Construct Level Increased
Grass (G > F)
0.01+ (Quality dependent) Mana Cost, 0.1/y+ (Quality dependent) Mana Upkeep
A weak weed. Easily choked out by other plant life, but capable of growing on its own.
Just as David was finishing up in the door on his newly squared room, the expected notification finally popped up. After extensive dives into his own mind and system, he could not only partially predict what the system would do next by looking at which of his actions it’s focusing on, but he also began to… while talk it an exaggeration, he began to communicate with the murder crystal.
Said crystal was scared for its life, the poor thing. And although it was still as bloodthirsty, it seemed to calm down when I replaced the straight tunnel with a square of rooms, eliminating the straight path to me and forcing people to make four ninety - degree turns to get to me. The addition of doors made it send some reverence at him for some reason.
So, David placed the grass on the second room's dirt floor, gained by countless rabbit sacrifices, gave it some mana because it felt right, and looked at his first room to find five dead rabbits. Turns out the sickly rabbits were too weak to stomach the rotting grass, but boredom over the last mounts caused the experiment to repeat again and again.
Remembering the basics of how plants grow, David turned back on the water upkeep and a small pond in the middle of the room started filling up and watering the soil. Although he couldn’t make a fake sun, he hoped the extra mana would compensate for that.
While David was thankful, for getting water, the increasing frequency of rain combined with decreasing temperatures made David frown at the prospects of what to do during wint-
BANG!
He heard a loud crash and quickly went to look. Even as he was still opening the heavy stone door, he saw a new stone in front of his door. It was cracked, and looked black and shiny inside despite its white shell. A team of seven rabbits managed to push the stone in, with only one lost.
Taking a tiny bite of this new curiosity, David felt a new taste.
‘Crunchy like stone, but more of a cracking kind of crunchy, instead of grinding. Uniform taste, just kinda bland. Leaves a sparkly aftertaste. The outside tastes like a mix between dead grass, rabbits and something else. Hang on! Isn’t this flint!’
Material Subcategory Unlocked!
Stone (F) > Flint (G)
Derivative, Simple
Chips instead of cracking. Has many uses.
‘Many uses my ass, this is so useful right now I wouldn’t mind paying a tenth of my past fortune for this’
As Davids slowly ground the door shut once again, others tried to move the flint, only for absolutely nothing to happen. While carrying it in with rabbits was ok, what he was about to do required precision, and so this was as good a time as any to try to learn levitation or some such. He could levitate a magical stone, so it was time to learn how to do it with a normal one.
David now knew what he was doing this winter.
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Cherz was bored out of his mind.
The constant tests and healing combined with bland hospital food waned on him. Hard. Combined with not having access to his computer and worry about the old man who needed him, left him in a constant terrible mood. He couldn’t wait to get out of here and get back to work.
Unfortunately for Cherz, the extensive damage to his wings was Months away from healing, and with David leaving the decision to the doctors, who were all happy with their grumpy but always helpful patient, he was stuck here until that time.
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‘Fucking Finally! The mana drain is ungodly, but with the grass, I’m still in the green.’
And indeed, as David spent weeks learning how to levitate non-magical objects by attaching his aura to them and dragging it into the air, his tiny patch of grass spread into all his rooms, both only needing much, Much less upkeep due to being real and not conjuration, freeing him from the upkeep of the grass in the first room, and also generating him more mana due to being actually alive.
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The grass also lessened his bunny upkeep, as they were both fed and hydrated, only requiring a tiny cost to keep them coherent and “real”. Unfortunately, while the bunnies have grown up, their state wasn’t that much better, but he suspected that he should see some healthy bunnies when they have kids, as they should be fully real, he didn’t splurge on real F-class water for no reason!
As the stone slowly levitated over the ten chewing bunnies and into his core room, David conjured some loose magic stones to work the flint.
What followed was weeks of constant bangs throughout the dungeon, caused by careful hits of stone on flint, slowly chipping it into the desired shards. All the shards were put into a corner, with the dust and too small a shard being absorbed. When the flint ran out, more was conjured, and while it was fairly low quality due to its rank, it was still good practice.
When David was finally satisfied with his knowledge about flint, he noticed that the outside was… white. Feeling awkward at missing when the snow fell, he looked around his dungeon and spotted sixteen bunnies in the overgrown grass, and some… baby corpses.
He quickly absorbed the corpses, cut the grass to level, cleared the snow off his exit, and looked at the new bunnies, both magically and visually. The baby bunnies were healthy with a white coat, compared to his sickly brown coated ones. While the bunnies were totally real, there was still a connection between him and them, although not as solid.
He tried to verify if the playing bunnies had a mind of their own, but couldn’t, as it seemed while he could still give them general commands, he could neither take full control, nor look into their head, as while they were still connected to him, they weren’t a Part of him.
Reaching a satisfactory explanation, David allowed the system to give him the updates.
New Skill Acquired
[Levitation] (Aura)
Active (Weight/Mana conductivity/Aura control*Interference/Skill)
Allows to levitate objects by use of aura. More customizable than spells, but also a lot less versatile and more costly.
Material Level Increased
Flint (G > E)
Derivative, Simple
Chips instead of cracking. Has many uses.
Material Level Increased
Water (G > E)
Primordial, Simple
One of the basic building blocks of life.
Achievement reached!
Room temperature.
Experience great variety in temperature.
Temperature Control unlocked. Upkeep: Temperature Control Unlocked.
Construct Level Increased
Rabbit (G > F)
10+ (Quality dependent) Mana Cost, 0.1/hr+ (Quality dependent) Mana Upkeep
A harmless herbivore. Simple-minded and skittish.
New Material Unlocked!
Fur (G)
Unnatural, Insanely Complex
Fur of a creature. Good at keeping creatures warm.
New Material Unlocked!
Skin (G)
Unnatural, Insanely Complex
Skin of a creature. Protects what is inside.
New Material Unlocked!
Flesh (G)
Unnatural, Insanely Complex
Flesh of a creature. Makes the creature truly living.
New Material Unlocked!
Bone (G)
Unnatural, Insanely Complex
Bone of a creature. Solid, holds a creature up.
New Material Unlocked!
Blood (G)
Unnatural, Insanely Complex
Blood of a creature. Flows through the creature, nourishing it.
Construct Level Increased
Grass (F > E)
0.01+ (Quality dependent) Mana Cost, 0.1/y+ (Quality dependent) Mana Upkeep
A healthy plant. Vibrant green and fresh smelling.
Material Level Increased
Plant (G > F)
Derivative, Extremely Complex
A simple natural material with a high range of possibilities.
‘Wow, that’s a lot.’
Going through everything one by one, David upgraded the ponds in all the rooms, shouldering the extra cost. The Temperature control interface was fully intuition-based, and he set the entire dungeon slightly lower than the max available temperature, so it would be just like when he opened his tunnel.
He wasn’t sure if he should replace the existing bunnies, as he felt the babies would most likely not trust them, but the shards he assigned to scan everything with [Identify] and to rifle through the compendium showed him a useful alternative, having the bunnies slowly upgrade over the course of the next month.
As for grass, he assigned a shard to remove grass in the last room and plant grass there, and to remove the grass in the next when the new one spreads.
Feeling that everything was more in focus, he checked his [Vision] skill and indeed, he was now +7.3, which he concluded to be because of his focusing on the flint.
Speaking of flint, David looked at the pile of crude knives, “saws”, and hatchet heads, and wondered where to get some wood.