Stinger is following Bob, who is swinging through the trees like a monkey. They have been doing that for a while as mostly a form of training, and just fun I think, both of them seem to like the high speed and rapid maneuvering.

While the two jocks are exercising Merlin is in my cave using magic, he has actually advanced a bit, he is now able to control his dark crystals and make them float around his {Black Shroud} making it slightly stronger. He has also been testing his {Reave} which creates large black claws, again he can use it with his crystals to slightly boost its power. He is also getting used to the cold mana, another interesting thing is his ability to instill necrotic energy into shadows. Put enough of it into a shadow and he can actually control it, somewhat, it’s still a work in progress.

While talking about works in progress me and Kaiman have one too. I have created some undead crabs, they are crab zombies and living armors when I scrub their flesh off, however their power was… lacking, it didn’t really feel worth it to have them when normal skulls are pretty much as strong, especially when you consider that they can only have two classes. However I remembered their second class, which seems to be giant related. So I decided to use all the crab bodies to create a larger one, and by large I mean, really larger. I asked Kaiman to join me because I imagine he can gain some experience from it. Right now the body of the monster looks like a coconut crab, with its thick legs, shell and large pincers.

The tips of the legs and the pincers have steel inside of them reinforcing it. The crab mostly just has the normal crab body plan really, its two feelers have skulls on their ends and Kaiman has been sculpting skulls on its leg segments. The centaur did give me an idea though, so me and Kaimancreated a humanoid crab body on top of the coconut crab, the face of the coconut crab then changed into a skull belt on the human body’s hip and stomach. We cheated it a bit and created a strong spine in the middle of it, well we cheated quite a bit, the entire inside of the whole crabs is extremely reinforced, and has an actual endoskeleton.

We are mostly doing the finishing touches on the body and embellishments mostly.

One of the more interesting finds was to do with the imp, we have discovered that using ghost flames on the imps they do not explode. The ghost flames seem to actually…burn away the imp’s flame destroying it and impeding them from exploding. Thus the corpses are mostly intact, they are actually pretty interesting corpses, although they are whole they become extremely brittle and break into fragments pretty much immediately. Gorger has been eating it when he can and it is actually showing some difference, his teeth and horns have been getting darker, his nails have also grown and engulfed his fingers and toes.

I have also begun using the imp dust to coat a skeleton using blood…It’s not doing much yet. I do hope it event—

The mana inside the greenhouse surges, to the point that it is visible to the naked eye, all the colors suddenly become more as if someone overlayed multiple paintings of the same tree. The entire greenhouse shakes, and Through the eyes of my drones I can see it expand and grow. I see the disk in the middle of the dome room fall off the ceiling and multiple into multiple multi colored disks of light, the disks cluster together and collapse unto themselves cracking noises fill the entire greenhouse as the disks curve inwards and become a multicolored ball before settling into a more normal sunlight color and floating up to the ceiling. What the…I hear a cracking sound from the fake sun, it expels larger amounts of mana all around the greenhouse.

The mana from the greenhouse pushes against me and I feel a large amount of it rising upwards toward me. I immediately start pulling it towards me, then I feel it, that sense of momentum as my core, my heart starts absorbing mana as fast as it is coming, I feel my constant mana absorption increasing the size of my domain, which lets me pull even more mana.

Again I see my body start shining and heating up, soon my surface cracks again and leaks a weird slime, the slime oozes down to the floor, slooowly, yet this time it doesn’t simply stay there, I see it start shining and… bubbling? I see Gorger eyeing the floor with hunger in his eyes. My surface explodes into shards and bursts into little particles while in the air. The liquid on the floor keeps bubbling, and I see a large bubble form and… float upwards. They start glowing, each bubble that floats up causes the liquid to diminish somehow, it is… absorbing the mana. As the bubbles ascend they start shining, and I see something deep inside them. I see something growing inside of them, it looks like a crystal, almost like a snowflake.

The mana slows down and I see the flat structure complete itself, right as the mana stops coming in the little bubbles fall to the floor with a wet plop.

Core Upgrade!

All abilities have been improved!

I see the little things perk up, what are they? Wait… No, it can’t be….

{Analyze}!!!

Pure Mana Crystal Slime

A slime created from large amounts of mana, these creatures are natural purifiers of mana, they absorb all kinds of mana through their crystal cores and grow more powerful through it, after they are done they expel extremely purified mana out.

Congratulations! You have created a creature not related to any of your domains.

Pure mana crystal slime’s biggest weakness is the fact that unlike other slimes their advanced core cannot be split into two unless they are a certain size, a larger size compared to most other slimes.

Slimes! They are so cute! Look at them! They are mostly your traditional slimes, rounded off with what looks like a consistency of pudding, they have a glassy blue color and deep inside I can see their core, they are thin crystal plates forming, what seem to be, random patterns.

I tell Gorger to not eat them, and tell Merlin to keep and eye on him, then I leave the two to see the beauty of slimes.

I use my drones to look around and see that the forest is much much bigger than before, and changed.

Before the whole greenhouse was a plain samey green forest, the only real difference was the river flooding the left part and creating a large lake and a swampy forest, actually now that I think there is probably some whole there or something, the lake seems to not have not risen since I got here so I assume there was some way to drain the water.

The whole place has changed, I am pretty sure, just through looking at the foliage, that the very trees have changed. Well, that is actually kind of obvious, my tree leaves are such a dark shade of green that they almost look black.

