I left Kalla with her confusion and went back to my work. The first tree I had grown was an oak and some 5 meters high right now even if I hadn't grown it any further after my first attempts at growing it. It seems my ambient mana had done the trick. I'd have to limit the growth directly then after it reached the height I wished for. I saw that it had grown some seeds and took them right away.

Even if the tree did indeed got manipulated before I maybe was able to do some more or at least extract the fire resistance from it. I wanted to use an ironwood seed as base so I had to wait for someone to bring me that one. Until then I would begin to use all the stone Sarah dumped into my inventory from her digging.

By the way my inventory space seemed to have grown significantly.

“Sorry to disturb you again but do you dump all your digging material directly into my inventory or yours? Because right now I have several kinds of stone and big amounts of dirt in my storage.”

There was a silence for some seconds before I heard distinct cursing from my dungeon counterpart.

“It seems we now share our inventory. What a fucked up situation is this? Now I can't do any projects on my own without you noticing. No surprises!”

I'd be worried if not for my contract with her that made it impossible for her to hurt me.

“Don't you have something like an inner mind like I do?”

“Not as far as I know. How did you create it by the way?”

I thought back and tried to recollect how I created it but I just seemed to have known the process and did it subconsciously.

“It seems to be a special ability of my core type. Maybe I can teach it to you?”

I hadn't thought that to its logical end when the system answered already.

Do you want to offer the dungeon core Sarah the ability to create an inner mind?

Yes/No?

“Inner mind mind incoming.”

And I chose yes with the girl suddenly creaking, “That's so awesome. You can teach abilities to me too. I thought it was only limited to your guardians.”

“Color me surprised too. I didn't know I could do this. Perhaps it has something to do with you being bound to me by contract. I mean you're something like the closest thing to a relative for me, being a dungeon core and me a city core. At some point there have to be some overlaps in our creation. I mean we have the same goddess as creator, don't we?”

I could feel her affection coming through our bond.

“Aw, you're such a sweet talker. Thanks Marcus, I appreciate it. The last years have made me a loner and it's such a strange thing to suddenly be in contact with someone other than Tiria. Dungeon cores don't talk to each other, you know. We try to kill each other whenever our territories connect.”

“Must have been hard for you. But you're with me and my guardians now. We'll always talk with you, maybe even more than you like.”

“Haha, in my former life I was quite the chatterbox. You might regret this offer.”

“Try me. You're with me and I'm with you, maybe for the rest of eternity. We don't have an expiration date, do we?”

“Nope, we don't. Can you also give me your memory shop ability? There are so many things I miss from good old Earth.”

“Oh babe, you'll love my access to Earth's media store.”

I gave her access to the memory shop. Adding to that I asked, “Can I come over later? I could need some inspiration to adjust my own place.”

“Give me some hours. A girl needs her time. You can't be so old as to not know this truth, right?

“I know it. I'm no geezer.”

Her amusement came clearly through the bond.

A human came closer to my core than most of the others and suddenly knelt.

“City Lord, I heard that you seek seeds of ironwood trees?”

The young guy was well built but lean, more endurance than brawn and that was something I liked. Don't get me wrong, Dwayne Johnson looks good but I prefer to look more on the lean side like Jason Statham.

“You're right. I need them for my city trees. I don't have anything to reward you at the moment but maybe later when the dungeon core under my command has built its first levels you may have the honor to check them out first?”

His eyes lit up, “That would be wonderful. It would raise my status in the tribe and perhaps also offer some nice loot.”

“Don't get too cocky inside it. I have told her to not kill you but that doesn't mean that she can't hurt you like a bitch.”

The young man nodded, “I will be careful, Sir. Where shall I put the seeds?”

“Just place them on the pedestal I'll create before my core.”

I took some granite from my inventory and placed it 3 meters in front of my core and then used the new geomancy spell to form it with a strong base and three beams upwards holding a bowl 50 centimeters in diameter. I wanted to make the beams look like trees but got instead just several vine looking things that swirled around each other going up. It didn't look bad but wasn't exactly what I had planned. Not that I would ever admit that.

The young human was impressed either way so I was happy. He put his seeds in the bowl and left.

At last I could begin with my experiments. The ironwood seed was surprisingly receptive for the fire resistance trait from the oak tree. The technique Tiria taught me what seemed ages ago worked like a charm and I was one step closer to my goal.

