> How do undead form? At first thought they are simply the creation of the filthy necromancers. Minions of evil that are simply puppets of the worst kind of sacrilegious scum. However, there is a second lesser known cause. War.
>
> War, Famine, Plagues. Whenever vast amounts of the holy Mother's gifted Life are lost in an area, the amount of environmental Death mana rises over a certain threshold and a percentage of the dead revive and continue to revive until the levels drop once more or are cleansed. These wild undead are less abhorrent than those created by Necromancers, however they must still be cleansed from the earth in holy fire. It is the only mercy we can give those who have been forced to stay on this world in such a twisted form.
>
> There are another group of undead. The cursed. Those who fear death so much they are willing to turn undead just to escape it. Those who specifically made themselves undead in obscene rituals while wanting strength, power and beauty – the vampires. Those necromancers who turn themselves while keeping their powers – the liches.
>
> If any cursed beings are found, they must be shown the holy Mother's mercy immediately and with extreme prejudice.
Excerpt from the priest guidebook “101 ways to be a good priest and spread the holy mothers’ teachings”
Innearth knew what his very first task was.
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Innearth: soooooooo how far away from tier 3 are you? :3
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Abe: DAMMIT! We can't all have a cheating empty dungeon fall into our laps. I'll leave it at that m8
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Innearth: Are you sure it's not my marvellous mana skills being represented and rewarded?
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Abe: Nah can't be. It's definitely the "non skill, totally just luck", you were gifted.
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Abe: see you in a bit. I'm going to be tier 3 soon just you wait.
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Innearth: Theres no rush. It's less important than Rank 2. Just some lazy controls... you aren't missing much.
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Innearth flipped through his system menu idly while talking to Abe. The only gift tier 3 gave him was a revamp to his schematic area.
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Innearth: Oh wait I was wrong! It lets you instantly dig to the surface in a few seconds. You should see this.
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Abe: Bruh lol. That's some high-end system controls. Tell me what the surface is like.
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Innearth: It's filled with thousands of trees... and exploding trees just for fun. A giant ball of Earth mana floats above and makes sure everything works right. oh and there's a dragon.
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Abe: jokes aside an exploding tree would be AWSOME. Bro if you ever find an explosion plant I'll finally get the point of them. Plant em everywhere. do the whole nature thing.
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Innearth: yeah sure if I ever see any.
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Tier 3 let a dungeon core design a monster completely in their system schematics just by overlaying the system panel over an area. He could pull up a schematic and actively change bits of it – a ghost-like, transparent and 3-dimensional model in his sight...but also not connected to anything in reality.
Beside the monster floating in the panel, was several general statistics. Numbers stating what the monster’s health was. How much defence its body had, as well as how much stamina or mana it could hold.
Quantified and simplified the panel also gave detailed stats of individual body parts. All he needed to do was separate the part from the main body and push it into its own panel. Innearth could remove the spider leg for example and play around with changing its density, thickness, length and the position of plates – all while watching its speed and grip change in real time. It was a no cost iteration although the system wasn’t able to quantify how dangerous the whole monster would be. Just guess.
So, this is why most of the market schematics are so good. They were designed by tier 3 cores before being sold to the rest of us...honestly it almost feels like by having this I know for a fact I can make better stuff than most of the stuff currently on the market. I wonder if I should start selling monsters or schematics? It seems pretty obvious that a lot of cores are keeping their favourite monsters to themselves…but having a steady income of cores would at least double my monster creation speed. Sure, would be nice for levelling.
I’m getting off topic. What else can this new system area do?
Innearth continued to play with the controls. There were duplication options – ways to copy and paste limbs that would all change when one was edited, or ways to quickly copy the crystal scales of the snakes over whole areas like a fabric. Intuitive ways of designing a monster like grabbing the sides and stretching it wider or scaling the whole thing up were given – material filling in as needed. He could also “Zoom” into a portion of the monster without physically increasing its size and then make small details. Small details at a higher scale than he could edit manually. The whole thing was convenient and easy to work with.
I guess…I guess I understand why this wasn't given to us right away – it forced us to learn how to do everything from scratch. But now that I've been given this tool, I really don't see why I shouldn't use it.
Innearth confirmed his half snake, half bat hybrid and watched it pull from his inventory and mana to form. He hadn’t really intelligently designed this hybrid just smashed the two monsters together. Copy pasting bits from both into a new schematic to see how it would work. Part of the experience of making it himself was lost letting it be made automatically...but he didn’t miss it. Additionally –despite the time to spawn the monster being linked to his own control of the mana types and materials – the process took slightly longer than a manual creation might.
