Chương 48: A distributive Ice Ice baby.

INCIDENT AC-0466 Status: Error Patched Culprit: Found — To be Penalized IncidentAC0466. log < log start < start time [19990921: 08: 01] < Initializing text-based &[)#xA= > interface < Authorizing user… # ERROR 999#. < This incident will be reported. #WARNING# Compromised Access Point Detected — Quarantining… > Welcome [UNDEFINED USER] < UNDEFINED@&[)#xA=~$query 'System Mana' /a > # ERROR 403#: Forbidden — Insufficient Clearance ##WARNING## Compromised Access Point Activity Detected! — Terminating Connection…

##WARNING## Connection Termination — Failed. Continuing Quarantining Process… < UNDEFINED@&[)#xA=~$sudo query 'System Mana' /f /a > [sudo] Enter Password for [UNDEFINED USER]: > username is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported. ##WARNING## Compromised Access Point Accessing Confidential Data! — Terminating Access Point… Failed. ##WARNING## Automatic redaction system partly bypassed. >>> Access Conditions Met — Loading…

QUERY RESULTS: Subject: System Mana Mana Type: Non-Elemental Complexity Level: UNKNOWN Description: The mana that makes up the system and all of its components — while it's mainly classified as Non-Elemental — has the correct classification as system mana. It exists to self support itself along with any [system] and crops up with nearly any interaction users have with the grand system. Massive breakthroughs have been made on &[)$: #= after using real system messages repeatly upon an area.

This project took a week of various system messages being spammed and stray system mana being routed into &[)$: #=. Through an Old elvish transferance technique system mana has been grafted upon and now self supports &[)$: #=. The greatest use of system mana is through [Hidden Personal Quest: System Support] quests issued to relevant trusted entities. This quest involves modifying core components of subsystems in the grand system.

Warning while subsystems become exposed core components of the system are not vulnerable. #@! ^& reviews all patches and any nefarious patches are rejected while permanent [Deviant - S] tags and permanent global [Emergency quest: Headhunting - Deviant] becomes active. While regular deviant tags do not restrict control the Deviant - S tag limits any and all new interactions with the system - something most would consider impossible. This combination is a death sentence to all in our current society.

Successful System Support quests result in relevant entities being given a [Hints] panel on their system tab that provides core secrets about the world and how to succeed in it. <<< ##WARNING## Access Point Successfully Quarantined — Terminating Connections! > WARNING: Emergency Connection Termination Protocol Activated — Ending Session! ##WARNING## Connections Terminated. — Beginning Quarantined Access Point Diagnostics…

> log end > end time [19990921: 12: 32] Excerpt from &[)#xA= incident reports – converted to readable text. Okay! Now that this floor is well on its way to being done, I'll divert some attention to filling it out. Let's see what my materials can do. Now I don't want to make anything that dangerous in here because the better my primary goal will be (confusing any and all senses) the worse any monsters will get.

I'm thinking something on the level of slimes but to the point adventurers might not notice they are being attacked. Thinking about how slimes were made and what Innearth could do about them Innearth thought about using liquid crystal as the "jelly inside" Nope. Even with a thin outside the "hard on two sides" makes it so they have rock hard strength and infinite durability as anything broken just reforms again. …

plus, I'd have to add crystal cores for it to be able to control itself and the goal isn't to make a strong monster. Not that a core automatically makes the monster strong but… well yeah, I don't think I want to go this route. Checking on the water slime that was currently terrorizing some of the local wildlife in the unclaimed areas Innearth thought about how their body – their new body – functioned. Endless internal motion that looks calm from the outside. Able to split apart and then rejoin itself without dying.

If I were to try and make those effects from scratch… well okay, I could probably figure out the internal motion with kinetic liquid. Maybe a 50: 50 mix of kinetic liquid moving anything that touches it and water or something to be moved around? But that's not actually my goal just a side effect of what I'm actually interested in. The reason why I thought of the ascended water slime in the first place. I'm really just interested in the "reforming" part of the body as a super form of healing.

Regular water slimes die way too easily, however. I don't want to fill this floor with stuff that will perish simply by touching an advanced adventurer. Is there any way I can make something just a bit more dangerous than a water slime to the unwary but with much much more durability? Is some variation of a water slime even a good idea for this floor? Thinking around Innearth returned to the sand bed boss.

