Time, surprisingly, did not slow as I tried to rationalize all of the developments inside the dream. I exploded in furious jello activity, amusing my companions with my frantic energy. Sage confirmed she also had the same vision while she slept. In a week, a gathering would happen at the location of our new home, requiring a proper building. A building that had special future implications, because I was the chosen of our Kami.

Perhaps most surprisingly a notification appeared in my Status screen, directing me to my Quest menu.

Special Quest (Notable): Complete the construction of the Kami’s temple before the week time limit is up 1/7 days.

Eh? Even a quest?

What do you mean, construction of the Kami’s temple! This was supposed to be our Chimera Core house!

…although, a Notable Achievement isn’t a simple thing to earn…

Umu… let me consider…

In the end, I accepted the Quest Screen’s bribe. It was quite a distant proposition to the Level 11 me, but my next evolution at Level 25 would be helped by additional achievements. So while it wasn’t exactly leisurely, I scurried over to the mud beach with determination.

Besides, I acknowledge this is a learning experience. The first building I attempt… Hehehe, I kept on a brave face, but it would inevitably be flawed. Better to give that building to the Kami…

I transported my four dried mud bricks to the work area and began to think about timelines. Because I’d barely have a low wall at my current pace— even with six days, I would not be able to build anything like a temple in that time, four bricks a day. So I spent most of the morning expanding the enterprise.

Your Skill (Temp) Dig has grown to Level 5.

Your Skill (Temp) Dig has grown to Level 6.

Your Skill (Earned) Inferior Body Manipulation has grown to Level 24.

I raised and clicked my digging claws. Heh, when it comes to mundane day labor, few can rival the reliability of the lowly crayfish. Truly, their portable shovel arms were made for this.

Despite recent emotional wounds I’d suffered, I was still a reincarnated human. If nothing else, I understood the value of parallel grinding. So while I toiled in the mud, the whole of my body was active.

Your Skill (Temp) Flutter Wings has grown to Level 8.

Your Skill (Temp) Flutter Wings has grown to Level 9.

Your Skill (Earned) Monster’s Wisdom has grown to Level 5.

Your Skill (Temp) Dig has grown to Level 7.

Your Skill (Temp) Dig has grown to Level 8.

Your Skill (Temp) Flutter Wings has grown to Level 10.

Your Skill (Earned) Inferior Body Manipulation has grown to Level 25.

Your Skill (Earned) Inferior Body Manipulation has evolved into (Earned) Body Manipulation Lvl 1.

An Interesting achievement: For evolving an Earned Skill, +5 Max Health and +5 Max Mana.

At the end of the day’s work, Inferior Body Manipulation had become regular Body Manipulation. The fineness of control I possessed over my tentacles increased. I could finally build a reed stand that wouldn’t just topple after I covered it with bricks. The final count was 10 bricks drying on top of my stand, but I knew tomorrow I could extend it further.

At this rate, I might really make it in time.

After becoming a veritable bricklayer, I returned to the area around the stump. As I considered my full Mana pool, my embarrassment about my Blessing returned; the way the hex spiderlings treated my liquid left me shivering in distaste. They were altogether too enthusiastic about it, and regularly sent me pulses of desire through the monster core regarding this liquid. They had apparently created a pool of it in the core area of their spider webs.

In the end, I crouched shamefully next to the Swampfly farm when I released the upgraded version of my Blessing. I felt more bitter than usual; seep as a label for this action made me even more uncomfortable than Dribble. The process felt less like light sweating and more like some sort of metaphysical squeezing of my body, resulting in the even flow of liquid from my person. With my Mana at 79, quite a bit of it flowed out into the still water of the swampfly harvesting location.

Ick… only a single proficiency this time, and the requirement to increase the Blessing again is a hundred…

Do I even want this sort of ability to grow? If it takes fifty days, with two activations a day- Perhaps I should just seal away this ability?

I focused on the positives of my situation: the monster summit probably meant that I would meet the Kami and earn my second Blessing. Despite Nightshade’s optimism about a relationship with the Kami, I reserved my judgment until I saw what I could accomplish with my next upgrade.

