Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube

There was already an issue with attempting that goal then and there in the form of a lack of knowledge. He didn’t really know the molecular structures of many foods but that was a problem for later. When he said he wanted to do it, what that really meant was he wanted to see if he could materialize something that would be as complex and he already knew something that fit the bill, being the dryadic seeds he could already create.

If he could replicate those then it really was a completed proof of concept that only needed to be filled in from there with whatever decently nutritious option the gods could find him and he was already getting to work, bodies creating a brand new machine while he pulled away some of his recently materialized rainbow mana crystal to fill with a new soul, connecting to it once more to try and fill it with all of the information it needed, even if the total volume had completely exploded from there.

He needed to give all of the information on every atom that made it up, the arrangements of the atoms into proteins and enzymes and the DNA equivalent it held and the further arrangement from there that became cells and tissues and culminating into the end product of a seed, with all the problems that would stem from that.

When he materialized them, he was actually creating shortcuts in his head for it. It was likely the only reason he’d been able to get the plant mages of the world to succeed at it with his help as well given the sheer scale of the information needed, with certain sections being grouped together in his mind with the side knowledge of how much it needed to be repeated again and again as some exceptionally non-lateral ideas were taken advantage of to make that work. If a soul would be able to replicate that was an entirely different question, with the answer being a resounding no when he actually tested it.

“Okay, not ideal but that means I’m giving it another go I guess,” He muttered, breaking the crystal to release the soul before creating a new one and trying again, attempting to think at it in a different way but still ending in failure.

It was another ten tries after that until he had to admit it didn’t seem like it was going to work but he didn’t let himself get discouraged. He’d already proven he could create a tool that could materialize, that meant a solution had to be possible so long as he was clever enough to find it and if there was one thing he was, it was clever.

If I’m assuming that the issue stems from the way information is being processed when it’s being materialized then it could be as simple as restructuring the process. It will be a bit… Well, a lot more complicated to build but it should be worth it.

His bodies were already moving as he thought, rebuilding the tool itself to let the enchantments pull from a far broader pool of souls instead of just the one the first prototypes were pulling information from and he began creating blank souls one by one to repeat the process, only this time, instead of trying to give each one everything he knew, he was instead dividing the information up between them and building his enchantments to pull from them all in order, working to see how complex he could make any one bit of information as his tests grew and the hours wore on, simplifying more and more until he had his success but a different issue emerged. By the end, it needed over a thousand souls to function.

The annoyance about that was tied with the smugness he felt about that one making it into upper legendary, finally crossing the threshold for the third time despite the issue that came with it.

It wasn’t sustainable. He was going to have to be the one who made every single one of those that would ever be made and it wasn’t simple work. Sure, it would get easier when he could wear his jacket again but that was only to a point, with another issue only amplifying that first one.

The seed he could materialize was simple, shockingly so. It had the most basic structure of the dryad homeworld and Jagal had even helped simplify it a little more for him while keeping it viable, but that wasn’t going to be true for anything else he’d create to act as a food source.

Be it plant, fungi, meat, or something else entirely, the cellular structure was sure to be infinitely more complex, meaning the tool would have to house tens of thousands of souls at a time on the low end of the scale and he’d have to force his knowledge into all of them, one by one.

At the very least, each tool would be able to pull mana from the same souls they used for knowledge and since people didn’t eat magic materials that meant it would in essence be never-ending with how much power each device would have access to but that wasn’t enough to offset the potential labour cost, especially given everything else that he alone could make.

Legendary weapons beyond just the realm of the soul enchantments his teacher could add to what he’d make and the mana bracelets that required created souls to give their power on top of everything else he was responsible for, he was making himself more and more of a hot commodity with all he’d produce but the more he was responsible for the more time he’d need to spend, having less overall to put towards trying to awaken deep connection and king of sacrilege.

At the very least, that newest project did give some level of training to the first when he needed all of the experience he could get to raise it but that still left sacrilege as well as his many other skills that he would have wanted to train too, leaving him to slump over as he thought about it.

“There aren’t enough hours in the day and there aren’t enough days in the year to do everything I want to,” He sighed to himself, pinching his brow while he thought. “Okay, simplify. Is there any way I can try to make each individual soul hold more information? I could try optimizing a bit more but even if I could knock off twenty or thirty for seed production, that still leaves me needing way too many when I get to the main goal. Ugh, god damn it, why does biology need to be so freaking complex…”

He trailed off as he said it, the complaint forming an idea in his head. Why was he trying to make something that was biologically perfect? In the past when he’d materialized into the stomach of the man who’d come to town to duel him, he’d only created the cells of the seed, the parts that could be digested, but there was no reason he’d even needed to go that far.

He wanted to create something that would taste tolerable and that was still a reasonable goal but what he was making were in essence wartime rations, they didn’t need to be at the level of perfection where Thera or Sachel could use what he’d produced to create a homunculus or to grow a tree. In essence, they didn’t actually need biology.

He could strip away their DNA equivalent, there was no reason to materialize a roadmap for the structure of it when it just needed to be digestible, and from there he found more and more he could technically take away. He was sure it would affect the taste in the end but that didn’t matter and he tried again with his seed once more, striping away everything that didn’t matter and creating a new arrangement of components based on what he thought would be most important for nutrition before activating the enchantments, ending with a hand-sized cube of plant matter, the cells locked together but lacking so much of what would allow them to really qualify as life while still being something that both felt like it and would be digestible, letting Ben take a bite and swallow it down.

“Okay, so this tastes like absolute crap but that doesn’t matter because this was never supposed to be food in the first place. What matters is I totally did it! I made a way for the world to eat, now I just need to actually get some structures that won’t be completely miserable to put in my mouth.”

He was already sitting down to do that then and there, only stopping as he heard a sound through his gate telling him that someone was in his teacher’s shop and popping his head through saw the yeti coming back from his own work.

“Falk, perfect timing!”

“Infinite hells boy, you’re going to give me a heart attack! Why don’t you ever go home?”

“Eh, you know how it is. Busy day, busy life, what matters is I made something cool. Come check it out.”

“No, before that, what did you do to your soul this time? Why’s it looking so rough?”

“Eh, it’s what happens when you shove millions of points of mana through it constantly for days on end. It hurts incredibly but since I can’t currently find the soul mages, that’s just life baby.”

“Okay, no, that’s not just life. Idiot boy, did it never occur to you that the soulsmith might be able to help with that at all?”

“Uh… No. No, it did not. Does that mean you can help fix this?”

“I won’t be very good compared to the other two but I’ll be a helluva lot better than just waiting it out. Now take a seat already so I can try to fix this nightmare.”