Chapter 10: Chapter 10

The Archive

The Archive collects knowledge of everything happening where mana is, allowing the creation of skills and rewarding knowledge or skills for quest completion.

 

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With 15 WIS Argul felt like he could try to perceive things in 4 dimensions. Before he did that he wanted to let his fifth floor start growing. He already had a lot of time to think over what he wanted and as one could guess from the catastrophic weather event it was going to be hot.

 

Floor 5

Volcanic caves

Cave size: large to gigantic

Eternal night

Temperature: 35°C to 50°C

Balancing events:

Earthquake

If less than 5km³ of soil matter is on the floor than optimally there would be, the earth will quake and cause cave ins, returning the missing matter.

 

Tunneling

Caves form random with a minimum distance of 50m and a maximum distance of 1000m between each other. Each cave has to be at least connected to one other cave.

 

Random events

Earthquake

There is a chance of 25% of small localized earthquakes to happen each month.

 

The floor is magma!

There is a 2% chance of a magma chamber forming beneath a cave, making the ground unstable. Beware or take a hot bath! This event counts for each cave extra and will cause a cave in after the floor of a cave broke in. There is no permanent settling inside a volcano.

 

Volcanic eruption

If the event ‘unreliable catastrophic weather’ is activated, earthquakes will shake this floor. The temperature will rise to 70°C and there is a medium chance for magma to erupt from the ground, walls or ceiling in random places.

 

Argul had thought about making the air toxic, but decided against it. There would be enough people dying by falling in magma, though those that died in gigantic caves would at least die epic and cause a cave the size of a small city to cave in.

 

Now that his floor was growing Argul mentally prepared himself for a really weird sight. As for how he would be able to perceive 4 dimensions he already had an idea. To perceive 2 dimensions he had to zoom out without zooming out, so now he would do directly the opposite.

 

Argul tried once and failed. After that he tried a few more times without success and began to become frustrated. At his 13th try he succeeded and immediately got an information overload. Everything began to hurt and Argul immediately changed his perception back.

 

That had not been a pain in his mind, his body had hurt. He looked at his core for a bit until he found a small crack. Looking at his structural integrity it was 96%. That was not good, because it meant that he could kill himself by accident. Argul would not try this again until he had at least 25 WIS.

 

For perceiving 4 dimensions you received +1 INT

 

At least he got something Argul thought before Alyra could interrupt him.

 

“Are you okay mom? Do you feel weird? Is everything alright?”

Alyra was very worried. Her mother and she might mock each other now and then, but they knew they only meant it good and her mother was literally everything she had.

“I’m alright Aly. I think my core got overwhelmed and a small crack formed. That hurt like hell, but I don’t feel it anymore. I’m really alright, but I’m not trying that again for some time. Thank you for worrying about me.”

Argul was honestly really thankful.

 

While in his last life he had theoretically known that people worried about him, he had never really felt or perceived it. Sure they came and asked if he was okay, but it had always been a lot easier for him than speaking about his problems and most of the people he knew had been happy with that answer.

 

“I wouldn’t let you do that again and let me tell you, even though I don’t have a body I’m still able to stop you from doing things if I really wanted to. Still it is good that you are okay. Please never do something like that again.”

“It’s okay Aly and while I can’t promise to never do something like that again, I will be a lot more careful in the future.”

And Argul meant what he said. To distract himself and Alyra from what just happened he asked her if she had something she wanted for this floor.

“Do you have anything you would want on this floor Aly?”

After a few minutes Alyra answered.

“A desert rose would be nice, but make it glow. Oh! There was a really weird, but huge as fuck flower in your old world that had something that looked like a ready to use swimming ring around its blossom. Actually I’m not sure if it’s a flower but I don’t care. It was like thrize at large as a man. Speaking of large, make the desert rose bigger too please!”

And thus Alyra was excited and happy again and Argul couldn’t help but smile to himself in his mind. She had sent a picture of the things she wanted and Argul had to agree that the second plant or flower or whatever was weird. He would make it a flower.

“Sure thing Aly!”

“Yay! You are the best! And you will make them even weirder!”

 

Argul had no idea what he should think about the last part, but chose to ignore it. After that he had to wait a bit, as the portal cave was of course a gigantic cave and it would not be affected by his events.

