A peek at the inner workings of the system:

At first glance every race has a separate system and all those systems function independently.

They might interact in a few specific ways, with quests and similar crossing borders, but most consider each system to be a separate entity. I’m here to provide significant evidence for the theory, that they are much more intertwined than we first realize.

I’ve come to this conclusion after studying the dwarven system. Did you know dwarves can sell their masterfully made creations to the system, in exchange for various quality boozes? Well at first, you’d think it's all magic mumbo jumbo transmuting weapons and tools into a drink. You might think that’s perfectly natural – only possible because the system was made by the gods. But then you start to look at some of the system quest rewards given out to other races. Sometimes after completing a hard quest the rewards from the system are tools and weapons.

And sometimes…sometimes those tools and weapons are dwarven made. Oh, plenty are not. But some of them. Some of them have the craftsmen’s mark on them.

This lends credence to the concept that quest costs are not simply transmuted to rewards but swapped, from some internal pool of items.

I tracked down a dwarf and showed him the spear he had made and marked, and he confirmed he had sold it for a barrel of ale some 10 years prior.

The only thing I haven’t confirmed yet is if all system rewards are made by dwarves and potential far away races. I haven’t yet figured out how the system gets the alcohol to sell to the dwarves yet for example. Maybe that’s purely magical. But I’ve found proof that the system recycles stuff at the very minimum and I think that’s significant.

I don't know what to do with this information but I'm sure it's valuable for someone. Thus, this paper. If you figure out some grand secret based on this information, please provide credit!

An excerpt from the thesis “On the connection between systems” by Steve – not a scholar.

Innearth finally finished moping about how much weaker his monsters had been than Amy and Bose’s.

I don’t know how to catch up.

Do I need to catch up though? As long as I’m happy with them they are fine right?...

Lol yeah right, I need to have strong monsters. Otherwise, the other Cores are bound to start making fun of me. It’s important.

He had decided to spend some time brainstorming and expanding but wanted to set something up before he started. Back in his first Tier, he had found he could customize the system to give him notifications…at the time he had seen no point in getting notifications from the group chat – but now that he was semi-regularly receiving private messages, he wanted to make sure he read them right away. He had ignored the message from Amy for nearly a day and didn’t want to have that happen again.

He sent a quick message to Amy to remedy this.

Innearth: Sorry random question can you message me real quick?

Amy: Sure what’s up?

Innearth: Thanks that was all I needed

Amy: …

He caught the twitch and feeling that receiving a private message gave him and bound it to a popup at the edge of his attention.

Splitting off some focus to expand and sitting there thinking about what both of the other Cores had said, a burning need to prove himself came over Innearth.

Changing his mind, he stopped expanding and started spawning snakes every half hour instead – he wanted all of his attention on brainstorming and even though he could split his focus for something like this, it seemed best to put his full attention on the task at hand.

I think I need a new material before I can improve the flying crystals. I think I stopped part way through combining Crystal mana with everything? Maybe that will give me an idea.

He started to make Dual element materials with Crystal mana and quartz, choosing a corner of the pool room to perform his experiments.

Skipping over Water – he already knew what that did – he started with Fire.

Fire and Crystal combined into solid wavy orange spikes – as if a fire was frozen and then a filter was applied to remove its smoothness – or reduce the number of polygons used to render it to an excessive level.

Taking the material and stabbing the wall with it, he saw the spike was hot…but not hot enough to melt through stone. Honestly not any different than a straight Fire material.

After putting pressure on the crystal, the tip broke off, falling to the ground and leaving a light glow at the bottom. Okay, neat…but not useful right now.

Moving next on to trying to combine Crystal mana with Rank 2 mana he started with Death, A blood-red crystal was formed giving off faint black wisps. The wisps looked less like black smoke and more like white smoke that was inverted – faint hints at the background behind it also being inverted.

Simultaneously he felt his control increase ever so slightly and checking his status he saw he had levelled up again to Level 11.

Turning back to his combinations he was suddenly interrupted by a private message.

Abe: M8!

Innearth: Hey! Been a while…nice to hear from you.

Abe: You changed your name bro! I only found you cause it was close enough. Man, I am not cut out for babysitting. Please don’t leave me alone with Jim again I can’t stand that insufferable lil lump of slag.

Innearth: It took you longer than I thought to reach this stage it's been what - a month since we were born?

Abe: Yeah, I ran out of ideas for blast slugs and levelling slowed to a crawl. I finished my 3rd floor well before reaching this point.

Innearth: Yeah, I’m level 11, You are still behind lol. Oh if you want to hide from Jim you should change your name as well. I'm sure he's too dumb to make the connection if you swap it up a bit.

Abe: Bruhh shouldn’t you have slowed down. You need more experience for each level now, how are you still 2 ahead. And I'll think about it. I kind of like this name.

