Chapter 123 – Phases (1/2)

After spending most of a day in Edgeworth Village, we went back home.

I was quite eager to get the next phase of the project going. So eager that despite the fact that rather than wait for the sun to set, I going sky borne just so I could get home a little sooner.

Well, it wasn't really a little.

Thanks to the shawl that Elli had commissioned for me, just by draping it over my shoulders I could expose my wings and fly through the air despite the harsh sunlight bearing down on them.

At least that was the theory.

”Okay okay. This'll be alright. It's already been proven to work after all.”

[Umm, Scarlet, I don't mind waiting until dark.]

”No, it's fine. I'm a vampire who's beaten the sun already. I just need to teabag it now.”

[Teabag?]

”Umm, don't worry about it.”

While hidden out of sight thanks to [Spirit Form], I simply stood there with the shawl wrapped over my shoulders, preparing myself to grow out my wings so I could take off.

But I could feel the sun's rays trying to pry themselves through the opening of my hood.

I knew that the shawl worked. I've experienced it for myself already.

But years of fearing the sun, of hating it, made it hard to expose myself to it even knowing it no longer had the power to hurt me.

I took a deep breath, then closing my eyes, I activated [Alter Silhouette]. I could feel the beginnings of my wings stretch out from my back, feeling around the inside of my robes until they found the overlapping flaps that concealed the holes in the back. They continued on, the coolness of the autumn wind tickling the freshly grown flesh. Eventually that same wind stopped gently caressing my new limbs like a lover, and instead dove straight into them like a child being caught in her mother's bosom.

Finally, I let the breath out of my lungs and opened my eyes. My wings were visible from the corner of my eyes.

There was no pain, no burning sensation. Not even a little bit of heat on my wings beyond what a tiny fragment of a memory told me that this amount of warmth was normal.

My heart on the other hand was pounding, and I was sure it wasn't because of impatience.

But I still needed more confirmation. My wings flapped slowly, gently catching the air under them and lifting me up to my toes before letting me down again.

Nothing happened to my wings, nor the rest of me. No flames, not intense burning sensation making me want to scream in pain.

So despite the nervousness in my heart refusing the go away, I flapped hard, shooting into the air as I wrapped my arms around my chest, holding tight to the shawl despite the pin that supposedly secured it well enough that there was no chance of it coming off on its own according to Elli.

Yes, there was no pain, no burning, but I felt queasy every time the wind licked up my hood and the sun shone directly on my face. The light was still hurt my eyes. The shawl's amazing enchantment couldn't do anything to stop the pain from the excessive brightness.

By the time I had gotten home, I felt like I was going to throw up. Like I was suffering from light headedness, dizziness, vertigo, intense throbbing in my head, an upset stomach, heartburn, and countless other symptoms which shouldn't have been possible to put together.

Whether it was some sort of side effect of being exposed under the sun despite the enchantment or it all just being psychological, one thing was sure.

I didn't want to do that again.

Maybe I would have to, but not if I could help it.

The shawl though, would stay close to me in my bag just in case. It had proven its worth even without its accompanying pareo.

”Alright then, time to work.”

Taking out the case with the hairs found in the fountain room along with the assorted hairs I nabbed from Alicia's hold home, I removed a single one of Alicia's mostly confirmed hair before putting the package back into my bag for safe keeping.

Holding onto the precious strand in one hand, I picked up a hair from the remaining pile and activated my original skill: [Data.Compare()].

[99.6%]

Things still looked as good as it did in Edgeworth Village, but I wanted to go a bit further. As long as it didn't delay things too much, I would put in all the effort I could without compromising on anything important.

So for the night, I continued to use the skill to compare the data between the hair in my left hand and each hair in the pile in front of me.

On occasion I got up to get a snack or spent some time submerged naked in the fountain, cooling off my head to get rid of the headaches that emerged from repeated use of the skill.

[Data.Compare()] wasn't a complicated skill. It was frankly quite a basic one, as all it did was compare the data from two objects and gave me a result in how much the two matched up. There were a few provisions to deal with data not lining up perfectly in the right order or lines which existed in one but not the other, but aside from that, it was just a brute force comparator.

That meant that while the code itself was incredibly simple, for a skill at least, the amount of processing that was done was quite immense. The result was that my brain heated up while in use.

But I kept at it, refuelling my neurons when needed, and did my best to avoid cooking the grey matter in my skull.

While the work took a while, I managed to compare the hairs before morning had arrived.

I did check them all, just in case. On the odd chance that I might have been wrong.

But in the end, I sat there on the floor with two hairs in front of me, only one of them from the little container full of hairs scoured from this very room.

[100%]

Those magic words.

Just in case, I checked it again.

[100%]

The grin on my face was so wide that my cheeks hurt, yet I couldn't do anything to stop.

[100%]

It was the hair I had found when there were only a dozen or so left. It was an old hair, made obvious from how crooked and warped it looked compared to the other hairs. Most likely from being swept into a corner or trampled on for years.

[100%]

Even though my head hurt, that if I doused my head in water maybe steam would rise. But even still, seeing that number show up in my mind was like confirming the world's most wonderful news.

[I know you're happy and all, but don't you think you're taking this a bit far?]

