Reincarnated as a mana core

Wonders of Mana

Mana influences the world only in small ways. Still this can lead to chain reactions, creating wonders of nature and mana.

 

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After checking his status Argul made himself ready for a long night of waiting, or for him a not so long night as he perceived the time differently. It had already been multiple days, but he somehow didn’t notice the change between day and night.

Through the night he got surprised watching the amount of water around the few hovering seeds grow until they started to descend. The drops of water grew larger than he had imagined them to grow.

Argul got a bad idea. “You know there is normal rain and there is my rain. Guess I have to declare my seeds as wet zones!”

Alyra gave herself a facepalm. “I hate you mom…”

Hah! She even knew what he meant. Must be worse than him in the head…

At the end of the night a new seed pod exploded and two hours into daylight you could see the first leaves of the new grass batches. The grass was spreading rather fast, likely because of his growth boost.

It really was like watching a sped up version of the world, which was a good thing because it didn’t look like Argul needed sleep and he would hate to wait for 10 hours to see something. He still knew what was happening without even seeing it, but he was used to being able to see.

A bit before noon Argul got ready for his next plant. 

He had to create 4 more plants for this floor, so Algur made a plan. 

As he was still testing how his ribm worked, he wanted to try creating a tree and at least one flower. 

His grass already had stupid overpowered abilities. Argul wanted something normal and tended towards creating a bush. 

For the last plant he would just ask Alyra. Smart work is work you made others do for you.

Argul started to design his flowers. They should be able to coexist with his moongrass and he wanted them to have large blossoms that opened around the height of the seed pots. 

He started the ribm process excited about what nonsense he would create this time.

Argul worked a lot faster this time as he more or less knew what he had to do and waited for the flowers to grow. 

The flowers had a silver not stalk – it was wooden you see – that opened up into a large sky blue blossom with a red shaded pistil. 

There were 7 flowers, two large ones and five smaller ones that didn’t have enough space to grow. 

On the bottom side of the blossom the petals were covered with large silver leaves. 

Every flower had only one blossom and besides the leaves under the petals they had only two other leaves.

After the two large flowers finished growing, they each shot out 2 large seeds that all descended at roughly at the same angle in random directions. Argul was fascinated.

Silver seemed to be this moon's green. The stalk, no that wouldn’t do it justice, the

trunk of the flower just looked odd. 

One thing was sure though, you couldn’t accidentally step on Argul’s flowers.

Alyra’s avatar slid into his view. It had waist long hair now. “I don’t want to interrupt your thoughts, but I can’t decide if they are beautiful or just weird.”

Argul nodded knowingly, not that Alyra could see it. “I know what you mean, the trunks just tick me off somehow.”

She hopped onto one of the flowers. “Yeah and the pistils just scream ‘Take me’.”

Argul was fascinated by how 3 dimensional Alyra could make the screens appear.

They were both silent for a while.

A problem dawned on him. He had still created something with an earth flower in mind, so his flower would need a method to move its pollen and the floor wasn’t big enough for any significant air currents to form.

A solution was needed. “Hey Aly, if you could choose bird, bee, bumblebee or some kind of fly thing?”

The avatar cocked its head. “Bumblebee, they are cute. Why do you ask?”

Argul looked at the blossoms. “Well, we need something to carry the pollen don’t we?”

A lightbulb appeared beside the avatar. “Oh yeah, they won't grow new seeds until they are fertilized.”

Argul smiled to himself. “You will have your bumblebees in one hour!”

This made Alyra jump in excitement. “Thanks mom!”

If only she knew… 

Alyra would definitely not get her bumblebees. No, she would get Argul’s bumblebees.

That she called him mom still ticked him off a bit, but it wasn’t that much of a problem.

Before Argul started with his bumblebees he still needed to name his flowers and chose Larna as name. After naming them he identified one of the larger ones.

Larna

A small type of plant. 

This flower grows in moongrass grassland in regions with low gravity. They have a, well, small trunk to support the pressure created by the large seeds and to store water in. On the bottom side of their blossoms the petals are framed by large silver leaves. 

These leaves curl around moongrass seeds to catch them and take the conjured water for the flower. Afterwards they push the moongrass seed away and slightly in the direction of the ground, so that the seed still has a chance to survive. 

The Larna flower leaves a sweet scent in the air.

Larna and moongrass had a rather interesting relationship between each other. Argul wouldn’t call it symbiotic as the Larna reduced the survival chances of the grass seed, but still. 

 Argul started working on the bumblebees. They were more interesting than his flowers in his opinion. Flowers didn’t move all that much, you see. 

