"We had an entire team of experienced Awakened crystal miners," Ryan says. "And none of them used [Telekinesis] to make things easier."

We're currently in the Sparkly Earth Cave, filling up one of his storage spaces with earth magic crystals. I'm harvesting and he's collecting while Aster is off either doing what I asked him to do or doing his own thing.

"They probably don't mind putting in extra effort," I tell him as my pickaxe breaks off another chunk of crystal. "Magic takes less effort."

Ryan snorts as he grabs the crystal to put into his storage.

"It's nearing full," he says. "With how much we're harvesting, will you have enough time to bury them before you have to get ready for the reading at the library? Or should I come back tomorrow to help?"

His confusion is understandable since he hadn't heard what I said to Aster and hasn't helped me with this before. The fact that he's willing to help me with this more is nice, but I'm not planning on relying on him for the restoration project. Working here is something the King of the Celestials asked me to do and I'm not going to ask Ryan to rearrange his own life to help me.

"We still have about an hour and a half," I tell him. "And it's not us that'll be planting them."

"It's not?"

"I asked Aster to get reinforcements," I inform him. "The azulvitt pups like burying them. If the Celestial pup did as I asked, they'll be meeting us there."

"Ah," Ryan says as he puts another crystal into his storage. "There's so much here… this could secure the city's food supply for years."

"Maybe," I say. "But it's better to use it for restoring the Mythic Forest. I don't think the King of the Celestials minds me taking a little bit of stuff for myself and my shop, but mass-harvesting would probably upset him."

Otherwise, access to the Mythic Forests would have been more widespread rather than as occasional one-off rewards to Rank 5s.

"Fair enough," Ryan adds another crystal to his storage. "My storage is full now, and I wasn't asking to let me do that. The city really will be fine for awhile and if your theory is right… our resources won't get strained before Dungeons return."

"Assuming the Mythic Forest recovers enough in the next six months," I put my pickaxe away.

"Assuming that, yeah," he says. "Though if there are multiple Mythic Forests, and they're all used as power sources, restoring one might not be enough. If there are different people for different ones, things may restore at different rates."

"Possibly," I say. "But we'll never know. We can't know until things progress further, and it may not really need that much more. Regardless, I just want to see the Mythic Forests back to their full beauty. Come over here."

Ryan steps up to me and I place a hand on his shoulder, then take us to the Starry Pleasure Waters. When we arrive, Aster's in his bear cub form and playing with the azulvitt wolf and fox pups at the largest of the three springs feeding the zone's streams and pond.

"Hello, everyone," I say, and the pups immediately charge me and start lightly ramming my legs.

Something tells me that Aster told them to do that.

I crouch and give them all rubs on their heads as Flow switches back to his adult form, the only one of the azulvitt wolves and foxes which didn't ram me. He tilts his head as he looks at Ryan, probably wondering who that is.

"Everyone," I stand. "This is Ryan, my boyfriend. He came to help me clean up this zone of its monsters and other… complications. We just came from gathering earth magic crystals and we need them buried. Same rules as before but this time, do it around the different springs and their streams. Fifty feet out, but not in the streams. There should be enough to go all the way down to the pond itself, then out some. Can you all do that?"

The pups all bark in confirmation, then start crowding Ryan and wagging their tails while they look up at him expectantly. That's too good of a scene to pass up on and I quickly take a picture as he stares down at them.

"Just put the crystals on the ground," I tell him. "Unlike Aster, they can actually perform a small amount of influence on the forest and can break the crystals and bury them."

"Alright," Ryan starts doing that and the pups begin working on their task.

Aster watches them for a few moments, then vanishes. He wasn't even being asked to help with the work and he's escaping.

"So what do we do?" Ryan asks. "They get buried, and I'm guessing you do the plant-growth thing you mentioned?"

"Yeah," I answer as the biggest of the wolves steps up to me. "Once the pups have moved from a spot. Hey, Flow."

Flow's tail swishes as I give him a scratch on the head, then he looks at Ryan again.

"We've only had one date so far," I tell him and the wolf looks at me. "Though another is scheduled for Saturday. It's non-committed right now, we're just testing things out to see if we want to go committed."

The azulvitt wolf nods as Ryan gives me a confused look.

"He's talking with you?" He asks.

"Sort of," I answer as the wolf looks at Ryan, then gives me a tilt of his head. "No, he doesn't have [Animal Communication], so you won't be able to ask him."

I'm starting to learn that its description is slightly wrong. It's a Skill which enables us to receive an animal's communication methods and understand it to a degree based upon the Level of the Skill. It's not purely the ability to communicate with them.