That monster had some similarities to the water slime – namely it could break off parts of itself and rejoin them. The main difference was that parts that fell off that boss were inert and then when rejoined with the boss it was like they were added to the boss's body from scratch. In comparison, the water slime split into perfect copies of themselves that then individually moved and sought each other out before rejoining into a single whole. I'm going study you for a bit okay? I hope that's fine.

Happily jiggling about the water slime seemed to give its assent as Innearth got to work. He wouldn't have asked permission for a non-ascended monster but well… ascended monsters were different. It seems almost like there's a sort of fluff ball of lines inside of the slime. Those crack-like webs stay in place while the liquid around them moves and… well pieces of them separate and then rejoin quite easily. Looking closer and closer Innearth tried to peel back the mysteries of the slime's body.

It was a lot harder to look inside solid materials after they were solidified into a monster as if some part of them blocked out any peeping. – their soul maybe? Life or Death force? Either way that didn't matter in this case because the slime was mostly transparent. Each crack-like line was made of an incredibly short and thin wire that had a significantly higher amount of mana inside of it.

These wires had little concave balls on the end of them that linked the wires in loops as they sought out and slipped into each other, magically connecting and forming long chains. When the slime moved chains would "break" but it really just involved unconnecting tiny rods harmlessly with no damage to the threads. It took awhile but Innearth was slowly able to come up with a theory about how the slime functioned. I think every single wire acts similar to a coreless circuit.

That means the "soul" of the water slime is contained within the wires while the gel surrounding them is just a part of their body. Now I made some monsters that had a circuit without a core and the spark of life went to dwell within the circuit, but I stopped those experiments at the time. It seemed worse than both a circuitless monster and a core'ed monster because it made an obvious weak spot throughout the body. If the circuit was broken the monster would die from a simple stab through a key line.

This water slime seems to get around that issue by making hundreds of little connections so it doesn't matter if a few break… I think I can manage something similar to that actually! The only thing is I'm sure if I split a monster with thousands of small circuits in two it won't be as good as this. What other secrets do you have? Hey lil buddy. Want to go fight the local wildlife? It would help me out loads…

Quivering with excitement as if that was just what it was waiting for the slime churned with excitement and then rushed away from Innearth's core room finding the path to the underground biome. Bursting through a small entrance into the room the slime fell onto a battle between a spider-crab and a blood-bat that were fiercely locked together in a struggle.

Not noticing until it was too late the two were suddenly partially covered in goo as the slime broke into separate pieces and started blending the body parts it grabbed onto. Gore made the insides of the two halves murky and hard to study but in the brief section between the two Innearth spotted an almost invisible web of threads between the two parts – and then between the 4 smaller blobs that were ripped off as the two monsters struggled.

Slowly following those nearly invisible threads of mana the sections met up and – surprisingly – Innearth was reminded of FED's urn to wind monster connection. Opening up a private stream Innearth started sharing and recording the fight. Fated Eternal Design: Oh! Hello. What's this my favourite apprentice? Innearth: Hey! Glad you could join me. I was recording just in case you didn't join right away but can you tell me what you see with the connection between the water slimes parts?

Innearth: Is there any way you know that I could mimic that sort of connection? Fated Eternal Design: Ah! A theoretical question. I simply love when you ask me for help. Innearth: I… I don't. Fated Eternal Design: Shhh. I understand. Let your mentor help you out. … why did I think it was a good idea to ask him to tell me his thoughts. Fated Eternal Design: Well, That's clearly not dungeon-made. I know you mentioned it was ascended once but what I can say is that sort of design is beyond my capabilities…

Fated Eternal Design: Have you managed to look inside "natural" creatures while they are still living? There's similar levels of complexity if you go down far enough. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. Innearth: So mimicking this is a dead end? Fated Eternal Design: No but yes. Hmm. You know how I make my connections right? I think I've explained it to you before.

Basically, I use a very tiny thread of pure mana and just think about connecting the area I have my core and my "body" together. The two have to be really really close together when they are first made, but can extend after giving life. Next I make massive lines of Mental mana connecting everything so thoughts can be distributed and most of what makes the masks tick can be transferred back and forth. Innearth: I'm not sure you've mentioned the pure line. Why do you need the mental mana if that line exists?