 

The cave was massive. It had a small magma sea in the middle and there were three magma streams that fed into it. Argul really liked the flare of his biom. Sadly the soil was still as resource poor as that one friend that always has to ask for money. The magma was mostly just flowing hot rock without many of the minerals.

 

Desert roses were actually one of those plants that couldn’t decide if they wanted to be a flower or a tree with a fat trunk and flowers instead of leaves. Yes the trunk was fat. Argul chose the tree version as Alyra had said large.

 

What grew from his ribm looked really interesting, like someone had taken ropes and curled them around one another. Then he made them thicker and turned them into wood. To make sure that wasn't just wood the person made sure to add a few branches with sky blue blossoms at the end. To be honest it looked more like black stone with veins of magma than wood.

 

Volcano rose.

This is a large plant. This tree grows in volcanic caves and on active volcanoes. The trunk is so heat resistant that the tree could even grow in magma, as long as its blossoms are over the surface and a bit away from the magma.

These trees don’t grow leaves but have blossoms instead as the temperature makes the needed energy of light for photosynthesis unnecessary. While the blossoms are heat resistant, they would not survive a magma bath or the immediate heat near magma and lava.

 

Sure, growing in magma made a lot of sense if magma could erupt out of the wall randomly. Argul thought the wood would be an interesting crafting material and made sure to look out for what people would come up with.

 

How he wanted the other flower to work was a bit more complicated. Argul would let the ring about the blossoms be, as he had no idea what to do with it and his mana would surely come up with something. The blossom would be a pointed pyramid. It wouldn’t have a large base area and be around as large as free stacked humans, so five to six meters. Argul wanted to give the flower the ability to rotate the three sides of the pyramid, making it possible to make the blossom look inwards to protect it from harm. 

 

After creating the flower it looked a lot like the one on the picture Alyra had shown him. The only difference was that the ring had changed its color to black and while the blossoms were blue, the protective side was dark red.

 

Haphephobic blowwood

This is a large plant. Haphephobia is the fear of contact with others and this flower does not like being touched. If the flower is touched it will turn its blossom inwards, protecting it and releasing a highly flammable gas that was stored in the ring around the blossom. This gas will likely ignite in seconds as the blowwood only grows in hot volcanic regions.

Sadly you will never reach the state of being properly prepared meat and instead get incinerated in moments, leaving behind naught but ash.

 

See, Argul’s mana came up with something. He wasn’t sure what he should think about it, but at least it would be a fast death. A small consolation, but a consolation nevertheless.

 

Argul wanted to create all of his plants and animals in this first room, letting them grow and spread around the floor from there. His next plant was another flower, but a small one this time. It had a black stalk and black leaves. The blossom was of such dark red coloring, that it could be mistaken for black. The middle of the blossom shone in a bright yellow that also framed the edge of the petals. Part of the flower erupted in flames and then grew again, as if nothing had ever happened.

 

Phoenix flower

This is a small plant. This plant grows in hot environments where magma or lava is present. The flower is mostly heat and flame resistant, except for the blossom and a small part of the stalk beneath the blossom where the seeds are grown. To spread its seeds the flower ignites that part of its body, causing the seeds to be taken away by the rising hot air.

 

Now Argul had flowers that couldn’t be ignited, would ignite others and one that would ignite itself. The collection was complete! Who wouldn’t like a small fire on a sunday evening? As long as it wasn’t yourself that burned, enjoy the show! Now only available on the fifth floor, you have never felt this hot before. Argul could understand igniting others as defense, but igniting oneself just to spread one's seeds seemed a bit inefficient in his opinion. 

 

Argul got back to creating plants. His next and last two ones were nothing really special, except for their heightened heat resistance. One was a moss and the other one a small mostly brown mushroom that grew in or besides the moss. They had a symbiotic relationship. The moss would supply the mushroom with sugar, which was hard for the mushroom to get and the mushroom would supply the moss with nutrients the moss could normally not process in return.

 

Quest completed: It grows! (3)

You created 25 species of plants never seen before. May nature flourish in your presence! STR +1, WIS +1

 

New Quest: It grows! (4)

Requirements: It grows (3)

Create 50 new plant species.

 

Argul had forgotten this quest, again, but wouldn’t complain about more stats. He also noticed that things he had created before he received a quest still counted towards the quest completion. That was something he should have asked Alyra at the very beginning.

