"…what are you guys doing here?"
"Just walking around. What about you? I didn't think you would be a planty type of guy." DT noticed that Vasari was in the process of buying some seeds.
"Oh, these? I bought a house recently and I'm trying to grow a little garden."
"You bought a house?" Jaxon asked in surprise. They tried looking for a house to purchase but they were all too expensive. He, DT, Asher, Timo, and Jett had to rent a decent-sized apartment together since they weren't part of a Top20 Faction.
Jude was lucky enough to have the opportunity to live in a faction house.
"Dude, Vasari had to have made bank from doing such a long mission." DT elbowed Jaxon and rolled his eyes as if it was so obvious how Vasari bought a house.
"Ah, you're right. Well, I'm happy for you man."
"Thanks…say you guys want to do a few missions together?" Vasari suddenly asked, catching the boys off guard.
"Ah, we would like to but Asher, Timo, Jett, and myself signed contracts with a faction so we can only do a mission they pick for us. Sorry man." Jude answered and explained their situation to Vasari who nodded his head in understanding.
"I understand, what about you two? You want to do a mission with me?" He asked DT and Jaxon, who didn't need a third invitation and readily accepted. Vasari told them to pick a mission at the mission hall and meet him at the front of the shopping mall when they are done.
The 4 others went with them and left Vasari to continue his shopping.
Now that the boys were gone, he turned back to the employee who had been patiently waiting all this time.
"Ah sorry about that. Where were we?"
"Sir, since you are buying 100 packets of mixed tree seeds at once, you will receive a 20% discount. The 500 packets of grass seeds will also be 30% off due to you buying in bulk and the 50 seed packets of erotic plants will be 1 Cloud Point per packet bringing your total to 395 Cloud Points."
Vasari nodded and took out his Cloud Badge. He paid the employee the exact amount and was left with 200 Cloud Points.
The employee smiled and then went to the back of the store to get all of Vasari's items. She came back with a cheap storage ring in her hand which had just enough space to store everything he bought and handed it to him.
"Here we go, sir. Enjoy the rest of your day."
"Thank you and you too."
Now that he had gotten everything he needed to make a small forest, he headed to the entrance of the mall and waited for his friends to return.
An hour later, Vasari and the 6 boys stood outside of the Mall, while Otis was busy flirting with the other customers' mounts nearby and was having very little success.
"So Vasari, there are 2 missions that pay quite well and we wanted to get your thoughts on it before we decide," Jaxon said, and seeing Vasari nod, he continued.
"The first mission is to protect a town from a predicted beast tide. Over a thousand Adult stage beasts and nearly a hundred Beta stage beasts are supposably in this beast tide. We will be joining a larger group of Outer Haven Disciples and you will be paid for every beast you kill. Adult stage beasts are 5 Cloud Points and Beta stage beasts are 50 Cloud Points. The group will be departing in a week.
The second mission is an investigation type of mission. There have been several young children reported missing and the town head is getting bombarded with several furious parents and has asked for help. If you find the cause and deal with it, a payment of a thousand Cloud Points will be rewarded. There's no time limit, but the quicker the better."
Vasari quietly listened and thought for a little while after Jaxon was finished.
"Can't we do both? We'll do the beast tide mission first, get the reward, then immediately do the investigation mission if it hasn't been completed by then."
"Oh so it's like a one-two punch and we make a good amount of Cloud Points." DT excitedly punched the air twice and his eyes shone in excitement.
This was going to be their first real mission and it was something as cool as defending a town of normal people, like he once was, from a beast tide. It was for moments like these that he dreamt of becoming a cultivator.
"So let's meet up in a week?"
DT: "Yeppers."
Jaxon: "See you in a week Vasari."
Vasari nodded and said goodbye to the rest of the boys. He had to drag the horny Pegasus away from the poor female mounts and they went back home.
Asher: "I wish I could go on the missions with you guys. It sounds like it would be so much fun."
