Argul set the entrance to her 12th floor to be one of the biomes in her mountain ranges. She wanted to create something akin to redwoods on this floor and wanted to make something more normal than her grassland. That said, once a few larger bodies of water formed they would be connected to her water network between her floors. The thing was getting so large that you could call it a floor of its own and it was a mess of a maze.
Theoretically you could reach from every somewhat large water body to all the others and take massive shortcuts. Sadly, just finding the right one should be difficult and taking that shortcut also meant possibly facing the danger of higher floors. As such Argul was fine with it, she even enjoyed the random creation of this network somewhat.
She finalized the settings of her floor and proceeded to watch the creation of another small planet.
[6. Floor]
Redwoods Temperature: 5°C to 20°C Daytime: 14 hours Nighttime: 10 hours Events: Natural catastrophes
Argul had thought a long time about adding some special event like acid rain or a death wave, but had decided against it. Not because she didn’t want to add those things and mostly because they would increase the maintenance cost of the floor by a lot. She would be able to play around with that a lot more on later floors, especially once she got her hands on more planet templates.
Argul focused her observation on the stone around her core this time to try and figure out how they changed. The massive amounts of mana flowing around her core had changed the material around it since the very first floor, but since her mana creation radius had increased she had noticed that the outer edges began to change even more than before. It was a bit like she was creating a world core.
After half an hour Argul gave up though, she just couldn’t tell what exactly was happening and would have to wait until her wisdom and thus her perception inside of her domain was high enough that she could observe stuff on an atomic level.
Instead she focused on creating her plants. Since she wanted to create a redwood forest or rather a forest with extremely tall trees they took one of the five slots she had to fill. Argul opted to do these last, finding them the most interesting plant of the floor.
She had a plan for the other plants too, though they were even less specific than the trees. It was not more than a herb, a root, some kind of fruit producing plant and a fern. She wasn’t quite sure why, but ferns were the second plant that came to her mind when she thought about redwoods. Maybe she had played a little too much ARK back on earth…
Argul focused back on her work and initiated her [ribm] process. As a result, thick gnarly roots that reminded her of ginger grew about 2m under the surface. This was quite deep for a plant that stored its energy in its roots as far as she knew.
Once the main tuber had finished growing to about the size of a small melon a secondary root formed and slowly snaked its way to the surface. A few elongated green leaves sprouted from the ground in multiple places, followed by a white blossom.
Argul named the thing White sprout and identified it.
[White sprout]
This is a mid-sized plant. This root grows deep inside of the earth to avoid being eaten. It is energy rich and the chemicals point towards a rather bitter taste.
There are multiple substances inside of White sprouts that have seemingly been influenced by mana. Possible effects are unknown and caution is advised.
She nodded to herself. The second part was new, but something she had anticipated to appear. The system had as of yet been able to deduce the effects of plants, even some of the more magical plants on the lower floors, but now they stepped into uncharted territory. If Argul had to guess then most of the effects of the plants that were more special were still based on chemicals. This in turn would mean this root in front of her had somehow changed the chemicals completely, something she definitely had to research in the future.
With that done, Argul tackled the herb next. The plant that grew was unobtrusive, little more than a few small leaves looking out of the soil. The only thing that seemed a bit special was a single black vein that adorned every leaf, but wasn’t visible from far away.
This time there was no unique feature except for the vein that Argul could use for a name so she figured she might as well identify it first.
[unnamed]
This is a small plant. This herb grows in mild and mostly humid climates. It has an unappetizing but numbing aftertaste. The black vein in the leaf contains some kind of modified poison that would normally cause blood to clog. The new effects however, are unknown.
Argul mentally raised her eyebrow. It looked like she had hit some kind of threshold and new stuff kept popping up. She wondered what she should name the thing though. Black vein seemed a bit too simple and uncreative, but she wanted to have the vein be the center of the name.
After mulling a bit about it she decided to go with black scar herb. The name wasn’t that much better, but it had a certain flair to it and who knew what that mana enhanced poison would do. Well, Argul would once an animal was stupid enough to take a bit, but that was not the point.