Normal sized bumblebees were a bit small for Larna, but luckily nobody said Argul had to create normal bumblebees, so he planned to make them about fist sized. 

He knew Alyra wanted them to be cute, so he made them look like something boys would enjoy watching. 

Like the good parent he was, he gave them something that looked like full plate chitin armor and colored it black with white stripes on the top side of the armor. Not zebra-like, more bumblebee natural. 

Argul waited until his mana pool was full again and called Alyra. “Aly it’s bumblebee time.”

Her avatar simply phased into existence. “I’m watching!”

Then 5 bumblebees kind of grew from one spot. 

They were small at first and you wouldn’t notice the heavy chitin armor, unless you knew it was there. That is until they grew to their full size, which took about 3 minutes. 

5 fistsized heavily armored bumblebees took off to the air with a mighty and deep ‘sssmmm’.

They looked like they were going to war. 

Alyra stayed silent for a minute and then her avatar threw its arms in the air. “You know they are supposed to be cute and fluffy!”

She was right, they were normally supposed to look cute and fluffy. “Maybe your bumblebees are cute and fluffy, but these are mine, so what did you expect?”

Alayra was a bit at a loss here. “They just don’t look like some badass dark knight that is about to attack you! Though they do make a nice and comforting sound while flying.”

He nodded in satisfaction. “See there is alway something positive.”

The avatar waved him off. “Yeah, yeah.” Then it became excited again. “Can I at least name them?”

Argul smiled to himself. “Of course, go for it!”

A rocket launcher appeared in the hands of the avatar. “Let's call them Negator bumblebees or Negator for short. If you want to know why, just identify them.”

And so Argul did while wondering what the rocket launcher was about.

Negator Bumblebee

A small sized animal. This insect lives in low gravity regions and consumes the nectar of flowers and other blossoms. Negator Bumblebees have a strong and heavy chitin armor that is black with silver stripes on the topside of the armor. There is not a lot in their level range that can harm them and even for higher leveled predators it often takes more work to bring down a Negator then it is worth. 

Negators are mostly friendly and tend to run away on any signs of aggression. That is until you come near their favorite flowers, then you are in for a heavy beating and not just by one, every Negator that sees you near a favorite flower will attack you until you leave their territory. 

Favorite flowers of Negators tend to grow up to 100% larger than others of their kind and Negators build burrows near them to live in. Female Negators have small extra pouches on their sides, in which they carry their offspring until they are able to fly themselves.

 He mentally winked at Alyra. “Aren’t they quite the handful?”

Question marks appeared around the head of the avatar. “Heh? I don’t get— Ohhh because they are fistsized. That one was a new kind of bad mom.”

Argul sighed. “There has to be something I am good at and see, joking is not part of that category.”

Alyra just shook her head and turned away from him.

They both calmed down and watched the Negators do Negator things. 

Just imagine heavily armored bumblebees in low gravity. It’s a bit like the difference between driving a boat down a slow and calm river and going whitewater rafting. Everything just loses the edge that higher gravity has.

 Before planning some kind of tree, Argul decided to check his quests.

 Quests:

•  Flooring away (1)
  • Requirements: It grows! (1) | Don’t eat that! (1)
  • Finish the first floor!

•  It grows! (2)
  • Requirements: It grows! (1)
  • Create 5 plants!

•  Sweet freedom!
  • Find a way to escape or leave your prison!

• To talk back
  • Requirements: Sweet freedom! | Prodigy outcast (1)
  • Your home universe banished you for no reason ‘cough’. How about you show it some of those shiny and sharp things, eh?!

•  Like a weed (1)
  • Requirements: Sweet freedom!
  • Spread your influence to the planet your moon orbits.

Quest completed! 

• Don’t eat that! (1)
  • You created an animal. Animals you created won’t have to eat for three days after creation. STR +1, INT +1

New quest: 

• Don’t eat that! (2)
  • Requirements: Don't eat that! (1)
  • Create 5 animals!

Argul felt his core move again, but slowly got used to the feeling.

He was a bit puzzled by his quest reward. “How does not eating for three days work?”

Alyra nodded sagely. “It’s like they get a buff that lasts three days and feeds them with the surrounding mana.”

Argul thought about this for a second. “So it’s like using ribm inside their stomach to produce food for three days.”

The avatar shrugged. “That’s not exactly right, but it works as a comparison.” 

It was good that Argul didn’t have to worry about food for a bit. It would have been sad if his predator just killed off all his prey to survive. 

He also should create the other plants as fast as possible. They will still need some time to reproduce and grow, especially the trees.

