Don't expect random extra chapters like this often.
A patron was talking about how they had a lot to catch up on for reading so I decided today is an extra day, that means you lot also get an extra chapter. Normal uploads from now on though!
Hope you enjoy!
Chapter 3
She...was an idiot.
There was no reason to expand outside, where any number of dangerous things could be lurking. She had already displayed her ability to excavate stone to use for swords, so why would she not simply dig downwards, making immense caverns beneath the base for her area to inhabit? The answer to that came when she did just that, attempting to dig downwards from the lowest point in the base, and being repulsed by something.
Each time she tried to excavate the stone beyond a certain point, her ability to remove stone simply stopped functioning for a short period, and the stone itself refused to budge even slightly. She attempted to excavate holes in several different locations, and found that every single spot stopped her in the exact same way. Well, if nothing else, she had at least tried, that was as much as she could be expected to do.
All the while she did this, she found herself drawn to the entrance, the 'easy way out' almost mocking her as whatever force was compelling her became stronger and stronger. After the fifth hole revealed the exact same reaction, she decided that if her next plan didn't work, she would have to give in to the urge and exit her base. That plan? Well, it was to simply use her skeletons.
After all, her Gravmap was blocked, but would it be able to stop a skeleton with a pickaxe?
As it turned out, yes, it would stop a skeleton with a pickaxe.
Her pick-wielding skeleton had taken a single swing at the floor, only to freeze with the tip of the crude stone pick a millimeter from the stone floor, seemingly unable to actually hit the floor with its pick. Evidently whatever wanted her to expand was leery of loopholes, and presumably any other method she concocted to cheat the system and expand through other means would similarly be blunted, like making an alchemical acid to melt through the floor or create crude explosives.
These were things the books she had read had shown her how to do, but she hadn't yet had the time to attempt any of the recipes discovered. She had, however, decided to create a suit of armour for her first skeleton, the one which had now reached level 5. It was made of stone, as was practically everything her skeletons had, and when the 'Prime skeleton' had equipped it, its mobility was basically removed entirely. The ability to jump was totally gone, and it moved at a third of the speed her unarmoured skeletons could move at.
Since her skeletons relied on her area or her vision to see, there was no need to make a point of vision, meaning the only vulnerability the stone armour had was the joints. She had tried to chisel crude joints into the armour, letting the joints bend, but it wasn't very effective. She had to make the armour in pieces and rely on the weight to hold it all together, meaning if the skeletons fell over or were pushed, it would probably all fall off, but considering how inept they currently were at fighting, that didn't matter much, they were basically relying on being impossible to actually hit.
And wow was stone armour completely ineffective at protecting against a hit. She set one of her skeletons to try and breach the helmet, and it took a good two hits, both of which consisted of smashing their sword against it, before the helmet completely shattered. Stone, as it turned out, was awful as armour. The first hit had cracked the stone and flaked a few pieces off, and the second had entirely obliterated it.
It also revealed a flaw with her skeletons, in that their swords were also absolutely awful. The sword that was used in the test had snapped in half. So, that proved that stone really just wasn't a good idea, but the issue was, how could she equip her skeletons with gear when there were so few things she could actually use? The storage room was useless, alchemical ingredients and magical detritus was useless to her in this endeavour. As she thought about it, she drifted towards the entrance, a good half of her skeleton force arrayed there and waiting.
Prime was going to be taking point, she wanted any attacker to have to face her strongest first, the alpha strike would be critical. As she floated towards the door to the outside, she tried and failed to think of an alternative equipment source, the only idea coming to mind being the wooden benches in the meeting room and the chairs in the regular rooms, she could maybe fashion weaponry from them.
But then she remembered that there were trees a scant few dozen meters from the entrance, perfect for fashioning weaponry. Maybe she could start making stone axeheads and have wooden handles, with the head attached to them and each skeletons carrying maybe a half-dozen spare heads to replace when the stone head inevitably broke. It wasn't a long-term solution, but for the purposes of defence it was as good as she could come up with. She would have chosen a spear, but the head of a spear is harder to attach, as an axe is swung sideways, not forwards and backwards, meaning that temporarily attaching a head would be far easier, a case of simply forcing the stone down the wooden shaft as far as it could go.
With this all decided to work on, she then postponed it all, because a sharp pain snapped at her, the pangs having become much worse recently. She didn't have the time to be experimenting with different weapons and slowly hewing stone and wood from floor and bench, she needed to get outside. She stopped and waited for the lingering pain to fade, not wanting any to remain and distract her when the door was opened, then turned the final corner and headed up the stairs.