Innearth: Fine I guess I have a way to get a bunch of freeish experience. What did you pick as your rank 2 specialization?

Abe: My Guy. Explosion mana exists. How could I not pick that as a specialization? Do you not know who I am? I even got a bonus because I’ve used it enough before the choice m8. I'm stoked by the choice.

Innearth: Ahh of course you were offered that, anyways have you used the other elements much yet?

Abe: I mean yeh, I tried each one out – water sucks massively by the way – combined em all with some silicon to see what happens. Fire was arrit but nothings as solid as explosions.

Innearth: Did you not make monsters out of each type?

Abe: …I mean I’ve used Earth mana to make some shards that could be exploded but I found metal and fire is much nicer to use.

Innearth: Okay, here’s what I want you to do. Try to combine each element with a few different materials to see what they do – you could buy the info, or I could just tell you but I’m sure you’ll get more out of it if you combine it yourself blind, especially if you come up with any ideas by what you see. Next, I’m giving you homework to make a monster using every other type of mana that you haven’t used yet.

Innearth: You can ignore Water if you don’t want to deal with the madness of that and you’ve already done earth somewhat so that leaves Air. Make an Air and Fire monster and make some materials with Air Water and Earth and then come back and I’ll give you some more easy exp.

Abe: Ayyyy, and this will give me more experience? How’d you figure out that gives you more? I'll get on this free experience and then go back to using nothing but explosions!

Innearth: Yeah it will I kept track the first time I did it. OH, I have some more stuff to tell you before you start.

Quickly recounting the important info from his tier 2 primer he started with not mixing opposing elements. Moving on he gave Abe some tips on navigating the market, then sent the explosion happy Core on his way before returning to his combinations.

It was like he had never left, Abe responding just how he had remembered him and removing some of the inferiority he was feeling after seeing Bose and Amy’s monsters.

Not that I need to be better than Abe or anything but… it's nice actually being able to help. It's nice being the more advanced one for a change.

Returning to the combinations his next attempt was using Kinetic mana.

This combination didn’t change the appearance of the crystal much – them forming much the same as pure crystals formed – however, the crystal also wasn’t doing any of the things that Kinetic mana did by default. Did it not get attached?

Staring deep into the crystal's depths he saw the mana was very much changed from pure Crystal mana.

So why isn’t it giving a visible effect?

Playing around with the crystal he pushed and prodded it in various ways until finally – pushing attributeless mana at it – something happened.

By injecting the crystal with mana, it seemed to activate the Kinetic mana pushing it forwards with nearly more force than a Kinetic mana cube of the same size would cost.

Okay, that’s actually perfect, I’m not going to replace pure Kinetic mana with this just because I found it – the mana cost makes it slightly worse than the material that doesn’t need it. But for a quick burst of speed, it's essentially perfect – I’ll add some to the flying crystals I just want to finish up the combinations.

Abe had distracted him at the end of his "Death Crystals" creation but just before moving on to Life, he witnessed the dumb living crystal snake slide into it. Thrashing about a few times it stilled. Dead but without a mark on its body indicating how it had died.

As the body stilled several things happened. The colour of the death crystal faded, and it crumbled to dust. Several spikes of living crystal also burst out of the side of the snake, spreading around it slightly and making a new small patch in the crystal pool room. Growing right up to the crystal waters edges, they seemed unable to spread into the liquid.

I mean I was meaning to replant some of them? So, I guess this is fine. I’ll put a few more around later.

Focusing on combining Life and Crystal he pushed the two into a form and found it immediately started growing.

Hungerly the crystal strained to grow bigger in the air, so he laid the crystal down near the crystal pool and watched as it embedded into the ground – a thick trunk growing higher and higher out of the stone, seeming to be eating some of the basalt to fuel its growth.

Stopping only when the crystal hit the ceiling it pushed upwards into it a bit and then stilled, as if reluctantly satisfied by its current size. After the large crystal stopped its expansion it started to glow a very very faint green.

Okay…so what is this? It acted differently than pure Life mana and actually gave a result. It's eerily similar to how living crystals acted although it's obviously much larger and doesn’t seem to be multiplying.

Crystal tree? It doesn’t really have branches…it does seem to be a plant, however…

Wait it’s a plant? Last time I had to give it a spark of life does Life mana work similarly? Can I start making monsters using nothing but Life mana? or is that strictly a plant thing...

I’m getting distracted.

Mental mana is next!

Adding the two and watching expectantly he saw – much the same as Kinetic mana – nothing was immediately different.

Assuming it was the same as before he pushed some mana into it and saw wisps of pink mana explode outwards in a pulse. This pulse passed harmlessly through the room, catching the pool snake by surprise and forcing it to be super curious about the new crystal by its home.

Moving over close to the glowing green crystal, faint wisps of Life mana rose off of the few scratches it had, while closing and smoothing over them as they healed.