Her berry bush and fern sadly turned out rather boring. The berries were black, small and round like a lot of other berries out there. They also didn’t have any special substances going for them for now so Argul didn’t bother to name the bush.
The fern was pretty much the same. It grew up to 2m tall, but except for the height it didn’t have anything special going for it, though the prehistoric growing style that had been popular back when dinosaurs were still around gave bonus points. Still, Argul didn’t bother herself too much with the thing. The tree was really the most important thing here.
That said or rather thought, she pictured what she wanted a bit more. The color wasn’t that essential for her. Sure, the trees had a somewhat red colored bark back on earth, but that wasn’t what made them so exceptional. What Argul wanted from the trees was the large height, despite the somewhat small trunks. Now the trunks would be massive on the ground no matter what, but the ratio to the height was what made her call them small.
A single leaf sprouted out of the ground and a tree began to shoot into existence. There was something different about this plant however. Argul had long since stopped infusing the thing with mana, yet more and more of the energy rushed into the thing, easily dwarfing her mana capacity by hundredfold.
Her mental eyes glittered as she watched the tree reach 50m height in a minute and continue on without slowing down. It grew and grew, not a single branch forming near the ground and the grayish brown bark got ripped apart in multiple places, unable to keep up with the growth.
Only when the tree got close to 200m tall with a trunk about 20m wide did it show signs of stopping. Instead an expansive treetop began to form and the wounds in the bark healed up, straightening the outer layer. It left the bark surprisingly smooth, contrary to what Argul would have expected from such a large tree.
When the tree completely finished growing the bark ripped open in some places again and hundreds of flat seeds began to float in random directions. They had fallen out of the rips that began to heal behind them. Not at a visible speed, but fast enough for Argul to notice it.
Some of the seeds hit the ground and sprouted immediately, though Argul’s mana had nothing to do with that anymore. Instead they used their own reserves to boost themselves to small sproutlings.
Argul thought they would stop there, but no, the small trees kept using all their mana to grow. In fact, now that she had seen that she also noticed that the original tree was doing the same. Did they never stop?
Argul frowned to herself as she looked at the small trees and compared them to the other plants. There was something different to the giant things. She couldn’t put her finger on the feeling, but it reminded her a lot of feeling a concentration of mana.
Argul squinted and for the first time really looked at the plant with her mana sight and how stats and level influenced the mana signature of a creature. After looking at hundreds of different things she determined that the edge of the signature got brighter the higher something's level was. The same went for stats and the inner part of the mana signature. She did not discover the source for the weird feeling however and she wanted to know what it was that made the tree feel more in tune with mana than everything she had ever seen, except for her core that is. It was hard to top something that was made of pure mana itself.
Argul kept looking, but couldn’t find it. She was either doing something terribly wrong or it was just not meant to be seen, which left her with only one option to confirm her suspicion.
She connected herself to her daughter. “Hey Aly, do you have a minute?”
Her avatar stepped into her view, though she still used the skill connection to reply. “Sure mom. I guess you want to know about the tree?”
Argul nodded. “Yes.”
Her daughter's avatar looked thoughtful and turned to the large tree. “Hmmm… You see, that thing just evolved and as a result it is more in tune with mana. The constant growth is actually one of the traits it got, the second one would be the numbing bark.”
Argul had guessed that the thing just evolved. It was quite possible as both she and her daughter could only guesstimate the level something needed for an evolution. She didn’t question the two traits too much. The numbing bark seemed useless and the tree being forced to use all its mana for growing outright detrimental. It left the thing without mana to use for anything so it couldn’t even make use of the fact that it was more in tune with mana.
There was one thing however, that bothered Argul. “So the tree evolved, but why? Shouldn’t I have grown multiple trees at level 1 that would evolve later?”
Alyra’s avatar turned around and smiled sweetly. “Yes, but you wanted a forest with only one kind of tree.”
Argul was a bit confused so Alyra elaborated a bit further. “Normally you would have grown multiple level 1 trees. Everyone of these would have evolved differently however and you didn’t want different kinds of trees. As a result the surrounding mana surged into the tree once you finished your thing and boosted the tree all the way to level 12. Now all its progeny have the same evolution and wont evolve at level 12 anymore.”