As she reached the top, she got Prime to open the door, peering out into the sunlight once more. With a quick order, she sent her skeletons out, keeping two in reserve just in case something tried to get in through the door, then expanded her area out behind them. Immediately she could feel the building pressure in her mind dissipating, and she focused on her mana pool as it grew steadily as she expanded her area.
She quickly did a circle around the entrance, claiming it for herself, then stopped. Her skeletons...she wanted them to do scouting, but of course they relied on her area and her own vision to see, now a hindrance instead of an aid. So, maybe it was time to try and figure out a way to give them vision. She wasn't being constantly pressed to expand anymore, so she had time.
Bringing the lowest-level skeleton over, she recalled how it felt to unlock her own vision. Since skeletons likely had vision before when they were alive, maybe that would help? Mostly she focused on the eye-sockets, trying to impart the feeling of seeing on her own and assimilating that information, though since she didn't even know how she could see without a body and thus no eyes, it had to have been something magical.
It took her a while, during which the sun high above had visibly moved in the sky, but eventually, a pair of blue lights appeared in the eye sockets of her skeleton, and she felt something new within her area. She 'touched' it, and found herself looking out of the eyes of her skeleton. Retracting herself was done with the same ease, and she saw two new lines of text appear as she did so.
Free Vision - 100 mana/creature
Channel Vision - 10 mana/second
With this discovery, she immediately assigned each spell to what it did, beginning to go around using Free Vision on every skeleton in the group and waiting for her mana to return when she ran out, each one having their eyes lit up with blue orbs of light. With this, however, she discovered the drawback. The skeletons that relied on their own vision could no longer use her area to detect things, nor her own view-point.
Glad to have discovered this early, she decided against giving the skeletons who would stay within her area Free Vision, they would be better served using her area to see, it would give them the advantage. But those scouting above-ground would be better served seeing with their own eyes. She experimented a bit with trying to change where exactly her skeletons could see from, but it seemed that they always had their vision placed in their eyes.
She made a note of this, reminding herself that she needed to test this on her Book Golem and see where it designated for eyes, if it was even capable of having Free Vision cast upon it. Maybe only previously living things could be given the ability to see. Hopefully that wasn't the case, but if it was, a few of her more extreme plans would go right out the window.
With her skeletons now able to see enemies coming from outside of her area, she was ready to begin expanding in earnest. Firstly though, she looked up at the sky, tracking the Sun and using it to determine directions. She sent her skeletons to patrol the region. All around the entrance to the base were craggy rocks, uneven and treacherous, causing several of her skeletons to fall down before recovering.
She quickly moved northwards, claiming territory for her area whilst also keeping one half of her focus on flicking between the views her skeletons possessed, letting her mentally map the region around her base. When she was satisfied with how far she had gone, she begun moving to the east, circling down and around and establishing an outer circle all the way around her base, then south a roughly equal distance past the entrance to her base before curving right and heading west, eventually looping back up and joining onto the area she had claimed already.
As the circle was completed, she felt almost as though she had just dropped into foam, as though weight had just been released from her body she didn't know she was carrying. She checked her mana bar, mildly surprised to see that it had increased a substantial quantity, rising straight up to a very healthy 13,300 mana points. With this change, she decided she could now attempt a new trick.
There was a smattering of dead trees in the claimed area around her base, and she picked a random tree to perform her experiment on, tearing away at pieces and then using her power to force them to attach to the tree in other positions, whittling away at the wood until the tree, which had once been a large and rounded but very dead oak, resembled a colossal humanoid. The legs and arm, the joints and whatnot, were all separated, and when she grasped ahold of the entire tree, seeing it drain her mana to do so, she deemed it complete and had the oak colossus take its first step.
When the binding magic wound around the tree, affixing it together and giving it real form, she let a wave of satisfaction overcome her. But, her experiment wasn't done yet. No, she then hovered up to where the presumed face of the colossus was, casting her Free Vision ability and watching as a light, singular, appeared on the point she had been looking at.
What was odd was that this point was green instead of blue, perhaps an odd side effect of the tree being a different form of life? Whatever the case was, she now had a gigantic tree colossus under her command. Suddenly, her surroundings didn't seem quite so threatening, not if she could make even the trees themselves into her allies. With this newly-named Oak Colossus under her command, she grouped up half of her skeletons around it, leaving the rest to roam around the borders of her area and guard, then had them begin marching outwards...only to immediately run into the same aggravating wall that had blocked her expansion underground.