Fated Eternal Design: That's… that's not really a line it's just a connection. It's kind of like… Fated Eternal Design: Well a lot of it is apart of stuff I've learned from air mana but basically if the mana doesn't combine with an element it's not really a body part. But if you use it in the creation of the body it sort of influences the way the body connects? Innearth: You explained how you made stuff before and I'm nearly positive you didn't include this information.

Fated Eternal Design: You never expressed any interest in making something like my masks! Also… well it's not actually important. I've managed to make masks that work without the line and just making sure the wind body is completely inside of the urn and touching the core. Fated Eternal Design: I think it just helps with intent. It's like a guide to the spell to tell it what I want. Or like a note. Oh! Here's how I can explain it. I don't need to draw that line when using the system design panel.

Just select the link tool which was added after I used it a bunch. I don't think the tool would work to make that many connections, however. Innearth: Well thank you for your time. I'm going to try linking stuff and seeing how it works. Fated eternal Design: It probably doesn't work how you're thinking. Most of the design I have is in the mental mana connections. That's where all the complicated stuff is happening. Innearth: It can't hurt to try.

It sounds a lot like it could be the solution to my problem so I'm going to try it anyways. Thanks for listening! Fated Eternal Design: No Problem my Apprentice! Glad I could help. Friend. Innearth closed the stream and left a very small portion of himself that was still invested in the water slime watching its relatively even fight against two spider-crabs. The majority went to see about trying to make a body like the water slime. First off, I should try and make a link tool.

Picking his spider bat pairs to experiment on Innearth started making them manually and leaving small lines of pure mana embedded in both their bodies as he designed them. It took over a dozen attempts with no discernable change before he noticed the pairs seemed to start being better in tune with each other. Continuing on, he randomized the circuits as he worked to make sure he was still innovating. At the 30 th attempt, something significant appeared.

After having sent it off with a faint monitoring thread of his consciousness he had started on the 31 st attempt. Before he got far a strange jolt of attention made him turn to watch what was happening. The spider seemed to be shooting living crystals! That… was actually the result of some sort of teleportation that was happening. The Crystal bat flew around behind the spider as it ran through the top of the crystal caverns and crystals seemed to grow out of its skin and fire.

Turning a corner, the tip of one of the bat's wings snagged on the wall and a faint spark of burning light was trailed in its wake. Somehow the two monsters are sharing skills? Except the living crystals seem like they are almost being teleported through the connection between the two monsters and I swear I didn't do anything close to portal magic… there's no space or void mana it's just some weird connection. I should send Doc a copy of this setup it will probably help him with his portals.

That 30 th experiment was the floodgates that led to every single pair after that point being connected in some intrinsic subtle way. A variation that had life cores in the magma spider's circuit, resulted in a duo where the spider could heal the bat over nearly any distance. A variation that had especially weird combinations of a link connecting directly to the circuit resulted in a duo that "combined" when fighting.

With the bat fusing slightly with the top of the spider and acting like a mobile turret that shot magma-covered melting living crystal bolts. The goal of adding the "Link tool" to his design panel was also managed. FED was mostly right. He couldn't make a net of thousands of connections. He couldn't even really set up how the connection looked.

The tool simply let him select two unconnected sections of reasonably sized monster parts highlighting the whole area and then checking a little checkmark that he wanted to link them. … But he didn't have to just rely on the tool. Starting on his eventual dark floor's monster, Innearth continued manually making monsters. Waterslimes were made that were doped with tiny crystals Innearth tried to link to one another.

Instead of combining two pieces with a line however, Innearth threaded mana through dozens at a time making circular loops of intent-filled mana connecting all the chunks together. Connection with "connection being the goal" and nothing else. Slowly but surely the iterations of the base of his new monster took shape. After enough stringing Innearth finally got a separate option added to his "linking" tool and the game changed. Distributed network creation.

Immediately Innearth's somewhat rough spells became exponentially stronger. The dozen connections became thousands easily as Innearth was no longer threading each and every crystal manually. Instead, he was simply "painting" a network of small crystals throughout the inside of the slimes. The system would not provide him with a tool he could not use manually but… with the number of connections being made in a few seconds of painting Innearth would have spent weeks threading them manually.

