I made Bryn a nice little hunting knife for now. About twelve inches long, grooved, brass hilt wrapped in leather. Workaday stainless steel. Then I tested the leather. It’s, uh, it’s leather. Like, I just imagined leather and poof! Leather came out, but this is actually dead animal skin with garbage degraded DNA. Gave me an idea.

I shelved it for the moment as I went to greet Bryn coming back from the village. She greeted me cheerfully and started babbling something about how people are made out of things and everything is lumpy orbs and things which seem to be still are moving etc. etc. Not especially coherent, but cute. Gal just discovered cellular biology, I think. A historic moment, but here I am looking at her like a cat that hunted a stuffed toy.

Gets me thinking about science. I try to touch her, but while I can get much closer I still get the whole touching a hot stove jerk back. Dulls her mood a little, but she goes right back to babbling. She sits down on the couch and meditates while changing expressions. I getcha girl, biology is a bit gross.

Again, science. I could absolutely whip out a few high-school biology diagrams right now, but do I want to? That changes the narrative of history- it’s no longer her discovery, but enlightenment from me. In the future, I think I’ll ask a few probing questions, but leave the discovering and thinking up to her.

For now I try not to distract her, telling Borb to lower the volume a bit, as I make a coffee table in front of her. This one is a little special: It’s redwood. Giant sequoia. Step one, success. I put the knife down where she can see it and then wander off. I make another chunk of redwood, this one I specify as being green, freshly harvested, untreated. Another success!

I tap into it and start copying down the DNA- or rather, remembering it in my freakishly powerful little dungeon brain. I grab a little bush in the tunnels and start copying the DNA over- then I have an epiphany and just try and make a redwood seed. This doesn’t work, unfortunately. Back to frankensteining. I’ll move into the caves.

Wait a tick- if I have to do this the hard way, am I not supposed to? Is this a dark and foreboden technique? I… Don’t care. If this is banned the gods can send me another blue box. They seem to be cool with beginner’s mistakes. Let’s just pretend I never thought about this. Hopefully they can’t read my mind.

Coughs.

After a bit I do the flashing where I make the thingy the way the thingy is supposed to be- restoration pulse? Updating the DNA? Flashing the bio? Heh. I like that one. Anyways, I flash the bio and the bush turns into a little giant sequoia. Step 2, complete. Step 3, embiggenizing.

I use my own tendrils to prepare the way, carving tunnels through the stone for the roots to grow into, linking the little tree to the underground lake I had made earlier. Then I make it not so little.

I’m able to direct the essence into growth through confusing processes. Just like, hey, grow. It just works. I figured I'd have to fuck around with hormones and stuff but nope! The process is automated. There's an intense twinkly constellation of runes involved, twice as large as my entire 3d printing array, which, of course, is also under heavy use.

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I consider implanting a core and hooking it up to the tree soul and making a big ol magic world tree, but nah… Not so soon after the tower. I stop growing the tree soon after it hits the surface- it looks like a bizarrely huge bush, but it’s about seventy feet tall, with only five feet above the surface. I did this because I want to.

Then I turn to using this technique I just invented on other things. The generic meat and eggs that I produce turns out to be chicken. I can also make beef. So I do. Then I take the dna and turn some random birds and rodents into chickens and cows. They're kinda feral looking, distinctly different from the hyperdomesticated breeds I'm familiar with from Earth. Sadly, I can't make horse or camel meat. Sheep and goat meat gives me the same critter.

Like, the exact same critter. Clones.

Double-checking, all the chickens and cows are clones as well. All of them female. Fortunately, I'm able to specify ram, rooster, and bull flesh to fix that, but apparently I only have two templates for each species, one of each sex. I suppose I can fix any inbreeding problems manually later.

Just for fun, I make an eight-foot-tall bull with all the drake upgrades. Why not?

Everyone is sleeping so I tunnel under the village and start building them a nice lil snorb-powered fountain, giving them a source of water that isn’t tainted by all the ick going through the tunnels. I make it in the shape of a woman wearing a mask holding a cornucopia, the water spilling out the cornucopia. The snorb is buried underground with a pipe, uh, piping the essence up, with the water array inscribed in the statue itself.

Then I try and give them a permanent campfire via another snorb piping up natural gas. Doesn’t work. Can’t make natural gas. Don’t know how to do it manually and it’s not in my library. Damn. After some experimenting I discover I CAN make sperm oil- that’s the premo whale oil they harvest from the heads of sperm whales. Makes a fantastic lamp oil and this production method is whale free, so I’ll use this.

...Hmmm.

Yes, I can make fish meat. Tuna, snapper, no shark, no salmon, frog meat, generic fish gives me some fish I don’t know, uh… Clams? Yeah, I can make clam meat. Eels, yes. Pufferfish, no. Fish eggs, yes. Not sure what kind. Squid and octopus, yes.

I need to save this for later, I’ll stop by the underground lake and populate it then. Hopefully I can twist any animal into any animal and there are no weird side effects from declaring rats fish.

Instead, I go back to the statue and edit it so that she’s holding a candle- if you turn a valve it opens up an essence pipe which causes sperm oil to gush out. I add a separate basin below the candle so it won’t mix with the water and a spout so you can just put a bucket below the basin and collect the oil easily.

I think about making the cornucopia twistable so you could switch between water, milk, and honey, but while that’s quite poetic it’d waste the effort I’ve already made by giving them beehives and the cows I just made. Give a man a fish and such, ya know? Maybe later if I ever build a great big palace for Zetli. Or Bryn. Or both. Bryn would make a terrible queen or empress or whatever, but she can have a palace. I’ll give her some symbolic role if she chooses to stay around. Herald of Ezekial or something. Or… Something else that doesn’t involve talking to people.

I spend the rest of the night or mid-day or whatever sleep cycle this is tunneling around under the basin, building an irrigation system a few feet below the surface and planting the sequoia seeds hither and thither. Plant a few more snorbs to make water. When I’m done this crater is going to end up a little Garden of Eden, a slice of paradise. Or a nightmarish jungle filled with deadly demonized animals.

Either or.

Maybe both?