The new snake flew off into the dungeon. Flitting around it headed up to go attack the spiders.
Well seems no different from what I make myself? It is using my mana after all.
Finally trying to find more problems with the system controls – Something this good can’t be without some sort of problem – Innearth figured out it wouldn’t let him make monsters higher than his max mana.
When making things manually he just had to pause and wait for his mana to regenerate. In comparison, the system pulled all his mana out in a lump sum into the panel and then slowly built the monster. When it finished printing the monster, the system moved it out of the panel into the real world by fuzzing it into existence.
I'm being kind of lazy, aren't I…
It's just so...convenient. Even if I'm able to split my focus and work on other things, I still had to actually do the repetitive stuff. No longer!
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Trying out a few things Innearth started to store body parts as schematics. He made a new section called "parts" and started shoving stuff like legs he had made or the kinetic plates inside of tubes so that he could pull them into his work area as needed.
Testing the limits, he realized the only thing he couldn't do was make unique monsters in it – those required materials he couldn't make manually and thus couldn't be used to draw from his inventory.
To make up for that the system could draw individual materials from his inventory and combine them into compounds he had already made – brass for example could be made with the system using copper and zinc without Innearth actually having to figure out how to combine them.
It was a worthy trade-off. Actually, makes me want to try and make or buy more compounds from the market – even if they are expensive – just so I can recreate them as needed.
Excited to do something practical with his new toy. Innearth designed something with a concept he hadn't touched since he was a young core.
A crazy ball of Earth and Air. Somehow the minor trauma of one nearly killing him was completely dwarfed by his run in with a demon.
Now he just tried to think how it could be useful.
Well I don't think it's useful making it bigger. Even if it's not as bad as the Demon it was still uncontrollable. Or maybe not...maybe I just have to figure out how to control it? The jumpers were kind of controlled with lots of Earth maybe if I try to use Water or Fire? Then again, I don’t know how that would work. It's not like it was a combination of the two – more like just the two elements interacting in a negative way while remaining separate?
Innearth started to modify his turtle template. He didn't really have a goal with this monster other than to see if he could control the crazy spinning ball somehow. Just to see if he could you know? Adding a thin tether to a crazy ball in his inventory, he attached it to the turtle’s cannon and housed it inside.
I wonder if they count as a single monster or two because of the string connecting them?
Checking the system interface, he saw no matter how thin he made it the ball on a string was part of its body. Actually – just as he thought that, it stopped counting. But the size was hair thin at that point.
He could place a small core inside of it and then it would have a different mind...but the original ball had not needed a core. And considering he was planning on them being basically ammo that would make for an expensive ball to simply throw at people.
Accepting what he had and waiting for it to print he didn't really care that it was taking much longer because of the Air mana in it. It's not like I'm doing the grunt work :3 I might start using Air mana more often if all it costs me is time and not a headache.
It made him wonder if he could make multiple monsters at once and he quickly set up a lesser snake as a test – the second monster was set up and took his mana before starting to print just like the other. Wanting to push this to test Innearth kept adding more monsters until instead of being made a monster was added to a queue. 6 monsters. Okay. The same as the number of floors Innearth had.
Going to have to check when I have a new floor and see if that changes it to 7, but I’m nearly positive I can make the number of floors I have in monsters simultaneously…and queue things up indefinitely as long as I have the mana for it.
Staring at his current mana in horror as he realized his absent-minded test – along with his previous level – had brought him down to 2/630 mana and started to make him feel dizzy. It's much easier to spend more mana than I have with this option. That was dumb of me. Waiting for his mana to tick back up Innearth watched the system print out his monsters.
A while later the first monster finally finished forming. Immediately, without the turtle being able to even shoot its body part, the ball broke off and whizzed around. The tether grew more and more tangled and knotted, before it hung sadly. Twitching. The ball jumping around slightly tied to the turtle's side, after having wrapped around the whole monster multiple times in a mad dance at its short freedom.
Playing around with his schematic he saw that making them completely separate allowed it to be its own monster...but something about this whole scenario felt fishy.
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Innearth: Hey m8 I have a question.
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Bringer Of Serene Eternity: Come to ask for my assistance once more disciple? Ewhahaha.
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Innearth: Yeah, you separate the core from your spirits somehow right? How do you keep them the same monster?
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Bringer Of Serene Eternity: Ahhh yess. Okay listen closely. They are still connected though their tether is made of Mind mana and nothing of the physical sort.
