The Core: The Hive Daughter

5. Adopting a star eater

I hoped that upgrading my entire ship to gold cr would help to make up for the lost time.

"Kevin!" I heard shouted briefly as I spread my arms wide to accept the incoming body that I had been expecting. Hoping for and expecting. I smiled into her hair as she wrapped her arms tightly around my neck, securing me in a wonderful hug.

"Hey Tutor," I said softly against her head as I hugged her back. A brief couple of moments later I felt George's grandfatherly arms as he embraced us both, making us all into a hug sandwich.

I felt a stir and swirl against the hair on my head as Invicta materialized and sat herself down where she had mentally been hitching a ride for the last adventure.

"Sheesh, you guys act like he was gone forever." She said as I felt her grab handfuls of my hair to keep her balance. Or maybe it was just to cause me to roll my eyes in my head at her behavior.

George broke the hug and stepped back, followed a moment later by Tutor who was beaming up at me.

"So you plan on trying to raise an outcast wyrm?" She asked as she nodded down towards our feet where we could see into the cargo bay. The huge egg took up much of the view as it sat there ominously pulsing and waiting.

"Yeah, you know. I leave home for a moment and see a lost puppy and think, man it would be nice to adopt something that could eat my house in one bite." I said as we all looked down at the new arrival.

"We got this right? Tell me we got this." I said as I looked up at their faces. George, ever practical George, had on a face that I could only describe as one that your dad would have on after you came home with a messed-up tattoo. Tutor, on the other hand, I think she was the more optimistic of the two. Invicta... she was busy zapping my scalp so I was pretty sure she didn't care.

"Oh!" I said as I remembered what we had learned from my resident swarm. "Big update, apparently we all almost died the last time I dreamed. It seems that I was meant to become a host for an invading swarm and not to have obtained a stronger version of cr. Turns out that the monster that ate the ant actually saved my life." I said as I gave both of them access to the conversation and all the events that happened while I was away.

"A new type of energy that mutates interdimensional life?" George was the first to speak as he latched onto the scientific parts of my encounters.

"Whatever! Kevin, come see my new place when you get time!" Invicta said before she jumped off my head and went speeding off into the distance. There was a new stone path that led off to the right of George's workshop and into some trees.

"Invicta kind of spoiled that surprise. Sorry." Tutor whispered to me, revealing to me why they all weren't more distressed than they were showing now.

"Looks like we have a forest growing behind your workshop now?" I asked George as I spotted the dense treetops leading off into the distance, letting the expectation of them being freaked fade away. Some things were bound to happen. Invicta would probably spoil movies for people as well.

"And a sky as well here it seems." I included when I noticed that they had let the environment leech into this section of the VR space.

"Yeah, we have been a bit busy monitoring the fallout from Magus the new 2nd's Core getting destroyed. Things happen very fast since most Tela exist in the System's rate of speed." Tutor said as she fixed the sky in this local area back to the original blue. It was better this way, it made this area seem like a transition point between leaving, command of the habitat, and the living spaces of my guests and AI.

"What is new in regards to the Citizens?" I asked as I noticed that my alien cr was through with its task of absorbing the raw cr. Four and a half small cubes of gold pulp remained and were stacked next to the gel of the nest.