The final editions to the slimes were the most important but dead simple. A handful of "sand mana" material was dispersed in the gel-like body giving them form and weight. A fine dust of the "numbing" material along with a few shavings of darkness mana material and over a 100 unique slimes were evenly distributed through the floor. Another batch using the "store and transfer" material along with shavings of null stone that made their bodies incredibly weak but completely invisible to mana sight was made.

64 of these were made with most having a few drops of kinetic liquid to perk them up into semi-dangerous levels again before they were distributed throughout the floor. Both slime variations had no natural predators on this floor. They could theoretically last unharmed forever until adventurers finally showed up and unless they were systematically eradicated, they were here to stay – that was the whole point of the network after all!

Innearth had thoroughly tested some non-unique versions beforehand and found as long as a slime portion had enough crystal shards it would stay "alive". The slime actually had over a thousand shards and could be split into a dozen pieces before it started falling apart so it was roughly 10 shards to stay conscious and moving and at least 1 to be able to rejoin the whole. I think. I think I've done a bunch for this floor now. I'm going to move on to the next goal – the ice caverns!

Spending the next few days making Ice materials, Innearth churned out Void+Fire materials one by one by one, filling out his material list. First, he went through all the ones in the market he could find and then he spent the next few days making unknown combinations and studying how useful they were. He was almost in a trance-like state for he was making materials in different spots separately and studying them with different threads of his attention. Not every combination of Void+Fire made Ice mana.

Metal alloys like copper for instance made an inverted looking blueish fire. Instead of a blue-shifted hot flame, this fire looked like someone had taken a picture and then colour inverted it so the edges were light blue and the "hottest" parts were nearly black. This inverted void-fire burned stuff regardless of its "supposed flammability" – burning steel and water alike as if they were made of tinder.

The fire itself would not spread like real fire, preferring to center around the material that created it while burning it ever so slowly up and disappearing. Water made the best "Ice" material to no real surprise. The best for filling his floors at least. Void+Fire+H 2 O made A LOT of ice per 3 components to the recipe. Nearly 10x the volume and mass of the original water and at a nice cold and slow-melting ice. Quartz however made an ice that was slightly warmer and harder.

An ice that could actually sit at room temperature without melting however one that would still melt with flames. Most of the rest were some variation in between these two with strange sorts of synergies happening between all of them. Hematite for example made an "Incredibly cold" and "Strong" feeling ice, that melted within seconds of being exposed to a room temperature room. If it was embedded in the "water Ice" that surrounding ice would grow colder instead and take longer to melt paradoxically.

Similarly, while the quartz ice felt reasonably room temperature it did not melt ice that touched it and actually worked as an amazing insulator. Thus the optimal setup for a room using those 3 was to blanket a thin layer of quartz ice on the outside, lay a nice thick layer of water ice everywhere. And then place a rod of Hematite Ice embedded in the center to help cool the whole room down to the point where it stayed frozen.

The next obvious course of action would be to start making ice monsters to fill the floor and potentially embedding them with the hematite ice as a core of coldness. But after seeing how the colder ice needed to be in a biome of ice to survive and seeing as how the more rooms he connected the more stable the whole system got Innearth decided to wait until he had a more complete floor.

The rooms at the edges were half-melted after all with slippery water-covered ice instead of the more solid stuff located further in. The floor would obviously do well with more than just Ice. Snow would be great to cover the caverns and from his initial research from the few cores that had made ice floors snow appeared with big enough biomes but just appeared over time – it had never been made from scratch by a Dungeon Core despite somehow being more common than Ice mana based on adventurers that had the affinity.

Innearth imagined it was an offshoot of Ice mana. He also imagined it was tier 1 like fire and earth due to it being easier to use. Fire is rank 1 right? And Void is rank 3. The combination should be rank 2 and… breaking down Ice somehow into snow mana makes it rank 1 again? Or maybe Ice is slightly higher than rank 2. Let's switch to tiers. Let's say Void mana is tier 4. Maybe Ice mana is tier 3 and Snow mana is tier 2. That kind of makes sense? The system hasn't actually ever mentioned a tier for mana however.

It's just given me a selection of 4 "base rank X mana" types. OR maybe! Maybe It's similar to that in that I was right with Ice being halfway between Void and Fire as a tier 2 mana type. But then snow is harder than ice so it's tier 3! Considering dungeons haven't made it, it has to be harder right? Or maybe I'm confusing myself. Let's try again from scratch. I'll try and study the other mana types and see if there's a way I can figure out what snow mana is....

