Reincarnated as a mana core

“The ultimate goal you ask me? I don’t know for me anymore. When I was young I of course wanted to evolve as much as possible so I may become immortal, but now I know some of the cost to achieve this goal and I’m not even halfway there.”

The term youth possibly means something else for the man in front of me, who is recorded to be at least 2000 years old.

 

—

POV Argul

Now that they had some time at Trevor's place, Argul planned to work on her next floor. She would in fact not go to every single person in the village and speak to them. That was entirely too many people in her opinion and she just hoped Alyra and Arthur would do it.

Argul looked at her floors. A day ago, when they had left the mana zone she had created her crabs. Leaving the mana zone had not been pleasant for Argul and Aina. It just felt wrong not being surrounded by mana and she couldn’t get comfortable anymore.

Besides the crabs two other major things had happened. First the mice she had created now populated the first 5 floors. Once they had started procreating their population had boomed, which led to them going to other floors. There were uncountable amounts of them and Argul’s predators had no trouble finding something to eat thanks to them.

The second thing that had happened was that a few things from the forest entered her sixth floor. They were mostly insects and the bird that had gone through the portal was sadly eaten by one of her seagull things.

Now, having finished her check of her domain she focused on her 7th floor.

For her next floor Argul had chosen a deep sea theme. She added a small chance for the appearance of oceanic trenches to form between large islands on her sixth floor. The trenches could be up to 13,000 m deep. Of course one was located near her start island, she had everything there. 

Argul thought it was a bit too much, so the trench would close once another had formed.

Through these oceanic trenches one could go to the 7th floor, the deep sea. Argul did something special here. There would be no ground on this floor and everything would be a dark ocean. Instead of one ground, large rocks would float through the water like asteroids through space.

These of course often contained a large amount of minerals and ore.

Some of the asteroids would have little mini volcanoes, enabling the growth of plants and creatures that would be unable to survive without the heat. The deep sea was a cold place, so you had to be special to survive here.

Argul also added what she called resource lakes. Due to pressure conditions sometimes lakes of extremely rare liquid ressources, such as oil or other chemicals would form. Near or in these lakes would be asteroids that had geysers instead of volcanoes. The hot water of the geysers would contain some of the ressource type of the lake they were near or in.

Having successfully added acidic and alkaline lakes, Argul also heightened the pressure to make living here even worse. She would have to create a special kind of plankton for this floor to survive and procreate here or there would be no food for the things living there.

The oil lakes would be a result of organic material collecting in one place and the pressure of the surroundings. They would only form if a source of heat was near them, because heat was required in the process.

Before giving the floor time to grow she also added some freaky events, one of which was likely to birth something Argul would regret ever having seen.

 

Floor 7

• Deep Sea
• Rock size: medium to large
• Eternal night
• temperature: around 2°C
• Events:
  • Sea currents:
    • There is a small chance of sea currents occurring in a region for a few days. These can lead through resource lakes and take on their characteristics and in case of different chemicals combining cause chemical reactions
  • PUT. THE PLUG. BACK. IN!!!
    • There is a small chance each month for large amounts of water to be sucked into oceanic trenches. We highly advise not to go swimming during this time. This event will lead to multiple sea currents happening on the 7th floor. After 1 to 3 days the suction force will reverse, returning lost water to the 6th floor. This will likely cause tsunamis and the appearance of deep sea denizens on the 6th floor.

 

See? The currents will likely cause the mutation of something as they could lead to weird chemical reactions with the lakes around and the other event makes sure that people will know about it!

Argul let her floor start growing and put some things on her sixth floor. She would need to create some whales. They would enable her to also have some larger predators and maybe krakens in the deep sea or swimming cthulhu eyes or something. 

For whales though, Argul needed more diverse plankton, so she added another type of algae and a small crustacean that fed off the algae, but only moved because of the sea currents. 

After 3 hours in which she had added more plankton Argul got her first view of the 7th floor. It was black, who would have thought? 

Now she got to feel her floor. It had mostly finished growing and living here would be hell, at least for creatures of the surface.

A lot of rocks were drifting around and any vehicle without light or sonar was bound to crash into something. Those with sonar or light were likely going to be eaten once Argul was finished with the floor. 

No, she was not malicious. It was the deep sea! There had to be horrors there or why would people fear it so much. And it’s not like Argul was forcing anyone to come here. (Let’s just ignore the resource lakes and rocks rich in ore…)

Said lakes were still rare. There were a few here and there on the large floor, but they were often on the smaller side than on the larger one. The geysers on the rocks in their locations were happily spewing out their payloads.

To quickstart her ecosystem Argul got to work and created a small algae that needed all its mana to survive on the floor and was only able to procreate once it had reached level 5. Luckily they were very tiny and got there rather fast. 

After waiting for her mana to regenerate Argul did the same with a small crustacean like on the sixth floor and got about the same result as with the algae, creating some nice deep sea plankton.

