Short summary of the last chapter:

Spoiler :

Voice created an entire city using mana from the mountain. Every building was made out of pure smooth stone. Several flying beasts, led by Nightmare-Wing, arrived and agreed to protect the new city.

Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate!

It took the rest of the day for everyone to pick out a place to live, and move their valuables in. Most of the people packed tightly together despite the excess space available.

The people explored the empty city. Most of them felt a bit creeped out by the lack of interior in most of the buildings. The center of the residential area was empty space. It could easily house a small square for people to hang out.

That wasn’t what I was going to use it for though. I gathered everyone around after speaking to each of them for a small amount of time.

That night everyone was gathered around the empty space. I was dressed as my ‘man by the fountain’ disguise.

The night sky was without clouds. The beautiful stars shone brightly beside the full moon. The light of the moon rays illuminated the city almost as if it was day.

In my best old man voice, amplified by wind mana, I said, “Fellows! This is the land promised by the Elder Gods themselves! Would it not be fair to thank them for their love and protection!?” I banged my staff on the ground.

Just as planned earlier, Eli got to work instantly. From the ground began to sprout another building. This building was larger than any of the surrounding buildings. Its height fit within the city plans, but the width was several times larger.

It was a circular building, to symbolize the heavens. Inside were eight shrines, each one had a general figure of the god or goddess it represented.

“This is the Temple of All Gods! The Pantheon! This is to show the city’s thanks to the Elder Gods. Yes, even Davros is represented! For it was due to the combined effort of all of the Elder Gods that blessed this city with such divine protection!”

The temple was made in the blink of an eye. Honestly speaking I had planned this temple for a week. I basically set up a ‘program’ using my automated skill, as well as several sub-skills of inspect.

Basically the earth mana came from Eli, and me a bit, and flowed into a preset mold.

With that I cloaked myself in darkness mana, and became ‘invisible’. Right after that, I changed my outfit, and came back out.

With my signature armor I walked out onto the platform I had just walked down from.

“Everyone! A round of applause for the ‘Man by the Fountain’!”

After a brief pause, an uproarious applause deafened the nearby area. Everyone began to talk loudly about the display of magic they just witnessed.

After a few minutes I quieted the group down. “Haha. Everyone let’s quiet down a bit. I have some important things to speak about.”

Although I spoke quietly, my voice was massively enhanced by my wind mana. “As the chosen of Mar, I have been chosen to be the leader of this city. I will not speak for long. The temple has a shrine to each of the Elder Gods. You will not be given any quests to harm another god, regardless of how one god view another.”

After that bit of explanation, I spoke briefly about the layout of the city. I told the group of people to take houses in where ever they wanted. And they could claim any of the stores, on any of the levels of the shopping district.

Lydia’s eyes lit up once I mentioned the location of the library. Although it wasn’t as fancy as the one she owned before, it was definitely much larger. Bookshelves didn’t exist inside it, but she would have to deal with that herself.

A week passed before everyone was comfortable and all of their belongings were in place. Susan, Evan, Elizabeth, Lydia and Elvina were all given the choice to live in my castle with me. As the chosen of Undine, Elvina chose to accept just to give face to her goddess.

Evan and Elizabeth chose to stay in the residential area. Susan and Lydia both chose to live in the castle. I decided to create a special tunnel in the castle that led right to Evan and Elizabeth’s home. Just for Susan.

EDI obviously stayed within the castle as well. The little girl Lily and Heather, my blood slime, both stayed in the castle.

The only bad thing that happened during this week was that I received a ‘visitor’. For no reason I could possibly discern the pact between me and Heather dissolved after she entered the city.

That same day I was forced into Gaia’s realm. “Voice! The abomination is near you! Kill it! Kill it with fire! If you don’t I’ll… I’ll curse you to death! If you do I’ll grant you my full affinity!”

Right after that she threw me back into the normal world. She could have just sent a whisper damn.

Unfortunately I knew exactly who she was talking about. I frowned, but called out for Heather to follow me to hunt down some monsters.

