Nameless Core
Level 0.
[Accumulate 300 iota worth of mana to advance and unlock your phenotype]
Control: 1 // Intuition: 1 // Empathy: 2
Domain: 300 meters.
—
– Blessings –
[Reach lv. 5 to unlock]
– Mana Production –
Ethereal: 0.2 IpH (Waking) // 1.0 IpH (Torpor)
– Reserves –
102.4i Ethereal Mana
I was.
I came into existence with a collapsing energy wave, ambient mana reaching such a saturation point that it crystallized into a single perfect jewel. I was a natural consequence of the energies that pervaded the world. I was a dungeon core.
But I had been something else.
There was a time when a man grew flowers here, on the barren island where I appeared. He had lived a very lonely life. He had farmed the soil until the weary ache of the day reached his bones, retired with a meager meal, and returned to work the next day.
The island on which I was born was very far from any civilization.
It was a singular dot in a deep blue sea.
I was not the man. His soul had passed on into Eternity. I was, however, crystallized into his socket, my roots of feldspar-colored stone reaching into his skull. I had access to his memories, and a certain kinship.
So I appreciated what he had done.
His house was a small hut made of palm leaves and mud thatched together, with crude doors and windows covered by netting he’d bought from the occasional passing trader. These were necessary to keep the mosquitoes out. The whole island was a malarial fever-swamp, a place of mangrove forests, peat bogs, deep quicksand pits, and stagnant pools of water that birthed buzzing insects in the thousands.
I found this satisfactory in many ways — it would be easy to construct murderous traps from all of these elements, for instance.
But he had wanted something else.
Outside the hut was a small clearing where the earth had been stripped down to workable soil, tilled, and planted with what little crops he could convince to grow. The soil had always been wrong; it was acidic and lacking in nitrogens. The old growth trees had long ago sucked up so much of the island’s natural resources that precious little else could survive on the scant nutrients left in the soil.
Nevertheless, there were squash plants, a few rows of tubers, and a patch of pale green flowers shaped like tiny stars. A fence. A path. A ruined shed where he’d briefly tried to keep a pig, before it had been eaten by a much larger predator.
I could access his memory of the night the pig died. Its terrified squealing rent the air apart, a desperate, ugly sound, sawing from guttural grunts to high-pitched terror again and again.
But the man was defeated, weak from lack of food, and nearing the end of his natural life.
He had covered his ears and tried to ignore the death of the animal he had named Esper and allowed onto his sanctuary, this island.
Perhaps the only living creature that he had any kinship with.
It was a sad story. The island was made of sad stories. There had been a village here once, a fishing community. Its nets had trawled the reefs at the edge of the island for bright, flopping fish, and divers with sleek muscular bodies had descended into the fields of oysters that lay in the sand to collect meat and pearls.
That was when the man was young, before…
Ah.
I accessed a memory that was more than just a memory. I felt, through my connection with the man, the terror of the Void.
The Void was the thing at the edge of things; the place where blue water and cloud-lined sky stopped dead, replaced by an infinite blackness that rose and fell in violent waves, that sucked like clutching mud at your feet, that tried to drag you down to fall forever into nothingness.
It was where abominations were born.
The Void was not far from the island. When he was young, the man had fled a brighter, happier version of this rocky isthmus, creeping away on a ship camouflaged to appear empty. They had not been attacked by abominations– or rather, while they had been attacked many times, they had always repelled the monstrosities with spear and magic.
Instead, they had been accused of trading with the void-dwellers. Of interbreeding and intermarrying with them, polluting their human bloodline.
The Ald-Hau-Nari Empire had arrived with a fleet of warships, their red sails shaped like the fins of sharks. Cannons boomed and fire washed over the water in oily slicks. The night was ruined by flame and smoke.
Most of the village was slaughtered on mere suspicion.
The man escaped, became a man of the Empire himself, a man of the sword and spear who rose quickly through the ranks. He had killed many people accused of the same crime his parents had been executed for.
He did not believe the Empire was evil, only that they were wrong, terribly wrong.
His void-dweller blood awoke in him one day when he was cornered by a pair of pirate frigates. He had risen to the command of a warship, but his men could not resist; once again, blood washed over the decks, bodies floated in the water, flame rode on the oil that greased the waves.
It reminded him of that terrible day when his world ended.