Without it, that means that those who aren't able to communicate with words or in a way the person can understand otherwise won't understand them even if the message is given to them.

"Ask me what?" Ryan asks.

"About your life as a god," I answer. "He's curious how much you remember of your old self. Seems he knows you?"

Flow nods. That's the real reason he'd tilted his in head curiosity earlier: he wanted to know what Ryan remembers.

"I don't think I remember any azulvitt beasts," Ryan tells Flow. "My memories aren't fully back. You can recognize demigods for their true selves?"

Flow nods.

"Says you're a combat-focused god who can commonly be found hunting beasts in the divine realm," I say. "You bring him meat from it every few Enkatros months, whatever that means. When you're in your true form, that is."

"Enkatros is another world," Ryan tells me. "I know of it, but not much else. With knowledge of some things – such as other worlds – we're mainly restricted to what's known as fact while as demigods. I think their months are a few days longer than an Earth month, though? I wasn't aware it had life on it, though."

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Flow gives a confirmation regarding the lengths of the months on that world, making me realize something about him. With [Animal Communication] at Level 3, I can understand him fairly well.

"Hey," I say. "Do you know how long ago the King of the Celestials disappeared in Earth years?"

Flow thinks for several moments before giving me an answer. While the Celestials seem to be bad at judging time, Flow apparently has a decent grasp of it based on what he said about Ryan's treat-bringing frequency. He must have just had a difficult time telling me properly when I was at Level 1 in [Animal Communication]. Even at Level 3, I still have to do a fair amount of interpretation on my own.

"That's what I thought," I tell Flow, then look at Ryan. "He says it was around five Earth centuries ago when he last noticed the King of the Celestials, though he's not fully sure if his estimate is right. He can apparently track time decently up to a century, but not as well after that."

"And that's how long ago you're estimating the King of the Celestials left to observe mankind?" Ryan asks.

"Yeah," I confirm. "Based on my research into the System over the last week and some, the slowdowns and shutdowns on the System began after the Mythic Forests ceased being used as rewards. Or at least, recorded rewards. I'm still unsure about what happened with that, though since Flow saw him that recently, we can conclude that's when he left."

"So he observed mankind for five hundred years," Ryan says as I kneel beside the spring. "And is now doing some sort of test involving the Mythic Forests."

"He'll likely return once his test is done," I say. "For now… let's see what grows here."

I reach out with my right hand and begin casting [Grow Plant], though I cast two of them rather than one. While it costs me 1,900 MP per [Grow Plant] in this pair, or 3,800 rather than 2,000 for both, it only takes 51.3 seconds for the pair rather than the 54 seconds it would take to cast them separately.

Not an overall improvement on the time, but it'll help me with raising [Multicast] up, which will speed things further once that happens.

All that grows with this [Multicast] are a pair of blades of grass, except they're not normal green ones. They're black with flecks of gold and silver, like stars.

"I've spoken with other plant-type mages who have that Skill," Ryan says. "They said it can only ever grow normal plants, not magical ones. That… looks pretty magical to me."

"Same," I say as I inspect the grass.

[Starry Grass] Tier: 7 A rare grass which resembles the starry night sky.

"I guess it's normal grass," I say. "Just a different species of itthan any we know on Earth."

I use [Grow Plant] four more times in this location, then do the same about four feet away from there. Grass makes up most of what grows as I work but some ferns and flowers sprout as well. Those also bear the starry name and appearance, just like the grass.

Only after a suitable amount of space has plants grown do I use [Boost Plant Growth]. This time, I try to [Multicast] it, though this is mostly to see what happens when I do. The cast still takes longer and drains my mana more, but the only difference in the sphere I create seems to be the intensity of the light.

Fortunately, it seems like the plants were treated as if they were hit with [Boost Plant Growth] twice. The level of growth and spread is pretty decent and all of the patches I created are now a good size.

I continue working around the streams as the pups work on breaking and burying crystals. Once Ryan runs out of crystals for them to play with, he strips and joins them in the shallow part of one of the streams to play with them. That's something I want to join in on, but I should at least get enough patches going that they'll spread to each other and the edges of the crystal-influenced soil more quickly.

It's possible planting the crystals also helps with the energy flows, since the magic within the crystals is enough to last for years with the amount of use it's seeing here. Having that magic flowing here might boost the strength of the earth mana streams, though I don't know for sure if I'm right.