The river is now much bigger, and the side of the crabs, the left side seems to be lowered down or something since it is now a proper forest swamp, with most of its area seeming flooded. Direct in front of my zone, deep on the other side of the greenhouse I can see a large pond. I take a look at my place.

There are… a lot of differences, as I come close I see, first of all, that my side of the greenhouse, my slice of the pizza pie is… darker, literally, it seems to gain less light from the fake sun? Or rather the sun shines less here? Also, now that I am close I can see that my leaves are not black, they are greenish but they also have clear shadow mana coming from it. {Analyze}

Ebon Gloomwood

A dark tree that uses shadow magic to nurture itself, becoming stronger as it tempers itself against light.

I keep moving and seeing a few other things like for example.

Red Cap Mushroom

This mushroom causes extreme berserking when consumed, should it be properly nurtured it could grow a Redcap, or attract one.

…

My skeletons warn me and I decide to take a look, both Stinger and Bob are outside the…mouth of the greenhouse base, which connects to my core rooms. The cave is a giant skull… the mouth of the cave is a literal mouth with teeth sculpted in. I notice that around there are small white trees with flowers under them that also look like human teeth.

Marrow Tree

This strange tree creates a healing blood red sap.

Marrow Flower

A flower that grows near marrow trees, can be used for bone regenerative items.

The flower is seriously weird, the petals look actually like teeth, the middle of the flower is deep red becoming lighter and lighter as it reaches its petals, meaning around the petals the flower is actually a pink color, like someone’s gums.

I feel a few of my diggers calling me, I go to them and see the underground, it changed too, pretty much all of it was just dirt, but now I am actually seeing what seems like different types of clays on the old tunnels. Does that mean that there are also metals here? Did they just spawn in?

QUEST

King of The Pit

Destroying dungeon cores can give you special skills or items, for a certain time you will gain certain bonuses for destroying cores.

Whenever a dungeon minion dies inside the greenhouse they will be absorbed and drop items.

Oh shit the lizard is going to go crazy for this. I wonder what kind of rewards are available. Wait what does the ‘drop items’ part mean?

My drone skulls report movement, from the “north” of the greenhouse, movement from the other side, opposite to mine. I take a look and see big, really really big horned beetles flying out of the woods, they separate two going to the sides towards the lizard and crab dungeon, and the last comes straight for me. I try to wait for it but the thing suddenly sends wind blades forcing my drones to dodge.

I was able to get a better look at it though, firstly it is a really big bug, it could eat a whole ass cow and probably the farmer responsible for it as desert. It has six legs ending in two large claws, and four wings, with two feelers, like those of cockroaches on the end of their abdomen. Instead of a single horn this monster actually has three, one right out of the top of its head, and two from the sides. It is also really spikey, Its legs are spikey and serrated, it has rows of spikes on its carapace, its elytron, the protective part of the wings, is serrated.

The monster is constantly creating a field of wind blades all around it, the insect does not even need to move or dodge, it just barrels through anything. Soon it gets into my territory, and I have been waiting for it. Bob is hiding in a tre— The thing immediately turns in his direction and accelerates forwards it impales Bob as I tell the other to go to Bob.

The insect flies upwards and doing a U turn flies back towards the ground, right as it slams Bob in the floor he uses his entomb spell and sinks deep into the ground not only softening his fall but dragging the horns of the beetle down too. The beetle tries to fly back, if not for Bob holding him with his arms and his impaled body it might have easily taken off, Bob holds it down long enough for Kaiman to run and jump at it transforming his arms into two spikes, the beetle immediately closes its wings which make the attack skitter off the hard blue chitin.

The battle opens its wings again and creates wind blades cutting into Kaiman, but only creating surface wounds.

{Wind Blade}

Creates wind slashes as sharp as steel swords.

Aurmetto LV26

Powerful flying bugs, aurmettos have great tournaments during their mating season.

{Acceleration Spin}

The bug suddenly starts spinning like a top even more wind blades explode out for a second, right before the beetle has pushed Bob deep enough into the ground that it can put four feet on the ground, the beetle thunks its claws into the ground and pulls Bob straight out of the ground, right as Kaiman leaps towards it the insect flies backwards making Kaiman missing.

The horned insect flies backwards and immediately dodges another attack, a flaming flying skull, by going down. The flaming skull passes right between the wings, the beast seems to think it is safe.

{Explode Bone}

The skull explodes into a shower of white fire and bone fragments mangling its wings and making it plummet down, Bob and Kaiman share a look, Bob moves and causes them both to start spinning. Right as they are about to hit the ground Kaiman jumps towards the insect.

{Wind Wave}

A powerful wave of wind buffets the ground and immediately breaks their fall. Kaiman punches the beetle in its back while Jack throws a flaming skull into its eyes.

The bug screams as they both fall on the ground, Kaiman jumps on its belly and starts beating it, Stinger jumps from the trees and falls like a comet immediately unleashing her cocktail of skills, skulls fly towards the insect hurting it and preventing it from righting itself.

Kaiman breaks through the weaker underside carapace and starts rearranging its insides.

The monster suddenly disappears, in its place a metallic green bow with six limbs.

Green Beetle Bow

{Wind Arrow}

Shoots a wind arrow.

{Windbreaker Shot}

Shoots an arrow that decreases wind resistance for the next arrow.

{Accelerated Shot}

Shoot an arrow that keeps accelerating.

{Beetle Limbs}

The limbs of this bow are magical and help the user draw the bow with ease while also increasing the power of the shots.

Huh, is that what they meant with “drop items”?