It's healing them slightly? Like a beacon? I should test with different monsters to see how it works but I really want to stay focused on my goal first.

Trying next to combine 3 elements at once – something the primer said was either hard or impossible depending upon both skill, and the specific elements and specific materials – Innearth attempted it anyways. His goal was to combine Crystal, Life and Water all at once, but when he searched through his list of compounds, he found none with 3 different periodic elements.

Can I not just combine 3 on my own?

Pulling out a bit of carbon, silicon and iron separately, he attempting to make a compound by mashing them together. Sadly, even though a speckled lump formed making him think he was successful, when he tried to mash all 3 Mana’s together the lump broke apart – a crystalline shard forming out of the silicon, attached to a life block of carbon while the liquid metal fell to the floor.

Guess I've reached the end of combinations...I'll buy a few 3 element materials later and try again but I can cross this off my list as complete for now.

Okay, so I immediately know how to use the Crystal+Kinetic combination. Let’s go back to that.

Making a flying crystal he put 4 long crystals on each of its flat sides before filling it in and housing it.

Hesitating after Bose’s advice he made two frozen and jagged looking crystal wings extending out of its sides and – figuring they might as well have a purpose – gave them small shards of the controllable kinetic crystals. Making a smiley face seems dumb. This is good enough for decorations.

He had a bit more mana to play with now that he had levelled up, so he juiced the pure core up slightly. It needs mana to activate the burst shards after all. And there was space in the housing.

As he was finishing up with seeding it with life, Abe responded once again.

Abe: Hey Hey Hey! Innearth I love you bro, that was amazing advice. I feel as stupid as Jim for not using Air with Fire yet.

Abe: Like air on its own? Boring slag-ass element. Just a faint touch to fire? Why the explosion gets so much better. I mean damn. That nearly doubled in strength.

Innearth: Ayy, Glad I could help. Some more low hanging fruit but you should try each of the rank 2 mana types. Then when you’re done that you can get started on combining everything.

Abe: Yeah yeah alright. Hey wanna see an explosion?

Innearth: I…guess? I think I know what an explosion looks like.

Abe: Trusssst.

Tentatively accepting the trade request that Abe had just sent him and depositing the…Whomper? As far away from his core as he could, he watched a curled up, shelled beetle of a monster appear.

Nothing much happened for a few seconds but, as the beetle sat there it started to glow brighter and brighter. Suddenly without warning, it exploded in a whoomph, fire bursting out of it in all directions. Bright orange fire flying outwards through the air and landing in a perfect doughnut centred around its remains.

Innearth: Thank you for your present…I loved it…really good…yes………………so thoughtful.

Abe: that’s what happens if you mix fire with earth and air by the way. And neat innit.

Innearth: Okay well you seemed to have taken to sending stuff pretty quickly…might want to warn people if you’re sending them literal bombs in the future, however.

Abe: Who would I send them to but you? Besides you knew what it was smh. Gotta brighten up your day somehow. How else am I going to reward you for helping me level.

Innearth: Well I mean…you could talk to Amy and Bose?

Abe: Oh? Lemmy check. Yeah Amy’s there, I found her kinda stuck up if I’m being frank. Don’t know if I’ll reach out but I don’t mind if she’s around. Who’s Bose?

Innearth: His name on here’s Bringer Of Serene Eternity – He’s that core that acted all dramatic in Tier 1.

Abe: 9?

Innearth: No sorry the other one with the long name.

Abe: Oh yeah, I remember him. Heh. You call him Bose? Booze! Doze? Bozer! Thought you hated that guy? He was amusing though, so I’ll hit him up some time yeh. Anyways what have you been up to man? Anything exciting happen in the past few weeks?

Innearth: Had it really been that long? It felt like I just advanced yesterday, but somehow the time spent experimenting and trading monsters really did take some time.

Abe: Trading monsters?

Innearth: Yeah sending them against each other and reviewing how they did. Telling each other how they think they could improve them that sort of thing.

Abe: Weeeeellllll…what did you think of Whoomper old boi.

Innearth: That explosion? …uh man you know I don’t want to repeat my issue with your monsters, but I think you should try to work on non-disposable monsters…also it kind of exploded without any prompting that seems even less useful.

Abe: I’ll get back to you on that…It feels different now that I have the explosion affinity. Like I can see possibilities of what I could do. Stay tuned I’ll figure something out.

Cutting out once again Abe disappeared to focus on practicing his new rank 2 mana, while Innearth resumed his upgrade program.

Returning to watching the room, his newest flying crystal was already at home. Spinning around the room it would sharply cut and twirl as it practiced moving around.

Why stop with upgrading the flying crystal?

Moving to his liquid crystal snakes he finally had a solution for them being stiffer and slower than their older cousins.

Placing a large kinetic crystal right after its coned head he nearly stopped there but then remembered a tenet he had subscribed to before. More is better!

