearing, ‘this is better’.”
Immortal Mother’s voice never becomes annoyed, or irritated, or impatient in any way. I don’t imagine that there is any way for someone at my level to annoy or irritate her, or even test her patience. So she simply answered, “I can explain, but I don’t know if it will change anything for you.”
“Please.”
“Alright,” she agreed. “Your body is undergoing significant changes right now. We are forcibly refining it, when it is already working hard just to harbor two new lives. Of the three body forms you know, this is easily the easiest one for it to handle all of it together. It is also the one most expedient for refinement.”
“Why?”
“Hm. Do you know your current weight?”
“Fifty seven pounds, last I checked,” I answered immediately.
A mortal with my exact bipedal form would weigh one-fourteen, but as an Elder I am fifty percent weightless mana. Adding volume with my wings or my flukes doesn’t add anything to my weight, so even in this form, I should weigh fifty seven.
Why can I submerge like that, with such a low density body? I ought to be too buoyant to do so, right? To put it simply, it’s a magic-powered innate racial skill, just like flying.
She giggled. “You last checked before you were pregnant, child. You’re gaining weight from pregnancy. Not as much as a mortal would, but about half as much. Without body refinement, you would probably have gained about six pounds at this point. About half what a mortal carrying twins would gain, at this percentage of the way through their term.
“So, sixty three?”
“On the other hand, as you refine your body, your weight is decreasing. The mana portion is more able to handle the extra pneuma than the material portion, which is causing the material portion to become a smaller percentage. Even with the pregnancy, you weigh about fifty five now.”
I struggled with the math. So, I’m more than half mana?
“In bipedal form, you would be about fifty seven percent mana. Right now, in this form that in material terms ought to weigh around two hundred fifty pounds, you are eighty percent. And that’s why it’s a better form for refinement. You are simply less tied to mortal physics in this form, closer to a pure magic entity, which allows the refinement process and the changes to your body to proceed with less resistance.”
“But I’m going stir crazy in here!”
“Hm…” she reflected for a moment, then nodded. “Alright, we can go outside, then. Stepping up to the next stage might work better there, as well.”
“How do I…” I began, and then found myself floating into the air!
At first, I remained on my back, but somehow, I flipped myself over, to see Immortal Mother, also still in aquatic form, flying through the air exactly the way that a mermaid can’t. We tipped upward to see a hole in the ‘sky’ of Grandmother’s home, revealing the sky of Sky Ocean beyond it. We flew through that into the wider expanse of my small world.
The puffy white clouds, like a Hollywood image of Heaven, and the expanse of watery surface that was just as much clear air in the ‘ocean’ part below the islands as it was ‘sky’ in the part above… My beloved refuge, the place I gave birth to Oberon, was the same as it had always been, with one small addition.
The barrier surrounding the reproduction of Grandmother’s home creates a false background in [Fairy Sense] as well as sight. This was the first time I was able to see where the replica actually existed in Sky Ocean.
The terracotta-floored South Island which served as a training, exhibition and parade ground, as well as a landing area when I brought the aircraft here, had added a new annex, or more like a new Southeast Island connected to it by a short causeway to an entrance near Grandmother’s fountain pool.
I vaguely recalled that the empty spaces beside the outside islands served as spaces for extra islands created for special events. Little Jia could mold these add-ons into any form required, even this reproduction of a mountain top outside the ancient city of Oste. The barrier looked a bit like a huge dome stadium from this side.
We arced downward toward the ‘surface’ until we met it and the ‘air’ below the surface, bestowed with the buoyant power of water, wrapped around me. Immortal Mother plunged in alongside me and then her magic was no longer carrying me. I was free to swim in this wide expanse.
“Come along!” she called out, and began swimming on a course that would take us between the main island and the great waterfall that pours out of the sky on the east of the main island, the area that used to be the training ground for my merrow servants.
I followed, and for a while, didn’t think about the fact that we weren’t wearing anything. I didn’t remember until I saw some local residents, spirit beasts in human form, waving to us from the shore of the main island.
“Mother, we’re out here naked!”
“Don’t mind it, child. We have something more important to concentrate on. Follow me.”
She sped up and set a course that would take us past the north island. I gave up worrying about it and followed. As she sped up, I had to switch to holding my hands together like a diver, to aid in cutting the water.
“The next stage that I’m referring to is the return of Sky Ocean to a temporal velocity equal to Huade. Little Jia is awaiting my order to switch us to 100:1. Are you ready?”
“What am I going to feel?” I asked, since I had no idea how to judge whether I was ready or not.
“I would expect very little or even nothing. At this spiritual density, now that you built up to your current refinement, you should be fine.”
“Then, I suppose I am,” I decided.
“Very well. Little Jia? Please proceed.”
A moment later, I heard Little Jia transmit, <Temporal compression is now 100:1> and as predicted, I felt nothing.
Still, now only one hundred seconds were passing for me with every one for Huade. I did feel a bit of that stress that was still buried inside of me being relieved.
“Mm. Good,” Immortal Mother judged. “As expected, you’ve done well with your body cultivation. Little Jia, we shall proceed to 10:1.”
<Temporal compression is now 10:1> Little Jia responded.
This time I did feel something. A very slight tingling on my skin.
“You feel the attention of Heaven’s Law, child. Practice your body tempering at this compression. It will have a better effect on you like this.”
I’m an obedient child. And I desperately wanted to reach 1:1 compression. I didn’t argue. I began pulling in the spiritual energy while accelerating my swimming pace, channeling everything I drew in through my heart nexus to make it spread throughout my body. Rounding the north island, I began swimming a course around the outside perimeter of Sky Ocean.
Every bit of spiritual energy which I fused with my body forced it to draw in additional pneuma, adding to my vitality. The external energy flowed back out but left my body infinitesimally better able to attach to my spiritual vessel.
The innate swimming skill channels the water around my body the same way that the innate flying skill channels the air. A dolphin can do thirty five miles per hour or more, but I began accelerating far past that, to eighty, ninety, one hundred. All the while, my mind only focused on maintaining my circular course outside of the islands, and on channeling spiritual strength.
I was reaching the speed limit of my aquatic form, but I had one more trick. I began breaching the surface, propelling myself repeatedly with powerful kicks into the air, where I could go even faster. As Senhion, I had been able to stay in the air, above the ocean surface, without growing my wings, just by force of Wind and Water mana, but I wasn’t quite there yet. Even so, I was doing laps around my small world at an amazing speed while the density of my pneuma increased at a discernible rate.
Dive, kick, kick, leap.
It became a sort of marching cadence in my head as I streaked around the small world. Dive, kick, kick, leap.
<Little Jia, proceed to 1:1> Immortal Mother commanded.