That made some sense, but only because the mana in Argul’s domain was still hers so of course it would do what she wanted. She should be careful in the future in that case though, because that also meant that the smallest of her wishes could influence a spell of hers inside of her domain.
After that Alyra left Argul again and Argul identified the tree.
[Evergrowth]
This is a gigantic plant. This tree has evolved once and lives in regions with mild climate. Due to its evolution it can never stop growing for as long as it absorbs more mana. The bark of the Evergrowth has some kind of numbing effect, making climbing a dangerous adventure.
That tree was just weird, though a lot of things in her domain were weird so it didn’t really matter.
With the plants finished Argul proceeded with the animals. The first thing she created was some kind of mice and the second thing an unassuming snake. Both of them didn’t do anything special, yet that is. With the tree evolving it was likely for some of the other organisms to follow suit.
The third animal however was quite interesting however. At first Argul had thought it was some normal kind of beetle, but the fist sized buck had started to do something that she definitely hadn’t expected.
The beetle had spread its glittering green wings and flown to the large tree. There it landed only to proceed to build a second layer on the bark around one of the spots where a seed had broken through. The stuff looked a bit like a coral with every beetle using a different color and because the beetles built a lot with the stuff, the tree now looked like coral reef.
Argul really liked these ones, they were pretty and did pretty things.
[Coral beetle]
This is a small animal. This insect lives around Evergrowths. They build nests resembling corals on the large trees and harvest the seed of the Evergrowth before it can float away. Since Evergrowths use their all to grow themselves and their seeds, large colonies of these beetles can survive as long as there are at least two trees.
She smiled to herself. Those beetles were definitely in her top five creatures she had ever created.
Argul watched them for a bit, but since she had promised Jack to teach him the light spell, or rather Mia’s light spell, today, she didn’t have too much time and opened her status. A lot of quest rewards opened up in front of her, all of them about enchanting so she kinda merged them together until there were only two left.
[Enchanting practice]
Through completing various quests about enchanting you received: Str +4, Int +9, Wis +6
[Spreading knowledge]
Through completing various quests about teaching Jack you received: Str +5, Int +1, Wis +2
Argul had to smile at that, the system was insulting Jack and it was pretty amusing in her opinion.
Floor completed!
[Level up!]
[Status]
Name: Argul Agren
Race: Mana core
Age: 8 months
Level: 12
Structural integrity: 100%
Mana: 307.83/307.83
Mana generation: 3.08/min
—
[Stats]
Str: 114 (+9)
Int: 114 (+11)
Wis: 114 (+10)
—
[Active skills]
core special: uniphone, ribm, materialization
mana manipulation
magic missile
water magic: conjure, manipulate, banish, fake tears
earth magic: conjure, manipulate, banish
light magic: conjure, invisibility, mirror image
identify (4)
cleaning
emergency portal
contract
fate contract
increase heat (solid)
space manipulation
Enchanting
Mana com
—
[Passive skills]
domain skills: accelerated [m] growth (small), accelerated [s] growth (all), core regeneration, knowledge domain
learning (3)
sense skills: sense mana, sense space
mental fortitude
curse of harmlessness (s)
aspect clothes
magic gunning
neutral magic sniper bullet
hidden might
Stat growth boost (1)
currently:
Str +2 Int +2 Wis +4
artifact creation
Artifacts: 1 (all +5) Lamp pole of light
—
[Floor 1]
Template: Luna (moon), surface
Size (radius): 1160 km
Area/ Volume: 9. 5 M km²
[Floor 10]
Template: Erod, deep forest
Size (radius): 1260 km
Area/ Volume: 11. 2 M km²
[Floor 11]
Template: Erod, grassland
Size (radius): 1270 km
Area/ Volume: 11. 4 M km²
[Floor 12]
Template: Erod, redwood (tall trees)
Size (radius): 1280 km
Area/ Volume: 11. 6 M km²
Argul set the entrance to her 12th floor to be one of the biomes in her mountain ranges. She wanted to create something akin to redwoods on this floor and wanted to make something more normal than her grassland. That said, once a few larger bodies of water formed they would be connected to her water network between her floors. The thing was getting so large that you could call it a floor of its own and it was a mess of a maze.
