Reincarnated as a mana core

 

Stat growth

Stats visible change your appearance in some cases. Stats always add 1% to what is already there, one's growth is exponential. This might change due to evolution.

 

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The first plant Argul had in mind was another type of grass again. The idea for this one actually came from Alyra’s comment on walking rock grass, when he first had woken up. 

The grass was going to glow, but if the temperature sank beneath 5°C it would cover its leaves in a layer of rock, essentially turning off the light. Once the temperature got back to 5°C the cover of rock would recede. 

Now, hold your breath, after creating the plant it actually had green leaves, even if they were a bit short compared to those of the moon grass. Argul thought he would never see a green plant evolving from his ribm. 

A weak green glow lit up the cave. While it was not really bright, it was enough for Argul.

He identified the grass.

Glowing sheath grass

This is a small plant. This grass grows in caves and can survive cold temperatures for prolonged time. It has a weak glow, caused by chemical processes inside the leaf. To shield the leaves from temperatures below 5°C the grass covers them in a layer of stone.

To complete the grass he now only needed some fireflies for the mystic vibe, so he waited for a bit more than an hour. 

Argul wanted these fireflies to be able to live on every floor and to be able to glow differently depending on the temperature. No, they wouldn’t be a larger size, just a bunch of fireflies. 

He left the colors of different temperatures to nature and, of course, they got a weird ability because of this.

Mind reader firefly

This is a small animal. These flies originate from the caves of —. They are somehow able to get a limited reading of the mind of creatures around them. They use this ability for two purposes, one to sense a threat, two to display exactly the opposite of a color a creature would choose to represent the current temperature.

Because of course Argul’s fireflies would get the ability to read minds just to fuck around with you. 

Couldn’t they get something more normal, like having a speed burst ability? 

It must have something to do with his snarky mana, there were not that many other options, none he could name at least.

As fighting against his own mana was useless, Argul got back to creating plants. 

The next one he made was a berry bush. It had white berries, green leaves and was about 40cm large.

White berry bush

This is a mid-sized plant. This bush grows in caves. Its berries actually help seeing in the dark and are often eaten by the cave's inhabitants. If a berry is exposed to cold temperatures for some time it will change its color to blue and additionally applies a coldness effect when ingested. 

This time he even got something useful, a nice change of pace compared to mind reading fireflies and diarrhea inducing fruits. 

Argul still had a problem with his third floor, as he wanted the crazy cold plants for his fourth floor, but didn’t want his third one to be boring compared to the forth one.

His next plant was a really small flower. It had a red stalk and small red leaves that grew close to the ground. Its blossom was purple and the flower's red roots spread mostly on the ground surface. 

Red cave herb 

This is a small plant. This flower grows in cold to mild caves. Their roots grow mostly on the surface of the cave to make sure that only others of its kind grow around it. They tend to fight other plants for more growing space.

When eaten this herb has a pain numbing effect.

Alyra came walking in and looked concerned at him. “Mom, you should take it slow you know? Take a break and do something different than fulfilling your floor's requirements.”

Huh? But wasn’t what he did right now his sole purpose for the time being? “Hey Aly. Why should I do something else?”

Alyra sighed. “Mom, I know that you love what you are doing right now, but you have to admit that you are not the most creative of minds.” 

She created a bunch of tables and graphs. “You like to analyze and compare things and view them from different perspectives and you think about some things too much.”

She made a waving motion with her arm. “Screw that, the moment you have some time you think about everything too much, which is exactly why you always try to distract yourself.”

Then she pointed at him. She would have likely poked his chest if they had bodys. “Nobody is going to care if you don’t put that many thoughts into your floors now and then. Most people would just rush the floors to become stronger.”

Argul frowned absentmindedly. “But it just feels wrong, you know, not putting too much thought into my floors.”

Alyra deflated a bit in frustration. “Mom, you are the only one of your kind and have nobody to compare yourself to. You expect too much of yourself and needlessly pressure yourself with that.” 

Her expression became trict. “I’m also aware that you miss having a body to freely move around in. You should learn to express your problems to others. You had the same problem in your last life too, don’t fall into old habits.”

He was a bit speechless. That…

Actually what she had just said was right and he was now extremely thankful for having her. “Thanks for looking out for me Aly. Guess I would fall into depression again without you.”

Alyra smiled a warm comforting smile at him. “It's okay mom, that’s what I’m here for and yes I know that saying that doesn’t really make it easier for you, but if I don’t say it you wouldn’t even think about speaking about such things to others.”