If she had a voice or a body, she knew she would have been ranting and raving. As it was, she took a moment to collect herself, her analytical side coming to the fore as she tried to figure out what the hell was blocking her, and what she was supposed to be doing now. As soon as she thought that, a new text-box appeared, one that tipped her off to the fact that she wasn't merely some ancient experiment.
Maximum external area capacity reached. Underground expansion options now unlocked. (Tip: If too low on mana, use Soul Crystal Synthesis)
New Ability: Synthesis - Produce any material already discovered using mana.
This stunk way too much of direct interference to be a weird mental bi-product of whatever was going on. This was tailor-made, not a mere accident, convenience could only be stretched so far. But then...did it matter? If something was messing with her, then what did it matter? If her unseen manipulator wanted her dead she would probably have already been smashed to pieces and not allowed to expand outside of her crystal, dead before she ever escaped the void.
She decided to try out her new ability, surprised when as she attempted to use it a menu appeared listing various materials she had encountered. Even asinine ones like grass, dirt and air were available to be synthesized. But, most amusingly, she could already produce metal. How? Well it was simple, the clock she had found was made of metal.
More specifically the weights, the pendulum and the chain, as well as some ornate decoration on the pediment. This gave her access to Lead, Brass, Cast Iron, and then the most valuable part, not even from those listed. The hands on the clock weren't made of mere brass or iron or copper. No, they were made out of Steel. Why it was so didn't really click with her, nor did it matter, since she had access to several valuable metals immediately.
Selecting simple wood to start off with, she pictured the forearm section for the left arm of her Oak Colossus, and watched as her mana was drained to form the arm, which thumped to the ground. She looked at her pool and was rather confused. The forearm of a Colossus wasn't exactly small, yet it only cost her 500 mana to produce. And with the extra size of her area, that number was regenerated swiftly to the tune of 133 mana per second, leaving her full again in less than five seconds. She focused upon every individual part of a Colossus at once, except the left forearm, then cast Synthesis again and watched as the entire form was produced, dropping to the floor and leaving her drained of a full 5000-ish mana.
As her mana began to regenerate, she looked over each piece, inspecting them for flaws, before using Gravmap to form the second body of an Oak Colossus and then 'binding' it, as she had taken to calling the action. She gave vision to the colossus sent the two Colossi to patrol the border of her area. She renamed Gravmap to the name she really should have given it before as Telekinesis, then turned her attention towards her skeletons, recalling Prime to her position near the entrance.
Prime was going to be the skeleton she focused most of her efforts upon, since it was the first she had made and the highest level skeleton she possessed. She looked at its sword, then had the skeleton stand there as she quickly went around the base for a second time, eventually coming across what she was looking for, a leather-bound book. She already had wood and steel, but leather wasn't unlocked, though the quick jaunt downstairs fixed that.
While she flew back, she began mentally building a new sword, several books she had read aiding in picturing what a sword should look like. She arrived and merely hovered for a while as she tried to create a sword she liked. The issue was that she only had text for reference, so she was merely going off what words had told her, meaning she would probably have to rework the sword in the future anyway.
It was that thought that led her to simply give up on any sense of complexity, which ended up with her making a sword that to her looked acceptable. While the blade was perfectly straight and it had a wooden handle wrapped in leather with a full tang, she had no idea how the ergonomics of wielding it were going to play. For all she knew one single swing and the sword would be jarred out of hand.
But it was definitely better than a stone sword, that was for sure, and about as sharp as she thought it should be. She checked her Synthesis again, just to check the actual price for the materials, but stopped when she saw that there was a tab she hadn't seen upon her first perusal of the new option. That was fine of course, though a little irksome, but as she selected it, she realized that things stretched just a tiny bit further than she'd realized with her new ability.
Her ability was not just able to synthesize materials, but entire pre-made objects, which included her skeletons, her Book Golem, Oak Colossi and even the sword she had just made. That...really changed things, as she could see that the cost of a sword was a mere 300 mana, which was what amounted to three seconds of waiting. A skeleton cost more, to the tune of a thousand mana. Oak Colossi were already established as around 5500 mana, and confirmed as a 6000 total, which surprised her as it was more expensive than she thought it'd be
The Book Golem was surprisingly even more expensive despite being smaller and seemingly more frail, as it cost a full 6500 mana to produce. But then again, the books within contained knowledge, so perhaps the case was that the more imparted value an item has, the more costly it was to produce. Each book used still retained information, and while she hadn't yet tried it, she felt able to dispel her...what should she call them? For now she hadn't given all her creations a collective title, but maybe just her creations would do.
