“Papa! I have something to show you!” Fantasia called out to me as I got into the factory in the morning.
It has been two nights since I dropped Cailie off in the Hero’s country, and today, our group should arrive in the next bigger town. It was another Baron’s town, and it was a Baron I’d never met, as he didn’t come to the Birthday party or anything.
But none of that is really important at the moment. Fantasia called me.
“Yes. What is it, sweetheart?” I asked the girl.
“I figured a way to make you the Spell Counters.” Fantasia announced.
… she did WHAT? Fantasia? I didn’t even know she was working on that. I thought it was just Laura, Tahlia and Endymion, the Master Magician.
Spoiler
[collapse]
“You did? What is it then?”
“I’ll show you. This way!” The girl said, as she dragged me towards the Yami room.
Spoiler
[collapse]
The room is just a bit dark, so I used some factory cheats to give myself perfect night vision in the room. With that, we kept going deeper into the room, until Fantasia stopped us in front of a large … I think this is a flower patch, but I’m not sure I want to call these … things flowers.
“Do you like it?” Fantasia asked.
“... so, how will this help?” I asked the girl.
“Papa doesn’t know?” Fantasia questioned. “They are Magical Plant Mandragola. When they bloom, they make Spell Counters on each nearby card that can hold them.”
Spoiler
FLIP: Place 1 Spell Counter on each face-up card on the field that you can place a Spell Counter on.
[collapse]
“... alright. Yeah. That is useful, but they are still monsters, so I’d either have to install them into the dungeon or summon them manually. I also don’t have a card to mass flip my own monsters face-down, so they don’t really help.”
I do have Swords of Concealing Light, sure, but it doesn’t work on my own monsters. Book of Moon and Darkness Approaches are also an option, but they are only for a single card. And I guess because Mandragola is a spellcaster, I could also use Ready for Intercepting.
Spoiler
[collapse]
“No, no. Not like that. Papa, do you remember mommy Lua’s dream? She said there were a lot of flowers there. So Papa just has to combine the Magical Plant Mandragola with some real flowers. Then spread around a lot of Pitch-Black Power Stones. Then when the flowers bloom, they make Spell Counters for each Pitch-Black Power Stone.”
Spoiler
[collapse]
“... eh?” Do they? … I mean, it should, I think. And as long as I have enough Pitch-Black Power Stones, it’ll make an absolute ton of mana, right? And if I have to crossbreed them with this world's flowers, I can pick flowers that open at day, and close at night. That should count as being flipped face-down and face-up again, I think. And if I choose flowers that open up at different times, like morning, noon, afternoon, evening and night, I’ll get Spell Counters throughout the day.
At least I think that is what Fantasia was referring to, but just to confirm she doesn’t have more crazy ideas, I asked her.
After asking her about it, it turns out Fantasia’s idea was basically what I just thought of. But still, what an idea. Was I too focused on using spells and traps, so I didn’t consider monsters? No. I did consider monsters like Magical Marionette and Blast Magician, as both of them get a Spell Counter each time a spell card is activated, but because they couldn’t move those counters onto anything else, I ended up deciding that they wouldn’t be worth using, as I don’t have a card that moves all Spell Counters onto one specific card, or anything like that.
Spoiler
[collapse]
So maybe I just didn’t consider any ways of making Spell Counters, other than activating spell cards. And it seems as if no one else did either, except for Fantasia. I’m so proud of her.
“So because of that, I’ll need to look into some local flowers.” I explained Fantasia’s idea to Lua and Alice.
“Wow. I never would have thought about that.” Alice said. Like Lua, she now had full access to the control platform of the Factory, so she could browse my collection. And while she had been more focused on learning how the dimensional cards work, to help her with the mission to develop that new spell, she did look at the Spell Counter cards so she could get some sort of unlimited mana skill.
“It does sound like it could have been what I saw…” Lua added.
“Could be, yes. And it does sound like the solution to our problem. But for that, we need flowers. Ones that close at night, or more like at some time of day, and then open up again at the optimal time. Any clues?”
“... I don’t really know flowers that well.” Lua said. “I do know about blood lilies, but they don’t close after they bloom, so…”
“I know some of the flowers that grow in our yard, but they are ones that bloom during the day and close at night. We didn’t have any night blooming flowers.” Alice told us.
“So we need an expert.” I concluded.
