As much as I enjoyed my little sit down I still had work to do. First I wanted to go and do more math, yay math. As much as I hated it, math makes the world go round and, despite being on a moon, I wanted a good base to build up from. The math i needed to do was a simple income analysis, somehow managing to cross dimensions and ending up as a fucking book keeper. Whatever the case I moved back down to my experiment room, deciding to re-dub it as the modular farm room as it really wasn’t for experimenting any more.
Alright, so to start with I need to re-examine what I know, a slimes move speed and a slimes collection rate. From there I could figure out just how much I was making and determine how much wiggle room I had to spend on new things. I moved to a relatively fresh wall, having left the entrance and far wall free from any farm tubes. I set up a single tube ten meters long and overpopulated it with moss nodes, simply wanting to get this test over without waiting some five days for a farm to fully form. I made sure to add the upper v notch and then moved on to make a short race track on the floor, marking it out with centimeters, then millimeters just to err on the side of caution. From there I spawned a slime and had it move along the track, timing it for a minute. Happy with the results I set up a new tube with marks on the v-notch, realizing a slime would likely move slower, even marginally, when harvesting.
‘Point nine eight meters per minute.’ It was about what I remembered and I took the time to make a metal book, scoring lines across the ‘pages’ before writing in the slimes information. For my second trick I had to stop all my slimes from collecting, patiently waiting a minute to ensure I didn't have any lagging behind on their orders. From there I sent the slime down the ten meter tube, counting out each meter as it harvested, eventually coming to the conclusion that it harvested a half a unit of biomatter every time it moved its full body length. With that I divided the distance of a regular farm tube, sixty meters not counting the return tube, or the bend, and I came up with one hundred and fifteen biomatter per hour, give or take one or two biomatter. It really was a staggering amount, not surprising to me that the slime could harvest that quickly but that I hadn’t experienced that kind of income so far. I had to put it up to not getting my original idea up and running before I spaced everything. Then all i had to do was multiply that by the number of slimes I would have when i was producing at max capacity.
‘Twenty two thousand.’ I had to be wrong. I went through my math again, sure I'd bungled something as simple as multiplication, but the number came back again. Even without accounting for the point four per slime per hour extra, I was going to make more biomatter than I could ever know what to do with. I could hardly wrap my head around the number. It was so insane to me, I’d not found any limiters on my monster spawning, even for this early in my existence so how were dungeons supposed to be kept in check? Then I realized what was wrong and why I could break things so readily. I was sentient. And the small matter of me being on the moon, allowing me to expand unimpeded. But as a sentient dungeon, I could focus on something as trivial as income efficiency rather than just grinding out floors to expand my levels and monster brochure. What kind of living creature would focus on an income instead of pure survival?
Well, with that bit of odd introspection out of the way I buckled down and focused on getting my farms up and running. It would be days yet, possibly weeks before they naturally filled and settled into maximum efficiency, and they’d likely be slightly less efficient as my numbers were from a more efficient style of farm, but the sooner I got them running, even inefficiently, the sooner I could focus on grinding on my levels. While it might seem like an odd thing to do, why go lower with no threat of attack, I was hoping that I might be able to spawn in something approaching, or even within, sentience. Slimes were cool and spiders made neat webs, but I couldn’t fathom spending eons alone. So, I'd put my faith in the system and pray for a miracle. For now, I set myself up with a couple tasks. The first, and most simple, was making more oxygen farms. I know it might sound strange with the sheer number I'd already made, but these weren’t meant for making me biomatter. I was still worried about voiding all my progress a second time, so I would make damned sure I had enough farms to reset me to, at least, baseline instead of waiting days for everything to repressurize. Similar to that note I had set myself the glorious task of designing a door with latches.
While my method of using a boulder to hold the door shut worked, it was not a terribly creative idea and it would mean I'd have to haul the boulder off should I ever care to open the door, or any others I might make. With that in mind I moved to the ‘airlock; and began my designing. I was going for something I had seen on a ship once, you’d spin the handle and tabs would slide down into notches that would hold the door in place. I also wanted the mechanism to put pressure on the door for a good seal so I decided to make something of a hooked latch. It only took one look at the mess of metal scraps before me to realize that would be wildly complex for someone that had been impressed by making a stalagmite. I scraped the bits and sat down, thinking things over. It didn’t need to be complex so I threw out the idea of a single mechanism opening the door. I could have several handles that could do that function just fine on their own but my problem was I'd need the handles to be two sided, so the dungeon system wouldn’t think I was sealing myself off. I didn’t know how a boulder on a big metal frame wasn’t sealing myself off but I tried not to think about it, just in case the system was watching and undid all my work.
It was slow and annoying work, creating sheets of metal to draw out blueprints, then scrapping them as one design or another didn’t work. I kept coming back to a ship style door, with six latches to hold it in place. While I could simplify it I would just be leaving more points for my hand made gaskets to fail. So I stuck with the design, struggling to make the joints, then the latches, until I was half sure things were working correctly. The doors handle, a circular wheel nearly as large as the rectangular I'd made, had teeth on it, like a ratchet, that would engage with what I was calling the bar thing. The bar would move up and down, depending on which direction the wheel was turned, and was attached to three pivot points I'd formed into the door. The pivot points would turn when the bar moved up or down, putting pressure onto two more bars each, either pushing them out or pulling them in. Then, for my final trick, these bars were attached to a final pivot point each, holding the latch and dropping or raising it depending on which way the wheel spun. The latches were five centimeters out, from the pivot point, and , when I made a frame to test them, they could swing down and take the force of the hatch clamping shut. I was sincerely wishing i had steel instead of this aluminum like substance, thinking that this sort of hatch just wouldn’t last long. But i had to work with the tools available.
