Reincarnated as a mana core

After Argul fell asleep she moved into her domain to check how things were going there. First of all there were now fake suns in the sky that moved around the planets. The AI had created them by using Argul’s version of the light spell.

That there hadn’t been any suns before was a bit embarrassing for Argul, because the transition to suns hadn’t gone unnoticed by the villagers on the 6th floor. Their appearance had somehow confirmed their belief that they were inside the territory of a higher being and they even attributed the massive amounts of easy quests they were getting to that being.

They were on the territory of someone, namely Argul and she was also kind of the reason for the higher mana density and the higher amount of quests, but she certainly was not a being of higher existence.

Speaking of mana density, the domain was still not back up to the normal levels of mana and would take more than 2 weeks for that. Until then no new mana would move into Lotusriver. The changes and safety measures Argul had created had been costly enough for that to happen.

Otherwise nothing much had happened, plants were still growing everywhere and creatures were procreating with more food around. All in all things were going quite well and with the new space she was confident that project kraken could soon be started.

Argul switched to the 9th floor and thought about possible things she could add, but decided to create a new floor instead. Her 9th floor would need some growing time before she would be satisfied and she didn’t want to wait the whole time.

Argul was already sure she wanted some kind of deep forest biome on her 10th floor, but she would deviate from the way she knew deep forests in fantasy to be. 

They were normally dark, with gigantic old trees and sparsely any undergrowth. In a way the deep forest was a jungle in colder regions where the environment wasn’t as constant as in equatorial regions.

After she had tried to recreate a jungle as she knew it from earth though, she wanted to do something a bit more special, a bit more weird. That was kind of more her way to do things.

Argul would do ‘more special’ by adding a lot of fluff to the dark, at least that was her plan and she was pretty sure her mana wouldn’t disappoint her when she tried out weird stuff.

To start things she put in the options for her next floor and made sure that everything was right.

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Floor 10

• Deep forest
• Daytime: 14 hours
• Nighttime: 10 hours
• Temperature: 5°C to 35°C
• Special conditions: cuteness, fluff
• Events:
  • Storms
    • Through natural processes storms can form.
  • Earthquakes
    • There is a really small chance for an earthquake to occur in a region once a year. The chance for an earthquake rises for every time that there was no earthquake and is reset upon an occurrence.
  • Rain of fluff
    • Clouds have a small chance to materialize and rain tiny versions of themselves instead of water. The tiny clouds will then slowly sink to the ground. The materialized cloud will fade away afterwards.

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Argul nodded satisfied to herself. This was about what she had wanted.

The special condition of cuteness and fluff didn’t matter all that much in the big picture. It just made it slightly easier for cute things to live on this floor and slightly more difficult for everything else. She had added this because she wanted this floor to stay that way and not change because of outside influences.

Argul added multiple options for entrances. One for each the 8th floor and the islands of the 6th floor as well as a connection from any lakes that formed to the already existing freshwater links. Then she accepted her input and watched as the space structure of her domain once again became more complex.

Her core moved to the new floor and her entire mana productions got attributed to creating the required atmosphere and matter. Luckily the AI didn’t start to build up a small sphere and then increased its size gradually, but created pillars of around a meter diameter next to each other that rose from Argul’s core all the way to the surface of the floor. Had it done the former thing Argul would have had to wait until the floor was finished growing and that would have taken quite a while.

As it was right now, Argul would have to wait around 2 hours until an area had grown that was large enough for her to start working. Watching her mana work so inefficient made her cringe however, so she decided that something had to be done there.

Thanks to the evil tree of the first floor she already had an idea of how to go about this. The spellformation was quite similar to that of the water creation spell and any of her spells really. 

Argul just generally started with a circle the mana would move through. The rest was adding more depth to it and adding things like the different components of soil and their ratio. The tricky part here was more to make these things changeable so the AI could use different variations.

Argul was pretty sure that others didn’t do magic the same way as her. Arthur was casting his spells in a more intent based manner in contrast to her more mathematical spellformations for example. 

Argul wasn’t even sure if others could do it like her, because she was pretty sure she hadn’t been able to juggle mathematical stuff around like this when she had still been a man.

