It’s most definitely flesh. The amount of blood mana is unmistakable. Also, a mouse stole a chunk and ate it while I was watching. Wonderful. Ok, time to reap what I’ve sown.
That’s a sizable amount of blood mana, enough to resume my previous projects. I guess… No, I just can’t allow it to look like that, it needs to go. What to put in that pond, then… Actually, why not have it be a damp ditch instead of a pond. I think there are plenty of types of creatures which prefer wet dirt to undergrowth for their environment, even if I don’t make them, they might come if I have a place for them.
That matter settled, I turn my attention to my Grazers, which is what I’ve decided to call the rodent-deer. With this healthy amount of blood mana, I can kick start making more than just five. Twenty eggs with them should be enough, six males and fourteen females sounds like a healthy enough breeding population. The plan is to keep enough of a population to keep overgrowth down, and then harvest the rest for mana. I’m sure it’ll be fine.
The flesh pit did sort of give me an idea, disgusting as it, and my idea, are. My idea is to make what is effectively a living ball of tentacles, to grab prey and drag it down into water. I don’t have a proper lake, but a test run of this creature has been placed in a solitary egg in the spawning pond.
My perimeter of plants is nowhere close to the end of the land I cleared for stuff to grow, but that’s fine. I need more holes for more water. I think I’m going to clear out a large chunk of my foliage to the… north? Whatever direction is right to where the sun rises from. I want a lake, big enough for all my creatures to drink from it without needing to venture to the spawning pool. It will take many, many plants worth of water mana to fill it, but that’s also why I’m making it so big, in the hopes that eventually, rainfall will fill it somewhat for me.
I’m still nowhere near close to what my mind immediately thinks of when I hear ‘dungeon’, but I’ve got a plan for that too. My trees grow four to five times as big as naturally occurring trees, so I think it’d be the perfect environment to make a sort of ‘Mirkwood x The Lost Woods’ jungle vibe. My giant spider, my bugs, and more creepy and dangerous stuff the closer you get to me.
To that end, I send a wave of plant mana over the green sea with thoughts of poison ivy.
Hopefully the people that live here hate it as much as I do.
I also want to finally flesh out my canopy layer. I’d been more or less ignoring it, but with the plan now to make myself and my surroundings into some giant, hostile, haunted forest, it would be prudent to choke out the sun as much as possible. My plants on the forest floor… I don’t mind modifying them to thrive in lower light conditions. In a moment of clarity, I leave the immediate area around my own tree and my pond and such open to light.
It’s not the smartest idea, I admit, but I want my ‘important’ locations to all have access to full sunlight. Similarly, I’ll leave the area Cytra made her main web in as is, to not encroach on her. She’s been quite happy making webs and doing a bit of light hunting, so I suspect she’s adapting to her lack of properly portioned food sources by being less active and nabbing whatever ducks are dumb enough to leave the pond too low to the ground.
And there it is again. I’m beginning to realize that whenever I run out of ‘things’ to do, I look for her. I guess you could say it’s like my break. Right, time to stop beating around the bush, I’ve got orange/fire mana to play with.
Not much, but I’ve got some, let's make something.
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I spend around a day straight in manavision, just playing with designs for plants and creatures, without getting any designs I’m confident would take ‘fire’ mana in any sort of positive way, when Cytra pokes me. That’s right, Cytra poked me, not the other way around.
How did you do that?
‘I was looking through Erika’s memories for stuff about magic, and just tried doing something I saw there. I’m sorry, I didn’t want to disturb you, master.’ No, that’s quite alright, it’s honestly rather impressive you’re learning that sort of thing faster than I am.
‘What do you mean? Don’t you use magic to make… everything?’ I mean, I guess so, but I can’t do the stuff that I think of when I hear ‘magic’, like throwing fire or ice around and such.
‘Erika called those types of magic “Black Magic”. I’m not sure why though.’ I don’t really know what to make of that, but thank you for the information. Hmm… Black Magic, Spellweaving… Cytra? Do you think you could reproduce the pattern the druid used for her spell with your webs? I want to know if anything happens.
‘I will endeavor this, master.’ Thank you, my dear. Also… don’t be afraid to talk to me whenever you wish to.
With that, I feel Cytra’s attention shift through my feeler. Looking at it, it looks like she more or less just reached up to where I was floating in manavision and ‘grabbed’ my attention, quite literally. That’s a bit neat, I guess.
My request with the webs is an idea I hope bears fruit, but not the most important thing I got out of that interaction. Spellweaving. And the fact that Cytra thinks I’m doing magic already. What if I tried to make, say, a breeze, instead of a plant. Can’t possibly go wrong, can it?
----------------------------------------
Two days of experimenting. Well, no, one nap, and one day of experimenting. Zero progress. Cytra’s experiment with the webs didn’t work either. For a consolation prize, I guess, I’m watching the first Grazer be born.
It’s… an ugly thing, crawling out of the water. And it somehow looks worse after shaking some of the water off. This one is female, and small right now, but looking at it, I can see how it will grow into my design to be about the size of a husky. As for why it is ugly… It has the beady black eyes of a rat, except… large. Like an inch in diameter. That’s not all, its front teeth are visible through its lips, and I can see how the skin just barely stretches over them. It is also quite chunky, and completely covered in inch long brown hairs. It also stands on legs entirely too tall for the way it looks. My disgusting little creation takes a bite of a nearby green sea plant, tears it off, and switches to its molars to chew. All while I mentally facepalm.
I made those plants cause irritation, completely forgetting that I designed a creature with the expressed purpose of eating them… One wave of blood mana later, and I hope that’s settled. Or not, I can see my Grazer looking uncomfortable and trying to wash its mouth with water from the spawning pool while my changes slowly take effect. Oh well.
I can see Cytra eyeing the thing with fascination from one of my tree’s branches. I’m sure she’ll ask me about it later, but I think I’ll leave the decision of whether or not she wants to eat them up to her.
Alright, Grazers are… a success. Not my proudest one, but a success. Next stop, figuring out how to get more types of-
‘Master? Something just tripped over some of my larger webs.’
Indeed something did. A couple somethings. Humans, two of them, I think the two from before. What were their names? I forgot. Plus two elves. Scratch that, an elf and some sort of half-elf or something. They don’t look friendly. At least, the way that the elf is cursing as he hacks off the web is.
“Fuck! I thought this place was just a small clearing with minor plant mutants, Kenny!” Kenny and Marc! I remember now.
“Don’t spose Erika’s alive, then.” The half elf says grimly while helping the elf to his feet.
“Oi. Me and Kenny did good recon work here. It’s just a lot different from when we’s were here.” Marc’s voice only seems to agitate the elven duo, which is mildly amusing, but Kenny steps in before I get to see any more outbursts.
“Shut up, all three of you. Alen, use your arcane sight. I want to know if this is a-”
Nope. I’m out of there. If Cytra could see me when she was looking for me, I don’t want them to find out I was spying. That said… Now I don’t know why they’re here. Though, since they mentioned the druid…
Cytra, dear. The intruders are adventurers, I think. You may kill them, I won’t stop you.