“Can’t you just use HomeBase to make the flowers?” Alice asked. “That way, you can make them like you want. They will bloom how you want, close how you want and will spread how you want.”
“... oh yeah. I should do that.” I agreed. “How about you two help me with that? Come up with how the flowers will look, and all of that? I’ll take care of the functional side.”
Making flowers that open and close daily wasn’t too difficult, so I had that part done in under an hour. As for the visuals, well, I left that to Alice and Lua, and they are still working on that.
But a bit more about the flowers themselves. I had to upgrade them to the point where I could install a Magical Plant Mandragola into each one, so they had to be quite high quality, or the install would just kill the flower.
Because of that, I had no choice but to make flowers that don’t spread on their own. I would make the flower with the dungeon, then plant it, then install Mandragola. The flowers wouldn’t spread on their own at all, but they also didn’t wither away. This is good and bad, as it means that after I plant one, it will produce me mana until some outside force destroys the flower. It will not die on its own.
But with the base flower made, I can send the design to the Different Dimension Factory for the factory tests. If they were successful, I’d start to plan how I want the flowers planted around HomeBase. I should also install Magical Citadel of Endymion to HomeBase, just so I have a full above ground building. I can make it into the management tower.
Spoiler
[collapse]
And then if anyone finds HomeBase, they will try to get to the top of the tower, instead of to the bottom of the dungeon where the Chaos God Core is. At least I hope so. Maybe I should make a false core with either the world treant or the behemoth’s monster core. I think if I convert either of them into a magic stone, it will be a good false core. I guess I could also use some of the hydra cores from the dungeon’s final boss, but the big core got annihilated by Shining Dragon, so I only got 6 head cores from the hydra. They are around lower S-rank or so, so they are still good, but not SS-rank by any means.
Anyway, having a ‘false core’ might help with how I’ll use all of the mana my flowers will hopefully produce. I was planning on having all of it go to the Chaos God Core, but maybe having one or multiple high ranking magic stones as alternatives would be good. And as more dimensional fissures keep appearing, I should be able to get my hands on some more SS-rank cores.
I could probably even cause one with the Dimensional Fissure spell card, but I feel like that will cause me to get bonked by the Goddess.
Spoiler
[collapse]
In the late afternoon of that day, our group had arrived at the next city. We had a mostly peaceful trip, outside of a single wolf attack. A pack of forest wolves came to bother us, but they were quickly dealt with.
The town itself was just a bit smaller than the town of Bloggs, but it was still similar in size to Alewatch, if not a bit larger. But still, it was just a relatively normal town, with no real specialties, so I’m just going to ignore it. I have bigger things to worry about.
Mainly, my projects at HomeBase, so I’ll just focus on them. I’ll let Mariina take care of what she wants to do, and after that, we can keep this escort quest going.
… maybe I should write a letter to the towns. Introduce myself and tell him I’ll be in town if he wants to meet. Yeah. I think I’ll do that at least. Then if the Lord wants to invite me, I’ll go pay him a visit. I should prepare some ‘throw-away’ gifts for nobles. It is good etiquette to bring at least something.
Well, another thing to think about. And it’s not like it will be difficult to make some random nick-nacks with HomeBase.
Anyway, I’m busy with stuff so later. And because I am, as soon as we got to our inn, I headed to the factory.
“... alright. That is 122 Different Dimension Capsules getting me copies of Magical Plant Mandragola.” I said to myself when I was finally done activating capsules.
Spoiler
[collapse]
Usually, I would leave it to Laura, but I decided to do it myself this time, just to lessen her burden.
I already completed the basic factory test of the flowers, and they do work. When they open up, which they do once per day, they produce a Spell Counter on everything close-by that can hold a Spell Counter.
But that led to the issue with the Pitch-Dark Power Stones. The stones they make will vanish away two hours after the trap is activated, so I needed something else to power everything.
Spoiler
[collapse]
For that, I began playing with the idea of using a monster core and installing a Pitch-Dark Power Stone into it. It did work, but I would need A-rank or higher cores for that, so it wasn’t really feasible. I don’t have enough cores for that.
On the other hand, if I used a magic stone, I could use B-rank stones. And unlike with A-rank cores, I have a lot of B-rank cores from conquering HomeBase. It will just be a lot of work for my spellcaster monsters to convert all of those cores into magic stones. I’ll have to ask if monsters other than spellcasters can do it. I think some of the fiend monsters might be able to, but I’m not sure. Same might go for fairies, and maybe even some of my plant monsters.