Then came the trickiest part, making the door two way, allowing it to open from either side. It had worried me greatly until I hit upon an idea, just make the door handle free moving. I could have a divot in the center that would keep the rod from just falling straight through and, hopefully, would hold air in well enough since it would have very little free room to get by. I quickly put my door together and tried it out, the door shutting firmly in place, then again with a copper gasket. I knew it wouldn’t be the most effective thing but i’d have time to test things and, with this, I could separate my floors and still allow my forces to move between them without worrying about a catastrophic loss of atmosphere.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
The final test came with removing my first outer door. It had served me well for a stopgap measure but it was just scrap in the way now. I recycled it, then started to change my entrance point, adjusting it so the entrance dropped directly into the room, then coating the room in general metal to further ensure no air leaks. After some consideration I decided to make a ladder from the entrance to the floor before putting in my new hatch. The final touch was readjusting the oxygen farms I had installed in the entrance room, adding new pinholes to allow them to pressurize the room, after making sure the hatch was sealed tight. The real test was whether the hatch would blow open at pressure, as I'd installed it on the outside where the pressure would be on the latches rather than the frame. While it might seem like an oversight, I simply wanted to test the durability of my hatch, hand made out of the crudest materials available. I wanted to be sure it could take it before I relied on it going forward.
With that out of the way I had one more thing to design, the thing that makes an airlock possible. I needed a way to vent the gas from the room, otherwise opening the door would be practically impossible, at least it would be if I had set it up to open inward. With that in mind I set out to design a ball valve, knowing it would likely be another leaky object in a long line of leaky objects. But, it was simple and I actually knew how they functioned well enough that I thought I could get one to work myself. The project was blessedly simple, making a tight fitting valve that could open or close when a wheel is spun. All I needed to do after that was add a second wheel to the opposite side and I had something I could use to depressurize the room.
As working with my metal and construction abilities was getting easier the more I used it, making pipes was the work of a couple minutes, running pipes along the roof of the room to better distribute the pull of vacuum on the room, or I hoped that’s what would happen. The final task would be putting the valve somewhere in reach of the outer door and punching a pipe up to the surface. I was a bit hesitant to do so as, while i had been working, the farms had filled to room with air and it had become somewhat pressurized, though i wasn’t sure how pressurized it was. I bit the bullet though, digging a hole through the wall and starting up another roaring noise as the air was quickly pulled from the room. I installed the pipe, then adjusted the door, sure my hinges, and the door itself, would do their job. I assembled it to open inwards, just to make sure it wouldn’t leak too much, and held it up as I turned the wheel and let the latches slide into place. As a bonus I added thick hinges, mostly so I wouldn't have to hold the door in place and spin the wheel at the same time. On shutting the valve a new window opened up, the first in a while, and surprised me.
Simple airlock discovered.
Granted ability to save and construct simple airlocks.
Advanced construction detected, granting skill upgrade.
Advanced construction.
Granted ability to save and construct advanced structures.
Granted simple components.
Simple components.
A collection of simple components used in building or crafting.
It was always a pleasant shock to get new toys, and this one seemed a better upgrade than any I had so far. While simple construction allowed me to save my buildings, or other constructed things, as templates, this new simple components thing seemed interesting. A quick look at its page showed a collection of different items i could use, hinges, slides, chains, and many other small items I'd otherwise have to build or design by hand. I did notice latches were in the mix, and looked a damned sight better than my kludged together solution. I’d have to make a new door in the future, for now I would just use what I had on hand. So I moved the boulder covering my first stopgap door and installed one of my newly built ones, along with another valve. While I didn't expect any visitors, I had a couple ideas for expanding to the surface and I wanted to have the option to quickly pressurize the airlock instead of waiting hours for its farms to get the job done.
With my work done I moved along the first floor, planting ten oxygen farms per room, while it wouldn’t fill quickly, the work of days rather than hours, every little bit helped. With that I came to the end of the first floor and installed another door, feeling that I might be a bit paranoid, I didn’t install any valves just in case someone, me, left the valves open and accidentally vented the first floor again. From there I moved along and set up doors at the entrance and exit of my second and third floor ramps before settling down and deciding to check out my new spawns, having forgotten about them.
Ramp bug Spawner.
Cost: 500 Biomatter.
Spawns available:
Ramp bug juvenile.
Ramp bug:
A heavily armored creature that can grow up to 150 meters long, 30 high, and 30 wide. Named for its thickly armored head section.
While not the most clever name, just reading the description made me understand why I'd be spawning juveniles instead of the fully grown specimens, I wasn't even sure I could jam a full grown into the second floor. IT did provide some neat sounding defensive abilities, just jam its head into the tunnel and intruders, if I ever got any, wouldn’t be getting by easily. They might also function somewhat well as a living valve, probably dying to lock in air but saving the stuff behind it. Sadly, other than possibly functioning as a living door, the description said nothing about being a utility creature. It was neat to finally have a fully combat focused creature but somewhat pointless. I’d have to make one anyways, just for fun.
So I now had copper, creeping crone vine, and a tank. A humble beginning to be sure but I was getting there. Another few floors and I might start getting something neat, though I was wondering about making a new sort of biome. I thought I might be able to get water from my plants, possibly, but I was thinking I'd have to do it the hard way through heat and evaporation. So I had a new plan, now that I was safe enough from the void, to make a new biome. If anything I hoped I could at least spawn a fish or two eventually, and possibly hops. I didn’t yet know if anything could affect my orb but I'd try pouring beer on it before giving up alcohol forever.