Nauvis was not a smart planet, and she only excelled at one topic, making her creatures better, the planet was incapable of something so complex as forming a plan, but she was more than capable of improving on evolutions designs.

The main thing Nauvis focused her limited intelligence on were the characteristics and potentials of its newer life forms, and the ways Nauvis could improve them. So when Nauvis developed a particularly violent or successful life form the planet became more active and began learning quicker, essentially growing in intelligence the more complex and diverse her ecosystems became. And Nauvis had very complex ecosystems, well everywhere except on the surface, and even that was rapidly becoming more complex and interesting.

The cause of this increased interest was the current focus of bulk of Nauvis’s attention, the human, with all his novel tools and weapons he was carving out a little slice of their surface, taking more resources, and growing his strength. He had even begun modifying his own body to grow stronger, something Nauvis had never seen done, sure some of her creations would wrap their wounds or remove parasites, some even used simple armor, but none had taken it to the extent the human did.

The planet was well versed in studying a species potential, avenues that a creature would grow and develop on, but the human had defied all of the planet's predictions and had grown at a nearly unprecedented rate. His creations moved in swarms over the land, defending his territory under the direction of one of his thought constructs, another thing the planet had never before seen, and his den grew larger and stronger every day.

He was fashioning himself an entirely new ecosystem on the planet's surface, one of metal.

Nauvis had noted a few problems in her human though, Nauvis had experience with all aspects of a creature's makeup, and there were a few glaring holes in their humans. Organs that served no purpose, joints placed under to much stress, a horribly mangled transition from quadrupedal to bipedal, a reliance on vitamins and minerals that the body could not produce, the planet could go on, and those were only the traits inherent in the species as a whole, not the problems specific to her human.

It was almost like the flaws were deliberately placed to annoy the planet too, and Nauvis new placed was the correct term, she was well familiar with modifying her own species and could recognize the additions for what they were. Artificial limitations, something Nauvis only did rarely, and only if a species threatened to wipe out all of her cultivated life, Nauvis loved conflict yes, but she also loved diversity and complex life, only having a single species on her planet? Unthinkable.

Already some of the restrictions were being triggered, and while it was not yet causing effects beyond discomfort, presumably as a deterrent, Nauvis would not be letting such inferior genetic manipulation slow or kill one of her favorite animals, so she set to work.

Nauvis didn’t really understand what triggered each restriction, but Nauvis did not need to understand something to remove it, or even really how to remove it at all, but a planet will made such things trivialities. A quick flex of will filled her human with a deep need to sleep, and once he had reached his den and entered a deep slumber Nauvis began making changes.

His brain, full of such complex interbalances, both chemical and biological, was something that Navis was still figuring out, it being the main defining feature of the human in the first place. But that didn't mean Nauvis wouldn’t make some changes to it. The node in her humans brain that controlled and managed the information from his creations was to be the focal point of her attentions, considering it was the spot both under the most strain and restrictions. The node had already been adapting on its own, both from its own robust designs and Nauvis’s passive attention, growing larger and more dense, and connecting more with the rest of the brain. This was something Nauvis was all too happy to encourage, forcing the node to grow dense pathways throughout the brain.

These changes necessitated more changes, forcing other areas of the brain out of the way, and making them more efficient and denser to maintain function, ensuring that the different nodes all linked up correctly, mistakes here had ended a few of her earliest creatures, and just in general ensuring her changes would be solely beneficial.

It took a few hours to finish all the groundwork, and it would take a few days for the changes to truly finish, but by the end of those few days her human would be able to grow without those pesky constraints, or the ones actively controlling his growth at least.

Considering Nauvis still had a few hours before her human woke up, the planet saw no need to stop with her changes there. The human had added new organs to its body, but he had neglected to properly integrate them, or perhaps he was simply unable, still it just seemed unfinished, and Nauvis couldn’t have any of her creations remain unfinished.

Still the next modifications would require much greater finesse than the planet was used to, she couldn’t afford to break the humans components like she did with its metal transport, or how she occasionally damaged a few of her less resilient species with modifications.

First his second stomach, it currently only supplied his new organs with energy, leaving his original body entirely to his first stomach. The solution here was a little more complex than his brain, if only because Nauvis was unfamiliar with some of the components she was dealing with. Still she would make up for her shortcomings with a more brute force approach, the human already had more organisms within his body to help with digestion, adding another that can convert energy into sugars he can digest is inefficient at best, but possible. It was the work of a few moments to modify an already present organism to suit her needs, before setting it to work.

That modification would solve a number of problems with her human’s design, mainly the body's inability to produce the vitamins and minerals it required, and while the modification would not be enough to meet all of the body's nutritional needs it would be a great improvement over the current state of affairs.

Normally Nauvis would hesitate to modify a creature so heavily, she was not a creative intelligence and when changing creatures she tended to follow the same path, so when the planet modified its creatures to extensively they would all wind up with similar traits and behaviors, eliminating the variety Nauvis so adored. But the human was different enough that subtle modifications could be made without ruining his unique traits, as instead of being biological in nature they were instead mental. Even with an entirely different body the mind would remain.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Not that Nauvis had any intentions to overtly modify the human, the planet was merely going to refine the modifications the body had already undergone.