”I know I am. But still!”

[100%]

[Are you going to keep doing that the entire time? What about the next step?]

”...”

She was right. I should move on to the next step. No matter how happy seeing this made me, there was no point if I didn't move on to the next step as well.

”Alright. You've made your point. But are you sure? After I confirm phase two worked, you'll probably be asleep until the next phase finishes. I can't delay it after all.”

[I know. But...we'll be together the entire time, right?]

”Of course. Until the phase is finished, we'll still be inseparable.”

Those words of encouragement weren't just for her. I knew half the reason why I was delaying phase two. Once I confirmed it worked, phase three meant that I would likely not be able to talk to Alicia until the phase ended.

Even after it ended, it didn't guarantee that we'd be able to talk for a while.

This was uncharted territory after all. Even if everything worked as intended, there were so many unknowns, so many things we'd just have to take as they came.

[Then I think you should do it. There's no benefit to delaying it.]

”...You're right. There really isn't.”

I was forced to suppress a sigh. Everything she said was right.

But in a sense, I was envious of Alicia. It was easy being the one at risk. Being the one putting another, and the one I cared about the most at that, at risk was almost like torture.

Endless worries plagued me. They've been plaguing me for months, but the thought of actually doing it just compounded those fears.

[So?]

”Fine! I'll do it!”

Taking the hair I had used to compare everything with, I enacted the second of three skills I had created for the sake of my life project.

[Artificial Insemination]

Using the data from Alicia's hair and my own, I could feel mana coursing through my body and condensing in the lower part of my belly.

The skill itself was only a modification of the [Breeding] skill, but most likely the effect was quite a lot different from its original. After all, the new skill did all the work of fertilization and implantation in addition to fixing the race of the embryo.

[Okay! There's some changes to your data!]

”Really?!”

I opened up the hidden data revealed by [Scan] and scrolled through it. There were certainly some new lines there in regards to my body. But the lines were pretty ambiguous. They didn't really confirm that I was pregnant, just that there was some sort of change to my body.

It seemed like it would take some time.

”There's no new core container file yet...”

[I'm sure that it'll show up soon. We probably just have to give it a bit of time!]

”Yea, you're probably right.”

My hand went to my belly, but of course I wouldn't be able to feel anything. An embryo was still only a single cell, even if it was quite a bit larger than most others.

The cold feeling in the pit of my stomach didn't go away, but even still, I couldn't just sit on my laurels and keep watch on my data for any change.

There would be an opening for when I could enact phase three. That opening won't just shut while I'm doing something else. It'll stay open for at least a few days if my scans of those pregnant women from before was any indication.

Pushing myself back onto my feet, I put my things away and prepared for work.

The next morning, I was working in my office clearing out the work that had piled up when I paused my hand for a moment.

”It's still not there...”

[Don't worry. I'm checking as well. You can just concentrate on your work.]

”I know, but...”

[Work comes first Scarlet! Everyone's depending on you!]

”But you're the one depending on me for...!”

There wasn't anyone else who could take care of Alicia. Aside from Claret, nobody even knew she existed even! I was the only one who could take care of her.

[That's why I'm checking your body! I can't help you with your work, so at least let me do this!]

But Alicia interrupted me. Her words were right, like usual.

”...Alright. But tell me when you see any changes, alright? It looked like there was a couple of new lines added an hour ago.”

[I know. I saw them too. I'll tell you when I see anything important change, alright? Not for something small though. You need to work.]

”...Fine. Alright.”

I didn't like the terms, but I was starting to annoy Alicia. It wasn't good to make her angry, not over something which neither of us could do anything about at the moment.

So I went back to correcting documents.

There was also the matter with Edgeworth Village as well. I've already put up three requests for common food items, and would have to put up more later.

It would be unfair for me to bring high worth food instead of the quantity the villagers needed as a way to pay for the paper, but at the same time our hunters could only carry so much in a single run. They weren't like me who had a magic bag of enormous capacity, nor did they have [Dimensional Magic].

At least as far as I knew.

(Maybe I should look into what it took to make one of these things.)

My eyes flickered to the bag hanging off the corner of my desk. As ever, the white cartoon rabbit, or rather, the killer bunny, that it was shaped after was quite a cute thing. I wasn't really willing to let it go even after I learned to carry things with magic instead. It had served me quite faithfully for years after all. At the very least, I'd like to keep using it to store my things even if I stopped bringing it everywhere I went.

There were a few people who knew their ways around magical items. I should try talking to some of them at some point.

But for now, I resisted the urge to check my data again and went back to my usual work. Only stopping for a bit when Orphne came flying through the window crying that she lost her last few desserts because she missed her work two days ago.

It took almost everything I had to resist the urge to tell her 'I told you so.'

In the end, I had to wait for another whole day before my data expanded to properly confirm the pregnancy.

It was the third night since I used the [Artificial Insemination] skill. Alicia checked my data as part of her routine when we got back home from work, and the first thing she did was tell me about it.

[It's there! You have another core in your data, Scarlet!]

”Really?!”

[Yea! Here it is!]

A pair of small windows appeared in the middle of my sight line. There were only a few lines included, but one of them was a line that included a new container file, one for a core which I didn't have before.