Chapter 4: Experimentation
dGhl-IHBy-b3Rh-Z29u-aXN0 expanded his domain. Tree after tree and plant after plant was consumed, the surrounding area slowly turning into a wasteland over the course of many hours.
It was a significant gain in mana generation compared to his passive income, but it was still too slow. His lowered mana efficiency meant each tree gave much less than it would have otherwise. This combined with the exponential scaling of mana cost based on speed meant the optimal growth was low. Hours were passing, and it was only a matter of time before other humans noticed the disappearance of the three and began to investigate. The body was most likely still out there, with the goblin core of the despawned goblin still sitting nearby. During the battle he had near-perfect ambush conditions and only three hostiles, but was still significantly damaged by the encounter. A larger more organized force would be able to destroy him with little effort.
He attempted to compensate for the low speed of growth by creating thin "roots" akin to plants instead of an even surface covering, but it severely degraded his sight and ability to direct the growth. His perception was tightly tied to the amount of sensors in an area, the minimal surface thickness of sensors rapidly losing nearly all sensor power based on distance to the cave.
He was forced to keep an even surface covering, with thicker regions to maintain at least a certain measure of control. Simple experimentation led to them becoming a series of 1.2 meter tall sensor towers jutting out of the ground in spiral formations with around 3 meters between each of them depending on the terrain. Thin spikes of unnaturally smooth grey stone amid dead plant life, their edges and ends sharpened as a crude form of costless area denial and bottoms curving to smoothly join the forest floor. His sight was still extremely blurry, the sensors presumably meant to operate in an entirely enclosed space such as the cave, with the spikes merely mimicking the corners of one. His ability to see the sky improved, but not sufficiently to be able to recognize his position. He would need to try to form an equivalent to a large sensor dish once he had more mana and was not expecting a hostile presence.
The sun was falling from the sky by the time he gained enough mana to begin the next upgrade process. The formation of the sensor spikes and necessity of an even surface covering severely cut into the profitability of consuming each tree and plant, forcing him to slow down for maximized gains per second. The process began upon reaching maximum storage, same as last time. The upgrade process length had doubled to 24 hours in length. dGhl-IHBy-b3Rh-Z29u-aXN0 sped up the process to compensate, spending 448 mana, nearly his full mana capacity, in order to speed up the process by 300%. The time lowered to 6 hours. If the three humans were meant to return to their village tonight, then a search party would likely be sent out tomorrow, which might be enough time to take advantage of the upgrade to gather mana with higher efficiency and prepare a defense. He could not gather enough mana during the night to speed up the upgrade process further.
dGhl-IHBy-b3Rh-Z29u-aXN0 continued to gather mana. His kind were meant for active combat operations, so he did not have enough awareness of passive human visual perception to avoid attention in non-combat scenarios, but he attempted to avoid exposing the dead forest to outside spaces to avoid undue attention. From the goblins path before, he knew that he was in a more forested area of a flooded region. His expanded, albeit extremely low quality, sense of the space showed that he was on elevated terrain flanked by a brackish swamp on almost all sides. It was a good defensive position, but it also meant he would eventually run out of trees to consume and have to switch over to concentrating on the relatively sparse plants of the swamp until he reached a more fertile area again.
Having freed his mana stores from the upgrading process, he began to experiment with the spawning and core formation process. He began the spawning process of the core he had created earlier and examined the spawn list. Reaching level 2 had unlocked the use of 2 additional creature types. The first a "dire wolf" and the second a "troll". Both taking more mana for a core, the dire wolf twice as much and troll three times as much on average, although the most efficient stone to target varied, making a direct comparison inaccurate.
The first experiment was with the goblin core formation process. dGhl-IHBy-b3Rh-Z29u-aXN0 could target any object, with a varying amount of mana required for conversion into a core. He organized a list of objects.
Stones of various sizes. The most efficient in terms of mana. Leaves. Branches. Most of them untargetable without additional sensor spikes to improve his senses. Most notably, the equipment carried by the humans. A wooden bow, barely more than a piece of wood with a connecting string. Too large for a goblin to effectively wield. A leather quiver containing 12 arrows, all wooden. Possibly useful as disposable stabbing weapons. A wooden spear with a slightly rusted metal tip. The best melee weapon of the bunch, although too long to be effectively used by the goblin. A plain metal knife with a wooden handle, the design indicating use as an utility tool rather than a weapon. Inferior at penetrating power compared to the daggers generated with the goblins. The humans had also worn various clothes and small bags containing unprocessed food of some kind, most likely inedible by him if he still had his old body.
