Jake’s mind went blank for a moment as the realization sunk in. Yet what he had expected to follow next never came. There was no anger or desire for revenge… just a belief that he had to get the fuck away from the moon as fast as humanly possible.
Anything capable of killing Sandy wasn’t something Jake was confident in facing, and just feeling the aura from the thousands of vines extended up from the surface of the moon, Jake knew that this wasn’t just some weak low-tier B-grade. It was already quite a few levels into B-grade and a powerful variant on top of that. The mere fact it had a range extending all the way from the center of the moon to the surface was proof enough of that.
Luckily, it didn’t seem to attack him as he flew away. The eye had also faded away, and all the vines began to retract back into the ground, leaving a battered Lunewood Forest behind. Many rotting spots were left where the vines had shot up from, and hundreds of Lunewood creatures had died. For some reason, the B-grade didn’t seem to care about the forest at all, and it had more or less just been collateral damage while trying to get Jake to leave.
Speeding up his flight, Jake just went further and further into empty space. He didn’t have any particular direction he was flying in, he just wanted to make sure he was out of range from any potential attacks that could reach beyond the moon. Only when he was many thousand kilometers away from the exit of the moon’s exosphere did Jake slow down before he stopped and had a while to think. And the first thought he had was to reach out to someone who had to know what had happened.
“Villy, what the fuck happened to Sandy? I felt the Mark disappear, and I think they died, but-“
“Sandy did die,” the Viper just answered in a casual tone.
Jake’s mind went blank a bit again before he quickly gathered his thoughts. “Then why am I not-“
Suddenly, Jake stopped as he felt his spatial necklace act odd, as if something wanted to break out.
“I think you’ll find the answer is quite obvious,” Villy commented, still clearly unbothered.
Things within the moon had not gone as planned for everyone’s favorite Cosmic Genesis Worm.Sandy had met their fair share of powerful beings while traveling around the multiverse and eating stuff, and sometimes, one naturally gets into trouble when eating the tasty snacks of others. Yet, this was definitely in the top two for most dangerous situations Sandy had ever gotten themselves into.
The wound on the worm’s side was already rotting, and more vines were closing in as the Ghostvine kept sending those nonsensical telepathic packages, yelling at Sandy to leave while not giving the poor worm any chance to actually do so. Sometimes, a worm had to be decisive, so Sandy steeled themselves and didn’t think twice before doing what had to be done:
“Begin operation clean up and consolidate! Go, go, go!” Sandy yelled to all the people and creatures in their internal worlds – also known as all the different stomachs - as Sandy opened gateways between all of them. They also quickly tried to spit out the Lunewood Meteorite Fragments hoping they were the cause of the aggression, but it didn’t make the attack stop.
A dozen vines closed in as Sandy shifted in space, teleporting out of the way. Entering Sandy’s Sand World wasn’t possible with space this unstable – the place not really made for fleeing either. It was made for traveling, first and foremost.
Sandy did have other defensive means, though.
Hardening the cosmic dust, Sandy slowed down all the vines, going for the worm. At the same time, the wound was rapidly healing as space shifted, launching Sandy toward the tunnel the worm had entered the core chamber from. Vines moved to block the worm, but with Sandy’s intense momentum, they managed to slip through, entering the tunnel.
Yet it wasn’t enough, as more vines just appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. They just popped into existence without any rhyme, reason, or warning. It was as if the entire moon was part of the Ghostvine’s body, which probably wasn’t that far off.
The Ghostvine had integrated itself with the moon’s core, after all.
Sandy kept going through the tunnels, teleporting, dodging, and blocking vines, but they just kept coming. A few managed to slip through, leaving nasty wounds all over the worm’s body and eating away at Sandy’s vital energies.
It definitely didn’t help that Sandy had practically trapped themselves within the belly of the beast. To escape and do long-range teleports, Sandy needed to get out of the vast tunnel network of the moon and into open space, but there was just so far.
Too far.
So, rather than escape, the name of the game was dragging things out as long as possible to give Tom and the others enough time to get everything prepared. Thus, Sandy did their best, as the wounds got worse and worse, and Sandy knew that death was inevitable.
Luckily, before death came, Sandy got the confirmation they needed.
“We’re done.”
Sandy didn’t hesitate as they turned around and flew at full speed back toward the core chamber. The Ghostvine wasn’t ready for this, allowing Sandy to get pretty damn close before too many vines impeded their path, and a dozen wrapped around the worm’s body, crushing it.
“You win this one, stupid vine!” Sandy telepathically yelled as the worm mobilized the rest of the energy in their body. “But I’ll be back!”
