Chương 68: Baking is a good hobby.

On gods: There are countless theories about the gods but, when cataloging them, three main schools of thought keep appearing. The religious institutes all maintain similar theories that the gods are exalted beings who adore their followers. They claim their strangely powerful but limited spells and feelings they gain in certain situations are undeniable proof of the god's continued existence and favor.

They maintain the gods are currently protecting everyone from some grand evil and we must provide gratitude and fealty for these "heroes". A growing group of the younger generation claim the so-called "gods" never existed in the first place. They point to historical evidence of gods performing miracles like [Resurrection] as impossible – while maintaining the system is simply providing spells to [Priests] in a similar way to regular skills.

This group maintains that the grand system is simply a natural phenomenon explained away as godly by the uneducated. The third theory is held by a smaller but passionate group of mostly high-levelled individuals. They claim the gods did exist… once upon a time but no longer. This group has brought forth the theory that the gods created the system and then died out inexplicably some time later. While there is some evidence to this theory being true... it raises some very scary implications. What could kill a god?

This theory is believed by a smaller group of people and the main fact preventing it from being ignored is how the group that believes in it are all high levelled beings who have lived for a long time. Some are even projected to have been around since the gods were allegedly still active. What do they know that we don't?

Excerpt obtained from the heretical banned book "An unbiased view of religions and gods" While Innearth became a fan of Craig – and as the town above him settled in – the majority of his effort was put into expanding. His lower area – the place with natural monsters in constant war – grew larger and larger and split into several floors… but also began changing subtly as he tried to think of a good zone plan- and left it to its devices.

Natural monster offspring ascended and mutated into stronger and more refined variants at an accelerated pace – pushing his artificial monsters to greater heights and ascending them as well. The number of ascended fossil riders grew to a total of seven and a crystal worm actually managed to break through as well… somehow assimilating the spider crab it had managed to land a killing blow on. This crystal worm+spidercrab corpse became a worm that moved around with nightmare legs – somehow worse than a roach.

Innearth loved him. The two factions played off each other and – due to having the highest mana level of anything in Innearth's dungeon but no directed purpose – began affecting the walls. While Innearth brainstormed ideas for the next zone (and potentially a new transitionary floor to skip his "whimsy floor") the floors themselves started to warp. Without him directing the passages' growth, they started to take on the hints of conflict and war that the monsters kept embroiling themselves in.

Interesting for unique materials… but not really something Innearth cared to center a whole zone around. Finally deciding to repeat his first zones, Innearth began cleaning up the war-strewn floors by packing them all into a single transitionary floor and making the hallway from the ice caverns bypass the whimsy floor straight to it. He made bricks of the permanently blood-soaked stone and went with a rust-red and crimson theme – to contrast the previous white and light blues of his ice caverns.

By concentrating the nearly 4 floors worth of unique materials into a single small floor, some invisible threshold was reached. This threshold – along with the pseudo spell that collecting all the materials together with the purpose of making a new floor caused – spontaneously began manifesting and changing everything. Innearth spent time laying raw materials about as well as collecting plants from the surface and market – watching as some were stifled and killed while others mutated to match the surroundings.

Plants were either squished and ripped apart or reformed into sharp-angled, bloodthirsty things – there was no in-between in this gauntlet. Despite it not being the prevalent theme – or even the most common mana type in the floor – Blood mana shone through – causing the occasional drop of conjured blood to drop from a ceiling or drip down a wall and disappear into the floor.

Taking a cue from FED and his mist monster – the one that was solely designed to increase ambiance – Innearth bartered for a blood mana core and stack of blood iron bars. Then after slicing the materials into long square blocks that could be placed about a monster Innearth built a long-fingered twisted variation of a dwarf. One whose crystal flesh had visible veins pump through and who could manipulate red mist and drops like a vampire. Technically a mini-boss…

but not one that Innearth wanted to remake, this monster purposefully spread the same effect that had spontaneously happened in a few spots throughout the floor. The walls and eyes of the occasional tasteful monster skull now bled dark red mana – and occasionally shoot drops at adventures eyes. In many ways they were just a red water manipulator… but in others there were very distinct differences between the mana types.

