The child continued to cross-breed the plants on their floor using the same process. They had even cross-bred three plants at the same time.

They cross-bred a black dripping mushroom with a mist orchid, creating a mushroom with a large cap that produces a fine mist. The mushroom has a round cap, about five centimetres wide, that is a dark blue, almost black, colour. Standing about six centimetres high, the mushroom has these little minuscule holes in its cap that produce a fine, sticky mist. The mist produces an almost glue-like reaction when it touches a living creature. When that area that the mist touched touches something else, it glues the creature and the object together. The child called it the “sticky mushroom.”

Cross-breeding a floating moss with a silver vine resulted in a green vine that had pockets of air bubbles that allowed it to grow and float on water. The vines were very thick and had few leaves; they called it the “floating vine.”

Mixing a string moss and a bearded bush resulted in an ever-growing bush. Having only small roots that need to be anchored at one point, the plant can continue growing as long as it wants, given that there is space to do so. The plant tends to grow on trees and has dark green moss-like leaves. They called it the “dangling bush.”

As the child was making these three new cross-breeds, a thought hit them.

I should use mana to make new versions of the plants and then cross-breed them, creating even more plants.

But just as they started using all of their mana strings, except the magma one, to enhance the plants on the floor, the small part of their attention that was focusing on their territory and the immediate outside picked something up.

On the horizon, far away, one from the way they came and the other to the west of them, were two storms.

Oh, this sucks. I just got here and haven’t really even explored the area, and now I’m going to be moved. Grumbled the child as they hoped to stay in the area for a bit longer until they got more out of the environment.

But their worries were for not, as the storms seemed to dissipate at the edges of the plateau.

I wonder…, pondered the child at this development, do storms not cross into the plateau. Is that why I was deposited here?

If storms did not go directly into the plateau they were floating above, then as long as they stayed within the area, they should be safe. At least, that was what they thought. Of course, they only had three storms to go off of, and their assumption could be wrong, but the child hoped they were right.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

And seeing that this area had storms more frequently than when they were floating with the other icebergs and when they were stuck in the five islands made the child more okay with using the lightning mana string as it fit the environment of the plateau. Sort of.

Taking all of the mana strings they wanted to use in the process, they went over all the plants, including the aquatic ones, that they realized they had been ignoring during the cross-breeding. They even included the two coral types; even though they were creatures and not plants, the child hoped to at least gain new subtypes of them and, at the most, perhaps successfully cross-breed them with a plant. But that would be later; for now, they focused on making three to five mana-enhanced versions of each plant.

They successfully enhanced four green mangroves with swamp, ice, water, heat, and their mana strings. The swamp mana string created a much more compact and water-dwelling mangrove than the original mangrove called the “mangrove bush.” The ice mana string enhanced only the tree leaves, making them hard, almost crystalline, while leaving the leaves their original colour; they called it the “frozen mangrove.” The water string created a tree that collects moisture within the air into its leaves, and when the leaves are full, they release the water all at once; they call it the “rain mangrove.” Finally, the heat mana string only affected the bark of the mangrove, creating a heated effect purely within the bark, and they called it the “heating mangrove.”

They enhanced the blade seaweed with their heat and lightning mana strings, creating a seaweed that produces a gel that, when touched, gives a burning sensation called the “burning blade seaweed,” the lightning mana string created a seaweed with these little needle-like prongs that produce small shocks called the “shock seaweed.”

The child continued this process until they created 24 mana-enhanced versions of most of their plants and the corals on the floor. As the child spread these new plants around the floor, making sure that they merged seamlessly with those other plants already growing on the floor.

As the child looked at everything they had done so far, they decided they didn’t need to do any more cross-breeding for the plants and started populating the floor with fauna now.

They placed all of their flying insect species except for the magma species, frogs, spiders, otters, shrews, and snakes, and even include a few sharp bills in the room.

For the aquatic species, the child decided to check out how far down their territory has gone before doing any.

To their surprise, in the days that they had spent cross-breeding, mana enhancing, and building their sixth floor, their territory had increased all the way down to about three metres underneath the top of the sand.

Their territory extended down now 103 metres from the water level, and the child got to work.

Carefully going through their territory, the child made every living organism and plant that they came across one of theirs. Well, at the very least, temporary theirs.

They knew they were slowly moving with the current, and the child did not want to leave areas completely stripped of the species, so they only made about half of the coral theirs.

In this process, they gained six new fish species, a turtle species, another small shark species, an eel species, a sea urchin species, a clam species, three new coral species, and one new grass species.

The child quickly claimed them and started scooping up the sand and everything within the sand to fill the bottom of the sixth floor. They did this repeatedly until each floor section was covered by a metre of sand. The transport of the sand also helped carry all of the sand-dwelling species directly into their floor, which was helpful.

Grabbing the corals that were fully theirs, the child carefully transported them and placed them along the bottom of the floor, away from the coral that they already had and enhanced.

They quickly filled their floor with the other creatures from the plateau. Then, they supplemented some of the other creatures that they had already obtained from other areas. When they were done, they took a step back and admired what they created.