I needed so many things to be ready before the delvers showed up again and so I worked a little bit on more creature types. To be honest it was kind of fun to feed the variant window a bunch of variables and see what it tossed back. I couldn't seem to get bugs of any kind from what I could tell because I was still restricted to mana I had access to which didn't seem to apply here. Thinking about the vigor crabs that were growing in the Grange's Mana Well I finagled the window into generating a crab. While focusing on the Vigor Crab which had be I got a Dire Version which had a similar bulbous body and seemed more land adapted then its non-monster cousins and stood about the same size as a small horse.
Dire Vigor [https://i.imgur.com/Wfinze2.png]
Tier $&+_ Monster species Dire Vigor Crab Level 03.01 Mana Type Life, Animal Skills Regeneration, Carapace fortification
Following the same line of thought I went for a cloud themed crab and got a spindly legged guy with undersized claws rigid carapace wings sticking off its sides. It would foam at the mouth and then pop those bubbles to produce little clouds that it would then float around with as a kind of highly conspicuous camouflage. Although there were probably more reliable uses of having portable bubbles of clouds.
Nimbus Crab [https://i.imgur.com/10Ce48i.png]
Tier )^& Monster species Dire Nimbus Crab Level 00.00 Mana Type Cloud, Animal Skills Minor Levitation, Bubbling
Lastly I tried the new Mana Mana and got something, down right creepy. It was translucent and seemed to be full of spaghetti strands of mana. another creepy aspect of it was how it seemed to keep looking at me with its many eyes. Most of the time when I made one of these example monsters they were more like motile statues going through a handful of natural motions. This moved around with apparent intent and as I shifted my focus to look at it from different angles it always kept some of its eyes in a position where it could see me. I quickly pinned the stat block and disbanded the example and immediately turned my attention to other things I needed to do.
Mana Crustatea [https://i.imgur.com/3tuOHf7.png]
Tier #@_^ Monster species Mana Crustacea Level 60.06 Mana Type Mana, Animal Skills Axis Manipulation, Emergency Molting
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I wanted to try and get Luciantisss working again since they had a vested interest in making sure that the dungeon was well defended just as much as I did. I tried a number of things that didn't seem to be met with much results. I made further attempts at using cloud mana pearls in some way. Only really getting any response when I dropped ten of my mana pearls into their Core room. Just like with my experience and Life Mana Pearls an arc of energy touched the broken Core which resulted in a surge of energy but ultimately just made Luciantisss bleed more caramelized mana.
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That was another thing I worked out. Caramelized mana was analogous to a Cores blood. The vitapygmy had been harvesting the stuff from the surface of the core for a while and had in effect, stunted the natural healing processes of Luciantisss. I contemplated trying to extract the fragments of Core that were interlaced with the mangrove trees roots but wasn't sure how good of an idea that was. The vitapygmy very much thought a complete core was in effect a prison and re building that prison to trap their god once again sounded like a bad idea. It took a bit of pantomiming to convince them to let me try to fiddle with the core directly since they were very protective of it, understandably so.
I was able to convince them to pack the under side of the core with moss and secure the whole thing with vines, and at the turn of day we were greeted with far less leakage. Upon checking their inner space I found that the glowing fissures that ran along the grand were less angry and abundant but it did nothing to remedy the howling maw in the sky.
Placing Life Mana Pearls on the Core itself was less helpful then I thought it would be. Using Mana Pearls as anchors when doing something ill advised seemed to be an active process that Luciantisss simply did not have the energy or wherewithal to do. And the inverse wasn't much help since the Mana Pearls were more of a byproduct of a Cores existence then intrinsically linked to the Core itself. This meant that the Life Mana Pearls were no more a part of Luciantisss than the Cloud Pearls were a part of me.
Grasping at straws I plopped a fleshborn progenitor atop the broken core on the slim chance that the fact that it was also a mono-affinity of the life axis it might interact differently with the broken Core. Dropping it onto the top it imediately began to purr and coo as it hunkered down into the gooey caramelized life mana. It would wiggle around in there like a pig in mud and seemed very happy. It swallowed one of the Life Mana Pearls but without any teeth and its apatite for Life axis mana being rather small it seemed to work like a real everlasting gobstopper and adding an occasional sucking sound as it shifted the pearl from one place on its surface to another.
On the outside of the core the caramelized mana that couldn't flow away from the crack due to the moss had been solidifying into a resin like substance, while on the inside the ground had become far more stable. It wasn't returning the interior structure to its original state bu it was filling in the cracks with a clear green polished stone like surface. Luciantisss was standing more comfortably next to the stele still not able to break contact with the thing. A representation of the Fleshborn Progenitor was also here, likely due to its proximity and its possesion of the Mana Pearl.
Luciantiss seemed much more relaxed then he had before and knelt down to pet the wobbly green meatball and suddenly with a snap of green light he was gone. I immediately yanked myself back to the core room only to be met with the horrifying squeaks of the little critter in pain. The poor thing was being struck with arcs of green energy that were pulling and kneading it into shapes that looked rather uncomfortable. The energy was also flash crystalizing the pool of caramelized mana into inverted bolts of lightning or jagged crystal trees. The Priestess and her honor guard who always accompanied my Volpertinger now that we had a more amenable relationship took up a combat stance and I urged my volpertinger to hold very still.
After just a moment the squeaking stopped but instead of a charred meatball and a dead core the room was filled with a gentle hum once again. The fleshborn then stood, which was an odd thing to note since it previously had no limbs. It now had a humanoid shape only slightly larger then its previous form and its head was made up of a single heavy lidded eye. It stabilized itself on the rim of the core and opened its eye for the first time revealing that it was in fact the glowing Life Mana Pearl that had been inside the Fleshborn progenitor.
Once I had regained my composure I inspected the small humanoid thing with my Domain.
Dominion Lu Xian Tier Ω Monster species Fleshborn Avatar Level 1 Mana Type Life Skills Over healing
Well, That was new. I mean he's back on his feet at least. Thats what I was trying to do in the first place.
Kind of.
I guess.