Blood magic was not actually adjacent to water or even life mana despite living things being the usual containers of blood. Instead, blood magic was distantly related to death mana in the dungeon system – with the majority of natural monsters and former sapients that used it being considered "Undead".

Besides the colour, it was much easier to harm with blood than water and harder to protect against – blood mana punched through shields in ways water never did and let Innearth's blood sentinel leave wounds that continued to bleed. Wounds could be made that lingered with something close to a curse – resisting healing and blood clotting. The main attraction of this floor however, was a variation of a monster Innearth had seen both in the dungeon games and on the market.

The monster was comprised of hundreds of different shaped blades and saws and screws. The base was a humanoid shape but the effect was positively ominous. Blades for arms and knives for fingers. Blades for feet and toes. A giant guillotine for a head, and enough carnage-related unique materials to alter the creation into something truly dangerous feeling.

This monster was mostly copied from the market and had a giant body long tier 10 core that fueled its skills – which were simple and straightforward enough (slash, stab, pierce) that they ended up being stronger than they had any right to be. Unlike his other floors, the goal of this transitionary floor was simply to pass through it so Innearth worked on increasing the difficulty to actually kill the boss.

Plants warped into sword trees and the torturous blade sentinel stalked about – the sound of sharpening knives spreading ominously as it moved. Next taking the momentum of finalizing this case, Innearth began making the "Nightmare" or hard mode version of the above silver mine. The dwarves who had started to stagnate on things to do, once more kicked off on making minecarts and traps – but this time around they didn't hold back.

Traps were made that would be incredibly lethal to all but high levelled adventurers – the void traps Innearth had made "that expanded and rapidly grew captured limbs" were liberally placed – along with ones that shot thousands of needles in every direction copying Craig's skill combo. Hallways that filled with explosive gas were made after talking to Abe and swinging blades tipped with void slashed past the occasional doorframe.

Innearth also began using his void affinity to increase the lethality of everything by embedding "unlife" materials in traps making life magic weaker at healing and protecting against them. Those that didn't were tipped in slow-acting poisons. The goal isn't to kill adventurers but without some proper danger what is the point. I also don't want these floors to feel weaker than the ice caves. Need a bit more to give this a proper oommmf.

Partway through this design – when thinking about the expanding silver flesh – Innearth remembered his mana oven out of hand. His periodic checks of it had been done across longer and longer periods – the only reason his experiment continued at this point was "simple stubbornness" born from the sunk cost fallacy. Checking the oven while not expecting much, Innearth nearly put the lid back down before stopping and looking again. That's different from my last check…

It's so infused with crystal mana by this point I don't think it will change much more if I leave it. Visual change is a good cue that it's done as well. The material in his oven took the shape of an "aggregator crystal" – a single large and simple aquamarine block that pushed up and then inwards towards a small point. This central pillar was surrounded by over a dozen smaller crystals that grew out of its base like leeches – crystal leeches that pulsed with mana like a heartbeat.

Innearth carefully made a containment "null" room in his deprivation floor – taking advantage of all the null materials around to create a simple box with a door and dungeon flesh circuit – complete with miniature panic door to break the connection and seal the room off in the event of an emergency. Then Innearth sent a nameless crystal dwarf over with null tweezers to carry it to the room. The oven was only a dozen meters away from his containment room but the process was still nerve-wracking.

At one point the dwarf almost dropped its potentially catastrophic payload after tripping over a stone and Innearth froze – wishing he had made a sealable box for transport and cursing that the deprivation floor messed with monster senses. No other mishaps happened however and the dwarf successfully made it to his destination. The material was deposited carefully in the center before the nameless dwarf retreated quickly slamming the door shut behind them. Alright! First off.