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Innearth: So, like, link two mental materials? I'm sorry that doesn't make sense either. I've linked my spiders and bats and they both act like their own creatures, despite communicating with each other constantly.
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Bringer Of Serene Eternity: Ahh do they both have a core?
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Innearth: Yes? Are you saying if I made one of them with a core and the other not they would function like your spirits???
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Bringer Of Serene Eternity: Undoubtedly. Without a core it functions like a body part that's detached.
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Innearth: Why?
Innearth: What about if I have a tier 1 core in one part and a tier 2 in the other?
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Bringer Of Serene Eternity: I don't think so. You could always check but if it has a separate core that's not able to be connected with a mana circuit it's going end up as separate souls...and then even with the mental connection, without a physical connection it will end up as a separate monster.
Bringer Of Serene Eternity: It's good to be curious Innearth, you're more curious than my other friends but sometimes the answer doesn't really matter. It just is. Magic is shaped by intent, so maybe If you truly desire to make a detached monster with separate cores you could come up with something.
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Wait what? Bose had other friends?
Innearth felt kind of mean for thinking he was the only core who could stand to talk to Bose...of course there are others...now I want to know what they are like.
Briefly forgetting his original topic he latched onto that point.
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Innearth: You should introduce me to your other friends sometime. I haven’t met anyone new in a while.
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Suddenly struck with a thought he messaged Amy and Abe as well.
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Innearth: Hey m8, Do you have any friends you’d think I like? I want to meet all your friends. Friend of my friend is friend.
Innearth: Hey Amy~ Who do you talk to besides me? Feel like introducing me sometime?
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All three started to happily try and introduce him to people. For some reason they liked that he had asked? He was just curious but based on the responses he had done something good.
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Abe: Yeah bro. I’ve made friends with this chill Core called “Ze Mad Doctor” You have got to meat him. Sorry meet him. He’s rubbing off on me. 10/10. I also started talking to Bose recently. But I only did that because I knew you were friends and I want to be buds with my buds bud y’know? Don’t worry between the 3 of you, you’re by far my favorite <3
Abe: Hey! I’ll tell doc to message you when he’s free, he’s a blast.
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Innearth: …sure I’ll try and talk to him again.
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Bringer Of Serene Eternity: Of course! I have correspondence with several unique cores. There’s a core by the name Aeirh who’s just lovely. She likes using Earth mana despite having chosen both Air mana and then doubled down on an abstract form of it – Incorporeal mana. Really weird the amount of effort she puts into making Earth constructs. I see no use for the stuff no offence.
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Innearth: None taken, I barely touch Air mana either. Seems much less useful than Earth.
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Bringer Of Serene Eternity: Anyways, there is also doc, Already introduced you to him and I’ve started to talk to Abe again.
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Innearth: Alright! Can you introduce me to Aeirh sometime?
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Bringer Of Serene Eternity: I’d be delighted to send her your way.
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Amy: Hmm I guess I can introduce you to a few of my friends. They are all older than you…but then again I think you’ve out-levelled everyone but Jake so does age even matter?
Amy: I can introduce Jake, Brutality Queen, and YYY. Jake's from my tier 1 group and an Earth core like you. He went with harmonic water as his second choice however. There are also xero and 9 but we’ve drifted apart as soon as we got more cores to talk to. Queen is a Life core like me but started with Earth. She’s…a bit rougher with her monsters than I’d have liked but really does know her stuff.
Amy: Finally There is YYY. He’s a...to be honest, we don’t know what either of his affinity choices are. Don’t know what his original element was – he never uses it and doesn’t tell us. I’m guessing he was the mythical “unattributed” type because I’ve never heard him use one of the base 4 elements even once. He uses the 4 secondary elements exclusively and doesn’t seem to favour one.
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Innearth: That’s…more people than I expected to have to meet but sure – introduce me to them all!
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Innearth returned to his half-finished mostly forgotten monster schematic while he waited for his friend's friends to start rolling in.
Not really caring about it anymore he absentmindedly finished the concept – half a dozen mental cores and a mental tether between the crazy ball and mother turtle.
Adding several more crazy balls and separate mind bridges, Innearth tweaked each one in an attempt to make them more dangerous. Each had several small sharp-angled spikes so that when they spun they could saw into stuff and each ball was implanted with a few kinetic materials to spin it even faster. Next, the amount of protective bouncing balls was increased to 5 (copy-paste of the previous cannon as a last-minute change), before Innearth set it to print.
It was barely 5 minutes (no time at all) since he had messaged his friends before the first of the new messages started rolling in.