Maybe I should ask Fantasia. She does seem to know my monsters very well, potentially even better than I do.
By the end of the day, I had an entire group of monsters willing to help with the magic stone conversion operation.
Dark Sage was going to be leading the operation as the one in charge. He is my magic stone expert after all.
Spoiler
[collapse]
Other than him, basically every spellcaster I have agreed to help. I also got a few fiends to agree, like Infernalqueen Archfiend and Terrorking Archfiend. As well as Dark Necrofear and Darklord Marie.
Spoiler
[collapse]
My fairies were a bit opposed to working with fiends, so we had to schedule them to work at different times than the fiends, but plenty of them also agreed to help. Gyakutenno Megami, Dark Witch, Dimensional Alchemist, as well as all of The Agent monsters all signed up.
Spoiler
span>
[collapse]
Representing the plant type monsters was actually no one, as they were in charge of making sure my flowers work. My own test showed satisfactory results, but I needed to confirm that the flowers really wouldn’t wilt or something, so I left it to Green Phantom King, Prickle Fairy and Queen of Autumn Leaves to confirm that they don’t. They will also hopefully figure out how to take care of the mana flowers.
Spoiler
[collapse]
With all of that now being processed, I’m starting to feel like maybe we can actually accomplish this goal.
Source of near infinite mana, check.
Way to store and transfer the mana, being worked on.
Magic circles to float HomeBase, as well as defensive barriers and that kind of stuff. Well, we can use what I learned while making the carriage, so check.
Control panel, well, since I’m building all of this on top of a dungeon, I can use dungeon founder and my founder’s terminal for that, so check. I should probably also make an alternative, so someone other than Agunan or I can also control it, but it isn’t strictly necessary and can be added in later.
Floating HomeBase, here we come.
nro_8 I do hope you liked the infinite mana solution I came up with, using Magical Plant Mandragola. I really wanted to use something other than an infinite spell card loop, so this was my answer. And it is a bit more … natural. I guess you could call it ‘green energy’.
“Papa! I have something to show you!” Fantasia called out to me as I got into the factory in the morning.
It has been two nights since I dropped Cailie off in the Hero’s country, and today, our group should arrive in the next bigger town. It was another Baron’s town, and it was a Baron I’d never met, as he didn’t come to the Birthday party or anything.
But none of that is really important at the moment. Fantasia called me.
“Yes. What is it, sweetheart?” I asked the girl.
“I figured a way to make you the Spell Counters.” Fantasia announced.
… she did WHAT? Fantasia? I didn’t even know she was working on that. I thought it was just Laura, Tahlia and Endymion, the Master Magician.
Spoiler
[collapse]
“You did? What is it then?”
“I’ll show you. This way!” The girl said, as she dragged me towards the Yami room.
Spoiler
[collapse]
The room is just a bit dark, so I used some factory cheats to give myself perfect night vision in the room. With that, we kept going deeper into the room, until Fantasia stopped us in front of a large … I think this is a flower patch, but I’m not sure I want to call these … things flowers.
“Do you like it?” Fantasia asked.
“... so, how will this help?” I asked the girl.
“Papa doesn’t know?” Fantasia questioned. “They are Magical Plant Mandragola. When they bloom, they make Spell Counters on each nearby card that can hold them.”
Spoiler
FLIP: Place 1 Spell Counter on each face-up card on the field that you can place a Spell Counter on.
[collapse]
“... alright. Yeah. That is useful, but they are still monsters, so I’d either have to install them into the dungeon or summon them manually. I also don’t have a card to mass flip my own monsters face-down, so they don’t really help.”
I do have Swords of Concealing Light, sure, but it doesn’t work on my own monsters. Book of Moon and Darkness Approaches are also an option, but they are only for a single card. And I guess because Mandragola is a spellcaster, I could also use Ready for Intercepting.
Spoiler
[collapse]
“No, no. Not like that. Papa, do you remember mommy Lua’s dream? She said there were a lot of flowers there. So Papa just has to combine the Magical Plant Mandragola with some real flowers. Then spread around a lot of Pitch-Black Power Stones. Then when the flowers bloom, they make Spell Counters for each Pitch-Black Power Stone.”