Jaxon: "Well you could always leave your faction."
Asher: "Haha no way. The faction member rizz is going to work wonders, just you wait."
Timo: "True. When we get our faction badges and stick them onto our sect robes, watch the ladies come flocking to us in droves."
Jude and Jett rolled their eyes at their nonsense while DT and Jaxon clenched their fists in frustration and internally swore they would work hard to get into a faction.
Suddenly Asher drops to his knees and holds the back of his head while staring at the concrete floor below him.
"Dude, what's up with you?" Jude asks after noticing his weird behaviour.
"We forgot to ask Vasari to take pictures!"
The others had a look of realisation before they too dropped to their knees in agony.
Jude looked at these idiots in stupefaction. This wasn't the first time he wondered why he was friends with such weirdos.
–––––
"Did you get everything you need?"
Witney and Vasari sat next to each other on their bed while the little dragons ate a large piece of fresh meat that Vasari just bought.
"Yes, I think so. I got plenty of different trees, grass, herbs, and exotic plants. I also still have the emerald flower we found in Mammoth Grove together. Oh, I also had the cubs dig up a lot of fresh soil from around the property."
"Okay, that's good. How big do you want the forest to be?"
"I have no clue. As large as the sub-space currently is right now."
"Gosh, I still can't believe there's an entire sub-space in your eyes and the fact that it can contain life is beyond amazing. Wait…you've tested if it can contain living things right?"
"Uhm…I mean, the eggs were fine when they were kept in there so it should be fine right?"
Witney looked at Vasari with a blank look and he heard her tapping her foot on the floor in agitation.
"I'll go get a mouse or something and test it out just to be sure."
"Mmhm, you do that."
Vasari rushed out of the room and returned 10 minutes later with 2 small mice.
"Why do you have two?" Witney asked when he came back. The 4 small dragons looked at the mice in Vasari's hand and licked their lips.
"Not food!" Witney scolded but they were too fixated on the mice to care.
"I have two eyes remember and they have completely opposite properties and contain different energies. I'm testing if both can support life or only one."
Witney nodded in understanding before standing up and helping Vasari remove his blindfold.
Vasari unsealed his eyes and the baby dragons finally took their eyes off the mice and fixated them on Vasari instead.
"Let's try the sub-space in my Eye of Absolute Destruction first." Vasari concentratedly stared at one of the mice and thought of sending it into his left eye's sub-space.
Witney opened her mouth, forming an 'O' when she suddenly saw one of the mice disappear like it never existed in the first place.
'These eyes are heaven-defying.'
She thought and saw Vasari close his eyes. His brows were relaxed and his face had no emotion which was a weird sight for her as she was used to seeing him with a smile on his face.
Meanwhile, Vasari found himself in a world filled with complete darkness. However, he was used to seeing the world this way so he was unaffected by it.
*Sque!* *Sque!*
Vasari looked down at where the sound was coming from and felt the movement of the mouse he had sent in here. It was frightened but still moved around, trying to find its way through this world of darkness. After 10 seconds passed, Vasari noticed that its movements were becoming sluggish and its squeaks were becoming less frequent, and after a minute passed…it collapsed.
'This sub-space is unsuitable for life due to the destructive energies constantly being circulated.' Vasari hypothesized and although he could be wrong, he thought it was most likely the reason.
He then remembered his short sword and walked towards it. Since this space was technically controlled by him, he knew exactly where it was.
'It's still intact, that's a good sign, no? I'll leave it here until before the mission. Let's test the other mouse now.'
Vasari's consciousness vanished from the world covered in darkness and he opened his eyes to see Witney looking at him with expectant eyes.
"The mouse died," Vasari said blankly making Witney's lips twitch in speechlessness. She wanted to scold him for nearly sending his children into a place that would've killed them but before she could, Vasari sent the mouse into his right eye's sub-space and closed his eyes.
Vasari now found himself in a world of white. It was a stark contrast to the previous sub-space and Vasari instinctively knew that this space could support life.