And if Nauvis was already working on the digestive system she might as well improve the microbiome, it was already a highly efficient machine, helped along by a few mechanical components the planet didn’t quite understand, but that didn’t mean the planet didn’t see a few spots to improve, redundant genetic code left from when the bacteria dwelt in other environments could be removed or modified, increased resistance to changes in the environment in case homeostasis failed, increasing the reproductive ability of the more helpful bacteria while enhancing those same helpful traits, and while Nauvis wouldn’t remove the unhelpful bacteria, whether merely benign or actively harmful, Nauvis was fully willing to increase the immune system's ability to differentiate between the harmful and helpful bacteria.

Nauvis would never weaken a species, it goes against everything the planet stands for, so the harmful bacteria would not be removed, and increasing the immune system's effectiveness was as far as the world would go.

Both the stomach and the brain could have been improved, but they were not inherently flawed. The groundwork might not have been ideal but it was certainly good enough to function on a longer term basis. The same could not be less true for a few of the humans' other features.

The human Nauvis had was not a standard human, and Nauvis was well aware of this, so her human was not nearly as flawed as an unmodified one. He did not have the redundant organs and all of his organs and muscles were optimized to be as efficient as a standard human could be. But Nauvis did not want a human that was merely standard, and based on his own modifications her human agreed, now she wanted a human that was a pinnacle of its race, one that was everything it could be, like all of her creatures.

And with the current joint and bone structure of her human being nowhere near “ideal”, it was an efficient mess that was set to fail far before the human's lifespan came to an end. Her human had already largely solved the durability problem, so the only change she needed to make was to the joints lifespan and the flexibility, increasing the bones ability to regenerate was a simple enough solution, and taking note of how the wires were weaved through the skin around the joint Nauvis made another modification to how exactly the tendons regenerated, if they came back a little more metallic each time… well they would certainly be more durable.

That was not the end of the bone modifications though, human bones were responsible for more than just providing the body structure. They also produce the body's blood, and with all the chemicals the human had added to his blood the blood cells themselves were in dire need of modifications, so they could thrive in their new environment.

The chemicals in the blood were not actively harmful, her human was too smart to put something like that inside his body, in fact most of the chemicals worked with the platelets and white blood cells to enhance both, but that did not mean it couldn't be improved further. It was a work of a few minutes to rewrite how the bones produce blood, and all of the newly produced blood would work better and the cells would last longer, reducing waste.

Nauvis as a planet did not actually have anything similar to bacteria or viruses, most of her creatures were larger and more directly predatory, so the immune system on the whole was something Nauvis was nearly unfamiliar with, in fact the closet thing Nauvis had to compare the humans immune system to were the bugs, and even that was reaching. So while Nauvis wanted to improve the human immune system the planet did not yet have enough of an understanding to make anything but the most minor of improvements. Increasing the individual components effectiveness rather than the system as a whole.

The human musculature was … passable, the systems were less efficient than Nauvis’s own but there were not true flaws in it, or at least the flaws were minor. The chemicals the human used to grow the muscles were working as well as the could be and the metal woven through the humans skin did not constrain the muscle, still allowing the muscles to fully expand and shrink as needed, but Nauvis could note a similarity between the muscles and the coiled wires throughout the skin, and it gave the planet ideas.

Using the same general idea as the tendons Nauvis set a few of the muscles to regenerate with a more robust structure each time, not quite as metallic as that would fracture and weaken under the more constant flexing, and while that would still be less strain than standard muscle the added weight would but even more stress on the joints and reduce the muscles overall effectiveness. The traces of metal mixed with the more durable cell structures Nauvis had would be more than sufficient to improve the muscles endurance, if lacking dramatic improvements to the strength itself.

The modifications continued, some more subtle and some overt as the planet reshaped the humans body to better reach the ideal it strove for, making changes to further weave the machine and man together, working flesh and metal working as one, changing what had once been 2 systems working in concert into one, working as seamlessly as she could make it.

And throughout all of this the human slept unaware, not knowing he would wake as something fundamentally different.

Nauvis did not usually have the intelligence to make active changes to her creations on the surface, her intelligence directly correlated to the complexity of the life in the area she was focusing, in the ocean depths the planet's mind was nearly unparalleled making creatures that defied comprehension, but on the surface? While the sole creature that inhabited the surface was a complex one certainly, it was still just one creature. Not the true ecosystems Nauvis needed to flourish.

But when the planet flooded the seas and the oceans creatures came to the surface, and when the bugs rose in complexity to fight those same creatures, well the planet's intelligence could actually be called something approaching an “intelligence”. Add onto that the concepts and ideas stolen from the human mind? Simple problem solving and things like cause and effect? The planet could actually understand the correlation between complexity and intelligence, and the planet could begin improving on its previous solutions, learning and adapting using the same principle the human operated on.

What happens when you teach a god the scientific method?

With an understanding that her actions would have consequences, and the ability to guess at those consequences the planet began to plan.

Nauvis did not need complex life on the surface to be intelligent, Nauvis needed complex life on the surface to be intelligent on the surface. And Nauvis needed to be intelligent on the surface to understand the human’s thoughts, to understand such large concepts.

So complex life on the surface needed to be fostered, the bugs were complex, and the human was complex, and in fighting they formed a sort of ecosystem that was rapidly growing in complexity, which was good.

The flooded areas were teeming with complex life, being the source of the bulk of Nauvis’s intelligence, this was excellent, but if the flooded area changed from merely “flooded” to “permanently submerged” the land would no longer be consider the “surface” so it could not be a long term solution.

The long term solution needed to be more complex life that truly resided on the surface, but any life that did develop would be quickly snuffed out by the insects.

The chain of logic continued, and Nauvis knew she needed to find a solution before her intelligence moved beyond her reach.