I'm thinking about this a lot for someone who can't use it. Studying the mana coursing through the ice materials he had made, Innearth tried to imagine creating it from scratch. He could almost see it. Instead of trying from Fire I would take Crystal mana and… try to make it look similar to this I guess? There's a weird sort of disconnection between the two states. It's like… Okay. Rank 1 mana is kind of 3D in terms of being interconnected shapes that work in 3 dimensions.

Its lines but they split out in all directions and curve all over the place. Rank 2 mana is kind of 2D I guess. Like the kinetic mana flying out behind stuff as it moves looks sort of flat. Vertical lines in the air almost. Rank 3 mana is… 1D? All the natural bits of the mana look just like minuscule dots. Except that's not fully accurate. That's not fully what void feels like when I use it and maybe my dimension analogy is wrong. Is rank 3 mana even dimensioned? 0D?

In that case the missing link between rank 2 and 3 would be 1D Tier 3 mana! Does that even help? Is rank 4 the end of the line for mana because rank 5 would be -1D? or assuming it's based-on Tier -4D if it's following the other pattern? 4 - 2^(rank-1) for the dimension of the mana type? Does that help? … does this mean ranks higher than 3 are impossible? End of the line I can't use rank 4 mana? … I guess I'll have to wait till I reach rank 4 to find out. This tangent isn't helping me do what I want, however.

Maybe I should try and base the problem after feelings. The way void mana feels, and the way fire mana feels, and what I'm seeing Ice mana do. Void mana is the concept of… well shrinking but that's not totally accurate because I'm mostly using the singularities and those are no longer shrinking. Void mana is the concept of shrinking something down to nothing or making something into nothing. Fire mana however is the concept of… adding energy to a system. Making everything hotter.

Ice mana from what I can tell both sounds and feels like the direct combination of those two. Something into nothing. Energy into nothing. Taking energy out of the system and making everything colder. … maybe this tangent is too abstract for me to come up with it I still feel like it's an offshoot of crystal mana even though I didn't see it in the list the system gave me. Studying Ice mana Innearth continued to experiment.

Weeks upon weeks pass of just trying to figure out how Ice mana worked and attempting to make it without the "Combination Spell" doing it for him. He came up with countless theories while continuing to expand his ice caverns and tried several experiments that each ended sadly in failure upon failure. Sadly, his imagination didn't quite live up to his skill and no matter how much he wanted it or how much he tried to shift crystal mana he couldn't reach ice mana without combining it.

What he did manage to do however was change the shape of several of his materials as well as what he was nearly certain as vaguely touch upon several of the options given to him in his past affinity choice. Amethyst and ruby mana make shimmering glassy metal blocks while mixed with Iron. Diamond and emerald mixed with silicone made milky-looking jewels with dust-like impurities that floated about the solid and clear material. The main problem with these altering experiments is most weren't repeatable consistently.

Trying specific steps of moving the mana or twisting or stretching it sometimes made a new affinity depending on his attention but most of the time stayed as regular generic crystal. Of these experiments, his best attempt at making Ice mana was done when he filled a new room with nothing but ice. Scrubbing as many conflicting affinities from the area before he created a ball of crystal mana under his control and then relaxed.

He spent a few hours just relaxing and holding his ball of crystal mana edging ever closer to giving up control. Innearth was hoping the transmutation would be affected by the environment and he was right. After almost a full day of this experiment, Innearth felt something imperceptible almost click and he grew momentarily excited. Checking he saw the mana in the center of the room was actually Ice mana!... but it was no longer his own.

At the last second, he had let go fueling its change but also removing the whole point of this experiment in the first place. Finally giving up Innearth realized he just wasn't enough of a genius to do what he wanted to do. … Maybe I'll try this again, but I wasted so much time on this already and I want to scream at this point. I'm… I'm not actually mad because it's not like anyone else has done this but also… I'm disappointed. I really thought I could do it.

What's something I should do instead to distract myself from this? I'm tired of looking at ice I don't even want to continue expanding the ice caverns right now. Oh! I was going to make a second boss for the beginner area! An alternative to the sand bed! Let's do that.