Let's try seeing if it works with silver or metals still. Innearth dropped several metals onto the unique material, watching as they simply bounced off. Okay, okay. Thought that would happen but it seemed a good thing to check. Now if what I'm thinking is true… Innearth made a single flake of quartz "smaller than a fingernail" and dropped it on the unique crystal – bracing himself for growth. After tensing up the actual result was surprisingly lacklustre.

Lacklustre in comparison to the potential it might have had based on the original material not in terms of what happened. The quartz fused to the top of the central crystal and slowly appeared to melt into it over the course of a minute. As it dissolved, the central crystal grew – but by such a small amount it couldn't have been more than the mass of the quartz's "food" itself. Rather than focus on the central pillars' minuscule growth, Innearth found his attention drawn to the leeches.

Even as the center crystal barely moved, the darkness in the room seemed to drop slightly – something drastic as it was incredibly difficult to affect environmental mana and anything that did so was immediately noticeable. As a lump of environmental mana from the room was sucked inwards, several black crystals grew out of the side in a slow but inevitable feeling movement.

These new sprouts ended up larger than all the previous leeches – over the course of a 10 minute period growing to be 5 centimetres to the previous leeches 1cm and the middle pillars 10cm. Breaking off one of the darkness-themed "children", Innearth continued his experiment by dropping a flake onto this second-generation crystal. A similar effect happened to this broken-off piece – but black crystals spreading on a black crystal was less impressive than black from azure.

It also ended up spreading slower and to a lower height in comparison to its parent. The 3 rd generation crystals did not propagate – they simply grew at a 1: 1 ratio with any "food" given to it. Still. That's a conversion of separate crystal to this third-generation styled crystal. Unless I want all my crystals to be in this "3 rd generation" state I should make sure not to let it spread. Okay, Let's see if I can try making other variants. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent.

Report any appearances on Amazon. Innearth first tried using personal mana to affect the crystal's growth, but found that instead of "influencing the reaction" holding a bundle of mana around the crystal seemed to "stifle the effect slightly". The entire time he tried to hold it the material strained and failed to suck mana towards itself – his natural mana insulating the crystal from the environmental mana in the room.

After letting the mana go Innearth watched the crystal gulp mana down hungrily – the personal mana he had used only making up a small percentage of the final blackish-brown crystal. Basically, the effect can be delayed through concentration but strains constantly until I release it. Can't think of any use for that other than trying to prevent it from growing so I'll try a different way of tinting the mana affinity.

Artificially filling the room with Earth mana took a while – when turning into environmental mana the concentration in the air seemed to drop drastically. Something that was "high" in personal mana as a spell, became low in environmental mana when it was complete… but rather than energy being lost it was almost as if environmental mana was naturally more muted than mana currently in a spell. After several days of syphoning off his ration of experiment mana, Innearth tried the experiment once more.

When adding quartz, the second and third-generation crystals did not draw from the browner flavors of mana in the room – simply clearing out more of the remaining darkness themes. The original crystal made several dark brown children and then as the darkness flavours dropped sprouted purer and closer to being solely "earth" flavours without a hint of darkness.

Tiny flakes could be eaten out of the original seed to duplicate it, but that took a while to grow back to the same size of the original – and required a large amount of crystal fuel to reach that point. Continuing the experiment Innearth found the crystals were much less dangerous in terms of endless expansion than the silver flesh. While more mass was created than put into it, the process was less drastic.

It happened at a slow enough pace that Innearth could use void mana to easily clean it up – besides his discovered method of "choking" it and preventing the environmental mana from gathering. The next test was how stable in different environments these crystals were. Bringing various stones into the room Innearth placed crystals on basalt and other "crystalline" solids – to check how dangerous it would be to place in his regular hallways.

