“So, is there something that you would like to talk to me about Ulgatha?” before she even managed to reply an excited voice spoke first.

“Mom Who is this? Why is your skin so different? All the men in armor also have purple skin. Does that mean you're not a construct?” she let out an excited gasp. “Are you a visitor from the web?” What’s it like to live in the psionic web? Mom said I can’t visit there until I am older.” she let out a huff.

Daniel had not been able to answer even a single one of the flood of questions, but just when Daniel opened his mouth Ulgatha spoke first this time Daniel was able to pick out the tiredness and patience of a parent in the way that she spoke.

“Maddison, this is Daniel. Daniel is our host. Please treat him with the respect he is due. This is his mindscape after all.”

Maddison for her part seemed to have not heard anything her mother had said beside the part where Daniel was their host. She let out an excited little shriek before her barrage of questions resumed. “What's the physical world like? I would like to visit at some point, but mom said that's not possible for now. What’s it like being a hero? Mom told me that you are on a newly integrated planet. What does peeing feel like?”

“Enough Maddison. Daniel has work that he needs to get done and we have a couple more things we need to discuss before he can begin his work.” Ulgatha reached under her desk and brought out a book bound in brown leather. “Take this to your room and read it. Come back once you finish we will discuss what you have learned once you return, so I expect you to be ready to answer questions about the book. Now leave.”

Maddison for her part grabbed the book and without another word skipped away heading to a door in the wall that Daniel hadn’t noticed up till now. Once the door closed leaving Daniel and Ulgatha alone again beside the soldier constructs. Daniel raised a single eyebrow at Ulgatha.

She just let out another long suffering sigh. “That was my first daughter I have managed to create.”

“Were you going to tell me about her?"

“Honestly no, or at least not yet. She is the first of my daughters, and she is still at a very critical point in her development since she only came into existence about a day and a half ago.”

“Really just over a day ago? She looked to be around the age of a twelve year old child. Also how did you manage to create a daughter I thought I was using all of the psionic energy to make constructs?”

“To answer your first question we psionic elementals do not mature the same way as other creatures. For us our physical and mental maturity come from the amount of knowledge or information our bodies contain. Take me for example. I looked just as I did now when I first met you and I was less than an hour old at that point. The amount of information I gained from my mother as a queen was staggering and vastly accelerated my growth compared to others of my kind. I did something similar with Maddison since we had originally discussed the first few of my daughters remaining with you before we began granting them to others. Any of my children you grant to others will be far less advanced and mature. With their host they will gain strength and maturity as they learn more through their bond.”

“As for the second question, no you are not using all of the psionic energy. The schedule I keep you on is to make sure you don't use all of your psionic energy; leaving me with enough to work on making my daughters.”

“That makes a sort of sense about how your maturity works and I am glad that you still have enough energy to work on other things, and as interesting as this all is I am just way too excited about the books you have managed to complete, so I am going to finish all of the work I need to get done so I can read them. I have new constructs to make and new rooms to construct.”

“Good luck to you Daniel, I will be here if you need me.”

Nodding Daniel left Ulgatha to her work. It was time for him to also get to work.

He could finally get down to the process of summoning some of his new constructs, if his math was right he should have around one hundred and twenty of the basic soldier constructs. Leaving the library and the tower he stood in a stone square between the tower and the new wall. He then tried to create his first Centurion, but immediately failed. He tried again with the same results; it seemed that something was missing before he would be able to make a Centurion. Daniel knew that he had enough constructs, so what was the problem? Rereading the skill Daniel realized the problem.

He then started to gather together any of the constructs that he saw. After ten minutes of this and still not having enough to form a Centuria Daniel began to wonder if he would be able to command the constructs like John did. John had a sort of mental link with each of his stone constructs which made Daniel wonder if had something similar. After pondering on that for a minute Daniel realized he was an idiot. This was his mindscape, he controlled everything in this space, and if he did have a mental link with his psionic constructs then it should be most powerful while he was in his mindscape.

Daniel tried to send out a mental summoning for all of the soldier constructs to gather with him outside the tower. Daniel hadn't been sure if it had worked until Ulgatha showed up on the surface with the rest of the constructs.

“Daniel, why are you stealing my library guards? I thought you were making your first Centurion.”

Ulgatha sounded irritated which was something Daniel was familiar with so he worded his next sentence very carefully. “Well, to be able to make a Centurion I need to make a Centuria made up of eight squads of Contubernium. I realized that I have never formally formed the legionnaires into their squads of ten men. I then need to formally gather eight of those squads together into a Centuria of eighty men to make a Centurion. I decided that it would be best to form all of the constructs into their official squads now so that when I have enough of the constructs ready in the future I won't have to call all of the constructs together in the future, or at least not until I need to make a Cohort.”