To give them time to spread, Argul created two corals and two more random fish on her 6th floor. One of them was actually a predator and looked a bit like a mini manta, which was also the name she gave it.

Mini manta

This is a small animal. This fish is specialized in speed and venom. While they prey on mostly crabs and small fish, mini mantas always try to poison and prey on larger creatures if they hunt as a pack.

The other fish seemed to live around the corals and were rather boring in appearance.

After that she got ready to create some glowing ocean plants. Argul had no idea if the weird things filtering plankton out of the water were plants or something else, likely the latter though. Thinking about it there wouldn’t be many plants on this floor, but Argul needed at least 5 of them. 

So what if these weird things scientifically weren’t plants on earth?

She would make them plants and solve that problem.

Argul then did just that and created 5 different plants. They all looked weird and fleshy, but who was she to judge right? At least they were still luminous.

Three of them looked similar to her weeping pink hair on the 4th floor and the other two were more like corals. Wait, corals are not plants, which meant Argul had messed up her coral reef! 

She had created plant corals, but corals are normally built by animals. Ahh who cares, at least they grow faster as plants!

Now Argul only needed a few animals to finish the floor. Really, it would be anything but finished, but the system didn’t care. 

The first thing she created was of course a shell. It was a large one though and would form pearls up to the size of a fist. Argul by no means forced sapients to come to the floor… 

Then she created shrimps that fed off the plants and the plankton. Shrimps! Why they were so damn large though she had no idea. 

Let's remind ourselves that nobody is forced to come to the 7th floor.

She ignored the notifications for now and created two more small crusteacens. There was something about crabs in the deep sea that just sat right with Argul. 

Then she created her first fish. While she still couldn’t see, due to her domain she still knew everything about them.

The fish was white and had the form of a small fat bird, just without the feet and wings. Even the mouth looked like a small beak, though it was still white. Why the thing had fins that looked like stylish eyebrows Argul didn’t know. 

From where the belly of a bird would be, another two fins protruded. These looked like a bad imitation of drake wings you couldn’t close. They were still white, like everything on the fish. It had a tail she would give a tadpole. The fish couldn’t do all that much, but it did look special in a good kind of way. That was likely the last time she would create something on the beautiful side.

The next fish she created hadn’t even considered the concept of color. You were able to see through it, at least if you were able to see anything down here. It looked a lot like a gigantic water flea and ate the algae and plankton. You could see its organs, but all in all it had okay looks.

That was the end of Argul’s luck though, as the next fish was a predator. It looked like somebody had decided to displace the fish’s face with a mouth, a mouth that had all too many teeth and too large teeth. The thing wasn’t even able to close it fully, not that it was required to do so to kill its prey. To lure in said prey it had a glowing tongue and while that made it even more terrifying to look at for those who could see, the creatures down here would mostly not be able to discern between the light of one of the plants or big mouth. Luckily it was only the size of a human head, so you couldn’t accidentally enter its mouth.

Argul watched her new horror and decided to take a break for now. While she had BIG plans for her deep sea, she would have to make preparations first and rushing creatures wouldn’t help her. She also had all the time she could want, so there was no need to rush anything.

Argul checked her status before she would get an hour or two of sleep.

Quest completed:

• A failed invade is always followed by a messy flight.
  • You managed to flee without anyone dying, wow. Likely you are just too damn overpowered, but who cares. 
  • Wis +2, for nobody dying Str +1

Quest completed:

• The beginning of magic!
  • You have taught Mia successfully how to sense and manipulate mana. You are like a walking university, at least in all things that are about mana.
  • Int +2

Subquest completed:

• Another village, another chance!
  • You reached the village before the mana zone, nice!
  • Str +2

New quest:

• Saving fools
  • The inhabitants with the exception of Trevor don’t seem to be the brightest stars in the night. Sadly even fools are needed in a society so try to save as many of them as possible, especially Trevor!

Quest completed:

• Don’t eat that! (3)
  • You created 25 new animal species, how diverse of you.
  • Animals you created are more likely to procreate during the first 3 days of their new existence. Be it egg or pregnancy their gestation speed is multiplied by the floor number you created them on.
  • Str +1

New Quest:

• Don’t eat that! (4)
  • Requirements: Don’t eat that! (3)
  • Create 50 animal species! 31/50

You finished the floor

Level up!

Argul was a bit overwhelmed. That was a lot. Hum, that she got quests for some of her daily activities was nice. It looks like she needs to put a certain amount of weight to something to create a quest.

For her teaching Mia about mana had been important, so a quest was created. The same thing happened with the village. On the other hand, things like eating and sleeping that were important, though not so much in her mind as they were basic things, didn't get quests.

She looked over her character sheet.

Status

Argul became excited when she saw her Wis and Int was over 25. She could now try to see 4 dimensional and should be able to tinker with her portals. Her floors would grow a lot faster if she could manage to make them more effizient.

Sadly she would have to wait a bit. Argul wanted to catch some sleep before the mana zone reached the village and didn’t have all that much time anymore.