His back erupted into tendrils of matter as dark as the Void. His eyes wept from their sockets as shapeless masses of jelly. Black chitin armor covered his skin. Mandibles erupted from his jaw.
He killed.
He killed every last pirate, and to conceal his secret, killed his own men too. There were very few of them left.
And when the hate he felt for himself burned a hole in his chest, he came here, to hide away from the Empire he’d betrayed. His many mutations had receded, his Warform falling into slumber again.
But he was no longer human, nor able to hide among them.
So…
The island was named Maukleu – Maw-Klew, as the Empire pronounced it.
It had its history.
But I was a new thing. I was not the man, I was not his sad past, I was not the bodies that lay under the islands soil or the grand trees that covered its sky with a canopy of green.
I was happy.
I was happy to exist. I was happy to be surrounded by this island, for better or for worse, because I owned it in a way few creations could ever own anything.
My presence extended along leylines that ran through the limestone of the island’s foundation; in time I would be able to reach out and affect anything, anywhere on the island, shaping the soil and plants as easily as a god might.
But for now my abilities were limited to a small area surrounding the hut, with my senses extending on the leylines outwards. I could feel several places of power within the islands, Nexii, places where magic had seeped into wells of mana. Reaching them and drinking from their power became an immediate priority…
But not my first one.
I needed mana to extend my reach.
Mana was created by all living things, absorbed from the light of the twin suns that drifted above, and their rings of asteroids that glittered with crystalline power…
What a man is to a god, I was to those asteroids.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
They were the Cosmic Alignment. The fragments of a creator so great it had built the entire world as a fortress against Void.
But to refrain from wondering at the fragile beauty of existence– mana was created by the Alignment, absorbed by living creatures, and released when they died. I could create some sparse amount of mana myself. But the easiest way was to create some petty lifeforms to gather mana for me, die, and return their harvest to me.
I chose the flowers he had grown. They were within my reach, very simple lifeforms, and perfectly adapted to gathering the thin sunlight that broke through the island’s jungle canopy.
I merely needed to alter them so they absorbed mana instead.
Green Gelblossoms
Pseudo-flowers formed by parasitic slime molds that grow within common grasses. Will eventually animate as Least Amoeba after a full life-cycle.
Level 0.
Relevant Traits:
Life Cycle: 36 Days
Mana Capacity: 1 iota
—
Cost: 0.4 iota.
Fascinating.
Not flowers at all, but tiny slimes, leeching off the grasses to develop themselves in their early, helpless stages. Slimes were the most basic sort of monster found in wild regions; they were what happened when untamed mana encountered rotting flesh or plant matter, reanimating it as a slimy approximation of true life. They could grow quite large, but had no particular structure or strengths except as manatrophs– effectively living batteries.
Making them perfect for my purposes.
I ate one.
Tiny motes of my personal energy, my will or soul, settled onto the plants like sparks. The embers ate down through the grass and the parasites clinging to it, absorbing everything. I could only devour soulless things this way; common plants, dirt, or dead matter within my domain. However, anything I devoured I understood even more deeply than my basic connection to this island allowed.
And what I understood, I could make.
I cleared the patch of slime-infected grass in moments.
– Schema Absorbed (Common) –
Green Gelblossom
Then, I turned my attention to the squash. They were heavy, ripely yellow blooms that grew in squat bulbs. Their deep roots sucked up nutrients from the soil and gathered what they accreted into heavy fruiting bodies.
A better host for parasites than the grass.
I simply needed to alter their properties slightly, and combine the two. In moments the prize of the squash field had been devoured…
– Schema Absorbed (Common) –
Island Gourd
A hearty plant that was once popular on the island for its robust taste. Generations of domestication have led to a crop well-suited to the environment, with a fast growth period and large, flavorful fruiting bodies.
Level 1.
Relevant Traits:
Fruiting Body Size: 12 to 20 cm
Water Absorption: 10-12 ml/day
Weather Resistance: Level 1
—
Cost: 1 iota.
And with my newfound knowledge – two ‘Schema’ or biological prototypes – I could get to work.
From the soil of the tilled field, mana-sparks congregated and formed a single spore of life. It was the process I had been created by, and it was supremely expensive in terms of the mana it consumed. Creating an entire island of monsters this way would be an impossible task.
But I could make a seed.
And once I had planted that seed, I could feed it some of my energy, causing it to crack open like a hatching egg and burrow green shoots out in all directions.
