My first action in my sudden arrival after searching for telltale signs of monitoring spell clusters and other detection in my immediate vicinity is searching for resources. No fancy or complex spell work is needed for this initially as I simply walk around the small upshot of land with a stone up thrust of its likely long dead volcanic origins. The light and contents of the ocean making the water a rather neon purple in color darkening significantly from the black sand of the beach and ocean floor.

My limited energy pool and basic senses confirming the salt deposits and a surprising note of iodine in the water of this alien ocean. Giving some hope of a more efficient breakdown of the trace elements in the water into energy for fueling some ritual spells for producing more raw power at my disposal. While not defenseless and not sign of foreign spell structures on this world I need to establish more strength while I am relatively benign and unnoticed by anyone who could in fact threaten my growth.

I had a suspicion I would not be able to stay with the Necromancer very long given his dislike of confrontation and the ultimate demonstration of my basic stage of adequacy in developing and producing all I would need to grow on my own. The very air of this world would likely kill me if not for the processes build into the very lining of my lungs as part of the system of spells used to keep me alive. Eventually to be replaced completely as I learn to convert my body into a construct of my own image of perfection. Far ahead in my capacity but a target to achieve in the end.

I begin making long filtering channels in the sand leading from the ocean, using very small amounts of my energy to melt the sand partially into more stable and lasting routes to refine out the salts and impurities in the water, using some of the residual quartz washed up from the ocean floor to purify larger quantities of the water into something more easily refined further by my internal protections than drinking the water straight, even if I think my protections could handle it, dealing with the impurities internally is not pleasant after learning that if I tried to rely on my internal processes alone would lead to kidney stones at least and outright poisoning at worst I play it safe. Having exhausted the small amount of particle energy in my reserves in the development of these external capture mechanisms in the hopes to rapidly increase my energy gains and fuel the further increases to my energy capacity itself through the ritual spell the necromancer guided me to develop.

I feel the eastern fictions do not adequately describe the sheer toil that is self-cultivation. The internal mechanism mortals have for even gathering energy is so small to get even the same energy expenditure as a fart would take you a year on anything but the most saturated worlds. The process of building arrays of spellwork and ritual engines to refine much more efficiently and spanning much larger areas still takes days compared to the years of running on purely internal structures.

This is further compounded when you can build rituals to self-replicate and feed their gained energy back into producing more gathering and production before collapsing and recycling those structures after depleting the easy to gather particles in close proximity. I do not have the resources or time to wait for more far reaching and autonomous resource gathering as I plan to strip this world of all I can quickly while preparing to fuel my escape plans. I want clear exit capacity before I go doing anything to risk my presence on this world.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

After a few hours of allowing my energy reserves and capacity to grow a bit farther than empty, I quickly form the first true bit of necromancy I was taught as a means to feed on environmentally hostile worlds. All the plant life and likely animals of this world are pure poison based on the atmospheric presence and other evident factors. There is some universal compounds commonly found in almost all living entities. One specifically in the energy transfer process being ATP. Fueling my little ritual with once more most of my energy shows a slow decay of my targeted faux-palm tree other harvesting replicator spells flood out steadily turning all the life on this little rock in the ocean; consuming the little packets of energy restoring and bolstering my reserves as I use the broken down compounds to feed more directly than what my body would be capable of doing.

It’s not a steak but it keeps me alive. With the basic functions started in the ‘Stay alive don’t die’ portion of being on an unknown world, it’s time to consider more practical objectives. I am functionally in for a very long wait time here with the slow accumulation of power kick started. My basic survival is stabilized and I am in for the most part a secure position in the middle of nowhere.

My first new spell development isn’t going to be for self-defense at this point, there isn’t really a dire need on an abandoned island that I can walk the edges of in under an hour. So chaining reconnaissance and power acceleration is now my priority. I can’t know for sure that this world isn’t being monitored for outsiders or at least for actual magic use based on just this island. Stealth and spying are going to be tools for my growth for a very long time until running away is added to that subset of skills for survival.

So I bury myself a good four feet into the volcanic sand and settle in for the long wait. I’m filtering everything I need to survive anyway so I may as well not make it easy for someone to find me. As I slowly shut down into a more preserving state, I start building my own sensory constructs and let them bleed out into the sand and ocean. While slowly constructing a energy refining process into the bedrock of the island.

The sensors are fairly simple, they operate almost in a Nano machine capacity looking for complex energy structures like itself and breaking them down after communicating back to a process that records and learns about the structure while providing me a chance to review the data for patterns. The Lich explaining how to use photon pairing to integrate parts is wonderful since anyone who can track me back with this method is unlikely to notice or I would have been found already just from the method of my arrival.

The Methodological arms race is tricky when you are low in power but high in knowledge. So rudimentary and simplistic countermeasures are how I need to start and save my power for growth and development. To this end my best defenses for the moment are natural ones, hide in the dirt and don’t attract attention. Listen and watch for danger. Have enough firepower stored to close any wandering eyes on my activities.

After some days of consideration and analysis of the structure of the things I am building, their features really start to make me kick myself. The lich is messing with me even when woefully out of reach. His idea of fun is to fundamentally make myself look like a core dungeon?