She agreed with a weird gleam in her eyes. The forest was only about five minutes’ walk away. The full trees, and lush undergrowth were perfect to nurture animals.

When we entered the forest I sighed. “Heather. *Sigh* Gaia wants me to kill you.” I decided to be blunt.

The look in Heather’s eyes changed in an instant. Instead of the weird fiery determination from earlier, she had a somewhat shocked look.

I shook my head. “I know it’s because of me you turned out this way. So I give you two choices. Either kill me and run off, or I can use the evolution crystal on you again. It will hurt though. A lot. It will at least turn you back from the way you are now though.”

My ‘emphatic link’ was reading tons of data from Heather. She was shocked, outraged, and in disbelief. But most of all was an overwhelming urge to kill me.

She jumped at me with her slime body. The killing intent was practically physical. As soon as she made the jump, it grabbed at her.

Without enough time to react to what I was doing, she was caught. I bound the water mana in her body. She tried to escape, but what magical creature could escape someone that could fully control the magic their bodies were made of?

When I made sure I had her, I logged out. Well not out of the pod. Just into my DI space. Heather was still bound when we arrived.

When we did arrive I quickly gathered up some loose stones. Holding Heather was draining my mana. So I summoned out Tear, and had the water fairy help me enchant the stones.

Willing my unbridled intent into the stones was easy. Modifying the intent to perfectly serve my purpose was a bit more tricky.

The first stone failed, and I wiped the enchantment off. The second stone succeeded but was too weak. By the time I started enchanting the third stone Heather was almost free of my power.

I hurriedly rushed the third stone. Imbuing it with the will to contain Heather.

During the small bouts of time I had to let my mana regen from nothing, I read. I had in my hands the ultimate combined knowledge of all races. Even though I could read very few, I did read them. I started off with the Ancient Elves.

They had studied many avenues of mana usage. One of the biggest ones, and the one that they were going to try to steal the power of the gods, was binding spells.

Binding is much like summoning the fairies, but instead of the bound entity being a part of your body, they were free to roam around the word. They would be forcefully summoned to the location of whoever controlled their ‘beacon’. The ‘beacon’ was the thing the creature was bound to.

The ‘beacon’ in this case a stone, would be the thing keeping them alive. It basically forced the creature being bound to obey the owner of the item completely.

A few drops of my blood, and two hundred darkness mana were all it took to complete the ritual. Now I might not be able to use quiet as much mana, but it was worth the loss to tie up Heather.

I smirked at her. “And here I was at least trying to give you a way out. Shame, shame Heather.” As I sarcastically said those words, energy arc began to shoot from the stone. The arcs were the lines of darkness and water I had drawn in my blood.

The lines detached themselves from the stone, and shot straight at Heather. The seemed to grab at her from all directions. She was imprisoned in a cage of mana in seconds.

The ‘bars’ of the cage slowly began to thicken. The thickened bars began to connect. The connections began to spread out. Eventually a perfect sphere of ‘Imprisoning Spirit’ was formed. Since Heather was darkness/water/nature beast, that is what the mana lines worked to suppress.

The darkness mana actually was sucked out of her to fuel the stone. Of course it cost me a permanent two hundred darkness mana as well.

The binding would have cost a lot more normally. Since Heather was already my pet companion, the game took it that she wouldn’t want to leave me under these circumstances. Since I knew her quite well, I gained an additional bonus. Since Heather had served me for so long, I got another bonus.

The bonuses I got from being in the situation I was in increased my chances of successfully binding Heather. If she wanted to revolt then she should have done so earlier.

The giant sphere slowly condensed down. As it grew smaller and smaller, it drew closer to the stone in my hand. By the time that the sphere of energy could barely be stuffed into the stone, *Whip*. It was sucked in, leaving no trace of it having ever existed.

I knew it was going to spit Heather out soon, so I quickly bought a small house for her to roam around it. Sturdy enough to not get taken down by a blood slime. No holes led outside. It was completely outlined in plastic.

