NOVEL NEXT Chapter 50
Argul sat in the chilling area and hummed to herself while she played around with a somewhat large bullet. Alyra was sleeping on the couch next to her and Mia was currently busy doing math at one of the dinner tables.
Argul was intentionally leaving the girl alone with her work. She had always hated when teachers had stood behind her and looked over her shoulder. It created an unnecessary amount of pressure and was anything but helpful.
Mia could ask questions once she was done with everything she knew. That way Argul could focus on the questions without having to worry about things she has to teach later.
Alyra snored softly and Argul had to smile. She looked lovingly at her daughter. Without her Argul would likely still stare at the portal to Luna, not having done anything at all.
She stopped playing around with the bullet and put it on the table in front of her. Mia would be occupied with her work for a while so Argul might as well do something herself. She looked at the girl and watched her scratch the back of her head in thought for a moment.
Then Argul leaned back and closed her eyes. First things first she would add to the jungle or rather rainforest floor. Except for the carnivorous plant the floor was pretty boring and most importantly lacked what made a rainforest unique, the biodiversity.
The AI had only added some small plants for now and what should look like a dense forest looked more like some weird kind of grassland. There were entirely too many different kinds of ferns scattered around as well as flowers. They even dominated the grass in numbers and it really showed that Argul had to create more fruity plants and roots.
If she didn’t have any roots, how would she go back to them?
Argul focused on the area with her trees as this was the most rainforest she would get at the moment. She already had vines even though they weren’t thick and sturdy enough to hold a person. A weird flower was also already there and the only thing that was lacking right now were plants that didn’t only produce seeds, but some kind of fruit around them. That would also enable her to have other animals live on the floor.
Argul decided to go with a small shrub in the end. She wanted to add some fruit trees too, but that had to wait for a bit.
The shrub she created grew more vertical than horizontal and looked a bit like a 0.5m tall green pillar once the leaves had grown. To finish things up a few berries began to form. They were still pretty small and green, but that was bound to change in the future.
Argul nodded to herself. The berries had turned out pretty much as what she had intended, but she decided to not influence the fruit for the next plants she created. Her mana might come up with something interesting again, be it weird or not.
With only about 50 mana left she moved her mind to the starting island of the 6th floor and looked after the lizard people.
They had taken their dead and buried them as best as they could. The neo-christians didn’t get the same treatment and their bodies had been left to rot or in one case to be eaten by a seagull.
The villagers had returned to their small camp that was further inland after the burial. The overall mood of them had been pretty sad, except for the one guy that was unnecessary happy and energetic. Argul could understand why everyone let out a collective sigh of relief when the dude had finally fallen asleep.
Right now the villagers were scouting their surroundings and searched for a source of freshwater. They were really wary of their surroundings and traveled in groups of at least four persons because of this. It might take them a few days to discover the large lake at the base of the one mountain this way, but Argul wasn’t in a hurry and could wait.
She watched them for a while to pass the time. It was a lot like watching TV and Argul could already see herself do this more often once more people lived inside of her domain.
After around half an hour she had enough mana for another round of ribm so she changed her focus back to her rainforest.
There was a second part to the rainforest she had yet to add to that hadn’t been formed when she had created the floor, the lakes and rivers. A heavy rainfall had been necessary for that and the rivers weren’t exactly stable yet. It would take some more time for riverbeds to form, that didn’t hinder Argul from creating things for the lakes though.
They were pretty much empty because she had yet to create any freshwater plants and animals. Argul had kind of forgotten them in her plan for an ocean floor.
She mentally went over to one of the lakes that had formed and looked at it. The AI had been able to create some of the vegetable plankton here so it wasn’t completely empty. The only other thing that grew in the lake was moongrass though, which wasn’t exactly meant to grow in places like this.
The only question now was what to create first. Argul wanted some kind of moss and a plant that grew long leaves as well as something that floated on the surface of the lake. After that she would start to add fish and other creatures to the lake.
She thought about it for a few minutes before she decided to go with the surface plant first. It would impede the other two plants in their photosynthesis as it blocked the light, so it made sense to create this one first.
The plant that grew had a circle of round leaves the size of a baby's palm that swam on the water surface. Under the surface a root grew from every single leaf and then merged together with the other roots into a single one. The root was about half a meter long, so it didn’t reach the ground of the lake, but was long enough to secure the plant should it grow on a river. In the center of the circle of leaves a beautiful deep blue blossom opened.
Argul had never been a flower person in her last life. The act of cutting off a blossom of a flower to give it to somebody might sound romantic, but it was a waste in her opinion. The flower was doomed to die because of that action. If somebody had come to her with the seeds for the flower though, she wouldn’t say no, especially not if it was this one.
She admired the flower for a bit and realized that she could use the lakes as connections to lakes on the 6th- something at the back of her mind interrupted her line of thought. It took her a second to realize it was her avatar that was signaling her and she moved her mind into it.
Argul opened her eyes and looked at Mia, who was standing in front of her. The girl put her hands on her hips. “Don’t laze around while I work.”
She pouted. “That’s not fair.”
Argul sighed and scratched her cheek. “I have been working on my domain Mia. I can’t control this body while I do this.” She had been heavily at work and definitely had not been busy watching flowers, okay?
Mia eyed her for a moment before she gave up. “Fine, I believe you.”
Alyra made a weird sound in her sleep, remembering the other two that they were not alone.
Mia handed her workbook over to Argul and whispered to her. “I am done. The only thing I didn’t know how to do was the task with the weird line between the numbers.”
Argul smiled. Mia meant the fraction line and she didn’t know about fractions yet. Including this task had been a bit mean by Argul, but she wanted to know if Mia was able to figure it out herself.
Argul got up and petted Mia. “You did good. Let’s check your answers and then I will teach you about fractions. They make calculating a lot easier in some cases.”
She walked over towards the table Mia had worked on before, closely followed by the girl.