The Great Kami of the Seeping Ooze… I shuddered. Yea, it might be better not to involve myself if all of its Blessings are like this.

In the afternoons, I faced a more ambiguous foe; myself.

My sense of responsibility had grown to include Nightshade and Sage in this new life. I would do anything to help them and their evolutions’ contained a mysterious threat. So after a morning on the mud beaches, I looked at my inner array. And when I witnessed it I remained focused, so that I wouldn't-

Knots of flowing energy twisted back on each other. The more I tried to follow the redirected flow-

Your Skill (Earned) Mana Sensitivity has grown to Level 4.

Your Skill (Species) Basic Array Knowledge has grown to Level 3.

Your Skill (Earned) Mana Sensitivity has grown to Level 5.

Your Skill (Earned) Foolish Grit has grown to Level 6.

…in the end, I passed out once more, waking to the evening sun. I could only sigh and push my body off the ground. At the very least, the efficiency of gaining Skill Levels in the process is quite high… just I hope we can have some actual functionality soon.

…hum? Actually, wouldn’t it be quite convenient if I could infinitely gaze at my Chimera Core and earn Skill Levels without much effort on my part? That would definitely be part of a leisurely life.

With their own desires animating them, evening approached without Sage or Nightshade returning to camp. Which left me to flop around for a bit before a combination of boredom and anxiety led me back to the mud clearing.

Now that I began rather systematically examining the ground I had separated for this building, which had been commandeered as a temple, the base layer, just going around the bottom, would require twenty-five mud bricks. Based on some mental calculations, I would then need to stack the mud bricks ten high. Plus the roof…

Two hundred and fifty bricks, at minimum.

To put it lightly, ten bricks a day was just an appetizer. Tomorrow, I would need to massively upgrade my production speed. Which would probably mean that I wouldn’t wander away and gain any Levels, but the first evolution had taught me that having high Skill Levels when you reached the evolution was almost as important as the evolution itself.

I lay in the stump and stared up at the holes in the roof. A small drizzle had started that night and I crossed my tentacles it wouldn’t rain enough to deform the already-dried bricks. Okay, priorities. Completing the temple is a big one. Continuing to understand our core arrays is another one, which also gets to the third, making sure my Skill Levels continue to grow.

Priorities four and five… Leveling and handling the consequences of my earlier farming attempts. They go hand in hand, but- Haaah, I definitely want to gain some more Levels before the monster summit, so we Chimera Cores won’t have more taken from us.

But how powerful are the other monsters in the area? The largest I’ve seen is the Five Horned Toad Broodmother Level 20. So, probably around that Level, or a little higher? I wonder if any have passed the Second Growth Threshold…

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Even if I were to dedicate my time to Leveling, I don’t think I can get to Level 25 in six days. Or even Level 20.

…But I don’t need to, do I? A warm feeling of release filled me. I allowed the natural sleepiness to massage my consciousness away. Because my companions will be by my side.

I don’t need to do it all… on my own…

In the morning, Sage bounced around the outside the stump. “I saw the beginnings of your temple! Little brother, your efforts are surely appreciated by the Kami. Apparently, your meaningless recording of others’ actions is quite well-received in this world. This is the beginning of our Chimera Core ascendance!”

Ah, Sage, keeping me humble even while encouraging me. Would you react worse if you learned I made everything up that I ‘recorded’ in my last life, I wonder…?

Once again, the morning went toward the creation and harvesting of mud bricks. With my crayfish digging claws, I could quickly scoop out an amount of mud that was near precisely what I needed. My Body Manipulation increased two more Levels as I built four more large drying racks for the bricks. With this, I could expect to harvest fifty bricks a day. Which should bring me to completion in time.

Ugh, the real bottleneck is hauling the bricks from the beach to the work site.

Oh? Am I forgetting my creepy little laborers? If I have twenty hex spiderlings stand in formation and lay a brick upon their back-

Hum, won’t it just crush them? And the time spent putting the bricks on them, or taking them off… no, better to work on my own for the Skill Levels

It was late afternoon when I returned from the mud breach, my body shaking from exhaustion. I didn’t possess any Stat like Stamina, but I definitely felt drained after spending the entire morning scooping out mud and broken reeds to make bricks. As I had joked about earlier, it was almost a relief to plop down next to the swampfly farm and turn my gaze inward to my own animating array.