Ulgatha hummed to herself. “Okay just give me command of one squad that will be my vault/office guard. I don't ever want to leave that area of the library unguarded, so I don't want them a part of the normal command structure. In the future just give me more squads to work with and then eventually I can form the library guard into their own Centuria and maybe even Cohort if the library gets big enough.”

“Sure I can do that. There should be four squads left after I make the first Centuria you can take any of them.”

Daniel then began to form the soldiers into squads. He had then stood in blocks two wide and five deep. Once all of them had been put in squads he had three constructs left over that he couldn't form into a squad. Not knowing what to do with them he decided to put it off for now. Turning he looked at his twelve newly made squads. As he looked at them they all looked the same, he had no way to tell them apart. So far his skill had seemingly been based on the old roman army structure, but he did not know how they differentiated between squads and the like, so Daniel decided to make his own system with some inspiration from the U.S. army which if Daniel remembered right was also loosely based on the old roman army structure.

Daniel also knew that most of these constructs wouldn't have very much intelligence and there would be a lot of them, so his system would have to be able to scale up to thousands of constructs. Their system would have to be simple but effective. Coming to a decision. Daniel walked to each squad and gave each of them a letter designation from A to J. Once that was complete starting with the first squad he gave each of them a ‘name’ if you could call it that. He walked down the line and said, “first squad, second squad, third squad.” while pointing to each squad in turn all the way until he got to the eighth squad. He would deal with the other constructs after he was done. Once done he called out, “first through eighth squads you are now a member of the first platoon.” Once that declaration was made Daniel once again tried to summon a centurion and this time it worked. Psionic energy gathered and gathered condensing into a humanoid form. After a couple of minutes the mist stopped and in front of Daniel was a new construct. This one was much different from the worker and soldier constructs he had made up to this point. The others were solid but more wispy, this centurion was solid, denser, similar to Ulgatha. The Centurion gave Daniel a salute fist to the chest. It seemed this construct was also much more intelligent just like the skill had said.

“You Centurion will now be known as Alpha Centurion and will be the commanding officer of First Platoon in the first Cohort of the First Legion. Now talk to Ulgatha here to get your orders so you can get your men to work. You have free reign to order any squads that have not formed into their own platoons as well as any worker constructs. You will also be responsible for any new soldier constructs that are made and form them into squads keeping to the naming scheme. Once there are enough squads to make another Platoon inform me or Ulgatha and I shall make another Centurion. Any questions?” The construct which had dropped to a sort of parade rest a Daniel had spoken saluted then very stiffly marched to Ulgatha where he also saluted. Leaving Ulgatha to it since she knew more about what was currently going on his mindscape than he did.

Daniel walked to the last of the squads and one uncompleted squad. He labeled each of them A through J just like before, but he remembered what Ulgatha had asked of him. He pointed to two of the three completed squads and the uncompleted squad. “You are the ninth, tenth, and eleventh Squads of the Second Platoon in the First Cohort in the First Legion. Report to Alpha Centurion for your orders until you have your own Centurion. He then walked to the last squad. “You shall be the First squad of the Library Platoon. You shall take your orders from Ulgatha until you gain a Centurion.” Daniel watched on as the new Centurion talked to Ulgatha. He was not sure, but as they talked different squads would begin to march away in different directions. Daniel thought about calling them back, but assumed they were somehow receiving their orders and leaving to perform them. He was wondering how when they didn't even talk to the centurion when Daniel realized his mistake. They were mental constructs; they didn't need to talk like a flesh bag like Daniel. He had been calling them all together mentally at the start of all of this, so it shouldn't have been a surprise that the Centurion could do something similar to give the various squads orders at a distance.

Deciding that everything was well in hand and being taken care of it was time for Daniel to make a metaphysical vault, to store metaphysical books in his metaphysical library. Daniel decided to not think about it too hard. He began to walk back to the library when he realized something, “Hey Ulgatha where should I even put this vault anyways?”

“One second, let me finish conversing with Alpha.” A couple minutes passed as Daniel walked down the stairs to the library, “Okay, I would recommend to continue extending the staircase down and make another room under your already existing library. This makes it easy for you to get to and also allows guards to guard the entrance. Now this is the important part. Under no circumstances should you allow any guards inside this vault.” Ulgatha spoke slowly and emphasized every word. “There are techniques that exist that can corrupt constructs. Now this won't be possible for constructs like Alpha or any of the officer constructs, but the basic soldier construct could be because of their lack of clear form and intelligence. If you allow such basic soldier constructs into the vault they could allow unsavory individuals into your vault. This is where the second very important part comes into play; you will need to make a will empowered vault door.”

“How would I make something like that and what does it mean to make a will empowered door?”