Theoretically you could reach from every somewhat large water body to all the others and take massive shortcuts. Sadly, just finding the right one should be difficult and taking that shortcut also meant possibly facing the danger of higher floors. As such Argul was fine with it, she even enjoyed the random creation of this network somewhat.
She finalized the settings of her floor and proceeded to watch the creation of another small planet.
[6. Floor]
Redwoods Temperature: 5°C to 20°C Daytime: 14 hours Nighttime: 10 hours Events: Natural catastrophes
Argul had thought a long time about adding some special event like acid rain or a death wave, but had decided against it. Not because she didn’t want to add those things and mostly because they would increase the maintenance cost of the floor by a lot. She would be able to play around with that a lot more on later floors, especially once she got her hands on more planet templates.
Argul focused her observation on the stone around her core this time to try and figure out how they changed. The massive amounts of mana flowing around her core had changed the material around it since the very first floor, but since her mana creation radius had increased she had noticed that the outer edges began to change even more than before. It was a bit like she was creating a world core.
After half an hour Argul gave up though, she just couldn’t tell what exactly was happening and would have to wait until her wisdom and thus her perception inside of her domain was high enough that she could observe stuff on an atomic level.
Instead she focused on creating her plants. Since she wanted to create a redwood forest or rather a forest with extremely tall trees they took one of the five slots she had to fill. Argul opted to do these last, finding them the most interesting plant of the floor.
She had a plan for the other plants too, though they were even less specific than the trees. It was not more than a herb, a root, some kind of fruit producing plant and a fern. She wasn’t quite sure why, but ferns were the second plant that came to her mind when she thought about redwoods. Maybe she had played a little too much ARK back on earth…
Argul focused back on her work and initiated her [ribm] process. As a result, thick gnarly roots that reminded her of ginger grew about 2m under the surface. This was quite deep for a plant that stored its energy in its roots as far as she knew.
Once the main tuber had finished growing to about the size of a small melon a secondary root formed and slowly snaked its way to the surface. A few elongated green leaves sprouted from the ground in multiple places, followed by a white blossom.
Argul named the thing White sprout and identified it.
[White sprout]
This is a mid-sized plant. This root grows deep inside of the earth to avoid being eaten. It is energy rich and the chemicals point towards a rather bitter taste.
There are multiple substances inside of White sprouts that have seemingly been influenced by mana. Possible effects are unknown and caution is advised.
She nodded to herself. The second part was new, but something she had anticipated to appear. The system had as of yet been able to deduce the effects of plants, even some of the more magical plants on the lower floors, but now they stepped into uncharted territory. If Argul had to guess then most of the effects of the plants that were more special were still based on chemicals. This in turn would mean this root in front of her had somehow changed the chemicals completely, something she definitely had to research in the future.
With that done, Argul tackled the herb next. The plant that grew was unobtrusive, little more than a few small leaves looking out of the soil. The only thing that seemed a bit special was a single black vein that adorned every leaf, but wasn’t visible from far away.
This time there was no unique feature except for the vein that Argul could use for a name so she figured she might as well identify it first.
[unnamed]
This is a small plant. This herb grows in mild and mostly humid climates. It has an unappetizing but numbing aftertaste. The black vein in the leaf contains some kind of modified poison that would normally cause blood to clog. The new effects however, are unknown.
Argul mentally raised her eyebrow. It looked like she had hit some kind of threshold and new stuff kept popping up. She wondered what she should name the thing though. Black vein seemed a bit too simple and uncreative, but she wanted to have the vein be the center of the name.
After mulling a bit about it she decided to go with black scar herb. The name wasn’t that much better, but it had a certain flair to it and who knew what that mana enhanced poison would do. Well, Argul would once an animal was stupid enough to take a bit, but that was not the point.