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He decided to experiment on the knife. The altered stone had gained strength and durability and it was possible the process would do the same to the knife, or it could shape it into a sphere. It was the most disposable of the weapons, as the new creature types might be able to wield the bow or spear. He spent 41 mana on beginning the process.
The knife floated into the air, in a similar operation to the stone. Engravings began to appear on the blade, with the now familiar runes. The shape of the blade shifted slightly, becoming sharper and shedding any spots of rust. Some material shifted away from the handle, improving its balance. The changes were less dramatic than with the stone, the underlying material not having become translucent. At the end of the process it merely looked like a higher quality knife as it clattered to the ground.
There was a slight uptick in mana generation after the knife was completed, but not enough to be a viable source of mana. It would take around 3 months for it to produce a surplus compared to its cost, or 25 days if he managed to reach his initial mana generation efficiency.
His goblin had spawned by this time, and he told it to grab the knife. A test against a wall displayed that the knife was now far sharper, leaving a visible cut on the stone. This did not seem to blunt the weapon. He instructed the goblin to drop the knife as he began the goblin spawning process from the new knife core. Disappointingly, the knife was weaved into the goblin itself, instead of remaining as its wielded weapon. A goblin with a knife implanted in its chest would have questionable utility. dGhl-IHBy-b3Rh-Z29u-aXN0 would wait for the actual result, but was very sceptical. Earlier iterations of their central optics had poor design due to having sharp internal components which could shatter and break away, damaging the brain until removed through surgery.
He designated the goblin with the stone core as goblin-a5Ut and sent it outside the cave to test its operation in the expanded environment. It could move freely without incurring the excessive mana costs associated with venturing outside the cave. The minimum sensor thickness was sufficient to avoid the penalty, which meant he could deconstruct the spikes if he had alternative methods of gathering data and no need to further alter the terrain.
The goblin had fairly good vision in the darkness. Superior to the blur he saw from his sensors, although the sensors were superior at detecting colours. The goblin incurred the mana cost penalty the moment any part of its body ventured out of range of the sensor field, including its associated dagger. He left it patrolling the area, supplementing his current poor sensor coverage with its vision.
When dGhl-IHBy-b3Rh-Z29u-aXN0 had gained sufficient mana, he began the creation process of a stone dire wolf core and after completion began its spawning. The process was identical to the goblin core except for the runes and a slightly bigger size.
The knife core spawning completed and he designated it as goblin-dHdv. It was slightly larger than the other goblin and its dagger was sharper. The real difference only became obvious once he told it to move. Its autonomous actions were far smoother, its movements more agile, both in its technique and in the strength of its body. He instructed it to make various movements and swings and incorporated them into his own suite of goblin control actions. He would have to observe if the increased mana cost of equipment based goblins was offset by the slow mana generation and increased power. The knife core was also unavailable for use by his other spawns due to being weaved into the goblin.
The dire wolf spawned and mana balance turned negative. The core turned black once more. The interference returned, blasting his organics with an enormous quantity of warning signals, only slightly less overwhelming after the upgrade. He tried to power through it, his mana production through plant consumption exceeded the drain and it having no visible negative effects beyond the warnings. In the end he was forced to terminate one of the goblins to get rid of the signal. The inorganic part of his mind, quick as it was, was not capable of assessing the dire wolf for combat utility on its own. This situation was too novel and outside his normal parameters. He chose to dismiss goblin-dHdv and to have goblin-a5Ut wield both its own dagger and the knife core, making the dagger a viable ranged weapon as losing it would no longer leave the goblin unarmed.
The dire wolf was very different from the goblin. It was a four-legged predator with sharp teeth, large ears and thick fur. The data he got from it indicated it had a strong sense of smell. It was a wild animal incapable of tool use and complex manipulation of its surrounding. He would consider it useless except for its addition to his detection suite, but at the moment he lacked good weaponry so natural weapons were not as disadvantaged. It was also much faster than the goblin and large enough for it to ride, allowing for skirmishing and harassment if his opponents lacked ranged weapons. Natural species suffered from vastly lowered combat efficiency under continual harassment. It was standard procedure to take advantage of it.
The process of experimentation and mana gathering had taken a long time. The sky began to brighten before he gained enough mana to create a troll core. He would need to prepare heavy defenses in case a search party found him instead of experimenting further.
He counted the milliseconds before his upgrade finalized, and was plunged into darkness once more.