I looked at the energy maze. The mesmerizing patterns of energy unfolded within my energy sonar. Sweet oblivion, take me!

Your Skill (Earned) Mana Sensitivity has grown to Level 6.

Your Skill (Species) Basic Array Knowledge has grown to Level 4.

Your Skill (Species) Basic Array Knowledge has grown to Level 5.

For reaching Level 5 in Basic Array Knowledge, you can create: Fundamental Array.

When the wooziness passed and my consciousness returned, I had obtained a benefit. I could create an array. I reached for the Skill and felt an intuitive understanding of its construction. Yet all I felt was disappointment.

…but only the fundamental array. Essentially, the shape of one. No current effects, or ability to infuse it with Mana, but the framework. As usual, the System is stingy. Advanced array knowledge is an infinite distance away from the current me…

I could now understand, without really knowing why, the basic array structure that would contain energy in a specific area. I released a slow clap with my ungainly digging claws for the power of a System. Even though I had no new insights based on my intellect, simply possessing the Skill and Leveling it was enough to create a Skill worth having.

Since I had reached this point, I drew a basic array diagram around the swampfly breeding ground.

Your Skill (Species) Basic Array Knowledge has grown to Level 6.

The drawing felt satisfying, plus it gave a Level? If only the array did anything, we’d be in business.

I shook my head. I felt bad for the swamp, so I once more activated my Blessing right outside of it, this time earning +2 Proficiency. I seeped my Blessed Oils without any effect. Perhaps someday, I could provide this place with an array that would actually benefit it…

Anyway, my night finished with some more preparatory work. I couldn’t make the bricks as night fell, but I diligently wove the reeds together to create two more large drying stations, preparing my yield for the following day to grow to seventy.

Ahem, my original estimate of 250 might have been an understatement. Don’t blame me, though; It’s a time-honored tradition for construction projects to be over budget, even from day two!

Plus, I found the cutting and folding of reeds increasingly satisfying as my motor skills improved. Soon, I would revisit our roof…! My eternal foe would be slain. No longer would my companions and I get drenched every time it rained.

Your Skill (Earned) Body Manipulation has grown to Level 4.

After finishing the new drying rack, I walked my way back from the beach. Both crayfish and frogs taunted me, with clicks and ribbits respectively. Although my jelly twitched to ignore this disrespect, I had dried bricks to move.

When I returned, I found Nightshade crouched over the stretch of ground he had claimed, painstakingly sticking little branches into the dirt. I paused and he straightened. “I have managed to explore a fair amount of ground in the area around our base. This is a simple representation of that space.”

My eye widened; suddenly, I understood. I moved closer. The strange bits sticking out of the mud around made sense; this was the reed forest to our East, this was the river, this was the growing spidersilk area, and beyond that… a genuine forest, based on the small branches Nightshade stuck into the ground.

I could only stare at the map taking shape before my eyes, admiring the effort of Nightshade in the process. “This… the whole area…? How long would it take to reach the forested area?”

“At a normal speed, two hours only. However… the enemies there are so numerous… heh, it makes my blood heat to think about such a wild crusade…” Nightshade said.

In the back of my mind, with as much leisure as possible, I engaged the clockwork machine. It began to tick and calculate in a very low-key manner. I could understand numerous enemies as an impediment, but I wasn’t there to try and slaughter the locals like a former Demon King might. Instead, I was more concerned with the process of harvesting wood. Rather than drying bricks in the sun, the presence of a forest would at least mean that I could obtain building materials without a great deal of effort.

“Let’s go tomorrow,” I decided. “I want to see the forest.”

Plus, Nightshade, I remember your moods. What do you mean, ‘it makes my blood heat’? Don’t do anything dumb without me.

“Of course, brother, I can tell your and my mind have just the same goal.” Nightshade’s many mouths curved upward into grins. “Together, we will burn our way through our opponents. We will drink the blood of the weak and dine on their flesh.”