 

As Argul waited for his portal cave to become overgrown the first slime stumbled upon the entrance to the third floor. His cave diggers had already spread to the fourth floor and were actually able to consume the frostbite mushrooms. They gave them an ice breath, much to the chagrin of the cave howlers. The mind reader fireflies spread to the second floor and a certain cave stalker found them to be a nice in between snack. Except for the mosquitos on the first floor, slimes actually had no one really preying on them. While all the predators would kill and eat them if they were really hungry, they did prefer to have something to chew on.

 

Once the cave had some plants, Argul proceeded with his first animal, a honeybee. The honeybees were black and red instead of black and yellow and started to work on a nest on one of the desert roses. He wanted to know how their honey would look, but that would take a bit of time.

 

Volcanic Honeybee

This is a small animal. This insect lives in volcanic environments and can survive in air that would be toxic for most creatures. As their normal counterpart they have a queen as the center of their colonies. The sting of volcanic honeybees will burn you in addition to their normal poison.

Honey made by these bees will make you not only feel warm, but actually warm your whole body if ingested.

 

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Everybody loves bees and they are good neighbors to have. Argul hoped they would help to spread his plants a bit faster once they got going and had their nest built.

 

After the bees he created a large blackish lizard that had a spiked tail and spikes on its back. Argul thought they would be imposing to look at as a human. While the lizards were more long then high, they still reached about a height of 1 meter, without the long spikes that is. They didn’t move around fast , but at a slow lumbering pace. 

 

Spiketail lizard

This is a large animal. This lizard lives in hot and volcanic environments. They eat the plants growing there, often not caring about defenses set in place as they won’t harm them. This lizard's scaled hide makes predators despair and even enables the lizard to swim through magma or lava for a limited amount of time.

Spiketail lizards have the ability to check the ground in front of them with the vibrations of their steps, to make sure they never step on something unstable. The spikes on their back are less a defense against predators than a defense against falling rocks.

 

The lizards did as suggested and started to munch on the plants around them without care. They immediately set off an explosion and Argul could only shake his head. Sure he had wanted lizards that were able to swim through the magma for a while, but that hadn’t meant he wanted impenetrable tanks walking around his fifth floor.

 

Argul had to wait for 5 days until he had another 3 beehives. He wanted to create some kind of bat next and giving his bees some time to grow before they got preyed on sounded good in this case.

 

The bats he created had a reddish hue and sharp claws on their feed. Their ears were a bit longer than Argul remembered, but except for that they were refreshingly normal.

 

Red shadow

This is a small animal. This bat lives mostly in caves. They have no problem with living outside them, but always search for a cave to raise their young. The hide of this bat can change its color to make them less noticeable in their environment. They use their sharp claws to hold themselves on the ceiling of the cave, leaving behind marks of their passing.

Red shadow is a subspecies that lives in volcanic caves. 

 

Argul could see his bats spread to all his floors, as they were mostly caves and there were even caves on his first floor.

 

You finished the floor!

Level up!

 

Quest completed: Flooring away (2)

You have finished five floors. May they reach eternity! STR +2

 

New Quest: Flooring away (3)

Requirements: Flooring away (2)

Finish 25 floors!

 

Argul opened his status after he told his mana AI to continue to grow the floor as it is.

 

Status

 

Name	Argul Agren		Stats
Race	Mana core		Str	15
Age	97d		Int	14
Level	5		Wis	17
Structural integrity	100%
Mana	3/114,95
Mana regeneration	1,17/min

 

Skills	Active	Passiv
	uniphone	Knowledge domain
	ribm	Core regeneration
	Mana manipulation	Learning (3)
	Magic missile	Sense Mana
	Identify (2)	Accelerated [m] growth (small)
	conjure Water	Accelerated [s] growth (all)
	Water manipulation	Sense Space
	banish Water	Mental fortitude
	fake Tears

 

Floor	Template	Size (radius)	Area or Volume
1	Luna (moon) surface	170km	90.800km²
2	Luna (moon) Upper mantle	180km	24,4M km³ (a lot of it is stone and earth)
3	Luna (moon) Upper mantle	190km	28,7M km³
4	Luna (moon) Upper mantle	200km	33,5M km³
5	Luna (moon) Upper mantle	210km	38,8M km³

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