I watched with satisfaction as the seed became the heart of a root network and sent up shoots that sprouted into thick green stalks, curling along the ground in a bed of tough weedy plant matter. This was all the basic lifecycle of the Island Gourd, but rapidly accelerated. However, as it came up into the light I began to make changes…
– New Schema In Vitro –
Precursors
Green Gelblossom x Island Gourd
(89% Compatible)
Level 1.
Relevant Traits:
[Selected Precursor Trait]
[Selected Precursor Trait]
[Random Precursor Trait]
[Wildcard Trait]
Resource Cost: 3 iota.
I could hybridize the two and gain some combination of their natural abilities: being of equal level to the creation would let me choose one of those traits, while having a Control score equal to or higher than its level would let me choose another. My Intuition was also equal to the creature's level, allowing for a wildcard trait to enter the picture.
I selected Mana Capacity, and Water Absorption to help it grow. Life Cycle was my preferred third choice– allowing the plants to develop into full slimes would grant me useful hands that could roam the island and gather more specimens.
Thankfully, I had enough mana in reserve that I could brute force the issue by simply creating more and more specimens until my random trait came up lucky– helped by the fact there were only three possible traits to begin with.
It took me five tries, and the better part of an hour, to grow a perfect combination. The first four came out with undesirable traits, although each one taught me a little about the process of creating.
The fifth was perfect.
– New Schema In Progress –
Precursors
Island Gourd x Green Gelblossom
Level 1.
“Slime Gourd”
Relevant Traits:
Water Absorption: 10-12 ml/day [Upgrade: 3i]
Life Cycle: 52 Days [Upgrade: 5i]
Mana Capacity: 2 iota [Upgrade: 5i]
Multiple Fruit Chance: 23% [Upgrade: 3i]
—
Additional Wildcard Trait [Unlock: 10i]
Additional Random Precursor Trait [Unlock: 10i]
It was perfection. The gourd itself was a mass of slime, clinging together into a furry, pod-like shape. Clear glass-like cilia extended from the round surface to absorb sunlight.
I had even chanced upon a particularly good wildcard trait.
With mana to spare on getting this basic building block of my ecosystem exactly right, I chose to purchase everything.
As I did, the costs for a secondary upgrade doubled. Sadly, there was no ability to simply stack traits together– I could only purchase my way up to six.
More specimens grew as I searched for the perfect fifth and sixth trait, discarding a half-dozen that came out with useless or even negative results.
Until…
– New Schema In Progress –
Precursors
Island Gourd x Green Gelblossom
Level 1.
“Slime Gourd”
Relevant Traits:
Water Absorption: 12-14 ml/day [Upgrade: 6i]
Life Cycle: 31 Days [Upgrade: 10i]
Mana Capacity: 5 iota [Upgrade: 10i]
Multiple Fruit Chance: 37% [Upgrade: 6i]
Fruiting Body Size: 24 to 30 cm [Upgrade: 5i]
Nature Core Chance: 0.3% [Upgrade: 7i]
—
Nature Core…
A small chance to develop a natural mana capacitor. Unlike my own core, which produced Ethereal Mana that could do a great many things but specialized in none, it would create Nature Mana that was excellent for matters of growth and verdancy.
Even with a truly abysmal chance for each gourd to produce one, I could reliably farm them.
And that was only a lucky find on top of the true goal, which was to acquire the fruiting body size trait. Now that it was a main trait, I could expand upon it.
And create much, much larger slimes.
I paid out more mana to increase the mana capacity– twice. When it reached a full 10 iota I felt the gourds would be sufficient in their ability to absorb and reserve mana for me.
Then I paid out three times for fruiting body size, increasing the range to a massive 24-41 cm.
Slimes being as simple as they were, I wanted them to at least have the advantage of size.
Finally, with my reserves dwindling, I pushed nature core chance until it was at a full one percent.
The perfect gourd grew from the soil. Massive in size, it had multiple growths that would steadily develop into wandering slimes. Its roots drank thirstily, its fruits grew quickly, and it was a perfect natural battery for the energies of the Cosmic Alignments.
Praise be.
I sighed and let my exhausted mind slide into unconsciousness. Cores do not sleep, but when their mana is exhausted, they do dream.
And I dreamt happily, my job well done.
I think the man would have been happy with the garden I’d created.
But I had so much more to do.