She finished her spell and started to improve it as much as possible. The AI immediately started to use her new soil conjuration skill to speed things up. It even used the spell to create different kinds of stone, but it wasn’t quite effective as it was with dirt. Argul would have to create a skill for stone later too.

After she finished her improvements for the spell she used it as a foundation to create a manipulation and banishment spell too. Argul just had to complete the trilogy of soil spells so the system would show it simply as earth magic.

Half an hour later Argul was satisfied with the spells as well as the area that had grown and got to work on a fluffy deep forest.

She wanted to have two different kinds of trees for this biome. A large one and a Sakura tree. Sakuras would fit pretty well into her aspired theme in her opinion.

Argul started with the large tree. It should be able to grow up to 50m tall and have a thick trunk with gnarled branches. Something like a limewood would work pretty well as a model.

She started the ribm process and watched as a few trees started to grow. As she had intended they ended up pretty gnarled, maybe even a little bit too much. They made good climbing trees for children though, so Argul wouldn’t complain. Once they stopped growing they looked like larger gnarled versions of limewoods with deep blue leaves.

The trees alone looked pretty dark and maybe even creepy under the right conditions. Due to their big canopies it was also quite dim near the ground and Argul would have to do something about that later.

For now though she would recreate sakura trees in the spots where the light managed to reach the ground between the other trees. 

Contrary to her expectation a small plant with white bark grew instead of the brown a sakura trees bark normally had. The tiny plant began to grow and branches started to form, but they had only a very few small green leaves on them.

At around 8m height the upwards growth slowed down drastically. Instead bright pink blossoms sprouted from the branches until the whole tree stood like a beacon between the larger trees. Just the appearance of the tree alone changed the mood of the surroundings to something more calm and serene. 

In between the pink blossoms Argul could make out the occasionally mint green blossom and on one of the trees she wasn’t looking at, a single teal colored blossom had grown.

She stared at the trees for a few long moments. Of course she could be offended because her mana had once again done things on its own, but damn those trees were beautiful. Argul really couldn’t complain. Normally she would be left speechless because a plant was weird, but this time the tree just looked impressive.

A gentle breeze went through the not very big forest and a few petals were taken off the tree and through the air. When they landed on the ground new petals had already started growing again and were doing so at a visible speed.

Argul loved the tree. If she ever chose to build herself a home she would grow one of these in her garden to be able to enjoy their sight.

This tree deserved a name and Argul would be the most ignorant person if she decided to leave this work of art unnamed so she settled down and stared at her new creation. She would not accept something unimpressive.

—

Alyra POV

Alyra woke up in the middle of the night and grinned madly. Her mother had just done it again and created something ridiculous not only in its potential use, but also in its nature.

The tree that Argul had created could grow 4 different blossoms. A golden one that needed an absolutely insane amount of mana as well as intent of purity and healing. Alyra had no idea what this blossom could be used for, but the effects had to be extremely valuable.

The second blossom the tree could create was teal blue and had an energizing effect when smelled. To grow this one quite the large amount of mana was needed, but contrary to the golden one you would find this one now and then on the tree.

The other two blossoms were absolutely hilarious on the other hand. Smelling the green one wouldn’t do anything to you, but if you ate it it would increase the chance for you to get pregnant and was able to give even infertile persons a chance to get pregnant.

The cherry on top though was the pink blossom. Its smell increased a creature's libido, which meant her mother had just created a giant aphrodisiac spraying plant.

Alyra took that information away from Argul’s possible identify. She would let her mother have her dream of having created something beautiful that wasn’t weird and then Alyra would have her fun tomorrow. The moment when she revealed the information to her mother would be glorious.

Alyra tried to calm back down, but couldn’t stop grinning at the ceiling and thinking about the tree. 

After a while her expression turned thoughtful. In all honesty the blossoms were pretty useful even the special ones. Her mother wasn’t aware of it right now, but her avatar was unable to get children no matter which sex organ it used, any avatar was. The green blossom changed that and saved Alyra from having to tell her mom that she couldn’t have any kids.

Alyra sighed. She would acknowledge the tree, but she would still have her fun tomorrow.