But she felt able to do so, and thus believed it likely her Book Golem could be effectively dis-assembled and turned into the base books it was made from. That, of course, meant all the knowledge contained within those books was replicated, which was far more valuable than just the ink, paper and bindings of the book itself, increasing the price and thus cementing in her mind the reason for the increased cost. If it was something else, she was missing it.
Next, she turned to the new expansion options. As it clearly stated, she was now able to expand underground, and as she opened the attached menu, she was given a view of her entire area. It didn't show any of her skeletons or her golem, nor her crystal, but it gave her a view of all of the rooms and the objects inside. Beneath it and to the sides were boxes, each one having a number tied to it, presumably the mana cost to unlock the space.
None of them were affordable yet, the sideways expansions each costing 25,000 to unlock, whilst going downwards was an even greater cost at 50,000, though that made sense. Each sidelong expansion was a smaller area than downwards, owing to the fact her base was pretty much square, no rooms offshooting too far to a side. The area she was allowed to claim in one go encompassed the same space as the two levels she already possessed, meaning with one go she could upgrade from two floor straight to four.
Of course, she didn't have the mana to buy even a smaller expansion, but when she did, she first wanted to purchase one of the smaller ones, just to see if the area below would expand with it or not, as well as whether the cost increased. Her course of action chosen, she went back to her Synthesis, scrolling through the list and coming to a stop at the end, a problem arising in her plan.
She wasn't able to synthesize a Soul Crystal.
With her plans for expansion stymied as of that moment, her immediate focus was on gathering the knowledge to either find or create a new Soul Crystal.
However, from what she had read so far, she knew very little about Soul Crystals. She knew that they were some kind of receptacle for magic, based on the fact that ritual circles sometimes called for a Soul Crystal to be used as a battery, being charged to in turn charge the rituals and needing to be recharged depending on how quickly the ritual drained the mana of the crystal, but that didn't help her with making one.
She still had forests worth of books to read though, so she was sure she could find something. However, for the first time since she had awoken, a new feeling crept over her mind, one of boredom. She had spent a very long time already reading books, and the thought of being trapped and unable to do anything as she read through hundreds and thousands of books didn't sound very appealing anymore.
So, rather than focus on that, she started pursuing more enjoyable ventures. She practiced various magical spells that the books entailed, each one being unlocked by her odd menu and categorized. She made more skeletons from Synthesis, equipping them all with proper swords and having them all train, using Prime as the leader who essentially taught them what it knew simply by demonstration. The skeletons were incredibly simple, and just by copying his sword strokes, they all unlocked their own levels and began to grind.
Prime had reached level 10 at this point, it's sword swings strong but without overreaching, and fortunately enough changing its sword hadn't adjusted the level in any noticeable way. At some point she wanted to attempt making armour, but she would save that project for when she really needed a break. Currently she was in the process of trying to form an avatar for herself.
As much as being a disembodied view-point was efficient, it was also rather detached from the world, she wanted a body. She didn't actively recall it, but she knew she had a body at some point, one with all senses, and she wanted that back, at least a little. Since she didn't want to be made of bone, she chose wood, but also plated herself in a sliver of steel, which would encase her in protection.
Wood was flammable after all, and she had no intention of getting set on fire. The hardest parts to create were the joints, since she wanted this to appear at least somewhat as the drawings in the books she had read depicted people, except made of wood. One thing she did discover was the ability to cosmetically change materials, so while her body was encased in steel, it appeared as wood.
She tried to make it look like what the books had flesh looking as, but she was unable. Maybe she had to actively know what it looked like, which meant finding a living being and observing them. She utterly lost track of time, having been doing her experimenting in the main hall rather than her original room, and thus hadn't tracked her clock for the time.
Not that it mattered. Her skeletons and Colossi hadn't seen anything out of the ordinary, and so she wasn't particularly worried about anything suddenly showing up to wreak havoc and break her crystal. That meant that even if possibly days, maybe weeks had passed, since it didn't feel like she'd spent too long doing it, that worked for her. Finally, almost at random, she decided that her avatar had been finished. There were still a few niggling bits she wanted to work on, but for the most part, her avatar was finished.
Now she just had to figure out if what she wanted was even possible. So far the systems surrounding her control seemed fairly lenient about what she did, but maybe an avatar was a step too far? She poked and prodded a little, before deciding to just go for it, controlling the entire avatar at once and making it take a step, but not before she positioned her view just in front of the disguised metal that consisted of a rough-hewn face.
