About an hour ago I finished perfecting the last of the mana versions of my plants. Grey Iris was the most difficult for me to work with, though I think I can change it into something more suitable for my skills somehow. Might work on that next.

I started working on making Solar Energy versions of all of my plants. I think it will take about a week to finish, maybe a bit less.

Nothing noteworthy to report on the undead brains today, progress is just the same as it has been.

Tiddol finished her clockwork person today. But, as expected, it didn’t come to life. It was obvious the moment she ran up to me, and not slowly walked while shivering. If she had succeeded she would probably be bedridden for a couple days at least, up to a month at worst.

So, of course, she asked me to do the final step for her. I’m not entirely sure how I did it, it was instinctual and reactive, not a process I could think about. But I do know that wanting it to happening and visualizing it happening was enough to trigger whatever mechanism that is in my dungeon core that brings things to life. I had to sit down for a couple minutes afterward, creating a dozen Ents doesn’t take that much out of me. I could feel the world wanting to evolve me at that moment, but I suppressed it, I’m not ready yet.

The new creature is interesting. He doesn’t have any memories so he is effectively a blank slate. He doesn’t know any language and his mind is alien enough that Lace struggles to communicate with it, which I could fix with a bit of effort. So something we’ve dealt with before a time or two, most notably being Willow when she was first born.

He is naturally curious, as are all of the creatures I give a chunk of my soul too. Tiddol is in the process of teaching him how to speak and he seems to be taking too it well, though he is a ways away from being conversation level. It would be weird if he wasn’t.

Apparently, I was given credit for his creation, which is ridiculous. All I did was offer a chunk of my soul at the end, Tiddol did all of the work. But no, the world declares me to be the mother of his species and the terminal put his design up for sale under my name just because I had a small part. Maybe I’ll use the money from that to get Tiddol something.

I was kinda pissed about that so asked why that was on the terminal. The first response was ‘perks of being part of the ruling class, the world bends to our wills’. A lot of dungeons were bashing the order the scholars belong to, something about how they only think they rule the world. A couple others recognized me, or at least my name, and called me something along the lines of ‘that lordling prodigy’, apparently my work is pretty popular. Still, others commented on just how weird a creature made of clockwork is and how it doesn’t fit anywhere on the current trees of evolution.

And for all of that none of them acknowledged the fact that it was not me that created the creature. Everyone that mentions it was basically saying that yes, it was me that made it, or that Tiddol was an extension of my power, or that Tiddol was just my servant and all her accomplishments were actually just mine. And honestly, it kind of pissed me off. Why do I get all of the credit when I didn’t actually do anything? It feels wrong in so many ways.

I should probably mention that there are a bunch of undead up for sale under my name as well. That at least I get, I did actual work to make the vast majority of them better, though there were a couple that Azrezel did entirely on his own.

Also, I can now create more clockwork people in the same way I could create an Ent, despite the fact that I don’t know anything about how clockwork works. It’s quite a bit more mana intensive than creating an Ent, but I have enough mana production as to render that irrelevant. It’s a dungeon thing I think, being able to create creatures I have created before. At least it gives me a resource in case I ever want to study clockwork, I don’t think I’ll ever do that. I’ll leave that for Tiddol.

Speaking of, Tiddol seems excited to make new clockwork creatures. It makes it hard to stay angry when I see her enthusiasm. She wants to make smaller, simpler creatures now. She’s started working on a bird and should be done by tomorrow. It’s already at the point that it can fly, not well but it can.

These new clockwork creatures are alive, they have a soul, but how do they reproduce? Maybe they will have to learn how to create new members of their species by hand? In that case, how will the nonsentient creatures reproduce? I’m not even going to try to figure it out on my own, clockwork is so far removed from anything I work with that I would just confuse myself. Alchemy at least I can kind of understand, a big part of it relates to the way plants magically interact with each other after all, something I know well.

I have to say that it is really weird being constantly aware of all the moving parts in the yet to be named clockwork man constantly. Since they are made of living wood I am aware of every detail for as long as he is inside my forest. Even if I don’t really care about clockwork I have a feeling I am going to learn something about it from that, at least passively. Maybe enough to save his life if he gets injured, though in that case, Tiddol would probably be better.

Not much else of note happened today.

Anyway, Good Night Diary.