Sandy’s body began to glow in a silvery light until suddenly, the worm was just gone… a faint mark left behind in space-time that even Jake wouldn’t be able to detect.
Jake’s spatial necklace was giving off an alarming response, and his eyes opened wide as he felt as if it was about to burst. He didn’t hesitate as he pulled out the item that was acting up. Jake had already realized by now what it was, as the egg that Sandy kept insisting wasn’t an egg appeared. However, rather than just looking like a weird rock, it was now glowing and filled with complicated runes far more complicated than Jake could comprehend.
Soon, the egg cracked as it leaked intense waves of energy that washed over Jake. Space itself shuddered before Jake saw a familiar tail pop out of the bottom of the egg. Then, the entire thing exploded, as a worm only half a meter across appeared before rapidly expanding in size as a full Cosmic Genesis Worm was born… or reborn?
“I LIVE!” Sandy’s voice echoed out as the worm wiggled in excitement - a feeling of excitement that quickly died down as the worm turned to look at Jake solemnly. “I think we should postpone moon exploration for a while…”
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Jake just stared at the worm for a moment as he blurbed out the first thing on his mind:
“Are you okay?”
“Okay is a relative term,” Sandy said in a sad tone. “I feel like crap, and just existing hurts right now. I’m also super weak, so please don’t make me do anything for a while, okay?”
“Alright,” Jake said with some concern as he was silent for a dozen seconds, just allowing the worm to wriggle back and forth a bit, getting used to being alive. “I take it this is the backlash from that second life skill?”
“Yep,” Sandy said, rolling over in space to lay with the stomach up. “My poor tummy.”
That’s when Jake realized… what happened to everything Sandy had eaten? More importantly, what happened to the people?
“What happened to what was in your many stomachs? Such as the dietitian?” Jake asked, now back to being fully concerned.
“They’re all fine,” Sandy said calmly.
“Oh, good,” Jake sighed in relief as he would have felt a lot worse if he had inadvertently got a few random people killed. “So I take it your internal stomachs aren’t negatively affected when reborn?”
“They super much are negatively affected. I have to limit everything to two stomachs for the skill, with everything not inside them getting consumed. It was only one stomach a while ago when I was reborn, but I got it up to two now, but it’s still far from enough! It’s pretty hard to put everything into two stomachs only, especially when each has its own environment that I spent time cultivating. Heck, it’s impossible to do. Now all of those fun biomes are gone, and I have to start over,” Sandy explained in a sad and annoyed tone. “But, together with the people in there, such as Tom and that dietitian that was forced upon me, I can gather everything and everyone important in the two stomachs I keep to at least make the losses not as worse as they could be. Again, it’s not perfect… as an example, that alchemy lab you got? Yeah, that’s gone.”
“I see,” Jake muttered. “That’s a big sacrifice but a cheap price to pay for a second life in the grand scheme of things.
“Easy for you to say. Gonna be a pain to get everything back to what it was. Not to mention the literal pain of having the majority of your stomachs implode. Gotta wait for everything before I’ll feel whole again,” Sandy complained.
“How long do you reckon it will take?” Jake asked with a frown.
“Depends. If I do nothing… a long time. If I eat stuff to help replenish my energy, not as long. I have some stuff already in my emergency rations to speed things up, but even if everything goes well, it will take me a few months at least,” Sandy answered.
“Just say if there’s anything I can do to help,” Jake sighed. He felt pretty damn bad about having dragged Sandy all the way to the moon only for this to happen. From the looks of it, the worm hadn’t even gotten anything out of the trip. Meanwhile, Jake had, at the very least, collected a cool-looking rock to bring back to his nephew... yeah, it had been a sucky trip overall.
“It’s fine for now, I don’t need anything from you,” Sandy surprisingly rejected Jake’s offer of food. “Because that’s the second thing that sucks right now. I can’t even eat a lot before I full super stuffed, as, you know, the vast majority of my stomachs just imploded. Who would have thought that had an adverse effect on appetite?”
“Alright, alright,” Jake nodded as he tried to lighten the mood. “You know, now I understand why you said you would be fine no matter what. That skill is the one you got from the True Blessing of the Lord Protector, right? I must say, it makes me a bit jealous that you have a skill that makes you impossible to kill. Meanwhile, I just got a skill primarily designed to fuck with people trying to use Identify on me.”
“Rude,” the Malefic Viper interjected, as Jake entirely ignored him.