Making every single ring first, he attached small shards of kinetic crystal all the way around each one. He then added a slightly larger one at the very center of each, suspended by its bracing.

Fearing that sudden pushing on these rings would slide them out of place, he expanded several crystal rods and laid them between each ring – their only purpose to hold the rings in place,

Finishing up, he gave life to his new and improved snake and watched as it slowly rose its head into the air.

Pulling backwards slightly and then stabbing forwards, its strike was many times faster than its previous iterations – many many times faster.

Faster even than the flying crystal because – while the crystal was using nothing but Kinetic mana to move – the snake was simultaneously moving its whole body as it activated the kinetic crystal inside of it.

Deciding this was his new baseline he marked down to vary the amount and size of kinetic crystals in the future to see if an optimal amount could be found.

Okay, I don’t want to keep sending these off every time I make a change. But at some point, I think I’ll ask Amy what she thinks and give it another test run.

Maybe I’ll make it a bit bigger too.

That way it won't look so small when comparing it to the octopus.

Giant thick snakes yeah.

Following that train of thought, he increased the crystal snakes’ size by 50% thickening everything slightly to see if that improved anything.

It…kind of worked. The size made it stronger however the increase slowed the snake down again even with kinetic crystals. The liquid crystal innards didn't melt outwards as much as a theoretical liquid metal version, but it took the snake much longer to make any changes to its body as it struggled to control its own body.

The polarity shifts that would slide down the length of its body like a wave took more time to propagate in the thicker body. In a lot of the shifts bits of the body would also sag drastically making its movement a mess.

Okay, maybe if I make the scales stronger?

Linking the scales deeper together and overlapping them more he increased their size to match the rest of the bodies increase. Less skin and more pure armour this version was solid and looked like it could take a beating.

He also set up compartments of liquid crystal in the body. Instead of a single thick tube of liquid crystal, the innards were separated by an "x" of a thin pure membrane that ran through the whole length of the snake. Passing through the rings and leaving very few holes for the areas to combine. Let’s see if it's easier to control separate compartments simultaneously. Come on attempt 2. Let us see how you do.

This snake was back to being faster – not quite reaching the speed of the smaller variant, but much more reasonable than its flabby brother. Its body no longer dragged slightly as it sagged and bulged while its larger form gave the snake more mass with which to move by.

It also looked stronger. The larger strong scales giving a sense of weight to the whole creature.

I think I’ll alternate between cheaper smaller ones and slightly stronger slightly less efficient large ones.

Hmmm’

Each snake he had made in the pool room had left shortly after their spawn, but after he had stopped focusing as intently on the task, the crystal pool reminded him of something he had added to the list of ideas he could try.

Gathering a small amount of the pool he held the unstable liquid in his grasp – the spikes ignoring his attempt at keeping them still, but the liquid still staying in his grasp.

Making a crystal snake and then replacing the liquid crystal with the unstable pool water, he shoved it inside and sewed it shut hurriedly before giving it life.

It's not that I have any expectations for this, but… I want to try making a unique monster.

This snake…was unstable. Obviously. He had already expected it wouldn’t be as controlled so the unique monster that formed before him was less of a disappointment and more of a curiosity. He also had plenty of pool water left so this experiment was as much a way to assess the value of his pool of anything.

For some reason, Pool Snek was protected from the harmful effects of the unstable pool. Maybe because it was already made before coming in contact with it? Maybe because its body was not literally made of the stuff. The new unique unstable crystal snake was not protected, however. Instead of simply moving weird or haltingly like he had guessed, the very core of what the snake was had been corrupted.

Instead of what he expected (having bulging spikes of crystal push the snake’s skin out randomly) the crystals in the skin itself had been corrupted. All the rings giving it form had been messed up and its head melted and reformed consistently, while it stretched out into a snake shape and then scrunched up into a ball. Moving forwards like a messed-up glitchy inchworm.

The snake sprouted new tails at odd angles and shot spikes out of its sides while slowly moving down the hall facing away from the crystal pillar room.

It can’t seem to control its body, so I guess it's not that useful. Actually, Pool Snek seems to be able to control the unstable crystals better than it. That being said at least it helped fill my advancement condition? That was... pretty easy all things considered. Might have taken longer if I didn’t know how to make a unique monster but the information from the primer trivializes the process. Guess the real hard part is making a strong unique monster and levelling to the point where I can advance... Anyways I should check my TODO list and see what to focus on next.

Indecisive Earth Level 11 42/252 exp to next level. System Access Level 2 1/2 requirements met to advance. -1+ Unique Monster ✓ -Level 20+ Stats Mana Regeneration 7.4 unit/min Mana Storage 33.7/252.0 units Physical Storage 49% Percent Capacity Titles. Earth Mana Specialization, Crystal Mana Specialization