Spoiler
[collapse]
“... eh?” Do they? … I mean, it should, I think. And as long as I have enough Pitch-Black Power Stones, it’ll make an absolute ton of mana, right? And if I have to crossbreed them with this world's flowers, I can pick flowers that open at day, and close at night. That should count as being flipped face-down and face-up again, I think. And if I choose flowers that open up at different times, like morning, noon, afternoon, evening and night, I’ll get Spell Counters throughout the day.
At least I think that is what Fantasia was referring to, but just to confirm she doesn’t have more crazy ideas, I asked her.
After asking her about it, it turns out Fantasia’s idea was basically what I just thought of. But still, what an idea. Was I too focused on using spells and traps, so I didn’t consider monsters? No. I did consider monsters like Magical Marionette and Blast Magician, as both of them get a Spell Counter each time a spell card is activated, but because they couldn’t move those counters onto anything else, I ended up deciding that they wouldn’t be worth using, as I don’t have a card that moves all Spell Counters onto one specific card, or anything like that.
Spoiler
[collapse]
So maybe I just didn’t consider any ways of making Spell Counters, other than activating spell cards. And it seems as if no one else did either, except for Fantasia. I’m so proud of her.
“So because of that, I’ll need to look into some local flowers.” I explained Fantasia’s idea to Lua and Alice.
“Wow. I never would have thought about that.” Alice said. Like Lua, she now had full access to the control platform of the Factory, so she could browse my collection. And while she had been more focused on learning how the dimensional cards work, to help her with the mission to develop that new spell, she did look at the Spell Counter cards so she could get some sort of unlimited mana skill.
“It does sound like it could have been what I saw…” Lua added.
“Could be, yes. And it does sound like the solution to our problem. But for that, we need flowers. Ones that close at night, or more like at some time of day, and then open up again at the optimal time. Any clues?”
“... I don’t really know flowers that well.” Lua said. “I do know about blood lilies, but they don’t close after they bloom, so…”
“I know some of the flowers that grow in our yard, but they are ones that bloom during the day and close at night. We didn’t have any night blooming flowers.” Alice told us.
“So we need an expert.” I concluded.
“Can’t you just use HomeBase to make the flowers?” Alice asked. “That way, you can make them like you want. They will bloom how you want, close how you want and will spread how you want.”
“... oh yeah. I should do that.” I agreed. “How about you two help me with that? Come up with how the flowers will look, and all of that? I’ll take care of the functional side.”
Making flowers that open and close daily wasn’t too difficult, so I had that part done in under an hour. As for the visuals, well, I left that to Alice and Lua, and they are still working on that.
But a bit more about the flowers themselves. I had to upgrade them to the point where I could install a Magical Plant Mandragola into each one, so they had to be quite high quality, or the install would just kill the flower.
Because of that, I had no choice but to make flowers that don’t spread on their own. I would make the flower with the dungeon, then plant it, then install Mandragola. The flowers wouldn’t spread on their own at all, but they also didn’t wither away. This is good and bad, as it means that after I plant one, it will produce me mana until some outside force destroys the flower. It will not die on its own.
But with the base flower made, I can send the design to the Different Dimension Factory for the factory tests. If they were successful, I’d start to plan how I want the flowers planted around HomeBase. I should also install Magical Citadel of Endymion to HomeBase, just so I have a full above ground building. I can make it into the management tower.
Spoiler
[collapse]
And then if anyone finds HomeBase, they will try to get to the top of the tower, instead of to the bottom of the dungeon where the Chaos God Core is. At least I hope so. Maybe I should make a false core with either the world treant or the behemoth’s monster core. I think if I convert either of them into a magic stone, it will be a good false core. I guess I could also use some of the hydra cores from the dungeon’s final boss, but the big core got annihilated by Shining Dragon, so I only got 6 head cores from the hydra. They are around lower S-rank or so, so they are still good, but not SS-rank by any means.
Anyway, having a ‘false core’ might help with how I’ll use all of the mana my flowers will hopefully produce. I was planning on having all of it go to the Chaos God Core, but maybe having one or multiple high ranking magic stones as alternatives would be good. And as more dimensional fissures keep appearing, I should be able to get my hands on some more SS-rank cores.
I could probably even cause one with the Dimensional Fissure spell card, but I feel like that will cause me to get bonked by the Goddess.