He looked down and saw the mouse he threw in here running around with excited squeals and he swore he even saw it slightly enlarge in the short amount of time it's been in here.
Just to be sure, Vasari watched the mouse for 2 minutes before he concluded that his plan of creating a forest would work.
He returned to the 'real world' and broke the news to Witney who looked ecstatic after hearing it.
"It might take some time to create the forest since I can only work on it for less than an hour a day before my eyes start to pain. Today I'll lay down the soil."
Witney nodded and wished him luck with a sweet kiss on the lips and with renewed vigour, Vasari got to work inside the Eye of Boundless Creation's sub-space.
The first thing he did was measure how large the sub-space currently was. He knew that as he progressed in cultivation it would get larger, but it was important to get a general idea of the size so that he could design a good landscape that he could constantly expand whenever he got more space available in the future.
"2000 metres by 2000 metres. Not bad for now but as they get bigger they will need more space."
The space had increased by a fair decent amount since the last time he measured it. When he was at the 1st stage of the Mortal Ascension Realm, his sub-space was just a hundred metres squared.
Now that he knew the dimensions of his sub-space he started laying down the soil. Normally he would use his Advanced Earth Will to move the soil but he found it to be extremely exhausting while in this sub-space for some reason. So he decided to get his hands dirty and do it the good old-fashioned way.
He put his god-like body to use and got down to work.
Half an hour later and he managed to cover 1/8th of the floor with fresh soil.
'We go again tomorrow.'
Vasari's consciousness left the sub-space and he opened his eyes in the real world.
He quickly sealed them to avoid the pain and after releasing a sigh of exhaustion, he sat down and began cultivating after he noticed Witney was also cultivating and the little dragons were sleeping with their bellies bloated.
When they woke up Vasari stopped his cultivation session and played with the hatchlings while Witney continued cultivating.
They switched roles every few hours and when Vasari felt that he could enter his sub-space, he did so and continued with laying down the soil.
Vasari eventually finished it three days later. During this time he and Witney would occasionally leave the room to hang out with the others and Vasari also spent a night alone with Talia. He also managed to finally gift the Nine Yin Dragon Claw technique to Witney and Talia. He thought about gifting it to the other girls too but their bodies weren't yet suited for it. It would require them to first learn the Dance of Dragons technique before partaking in plenty of cultivation sessions with Vasari. Even Hiromi was still a fair bit away from having the ideal body constitution to learn the Low Celestial-grade martial technique.
The reason Witney could learn it was that she had refined Vasari's Primal Yang and could be considered one-eighth Imperial Dragon.
Currently, Vasari was in his sub-space, and in his hand was a green packet of grass seeds. Sitting next to Vasari was 4 oversized wolf cubs. Vasari decided to have the wolf cubs do some work and help him out. The wolves felt energised in this world of white and they were raring to get to work.
Vasari had already fertilised the soil and was now on to the next step.
"I want you boys to run around with these in your mouths. Just run all over until it's empty then come back."
Vasari gave the order and handed the cubs a large packet of grass seeds before sending them away. When their packets were empty they returned to him and he gave them another packet. This process repeated until the grass seeds blanketed the soil.
Vasari then covered the seeds in a light layer of soil.
"All we have to do now is water it," Vasari said while looking at the large water tank next to him. He really had prepared everything.
Vasari picked up a large watering can and while the cubs rested, Vasari began watering the seeds. After they were back to full energy, the cubs helped Vasari by picking up a watering can in their mouths and ran around all over the place.
When Vasari felt the prickling pain approaching, he quickly sent the cubs out before he too left.
They had successfully watered the soil and all they could do now was wait for it to grow.
They returned a day later to find the grass was already half a metre in height.
Vasari was shocked by the growth speed but remembered that he purchased 'Quick Growing Grass'.
Now it was time to plant the trees and vegetation. For this part, he needed the help of a professional landscaper.