Damn. That might have been the first time someone actually pointed his failures out to him. Others might not like it, but it meant a lot to Argul, because it showed that a person cared for him.

He took a break to do the one thing he had put on hold for now, the one thing he feared the most right now. 

He thought about his future. In his last life he always thought about commiting suicide when he thought of the future. 

He still had no idea why or when he had truly lost the sense of being alive, of wanting to live. There were a lot of personal problems and small problems with his family that weren’t really that obvious.

At 17 he had thought about suicide for the first time. Really thought about it, not speaking about it in school and analyzing the problem. 

In school a lot of the involved emotions don’t get noticed or aren’t as much appreciated as they should have been in Argul’s opinion.

By the time he was 18 he had difficulties enjoying himself or having positive thoughts about anything. 

Somewhere along the line he lost his connection to the world and started to live his life as if he was detached from reality. 

Completing his A levels had been his last life goal and afterwards he had been even more hollow than before. 

The biggest problem though had been that he never brought his concerns to light, never tried to speak about his problems and there never was anyone he felt was safe speaking to. 

Likely he himself had realized too late that he was in fact not okay and all the people he knew, even his family, had already lost importance to him.

It left him in a weird spot, living his life like a hollow husk with what for him might be fragments of the past around him.

Rationally he had still been fully aware that his friends and his family still cared about him, but emotionally he was not and his emotional side had a lot more weight in that topic.

It did not help that nobody ever noticed him going to his favorite spot at a cliff at night, always crying but never strong enough to jump.

Ever since the first time it had not been his favorite spot anymore.

With 19 he had tried to kill himself multiple times, while slowly sinking into a bottomless abyss. He had somehow even managed to fail hanging himself without anyone noticing.

One day he had lost it. 

It had been really cold outside that night, so he thought if he couldn’t manage to kill himself, nature would help him. 

He had sat down on a park bench, but didn’t know what had happened afterwards except that he woke up as mana core. Argul had likely died, not that it mattered.

But what did he want in this life? 

He wanted to have fun and wanted to have adventures together with his friends. He wanted to learn interesting things and build the most crazy artifacts. He wanted to travel through space and see the universe with his own eyes. He wanted to grow strong enough to protect what he cared about and while doing all this he wanted to build the most awesome impossibility into an endless ecosystem containing all the craziness of nature. 

He wanted to live a free life full of fun and maybe a bit of excitement.

Alyra was right, he couldn’t just build floor after floor, not that he had planned to. 

Argul should figure out how to gain a fleshy body and if he couldn’t come up with something cool for a floor, he could always add new ideas later. There was no need to stress about something like his creativity being nonexistent most of the time. 

The whole next day Argul brainstormed ideas for creating a body. 

In this time he created two new plants at random for his floor. One was a yellow flower with a single stalk and the other was a small bluish cactus. They both didn’t have any special ability, but in Argul’s opinion were plants he could imagine growing in a tundra. 

Argul started the next day adding something that could have been mice, if it weren’t for the long claws and six legs. They were good at digging and created a whole new system of small tunnels inside his floor. 

The rest of the day he trained his space sense. Argul was able to let it stay on all the time, but it was tiring to do so.

He left his floor alone for 6 days after that and focused completely on creating a body, while discussing his ideas with Alyra. 

She might not be able to create something new, but she still knew all about magic and mana and was thus able to point out things that wouldn’t work or could lead to unwanted problems.

On the sixth day he got an idea for the predator he still needed on his third floor. He created a black fox. 

The tip of the ears and the tail were colored red and the tail had really long hair. Out of their mouth grew two large sharp looking fangs and they had an evil glint in their eyes.

Lunarian cackle fang

This is a mid-sized animal. This fox is a nocturnal predator that can also live in caves. They have two large mana strengthened fangs to hunt larger prey. While they normally hunt alone, to hunt bigger game they often form groups.

Lunarian cackle fangs like to play with their victims, using a panic inducing cackle that would make most grown ups pack up their things and run. Their cackle is especially effective inside of caves and one can often hear them hunt through large parts of a cave system. Sleeping there takes a special kind of person.

Two screens appeared.

Floor finished!

Level up!

Argul saw the effects of his strength increase this time. 

The whole space structure shifted and then he watched as his mana added more to the already existing structure before filling up the new space. 

He now had an idea of how to optimize his portals, making them more stable and less mana intensiv, but he still wasn’t powerful enough to do it. 

After watching his mana create new space for a bit, he set his floor to continue growing and opened his status.

Status