The still-unnamed crystals stuck to and slightly ate into the stone, but seemed to stop after a brief connection period. Safe enough to place in a hallway I think. As if when eating into the stone the crystal had built up a natural insulation barrier of all the parts it couldn't consume, the magic let Innearth feel safer about transporting the material. A similar effect happened with ice – despite it technically being a crystal the seed barely ate into the material…

The crystal did grow slightly but simultaneously melted a huge amount of the ice surrounding it – as if "ripping the solid" out of the frozen water. Less "melting the ice" and more "transmuting it into water" the change was decidedly magical –happening rapidly but without steam or heat. Alright. Now on to the most important part of this experiment. Moving forward, Innearth made a second containment room to protect the original crystals from anything that could happen then began making monsters.

First, he used his default testing monster – his crystal snakes – and placed a single flake of first the source, then the second generation, and finally the third generation crystals into it. Magic swirled around these creatures as soon as they were "born" with the effect both more and less impressive than the silver flesh had been.

Madness was nearly nonexistent at the start – with each experiment growing and changing into stronger and "better" versions of themselves in a smooth manner even as the environmental mana dropped. The source and "second generation" versions were nearly identical in terms of first armour and then fin-like wings and arms growing out of them. The second generation was more limited in terms of only using earthly mana or darkness based on their seeded alignment but functionally they were the same effect.

So using the second-generation crystals could let me influence what sort of improvements are made? They don't seem to be that insane yet… I'm hesitantly pleased with the result! The third-generation crystal didn't seem able to enhance various parts of the snake. It essentially just grew slightly becoming a weight in the snake's stomach that blocked movement and transmuted movable crystal flesh to stiff useless blocks.

As the monsters' flesh were remade, their bodies grew steadily stronger and stronger in a nice beneficial curve – before suddenly appearing to go out of control. As if tipping over the edge of some invisible threshold, their movements turned erratic and crazed. The experimental monsters grew rapidly worse as their beneficial transformations continued past the point of benefit.

Like tumours, their limbs expanded and their armour thickened – trapping the snakes slowly in a solid block of crystal – all that left an artful spikey statue. Innearth waited for a bit to see if this was a finished product – or if it was closer to a chrysalis that would shatter…." the monster reborn anew". After nearly an hour of sitting there like a statue, the monsters expired answering the question with a more disappointing result.

Innearth took extra care to review the memories he usually ignored while absorbing dead monsters – to see what exactly was happening. Each monster had felt fully "normal" and uncorrupted… but they had a growing seed inside of them. One that seemed to speak stronger and with more insistence into their mind as they transformed further – promising power as long as they took it. Pointing to their past growth and claiming that as proof they could gain even more…

The new monsters kept taking the offered power trusting the inner voice as it whispered sweet nothings. Trusting the feelings that turned into a voice that spoke about how they would better be able to "serve their dungeon with more strength" not even realizing the moment it was too late. Innearth felt how claustrophobic and then crushed and broken the monsters felt after becoming statues. He felt the moment the parasite knew it had won and started laughing in the monster's whole being.

He felt the crystals ripping strength from the monster to purify and grow the original sources before slowing down and becoming a dormant center seed once more. Hmmm. Well, I'm still pretty sure the original silver flesh was from a demon… so even transmuted into a crystal version it still has some effect that feels demonic. That being said… I still think this is a better result.

I know for a fact the otter that delved me was able to overcome and control the silver flesh through mental strength and I'm pretty sure this crystal is easier to ignore. Bonus these statues are less dangerous feeling than a literal river of silver flesh. Sure the crystal grew and ripped strength… but I can tell that's only an echo of the silver flesh not a set thing. It's like… the silver flesh felt like if it grew strong enough it would revive the original demon it had been taken from. This feels…

this feels like. What does this feel like? This feels like no matter how much it grows it's still going to stay a growing crystal. It also… It also doesn't give me the feeling of dread that demonic things do. The crystal grew... but it grew in three dimensions instead of some strange four or five dimensions. I obviously can't prove anything without more experience but it feels fundamentally more constrained and safer.

Let's see if I can make more useful results than a suicidal bomber of a monster that ends up as a statue. Innearth tested out the statue's stability and "safety" – finding that the outer layer of both was pretty non reactive ignoring both quartz food and mana. When breaking down into the middle the very center contained a large seed of the original material – innocently ignoring the fact they had killed their host.