As for trees, Argul wanted to create something oak-like. 

They would grow a storage space for water underneath their trunk and surround it with roots to seal it. Because of the low gravity the branches would be able to extend a lot more and the leaves should be larger.

Argul liked making things larger. 

You just had to enlarge something from earth enough and bam, everyone would be like whoa look at that massive 5 meter spider and get my damn flamethrower. 

Poor little spider made no friends that day…

Back to the tree, it would have special lower branches where it grows blossoms that become a round fruit upon fertilization. 

Last but not least he wanted to make the thing as a whole larger. Then he would need to wait again.

Argul had to wait for a whole 75 minutes to get his mana back to 100. 

There were batches of silver coming out of the barren land here and there now that the grass had some time to grow and one of the Negators started to build a burrow.

When Argul began the ribm process he tried to do something different. 

Wanting more than one tree he focused on the air and added the intent of creating the seeds and not the whole tree. When he was done a dozen elongated flat seeds started to grow in the air and drifted in random directions while growing. 

Then they started to sink to the ground and small trees sprouted from them. The trees grew until they were about 1,5 meters tall and then stopped.

It looked like Argul could choose between a few mature plants or more plants that won't grow to maturity immediately. 

Of course the trees had silver leaves that were already as big as a grown man's forearm and nearly black trunks. 

He was most excited to see what kind of fruit they would grow, but well, he would have to wait for that. 

Argul identified the tree before he named it.

Plant

This is a large Plant. This tree grows in low gravity moongrass grasslands. They surround their main branches with conjured soil to grow moongrass on them and ensure water supply. Upon maturity they grow special lower branches for their blossoms and later fruits.

The fruits contain a lot of sugar to make them an attractive food source, but still cause most creatures diarrhea to make sure the seeds don’t get digested and are flushed out.

Argul had so many questions. Like, normally trees would make their seeds so hard that they won’t get digested, but no his trees had to cause diarrhea. 

He dubbed them diarrhea trees for their crimes, so that they were branded for eternity.

Argul had no idea that his tree would become somewhat popular, because of the effects of the fruit. It did not stop him from ignoring the tree however and to concentrate on creating some kind bush.

Argul wanted to create a bush that looked like a bush and then would name it bush. 

And then in 100 years children would see pictures of exactly this bush in their biology books titled ‘The bush’ and it’s going to be the hit of their day. 

Argul thought of them as around a meter tall and with the branches spread in a way that made it look somewhat like a sphere. 

The bush was going to bloom white at least once a month and everyone would be happy, especially the Negators.

Argul repeated the same process as with the trees, just a bit higher to spread the bushes more out. 

He got around 30 spherical bushes around his portal area, but didn’t care to count as they would multiply anyway. And they really were just bushes, not that interesting. 

Just to make sure he identified one after they stopped growing.

Bush

A mid size plant. This is a bush and does nothing else than being a bush and blooming at least once a month. You really found nothing special, just go on with your day.

The description was somewhat of a critic. It could have just listed what the bush does, now the bush just looked sad to Argul.

For the last plant he wanted another flower, but he would let Alyra decide what it would be. “Aly, you have an idea for a flower to grow?”

Her avatar appeared again and this time it also had a face, in manga style… She looked at him disapprovingly. “You know, I really don’t understand why you don’t take some of the plants that grew on earth. I mean they will change because of the surroundings anyways. Tulips would be nice though.”

She was right and Argul had no idea why he didn’t, so he had to improvise an excuse. “I know that I make it really hard for myself right now, but trying to come up with something new sounds more fun, also I already have to use the ideas of trees and grass and flowers and such as a basis just to have something to work with. Tulips it is then, but like the tree and the Larna they will bloom all year.”

Alyra shook her head again. “The tree has a name and you were the one to name it mom… Still if you can’t come up with something new you could just use some earth plant as a basis instead of getting frustrated by racking your crystel too much.”

Argul smiled. “Sure thing!”

She deflated a bit and sighed. “Thanks mom.”

Argul changed his view to one of the newer batches of silver and started to create the flowers. 

He managed to get 6 tulips and like everything else they were weird. 

They had a silver stalk and silver leaves of course, but to quote Argul, “Why in all that is holy are the blossoms light green!”. 

Alyra promptly named them Alien tulips and that was that. 

Afterwards Argul was left to check his status.

Quest completed! 

• It grows! (2)
  • You have created 5 plants! What a nice silver place you have. WIS +2

New Quest: 

• It grows! (3)
  • Requirements: It grows! (2) | floor 3
  • Create 25 plants!

Status