“Eh, it’s overpowered for sure, but I can’t say its perfect. Big Boss Hydra did warn me of some potential flaws. Some skills will allow whatever killed me to still track me down while I’m weakened, and certain attacks can leave bad lingering effects even a rebirth can’t fix. Too bad soul damage and curses are two examples of this that the Big Boss pointed out. Then, there is, of course, karmic magic, which can outright block the rebirth or even tap into the power from the skill to attack me even after the fact. There are other means of blocking off my ability to be reborn, too, but they are super rare, and I am working on counters to all of them,” Sandy explained willingly.
“Are you sure it’s a good idea to share all the weaknesses of what’s arguably your biggest trump card with others? Even if it’s me?” Jake asked, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Oh, no, it’s a stupid thing to do, but I reckon if I want you to carry around one of my egg things, it’s only polite to tell you... oh yeah, that gets me to one of the other drawbacks. I need the egg things to do my rebirth trick, so if the final one breaks or is lost or something, I’m screwed. Also, I can’t control which one I use; it’s always the closest,” Sandy continued, over-explaining their abilities with a sigh. “So, anyway, I will need to reconstruct the egg, which takes a lot of stuff I could have eaten instead, so that sucks. And all of that comes after I heal my stomachs. It all just takes so much time and energy to do… dying is a real bummer, you know?”
“From the times I’ve tried it, death indeed has been wholly unpleasant,” Jake answered honestly, remembering the Challenge Dungeons in Nevermore, especially the Colosseum of Mortals and his strategy of just throwing lives at Valdemar.
“Right?” Sandy agreed. “I think we should both strive to not die as much.”
The two of them fell silent for a while as Sandy slowly got back their bearings. It would take a bit for the worm to feel well enough to move, and Jake didn’t want to disturb Sandy while that happened.
While Jake had asked some questions about Sandy’s skill, he still had no idea how it worked. Not really. Sure, he knew what it did, but the fundamental concepts behind it were a massive mystery to him. He also reckoned there was more to it than Sandy said. Especially seeing as there wasn’t just one egg but multiple, giving Sandy more than one extra life.
If there wasn’t more to it than met the eye, why wouldn’t all gods give their Chosen a skill like this? Having a Chosen was a risk, and a skill like this would heavily alleviate that risk. Jake wanted to ask Villy, but decided to postpone that conversation for later.
After a bit of time had passed, Sandy spoke again:
“The thing inside the moon is something called a Ghostvine Sovereign,” the worm said. “Ever heard about one before?”
Jake frowned as he rummaged through his memory before he shook his head. “No, can’t say I have, but the name is pretty telling in its own right. Plus, anything with Sovereign in its name makes me assume it can’t be weak.”
“It definitely isn’t. What’s more, it has merged with the moon’s core entirely,” Sandy kept explaining.
“That’s… bad,” Jake muttered.
“Yep,” Sandy readily agreed. “But, there is one kind of good thing. I don’t think this Ghostvine has any real intelligence. It looks like it does, but there is no cohesion in its thought pattern or telepathic messages, and I sensed primarily emotion and not anything truly complex from it. Heck, I think it only attacked me because of the Lunewood Meteorite Fragments I had in my stomach, and that was entirely on instinct. Once I was designated as an enemy, the way the attacks worked seemed almost automatic.”
Jake could only agree as he also found the way the Ghostvine had acted odd. “Then what do you think it wants? For some reason, it didn’t attack the Lunewood Forest at all.”
“I’m not sure, and in all honesty, I don’t think the Ghostvine is either. It may be because it originated from the Lunewood Forest and thus instinctively views it as a part of it that shouldn’t be destroyed, or it may be because it uses the life energy to fuel its own death energy. Or, you know, something entirely illogical since we are talking about a creature that doesn’t really operate on logic here.”
They were quiet once more for a minute before Sandy spoke again. “Just to be clear, we both agree on what we’re gonna do about that stupid Ghostvine and the celestial object it integrated itself with, right?”
“Oh yeah,” Jake nodded as he looked at the moon. “We’re gonna kill that fucking Ghostvine one way or another… even if the moon has to go along with it.”
“Can we call it Operation: Moonfall?”
“Sure?” Jake agreed, confused.
“Thank you. Tom will be very happy to hear that.”
“I’m sure he will,” Jake said with a smile. “Now let’s go home, alright?”
“Alright… but you’re in charge of transport this time around, at least for the first part of the trip,” Sandy said.
“Sure,” Jake shrugged, wondering how exactly he planned on doing that. Maybe he could have Sandy-
“And no, I’m not shrinking down. Can’t at the moment.”
… or he could figure something else out.