Spoiler
[collapse]
In the late afternoon of that day, our group had arrived at the next city. We had a mostly peaceful trip, outside of a single wolf attack. A pack of forest wolves came to bother us, but they were quickly dealt with.
The town itself was just a bit smaller than the town of Bloggs, but it was still similar in size to Alewatch, if not a bit larger. But still, it was just a relatively normal town, with no real specialties, so I’m just going to ignore it. I have bigger things to worry about.
Mainly, my projects at HomeBase, so I’ll just focus on them. I’ll let Mariina take care of what she wants to do, and after that, we can keep this escort quest going.
… maybe I should write a letter to the towns. Introduce myself and tell him I’ll be in town if he wants to meet. Yeah. I think I’ll do that at least. Then if the Lord wants to invite me, I’ll go pay him a visit. I should prepare some ‘throw-away’ gifts for nobles. It is good etiquette to bring at least something.
Well, another thing to think about. And it’s not like it will be difficult to make some random nick-nacks with HomeBase.
Anyway, I’m busy with stuff so later. And because I am, as soon as we got to our inn, I headed to the factory.
“... alright. That is 122 Different Dimension Capsules getting me copies of Magical Plant Mandragola.” I said to myself when I was finally done activating capsules.
Spoiler
[collapse]
Usually, I would leave it to Laura, but I decided to do it myself this time, just to lessen her burden.
I already completed the basic factory test of the flowers, and they do work. When they open up, which they do once per day, they produce a Spell Counter on everything close-by that can hold a Spell Counter.
But that led to the issue with the Pitch-Dark Power Stones. The stones they make will vanish away two hours after the trap is activated, so I needed something else to power everything.
Spoiler
[collapse]
For that, I began playing with the idea of using a monster core and installing a Pitch-Dark Power Stone into it. It did work, but I would need A-rank or higher cores for that, so it wasn’t really feasible. I don’t have enough cores for that.
On the other hand, if I used a magic stone, I could use B-rank stones. And unlike with A-rank cores, I have a lot of B-rank cores from conquering HomeBase. It will just be a lot of work for my spellcaster monsters to convert all of those cores into magic stones. I’ll have to ask if monsters other than spellcasters can do it. I think some of the fiend monsters might be able to, but I’m not sure. Same might go for fairies, and maybe even some of my plant monsters.
Maybe I should ask Fantasia. She does seem to know my monsters very well, potentially even better than I do.
By the end of the day, I had an entire group of monsters willing to help with the magic stone conversion operation.
Dark Sage was going to be leading the operation as the one in charge. He is my magic stone expert after all.
Spoiler
[collapse]
Other than him, basically every spellcaster I have agreed to help. I also got a few fiends to agree, like Infernalqueen Archfiend and Terrorking Archfiend. As well as Dark Necrofear and Darklord Marie.
Spoiler
[collapse]
My fairies were a bit opposed to working with fiends, so we had to schedule them to work at different times than the fiends, but plenty of them also agreed to help. Gyakutenno Megami, Dark Witch, Dimensional Alchemist, as well as all of The Agent monsters all signed up.
Spoiler
span>
[collapse]
Representing the plant type monsters was actually no one, as they were in charge of making sure my flowers work. My own test showed satisfactory results, but I needed to confirm that the flowers really wouldn’t wilt or something, so I left it to Green Phantom King, Prickle Fairy and Queen of Autumn Leaves to confirm that they don’t. They will also hopefully figure out how to take care of the mana flowers.
Spoiler
[collapse]
With all of that now being processed, I’m starting to feel like maybe we can actually accomplish this goal.
Source of near infinite mana, check.
Way to store and transfer the mana, being worked on.
Magic circles to float HomeBase, as well as defensive barriers and that kind of stuff. Well, we can use what I learned while making the carriage, so check.
Control panel, well, since I’m building all of this on top of a dungeon, I can use dungeon founder and my founder’s terminal for that, so check. I should probably also make an alternative, so someone other than Agunan or I can also control it, but it isn’t strictly necessary and can be added in later.
Floating HomeBase, here we come.
nro_8 I do hope you liked the infinite mana solution I came up with, using Magical Plant Mandragola. I really wanted to use something other than an infinite spell card loop, so this was my answer. And it is a bit more … natural. I guess you could call it ‘green energy’.