Innearth then tested creating various strength monsters and ordered them to only accept some power before controlling themselves and not listening to the voice. That worked surprisingly well with most of the dungeon monsters stopping well below the dangerous threshold and then obediently ignoring the voice – no matter how they tried to trick them into thinking accepting more power was what Innearth wanted them to do. Of the dozen experiments only two had given in. That was two over a month-long period.

During this period of experimentation, the highlight of his actual entertainment had been something not experimentation-related. Less than a week after Abe's dungeon had connected something new happened. First a party of orcs and then a whole clan had come through the portal. They had immediately run rampage in his crystal caverns – attacking his defences in a way that was distinctly different from all the other adventurers Innearth had hosted so far.

The orcs – to a man, women and child – preferred to go "through" an obstacle instead of "around" it. However… the way they faced his traps and monsters wasn't in a brutish or dumb manner. The orcs would never wander into a trap by accident, but would actually swerve into them – throwing themselves directly into the path of crystal spikes that would have missed them. They crashed through danger while enhancing their clothes or weapons to block and smash through the spikes instead of dodging them every time.

The orcs moved as a group but would nearly never use their numbers in a "dishonourable" way. If a group of five orcs came across three monsters, two orcs would step back and make the fight "even". If they came across a single monster wandering alone, orcs would duel them one on one – and would even make plenty of noise to make sure the monster knew they were there and attacking.

Orcs had this list of "rules" they seemed to follow but if they were in a chaotic battle they would fall back on more practical "everyone fights" tactics. After five days of living in Innearth's dungeon – making fires and having large parties where they roasted monster meat and slept without a care – a single monster changed their aimless exploration. An ascended monster of Innearth's – the illusionary/invisible wurm who had steadily grown by fighting the occasional adventurer – had come across the group.

After figuring them an easy kill the monster had sneak attacked and ate one of the weaker orcs before slithering away deeper into the dungeon happily unaware at the hornet's nest they had just savaged. From that moment on the orcs hunted the illusionary wurm with a vengeance. Now. This wasn't even the first orc that had died in Innearth's dungeon – a previous duel had resulted in a nameless orc dying two days before – but this reaction was a very different result.

The previous nameless orc had been skewered again and again by a dashing – crystal-spike wielding and three-ringed marked – "greater crystal snake". He had thrown everything he had at the snake before perishing and the group he had been in had cheered! They had then sent a second challenger out to face the victor – waiting politely for the snake to heal before attacking – and beat the snake in round two. The illusion wurm however had attacked the orc from behind.

The wurm had snuck around and projected its position to be somewhere else so the orc's hated it on principle. Their faces and voices had filled with red hot rage, they had mourned the "unhonorable" death their companion had fallen to and then went to war. … This feels like an overreaction. It's just one orc. What is their problem? Innearth had asked Abe what was up with the whole scenario and got back a – Abe: Oh yeah. They aren't going to rest until they kill that monster – sorry m8.

They carry a massive grudge and anything I can think of doing will probably just make it worse. Abe: Like sure… you could try and make a dummy for them to kill instead… but unless you make it convincing enough they won't buy it. Had to sacrifice my own experiments with illusion monsters when I realized there are more orcs than anything else by me. Innearth: … that's fun. Abe: More importantly is this not cool being connected across portals? I just found out the continent I'm on is called "Okos".

Named after the orcs? Or just a coincidence. Abe: MORE IMPORTANTLY. These adventurers I'm getting from Doc's dungeon are bringing guns! Do you know how awesome these are? They are literally the second best weapon adventurers could use beside bombs. Innearth: I've gotten a few. They are… okay. Honestly I prefer mages to gunmen. Even if they both shoot projectiles and use skills and devices… guns and wands… well honestly I don't even know what it is about them but I like the mages more. I like their aesthetic.