“You could have made one without any skills, but since you have ‘Psionic Creation’ it will be easier for you. A will empowered door basically makes an object in your mindscape that only you can use or give access to others to use. It's just a way to restrict access to some areas of your mindscape. While you are making your vault door you will need to focus on what its desired purpose is; in this case to keep people or creatures out.”

“Okay… sounds easy enough. I'm going to get started, I’ll let you know if I run into any problems.”

“Do keep in touch dear. Bye for now.”

Daniel felt the communication link cut. He knew he could re-establish it with little effort, if the need came up. Now it was time to start excavating another room.

~~~~~

It took Daniel the next five or so hours to finish excavating the new library. He had started by extending the spiral staircase further down. Then after he was sure he was a good distance down from the main library he started to make the outline of the vault to determine its dimensions. From what Daniel knew so far was that Ulgatha had only managed to extract some information from his mind so far, and most of the information was incomplete; he only had the two red bound books she had managed to complete, so he did not currently see a need to make the vault very large for now. He only made it twenty by twenty feet wide and long and ten feet tall, just tall enough that he couldn't touch the ceiling.

He then filled the room with shelves, but left the center open. There he made a desk with the most comfortable looking chair he could envision. He then made a second comfortable armchair where he could also sit and read books. After that was all done Daniel was about to put the two books on the shelves, but stopped. He still hasn't made the vault door.

Walking back to the entrance of the room Daniel started to do what Ulgatha had recommended as he used ‘Psionic Creation’ he envisioned the purpose of the door he was creating. It was to keep all people out and to only open for him or those he gave permission to. It took him over an hour to make the door. He made one of those old timey vault doors that were seen in banks in a lot of movies. The ones with the big wheels that kind of looked like a pirate ship's wheel. Once the door was finally done Daniel got one of the soldier constructs that Ulgatha had tasked with guarding the new vault he was made to try and open the door. To Daniel’s surprise they weren't able to open the door. He then envisioned allowing construct access to the vault and a second later it was able to open the door.

Remembering Ulgatha’s warning Daniel quickly revoked the constructs rights to enter the vault and then double checked that it had worked by having it open the door again, and to his relief it was once again unable to enter the vault. Daniel having finished with that tack grew excited, it was finally time to find out what Ulgatha had been able to extract from his mind. Would there be some arcane secrets? Powerful crafting technique to allow a person to craft master quality work? Daniel didn't know but he was ready to find out.

He started by shelving both of the books. With his skill this would allow him to get a general idea on the contents of each book. From there he could read any items that interested him. Slightly changing his mind he decided to shelve only one book first so that he would not confuse their contents with one another, he still didn't have much experience with using the skill combined with his still low level.

Once the book was shelved Daniel sat down in his arm chair and concentrated on the book. He was still in the second stage of meditation so it was easy for him to concentrate on the book and as he thought of the book he Remembered it. Unlike the first time he had tried to use this skill the information was clear and crisp. Before the pages had been a jumbled mess with no cohesion between books; now however the information flowed to his mind in a rush. The feeling exhilarated him all the way up until he digested its contents. It was a book that contained hundreds of different kinds and uses for anvils. Daniel knew a lot of this already, he had been a blacksmith before the system and he was no stranger around an anvil. This book however went into more depth on an anvil than he thought would be possible. It went over shape, size, weight, metal composition, the sound an anvil made when tapped with a hammer, the shape of the horn, the advantages and disadvantages of beveled and sharp edges. So many things and more. Daniel never in his wildest dreams would have thought there was that much to learn about anvils.

It was in that moment that Daniel realized something, this was why the crafting legacy was so broken. It took the unfiltered knowledge of an unknown number of crafters and with little care for how all the information fit together just forcefully fused it. Did someone really need to know a thousand ways to test if an anvil was hard or would it be better to know one or two ways that would work for almost every single anvil they ever encountered. Most of this information would be of no use to Daniel and if he didn't have ‘Stronghold of the Mental Archive’ it could have taken him hours to sift through all of the useless information the book had to find the handful of actually useful and practical information the book contained.

With his spirits low Daniel shelved the second book and began to concentrate on its contents. He honestly expected something similar to the first book, just a book of raw information on a single topic, but to his surprise he was wrong. Ulgatha had really managed to pull a gem out from the piles of superfluous information that his feat gave him.

The book contained information on the process of natural enchanting that he had done when he had made the Cryonite and Thermonite hammers. Back then he hadn't known exactly what he had been doing. There had been whispers in his mind telling him what he needed to do as he worked, he hadn’t understood why he was doing it; now though he did.