Gilian would have been happy to get the hardness of the ironwood too but I was quite sure that even with my impressive mana capacity right now I had nowhere enough to implement that trait into her living being.

Thinking of her I took a look at her to see how much progress she made with creating some homes for the elves.

“Gilian, can you tell me why there don't seem to be many huts in your tree? I thought that you would be the home of the elves?”

Her spirit form appeared before me, “Oh yes I am, but only if there isn't any other room to be had. Normally I'm the home of the royal family and their closest friends and allies. I'd have to be enormous if I'd have to be the home of a complete clan.”

“I understand. So I should hurry to create the new homes.”

“That would be the best for now. After you've made the trees big enough I can use my powers to create the homes for the other elves and then stop the trees from expanding.”

“Yes, that be awesome. I want to make the trees emit some warmth on cold days so they don't accumulate snow and can bear leaves all year long and possibly also fruits.”

She made a worried impression now, “That's quite unnatural.”

“And?”

“I think I'll have to adapt to your powers but it goes against mother nature what you're doing.”

“Mother nature is also something governed by the system. If I'm able to do this why shouldn't I do it? It would help our city tremendously and cut down any heating costs. We might need some more mana in cold seasons but with rising numbers of citizens that shouldn't be any problem.”

She sighed, “I won't stop you and it might be a good idea but don't overdo it. Nature has a reason for things so don't hit her too hard in the face or she might bite back.”

“You're talking as if Nature has a will of its own.”

“She might!” and with that she left me.

I really hoped that this planet didn't have a mind of its own. That would be another problem to handle in the long run. Remembering the ways humans had fucked old Earth I didn't want to know what a not so benevolent planetary god would do to its inhabitants. Earthquakes are just the smaller things that could happen. Bad enough for the landscape but for a city an absolute desaster.

Some thoughts for later. Now there was a tree to grow and then to build my first stone building around it. I modified the tree with the resistance of pine trees to cold and even that worked better than I'd hoped.

Now how could I add the self-heating function? Just adding fire mana could solve the problem but I had some doubts it would be so easy. So I just grew the modified ironwood tree until it bore first seeds and took them for further testing. The bark had changed to an auburn color much to my delight.

Now that I had more seeds for my experiments I began to send fire mana directly into the first seed only to see it burn to ashes. That was a mistake.

So I tried to mitigate it with earth mana but that also didn't work. Next I tried to add other kinds of mana only to be disappointed too. My old ways didn't seem to have any leeway so I had to try something new.

I went back into the seeds inner core and looked around to get some inspiration only to discover that I was surrounded by the most complex runework I've ever seen. Much too advanced for me, making my mind dizzy only by looking at it.

I went back outside and searched for Tiria only to see that she had almost left my territory.

“Wait Tiria. I have a question for you.”

Said lady turned around with some irritation appearing on her face.

“What is it? I have a place to be.” And then she pointed with her thumb to her new and old boyfriend.

“It won't take long hopefully.”

She was somewhat mullified.

“When I went to modify my ironwood seed I sent my consciousness into its core only to discover an overwhelming amount of runes surrounding me. Last time we did that with you still a goddess there wasn't anything of that.”

She frowned, “I have only a misty memory of that but if I had to guess it might have to do with you discovering runes yourself and trying to change the fundamental layout of life itself in the seed. Very advanced stuff, so you should be careful of what you do. Sadly I can't offer you more advice as I've lost most of my knowledge about runes.”

She grinned shortly, “Tell me later about your newest mischief but now I have to leave you.”

I wished her some fun and and went back to designer mode. I tried to discover anything familiar and that took me most of the day. As the sun came up again I found what I was looking for. There was a small segment where I could see the known part of the fire rune. It was much more complex than I've known and I made a mental note to show it to Mariah. Maybe she could offer some advice on it but right now I was just too impatient to wait for it.

I made the rune stronger by intensifying its outline, using tremendous amounts of mana that way. Feeling somewhat dizzy I had to wait for some minutes to get back into the game and planted the seed a little bit away from everyone sending a steady stream of mana into it.

I could feel Sarah's and Gilian's attention shift over to me and the test site.

“I have a feeling that this could be awesome or its direct opposite,” said Sarah.

Just as Gilian wanted to add her own bit a new mind erupted from the seed, definitely masculine, “Dad?”