With a feeling like...well, with a feeling that felt weird, she found her vision attached to her golem, and for the first time felt...normal. She hadn't really noticed it after having expanded so much, but being able to feel all her skeletons and her Book Golems roaming around in her area, where her primary sense of detection was touch, was actually pretty weird.
She looked down, the action of moving her head to actually do so coming naturally to her, reaffirming her knowledge of having a body beforehand. She may have forgotten all her memories of that time, but those ingrained instincts for motion were still ingrained in her memory. She raised an arm, flexing each finger then clenching a tight fist and releasing.
Doing the same for her other arm, she went through a few...a few dozen different tests and checks of her body. She kicked, punched, blocked, crouched, jumped, walked and generally strained herself ensuring she didn't have something wrong with her new body. As it turned out, she did, her left knee wasn't hinging properly, though that was an easy fix using Telekinesis.
The act of detaching from her avatar to reclaim her normal form was actually relatively simple, she just willed herself out of the body and thus she was out. She whittled away at the small blockage, hopping back into her body with more ease than before and testing her knee again, this time being able to freely kick without limitation. She then attempted to cast a spell, but realized that her mana was actually empty.
She glanced at it, bringing it to the forefront of her vision, and was confused when she saw that not only was it empty, it registered as 0/0 with no regeneration rate. Tapping her newly-acquired chin, she tried to figure out why it was so, exiting her avatar and checking again to see that her mana was full. She re-entered her avatar, and was empty again. Tentatively she decided that, as her avatar didn't have a Soul Crystal nor was it actually alive, it wasn't actually able to hold mana, and thus she had none available. Why it disconnected her from her normal mana was something she couldn't figure out though.
Shrugging at it, an action that before she didn't even realize was something she would have done before, she put it to one side of her mind, walking out of the hall and taking in her surroundings from a more personal perspective. Viewing things from her skeletons was always detached, she retained her own vision and saw it as though she was looking through a window into what their eyes saw This, though, gave her a far better perspective on things, like how imposing her base really was.
Various doorways had shattered stone in their frames, the doors strewn across the hallway and some of which had been dented by the impact force. She looked one way and then the other, picking the direction that led towards the entrance. The biggest thing she wanted to test was being able to leave her own area. Her view-point was blocked by the ever-present barrier, but her skeletons and Colossi were able to exit her area with no repercussions, so perhaps her avatar was also capable of this?
As she walked, she scooped up an odd piece of stone, looking it over before tossing it up and angling to catch it again. When the stone ended up slamming into the ceiling and ricocheting off to land behind her, that was when she knew that while she still had the muscle memory for performing actions, the different strength to what she had been used to would cause different outcomes.
Case in point being when she picked another stone up and clenched her hand around it, crumbling the stone to powder and feeling the pressure exerted on the steel casing of her palm and fingers. She knew somehow that if she had tried that in her old form, it would have caused her an injury. The sole first aid book she had skimmed through before deciding it was boring told her that it would have caused bleeding and pain and the potential of an infection, but it was detached from the actual experience so much that she couldn't really picture it.
Her distractions made the walk outside feel much shorter than it was, and before she knew it she was pushing open the mostly-closed door to the outside and looking around. She could actually feel the wind on her face, and the difference from smooth stone floors to the dirt and loose stones she was now walking atop, the warmth of the sun on her exterior. It was like...almost as if realizing that she was...there wasn't a good way to describe it really, just that it felt nice.
She stepped further from the entrance, absently having Prime and a pair of other skeletons form up behind her. Sure, there wasn't anything detected by her external perimeter guards, but there was also the chance that something could suddenly charge through them and give her little time to react. There was absolutely no need to take silly risks after all, and the skeletons weren't exactly obtrusive.
A few minutes of casual walking saw her at the edge of her claimed perimeter, with no sign of the barrier that before had sprung up whenever she got near. She took a few steps outward, then a few more, turning back to see that she was further from her base than ever before. A feeling of excitement and satisfaction swept her mind as she turned away again, looking across the endless craggy rocks.
But then she turned back towards her base, walking back with a slightly sour feeling in her mind. If she left the area, she did not trust this terrain to lead her back. It was all far too similar, and without her Synthesis ability, she couldn't make a trail leading her back. She feared what would happen if she lost her base and wasn't able to return. So, for as much as it stung her, she had to remain, at least until she found a way for her to use mana whilst in her avatar form.
So...back to reading.