The process basically boiled down to working with material that had a high innate mana content like the Cryonite and Thermonite he had made the hammers out of. Then using a catalyst of the materials chosen element you fill the item with more mana than the material could normally contain. With the item now having an overabundance of mana there are two possible outcomes that can happen next. The first is that the item explodes releasing all of the contained mana in a single burst that could have easily killed Daniel. The second outcome which is far less likely to happen is that the mana finds a new outlet for its over abundance of mana. As it turned out the only reason his natural enchantments had worked at all was because he had made conflicting items. They had been unable to explode and expel because both of the hammers had kept the other in check, not allowing the build up of mana to an explosive level. The excess mana not being allowed to escape had been forced to find an outlet elsewhere which was why the natural enchantment had been formed.

As he digested more of the information in the book he found out that what he had done was very uncommon. Most people didn't even bother to try and naturally enchant items. With the explosive effects if you failed, the extensive nature of the catalysts that would be needed, and the uncertainty of how good the enchantment would be. With all of those things combined it was a waste to enchant items in such a way, when you could just higher an enchanter to do the work with less of a chance of failure.

Daniel of course didn't know any of that when he had made the two hammers, but now that he did he would probably try similar methods in the future. As long as he made such items in pairs with the right element combination it was basically a guarantee that he would succeed. The only downside that he remembered from the first time is since he didn't have the enchanter profession he would gain any profession experience for naturally enchanting items.

Reading over the rest of the book it also talked about other element combinations he could use and a list of metals and materials that would work for such items, including what catalyst he would also need.

It was an interesting book. Once he was finally done he stood and was going to leave the vault when he remembered something. The system gave me a book I haven't read yet. I wonder if I can bring it into my mindscape, so that I don’t have to actually read it. He hummed to himself.

‘Probably something I should also talk to Ulgatha about.’

He left the vault and walked back to Ulgatha’s office. When he arrived the constructs led him in once more. When he did enter she was once again sitting behind her desk. “Ulgatha I finished the vault, and I wanted to let you know I will give you rights to enter it to deposit any more books you manage to finish.” when he finished talked he concentrated for a moment the same why he had with the random construct that was guarding the exterior of the vault.

“That's great Daniel, but you didn't have to come all the way here just to tell me that.”

“I had another question as well which is the real reason I came. Is there a way for me to transfer the information from a book in the physical world to the mindscape?”

“Maybe, your skill ‘Psionic Creation’ does not limit itself to only be used in your mindscape. You could theoretically use it in the physical world, but I am not sure it would be able to copy a book. I mean sure you could make a book out of psionic energy, but it would most likely only be a shell that lacked any information that the original book constrained. Sadly I fear your only real option would be to read the book, with your mental library here anything you read would be formed into real pages of information here. I don't think there will be much of a shortcut for you for the time being.”

“Well that's a shame. Maybe I'll be able to once I increase ‘Psionic Creation’ to a higher level. I’ll be leaving the mindscape now, I am going to read that book then I need to figure out how my new bracers work.”

“Make sure to continue to make you legionnaires, now that you have Alpha all the work going on in your mindscape will pick up in pace.”

“Will one construct really make that big of a difference?”

“Very much so. Up until now I have had to micromanage all of the legionnaires and since they have no real intelligence. Alpha with his mental connection to all of the soldiers under his command can instantly provide constructs with new order as soon as they finish their task. This means that no worker or soldier constructs will ever have any down time where they are not working. I can't tell you the number of times that I forgot to give one construct or another order and they were just standing somewhere idle.”

“Well, that does make sense. Speaking of which, we need more worker constructs. I know I want to make some, but what should I be making now?”

“You have increased in power so I would say that you can make one legionnaire and two workers an hour.”

Daniel nodded and with a slight effort of will he left his mindscape. Opening his eyes back on the real world he removed the system granted book from his storage ring and began to read. Like the reward description had said it was a series of recounting of when the Crystal of Creation was thought to have been used. However as he read more and more of the recounting began to contradict one another.

In one instance a whole planet that had been ravaged by war and plague had been restored. Toxic air purified, plant life regrown, people healed, but then in the next recounting it was said that a king had sought out a Crystal of Creation to heal his ailing wife and when he eventually found one it was discovered that it could not heal his wife. In his grief at the news he began to sacrifice billions of his subjects to the crystal in a massive ritual in a last ditch effort to save his wife.

The ritual however back fired, the ritual when activated began to produce an endless stream of miasma which eventually spread to cover the whole planet and turning all of its inhabitants into undead. It was a gruesome tale and supposedly the recounting of the event came from an advisor of the king who had managed to flee the planet before the ritual was cast.

Many of the stories were like that. The being used to heal the sick or make wondrous structures, or its power being used in terrifying ways that corrupted or destroyed whole planets or civilizations. However there was no mention in all of the stories about people using the crystal to endlessly come back to life like the gremlins seemed to be doing.

Once his reading was finally done Daniel put the book away and walked to the training room. It was now time to test out ‘Juggernauts Rebuke.’ As he walked Daniel wondered how John and Steve were doing.