Eventually, I decide to take a break from the work and strip down to join Ryan and the pups in the water. Ryan's been jumping around, picking up the pups, and tossing them a little while they playfully nip at his legs and headbutt him. They're sticking to shallower waters since the pups can run around in that instead of swim, and I decide to sit there and splash at the pups.

"Not going all the way?" Ryan asks.

I left quite a bit of planted soil untouched by my magic, though I also don't have enough time to grow plants across all of it, even if I didn't add in [Boost Plant Growth].

"It'll be fine," I start messing with one of the pups which ran up to me. "I did a little bit of research on earth magic crystals and with this amount of space and the plants not being harvested, they should keep the soil fertile for years of time. For where there aren't plants, it'll last much longer. I'm not sure how much time passes between my visits, but I doubt it'll be years between when we leave here in a few minutes and when I arrive tomorrow, unless the time difference goes a bit wonky."

"You said it's never consistent?" He asks as he picks up an azulvitt fox pup, then lightly tosses it.

"Yeah," I answer. "I think only a year passes at the most between when I leave in the evening and return the next day, but it might be two or three years. Shouldn't be too much time for the fertilization magic of the earth magic crystals to run out where there aren't plants."

"Okay," he says. "I'm free tomorrow, so if you want more help, just let me know."

"You don't need to help me," I tell him. "I only asked for help now because I wasn't too sure I could handle this zone without a tank."

"I ended up being the fighter," he chuckles. "With you doing a little bit of the tank duty by drawing them in. And I don't mind helping. I'd like to see this place restored, too. Not just because of the System but because I can imagine it'd be quite beautiful and that's something I want to see."

"It's sure to be quite nice," I say as he picks up another pup to toss.

We keep messing with the pups for a bit and as we do, I notice a fish hanging out a little upstream. It keeps peeking out from around a slight bend in the stream before turning around and swimming against the current to hide itself again, and that seems to happen more if I look directly at it. The fish has lavender-colored eyes and its scales are reminiscent of clouds, with layers of shades of grey, their primary darker color making them more difficult to see in the grey light of the realm.

After about ten minutes of noticing the fish, I decide to see if I can call up information about it and find that I can.

Cloud Category: Bashful More likely to come out if Aster's calm or not around. Can more easily lure him out with deer, elk, or moose meat. Prefers moose meat and snuggles.

"Hey, Ryan?" I say.

"Yeah?" He looks at me.

"In those storage bracelets of yours," I say. "Got any moose meat?"

"Yeah, why?" He asks.

"If you're okay with it," I say. "Can we give the pups some as a treat before we leave? It's almost time to go if I want to shower and get cleaned up before heading to the library."

"Oh, sure," he summons one of his food storage bracelets. "No matter how much I tell them I don't need more meat, they keep giving me some."

I chuckle a little as Ryan pulls out the meat, which he slices into smaller chunks with a knife and tosses around for the pups to chase after. He gives me a few pieces when I ask, and I sneakily throw a couple of them towards Cloud when the pups and Ryan aren't looking.

From the corner of my eye, I watch as Cloud swims closer to the small pieces of meat. They're just a little too big for him, but he fixes that by increasing his size before chomping down on them. Either all Celestials are able to change their size or Cloud has the ability to when others aside from the big boy don't. He switches back to the size he was in before once he finishes and I make a mental note to ask Aster about the size thing later.

Though I'll omit encountering Cloud when I do, since it seems he doesn't like being around the pup.

"Alright, guys," I say once Ryan and I finish tossing meat for the pups (and the fish). "It's time for us to leave now. I'll see you all again, okay? Bye!"

The pups bark goodbye as I stand and touch Ryan on the arm, and he slides an arm around my waist just as I take us to my house via my gate. Since we're wet, I take us straight into my shower so we don't drip all over my floor.

"I saw you tossing meat elsewhere," he gives me a kiss. "But didn't see anything that'd indicate why when I looked. What was that about?"

It seems he did notice.

"The real reason for the meat," I kiss him. "There was another Celestial hanging out. He'd been watching us for awhile, just a little out of sight from where you were, I guess. Had cloud-like scales and the name of 'Cloud', and his description said that he's bashful and is unlikely to show up if Aster's around. Also that he likes moose meat and it's a good way to encourage him to come out."

"Ah," Ryan says. "Do you think he's going to come out and play with the pups now that we're gone?"

"He might," I answer. "Or they might be too much for him and he's left or is still watching them from afar. I'm hoping I'll see him again as I work on the forest. For now, though, we should probably get started on the shower so I can get to the library. I'll be late if we take too long."