Chapter 3: Consolidation
dGhl-IHBy-b3Rh-Z29u-aXN0 considered his next actions.
He was injured, although luckily it did not seem to affect the emulation and left his mind unaltered. The low efficiency of mana production was a serious issue regardless. The currently highest confirmed source of mana was the death of humans inside the cave, and the lowered efficiency made it unprofitable. If he had the same damaged efficiency prior to the battle, then it would have left him with a large deficit of mana and no ongoing upgrade process. Efficiency was ticking up slowly, but assuming a linear rate of growth, it would take 3 months to recover fully.
He had accidentally boosted the speed of the upgrade twice while distracted by the fighting. He would need to be more careful of new outgoing channels forming during periods of high activity. The upgrade showed a countdown of less than 4 hours. Each upgrade increasing the speed by a non-multiplicative 100% but doubling in cost each time. What the upgrade entailed, was unknown for now.
He could spawn a goblin, but it would cripple his mana production. The possibility of killing a wandering animal for mana was something worth testing, so a core was still necessary. An animal was unlikely to be able to damage his core before the spawning process completed, considering the force demonstrated during the battle. It was still a mystery what empowered the axe swings. There was no surgical scarring on Marcus, but those were easy to hide with sufficient medical care. The most likely cause seemed the mysterious "mana", perhaps an implanted crystal similar to his own.
If he ever gained a surplus of mana, he would need to experiment with the core forming process. He could target practically any object for core formation, meaning other objects might create variants. The only barred targets being the human corpses, and their glowing necklaces. dGhl-IHBy-b3Rh-Z29u-aXN0 went back over his recordings and noted that the necklaces had gone dark at the moment the humans had died, evidently powered by their own metabolism.
The goblin itself had vaporized after death, suggesting its form was a simulacra of some sort, powered by mana. He kept coming back to the idea of a nanite swarm, but despite their illegality, nanites were largely useless for any complex functions. The amount of computational power needed for proper coordination made them severely cost ineffective and dependent on rare materials. He needed more information, which he could not retrieve inside the cave.
He was stuck. All avenues of progress dependent on waiting. Waiting for animals to be attracted, waiting for the upgrade to progress, waiting for a new source of information to wander into his perimeter.
He let his mind wander into combat simulations while he waited for anything relevant to occur. There was a strong species-wide bias towards plans involving extreme aggression and rapid action, which they sometimes had to curb when it became predictable. But he could wait for centuries if that was the plan, having no innate sense of boredom. The only problem was that he would be forced to lower mental plasticity in the process to keep his mind from degenerating.
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The humans had been wearing non-standardized equipment and primitive melee weaponry. There would be no point in carrying a spear and a bow if they had any access to firearms. He knew melee combat like all of his kind, but statistically there were a negligible amount of scenarios where it would be needed, and so the amount of data was limited. He needed to generate more.
He spent the next 4 hours imagining melee combat scenarios regarding the goblin. There was a strong possibility that a lot of estimations were off, especially considering his current inability to identify enhanced targets. The core perceptively expanded during the waiting, slightly less than doubling in volume. The growth sealed several cracks in the crystal, lowering the amoFINALIZING UPGRADE
dGhl-IHBy-b3Rh-Z29u-aXN0 felt disconnected. The extra inputs from the crystal missing. He was floating in a thick fluid the same temperature as his body, optimal for growth and healing. He opened his eyes, and saw the inside of a nutrient tank. The same one he had grown in before his implants were attached. The same one he returned to whenever his injuries needed healing. It was lit by the soft blue glow of a crystal he was holding in his hand, but it was different from the one he controlled. Its insides swirling in complicated patterns in tune with the beating of his hearts and the clock speed of his implants. He felt as if it was speaking to him, but he lacked the senses to hear it.
The connections returned one by one, and the image of the nutrient tank and crystal faded from his view. Each signal cleaner than before. The status screen lacked the strange artifacting and repeated fields. The spawn menu lacked the millions of empty entries, now displaying a few additional creatures he could spawn in an orderly list. The signals from his spine and optical nerves now better suited to processing by his implants.
The status now displayed him as core level 2. Mana generation efficiency was up to 0.4201, and his base mana generation doubled. His mana storage was up to 512. The world felt brighter to him. His ability to look outside improved, now able to detect clouds in the sky above. He tested if his ability to dig had improved, and it had. Not only had it doubled in efficiency, he was now also able to shift the area he controlled, thinning the depth of his control in some places while extending it in others.
He used it to thin the walls of his cave, and crept his control out of the cave entrance along the ground. He needed to extend his sight so he could see the stars and so he could scout the area without a goblin. The incessant signal in his head complained, but he found he could simply will it to stop.
A 12 millimeter layer of control extended from the entrance along the ground, the thinnest he could make it. When it reached a piece of grass, dGhl-IHBy-b3Rh-Z29u-aXN0 witnessed the plant wither away, turning brown as if drained of water. A small trickle of mana accompanied it. A nearby tree did much the same, shedding its leaves and producing a shower of yellow as they fell and were blown away by wind, producing an hours worth of production. It made his position much more obvious, but he considered it a good exchange.
The upgrades were the way to go. He needed more mana, and it had provided it to him. He needed more sight, and it gave it to him. He began to spread his control into the forest, creating a radius of death around the cave entrance. He would start the process of the next upgrade quite soon. He also began the spawning process of the goblin. He needed to see if the cost of wandering outside the dungeon was now lower, and if the thin controlled ground allowed it to walk without extra cost.
The path forward suddenly seemed a lot simpler.