Definitely, you need to chill out a bit from your days as a demon king…

It… will be fine to spend the day with Nightshade, right? He always comes back from his excursions before nightfall. It would only be a half day of work on the temple, but with my adjustments today, I should be back on schedule.

The machine hummed, clearly unconvinced. I ceased its activities before it could synthesize counter-arguments.

Besides, while the harvesting of mud did improve many Skill Levels, I had to admit that there was a restless part of me that… sorta enjoyed the violent competition the monsters engaged in. Plus, getting a few Levels before the monster summit would reassure me.

The Quest and the benefits it offered was important.

But ensuring the safety of my siblings was everything.

With most of my labor for the day finished, I drifted over to the swampfly farm and performed some less savory tests with my new body. I tried to channel Green’s pure curiosity and not think about the particulars of my actions. The Serrated Foreleg became my reliable scalpel, cleaving off my lavender flesh. I glanced surreptitiously around and tossed the chunks into the swamp; I didn’t want either of my strange companions to wander past and have their opinions of me altered by finding me surrounded by severed parts of my body.

I shook my head as I watched the flesh slowly grow back. We really are monsters.

Your (Species) Skill Interstitial Body Structure has grown to Level 4.

As expected, it needs to grow back or shift for the Skill to Level. But the growth is the faster method. I carefully observed the difference after I gained a Level. Visibly, I could tell that the flesh grew back more quickly after I earned the Level. It dripped down across my uncovered jello and encased it in a solid shell. It was hard to tell more than that, but definitely, the regrown flesh might be somewhat thicker than the original layer.

Hum. The interesting part is that it costs me Health to do this. The Skill provides a protective shell, but I lose Health when I get rid of the flesh. It has become a part of me. Well, with how much my Health has grown, it’s not that big of a problem…

A Swampfly Swarmer drifted over to me and rather instinctively my tongue shot out and sucked its small body into my mouth.

You have successfully Absorbed Anima! Anima +1.

Your Skill (Species) Absorb Anima has grown to Level 24.

However, its presence here made me aware of a growing problem; my work gathering those sweet flowers to help the fly population grow had become too effective. The area directly above the swamp was a buzzing mass of swarmers. But really, the issue was that there were so many flies that some of them drifted over and landed in the area of the stump. Not that I was happy about the Kami showing up in dreams and magically demanding I make it a temple, but definitely it was a chance to change the Kami’s opinion of me and obtain a valuable second Blessing.

Doing so… might be difficult with flies everywhere…

For a bit, I went on a murder spree. The frog tongue was the scythe of death to these mindless bugs. I ate 78 Swampflies in total, clearing out all the ones bold enough to try and encroach on our territory. About a dozen more drifted over while I worked and they were also swiftly dispatched.

I towered over their spawning grown, a shadow across my face as I struck a pose. In my past life… they called me Fly Reaper.

Ahem, ahem, okay, it’s sorta fun to make random dramatic statements like this… I can understand Nightshade a bit more…

Anyway, I did have a solution to this fly-trification, I just didn’t exactly like it. I looked down at my wide and flat crayfish claws. My eyes spun with weariness. “I tried to get out of the digging game, cheep. But you always claw me back in…”

Whistling with my beak, I went over to the wet ground next to the swamp and began to dig. Not directly into the edge of the standing water, but a similar area a bit away, which I would later connect. The dirt was much less clay here, which made it that much more difficult to work with the sludge I excavated.

Your Skill (Temp) Dig has grown to Level 9.

Your Skill (Temp) Dig has grown to Level 10.

As night fell, my claws were covered in sludge. The other big issue with the process was that the water table was so high in this area, I could only go so deep before the surrounding soil began to seep into my hole. Despite the flaws, I still broke through the ground between the swamp and the new hole. Water gushed to fill the space before the two evened out. Then I extended out a tentacle and dragged some of the floating flowers over to the new place. The flies drifted after their flowers mindlessly.

With an extra few meters between the flies and my building, I nodded in pleasure. For today, this would be enough. Tomorrow… the forest.

Tomorrow is the third day of the seven. With an expansion of my brick activities… looks like the temple will be right on schedule.

Definitely…