Her berry bush and fern sadly turned out rather boring. The berries were black, small and round like a lot of other berries out there. They also didn’t have any special substances going for them for now so Argul didn’t bother to name the bush.
The fern was pretty much the same. It grew up to 2m tall, but except for the height it didn’t have anything special going for it, though the prehistoric growing style that had been popular back when dinosaurs were still around gave bonus points. Still, Argul didn’t bother herself too much with the thing. The tree was really the most important thing here.
That said or rather thought, she pictured what she wanted a bit more. The color wasn’t that essential for her. Sure, the trees had a somewhat red colored bark back on earth, but that wasn’t what made them so exceptional. What Argul wanted from the trees was the large height, despite the somewhat small trunks. Now the trunks would be massive on the ground no matter what, but the ratio to the height was what made her call them small.
A single leaf sprouted out of the ground and a tree began to shoot into existence. There was something different about this plant however. Argul had long since stopped infusing the thing with mana, yet more and more of the energy rushed into the thing, easily dwarfing her mana capacity by hundredfold.
Her mental eyes glittered as she watched the tree reach 50m height in a minute and continue on without slowing down. It grew and grew, not a single branch forming near the ground and the grayish brown bark got ripped apart in multiple places, unable to keep up with the growth.
Only when the tree got close to 200m tall with a trunk about 20m wide did it show signs of stopping. Instead an expansive treetop began to form and the wounds in the bark healed up, straightening the outer layer. It left the bark surprisingly smooth, contrary to what Argul would have expected from such a large tree.
When the tree completely finished growing the bark ripped open in some places again and hundreds of flat seeds began to float in random directions. They had fallen out of the rips that began to heal behind them. Not at a visible speed, but fast enough for Argul to notice it.
Some of the seeds hit the ground and sprouted immediately, though Argul’s mana had nothing to do with that anymore. Instead they used their own reserves to boost themselves to small sproutlings.
Argul thought they would stop there, but no, the small trees kept using all their mana to grow. In fact, now that she had seen that she also noticed that the original tree was doing the same. Did they never stop?
Argul frowned to herself as she looked at the small trees and compared them to the other plants. There was something different to the giant things. She couldn’t put her finger on the feeling, but it reminded her a lot of feeling a concentration of mana.
Argul squinted and for the first time really looked at the plant with her mana sight and how stats and level influenced the mana signature of a creature. After looking at hundreds of different things she determined that the edge of the signature got brighter the higher something's level was. The same went for stats and the inner part of the mana signature. She did not discover the source for the weird feeling however and she wanted to know what it was that made the tree feel more in tune with mana than everything she had ever seen, except for her core that is. It was hard to top something that was made of pure mana itself.
Argul kept looking, but couldn’t find it. She was either doing something terribly wrong or it was just not meant to be seen, which left her with only one option to confirm her suspicion.
She connected herself to her daughter. “Hey Aly, do you have a minute?”
Her avatar stepped into her view, though she still used the skill connection to reply. “Sure mom. I guess you want to know about the tree?”
Argul nodded. “Yes.”
Her daughter's avatar looked thoughtful and turned to the large tree. “Hmmm… You see, that thing just evolved and as a result it is more in tune with mana. The constant growth is actually one of the traits it got, the second one would be the numbing bark.”
Argul had guessed that the thing just evolved. It was quite possible as both she and her daughter could only guesstimate the level something needed for an evolution. She didn’t question the two traits too much. The numbing bark seemed useless and the tree being forced to use all its mana for growing outright detrimental. It left the thing without mana to use for anything so it couldn’t even make use of the fact that it was more in tune with mana.
There was one thing however, that bothered Argul. “So the tree evolved, but why? Shouldn’t I have grown multiple trees at level 1 that would evolve later?”
Alyra’s avatar turned around and smiled sweetly. “Yes, but you wanted a forest with only one kind of tree.”
Argul was a bit confused so Alyra elaborated a bit further. “Normally you would have grown multiple level 1 trees. Everyone of these would have evolved differently however and you didn’t want different kinds of trees. As a result the surrounding mana surged into the tree once you finished your thing and boosted the tree all the way to level 12. Now all its progeny have the same evolution and wont evolve at level 12 anymore.”