Abe: I've made some weapons I call gunbombs that can be destabalizied and thrown at stuff to make explosions and I made these other items called bombguns that shoot bombs with pressurized chambers. Only problem so far is ammo, I have no clue how the guns they have convert mana into bullets. Any thoughts? I want a gun that can create endless bombs. Innearth: … using my own skills? Well… I can make explosion mana but haven't had much luck making it in any form other than as a sort of bomb.

If I could make it in an easier way… and combine it with crystal mana I might be able to make an X crystal version? Abe: … what's an X crystal? Innearth: What I'm calling the crystals that create an effect when converting mana. Water crystals. Fire crystals. Those sorts of things. Anyways as I was saying… it's been a while so I might be able to make one… but even that wouldn't be the best. Innearth: Like it would just release explosion mana as soon as you push mana through it.

Kind of just an instant explosion that's more dangerous than a bomb you can set beforehand. Abe: Bruh. Getting my hopes up for nothing. Innearth: I'm getting there! Listen. You have to promise to treat him well but… I'm thinking of seeing if one of my crystal dwarves wants to visit your dungeon. I'm sure what you want could be made with their help. Worst case we can try making a material together but I'm not sure how well that will work. Abe: You'll send your little buddy over? Damn.

I know how much you care about them. Innearth: I don't want to be a controlling progenitor so no promises. I'll bring it up to them however and see if any will take you up on that. Abe: Making a sweet crib for them already. Tell them uncle Abe can show them a good time. Innearth: Done. Innearth asked all three of his ascended dwarves finding the dwarf he always thought of as "the third brother" – Rutile – was the most interested. Steve said he could…

but was still tweaking the trial rooms while Ilmenite was getting more and more "dwarf-like" in that she spent most of her time making items to sell for booze. She "paid" for the materials she took by leaving every other item for Innearth to stock his dungeon – and was starting to consistently reach tier 7 or 8 in her offerings letting Innearth continue the weekly bounty quests. Rutile however was somewhat quiet and subdued.

He seemed almost shy and Innearth thought letting him explore the wider world might be a good experience. Waiting for a time when the portals were free before smuggling Rutile through, Innearth returned to his previous problem. I would actually be worried about the illusion wurm if the orcs had even the slightest chance of catching them but well… the wurm can fool my senses let alone the orcs. Guess I'll just remind any of my more sneak attack prone monsters to avoid the green and grey people then move on? … Yep.

Moving on, What is the best use of the transmuted fleshy crystals? … I really need a good name for them. I could start implanting monsters with the crystals… but unless I first weaken the monsters, they will become too strong for regular mooks. Well at least too strong for the nightmare version of the silver mines. I'll do it for the nightmare mine boss as a proof of concept and save it for deeper floors. OH! I think the difficulty might be balanced with my nightmare crystal floors?

That's a good goal to work towards. … although now I'm going back around to wondering if that's safe. I've done plenty of experiments with smaller amounts of crystal and the material… but I'm still not confident about bringing it to the crystal floor. Maybe if all the crystals in the nightmare version are this? Ehhh. Either way I have to stick to the plan and finish this zone… as well as start working on the transitionary floors and then the nightmare magma halls before I figure that out.

There's so much to do – not that I'm complaining. Innearth began jumping around his plans for the next zones – planning out what he wanted for them before he even reached enough space for them let alone enough "floors". The last change he made to the plan for the nightmare versions was to increase the difficulty by "suppressing" the adventurers slightly. All of his nightmare floors were and would be shrunk by 0. 1% making them more isolated and then very light gravity materials were placed everywhere.

Planning it out the nightmare mines would have gravity increased by roughly 10/20/30% on each of the floors making it slightly harder for adventurers to move. Most of his monsters were then given gravity nulling materials to protect them from his defenses. I have to grow this zone a bit more and finish stocking it with loot… but I want to start luring adventurers down this far. There's still a group that doesn't seem challenged by my ice caves – I need to show off this new area to them!

Let's give myself one more week so I can sync its reveal up with the weekly loot reward. That's all I'm giving myself!