That made some sense, but only because the mana in Argul’s domain was still hers so of course it would do what she wanted. She should be careful in the future in that case though, because that also meant that the smallest of her wishes could influence a spell of hers inside of her domain.
After that Alyra left Argul again and Argul identified the tree.
[Evergrowth]
This is a gigantic plant. This tree has evolved once and lives in regions with mild climate. Due to its evolution it can never stop growing for as long as it absorbs more mana. The bark of the Evergrowth has some kind of numbing effect, making climbing a dangerous adventure.
That tree was just weird, though a lot of things in her domain were weird so it didn’t really matter.
With the plants finished Argul proceeded with the animals. The first thing she created was some kind of mice and the second thing an unassuming snake. Both of them didn’t do anything special, yet that is. With the tree evolving it was likely for some of the other organisms to follow suit.
The third animal however was quite interesting however. At first Argul had thought it was some normal kind of beetle, but the fist sized buck had started to do something that she definitely hadn’t expected.
The beetle had spread its glittering green wings and flown to the large tree. There it landed only to proceed to build a second layer on the bark around one of the spots where a seed had broken through. The stuff looked a bit like a coral with every beetle using a different color and because the beetles built a lot with the stuff, the tree now looked like coral reef.
Argul really liked these ones, they were pretty and did pretty things.
[Coral beetle]
This is a small animal. This insect lives around Evergrowths. They build nests resembling corals on the large trees and harvest the seed of the Evergrowth before it can float away. Since Evergrowths use their all to grow themselves and their seeds, large colonies of these beetles can survive as long as there are at least two trees.
She smiled to herself. Those beetles were definitely in her top five creatures she had ever created.
Argul watched them for a bit, but since she had promised Jack to teach him the light spell, or rather Mia’s light spell, today, she didn’t have too much time and opened her status. A lot of quest rewards opened up in front of her, all of them about enchanting so she kinda merged them together until there were only two left.
[Enchanting practice]
Through completing various quests about enchanting you received: Str +4, Int +9, Wis +6
[Spreading knowledge]
Through completing various quests about teaching Jack you received: Str +5, Int +1, Wis +2
Argul had to smile at that, the system was insulting Jack and it was pretty amusing in her opinion.
Floor completed!
[Level up!]
[Status]
Name: Argul Agren
Race: Mana core
Age: 8 months
Level: 12
Structural integrity: 100%
Mana: 307.83/307.83
Mana generation: 3.08/min
—
[Stats]
Str: 114 (+9)
Int: 114 (+11)
Wis: 114 (+10)
—
[Active skills]
core special: uniphone, ribm, materialization
mana manipulation
magic missile
water magic: conjure, manipulate, banish, fake tears
earth magic: conjure, manipulate, banish
light magic: conjure, invisibility, mirror image
identify (4)
cleaning
emergency portal
contract
fate contract
increase heat (solid)
space manipulation
Enchanting
Mana com
—
[Passive skills]
domain skills: accelerated [m] growth (small), accelerated [s] growth (all), core regeneration, knowledge domain
learning (3)
sense skills: sense mana, sense space
mental fortitude
curse of harmlessness (s)
aspect clothes
magic gunning
neutral magic sniper bullet
hidden might
Stat growth boost (1)
currently:
Str +2 Int +2 Wis +4
artifact creation
Artifacts: 1 (all +5) Lamp pole of light
—
[Floor 1]
Template: Luna (moon), surface
Size (radius): 1160 km
Area/ Volume: 9. 5 M km²
[Floor 10]
Template: Erod, deep forest
Size (radius): 1260 km
Area/ Volume: 11. 2 M km²
[Floor 11]
Template: Erod, grassland
Size (radius): 1270 km
Area/ Volume: 11. 4 M km²
[Floor 12]
Template: Erod, redwood (tall trees)
Size (radius): 1280 km
Area/ Volume: 11. 6 M km²