There was enough earth and plants inside, as well as small bugs, to sustain Heather. She would definitely not enjoy it though. When she was released she tried to break through by ripping the plastic apart. Too bad for her that it was military grade plastic.

I left her there as I prepared myself. I quickly re-entered DIVE, and promptly got to work. I made sure that those closest to me knew the plan. They were to use various means to spread the name of my city to others.

I went into my room in the castle. After closing the door I began to speak to Gaia.

“Great Goddess of Nature I have failed to kill the abomination.” As the words left my lips and intense green and brown light shone over the entire room.

In an angry tone Gaia spoke to me. “Did you not believe me when I said I would kill you if you failed?”

The color drained from my face. I stuttered out a response. “Wait a moment, there was a reason!” After making sure she at least wouldn’t kill me until she knew what I had to say, I continued.

“I thank the Goddess for her benevolence. The reason is simple, but I must go into a bit of story first.”

After that I gave the (embellished) story of how I found Heather. Feeding rabbits that most kill definitely got me some brownie points with Gaia.

I continued on how Heather had valiantly saved me from a bunch of slavers. In the process she regretfully (I said this with tears in my eyes) got mutated into a blood bunny. The equivalent of a vampire.

In my regret I had promised Heather to find a way to turn her back. We ended up fighting an evolving slime, in hopes that it would be the key. Instead Heather had to once again save me. She was thus turned into a blood slime.

“That’s why, even if I have to suffer such wrath as has never been seen, I want to turn her back into her previous form.”

One thing I knew about the gods, and information exchange with Davros, was that they couldn’t tell what had already happened, only if they were paying attention to the act at the time.

If he lied I’d be screwed. But then he wouldn’t be able to issue any quests anymore. I doubted he would do something so obviously detrimental to himself.

“So even if I did not destroy her, I hoped you would be lenient with me.” I bowed, ready to take on any punishment she might give me. At worst she should only cause me a few levels dropping. After all, I was Mar’s chosen.

I didn’t raise from the bow at my waist until Gaia spoke.

“*Sigh* You’re right. Of course you would want to show mercy, you are Mar’s chosen after all. Rise.”

I lifted myself up and looked her in the eye.

“Very well, I can’t sense her anymore. Whatever you did worked. I won’t kill you. You have done what you have promised me, so I will reward you.”

After she spoke of rewarding me, I quickly shook my head. “No! *Ahem* No I don’t need a reward, if you’ll remember I did this in exchange for a drop of your own blood.”

She nodded, and waved her hand. “That’s as it should be. However I still gave my word earlier.” She smirked at me. “You wouldn’t be trying to make me a liar now would you?”

I nervously shook my head. With another wave of her hand she was gone.

Many Blessings of Gaia (Complete)

For showing your love of nature to Gaia you have been gifted with her blessing.

You will naturally produce pheromones. You can currently release:

Territorial Pheromone

Reproductive Pheromone

Trail Pheromone

Pheromone Thief

You can study different pheromones in order to add them to the list you may use.

When used, Territorial Pheromones will indicate to others of your species that this area is yours. Others of your species will be alerted to who the territory belongs to. If they wish harm to you they will suffer (minor) psychological impairments.

When used, Reproductive Pheromones will indicate to those that mate with your sex your wish to copulate. This pheromone will grant favor with the those that mate with your sex. (only useful to other humanoids). Those affected by this will be more likely to grant you favor.

When used, Trail Pheromones will show others of your species the path you took. The trail evaporates after 1 minute. The trail can be picked up by any sentient species with a high smelling capability.

When used, Pheromone Thief will have a small chance of gaining insight on how to use them. When you have sufficiently studied a new pheromone it will be added to your available list.

You have gained 100% affinity to Nature. You will be able to communicate with Gaia at will (this doesn’t mean she will respond). If she loses her Chosen, you will be top in the line to receive the position.

Nature Mana wishes to bow to your prowess. You will find it extremely easy to manipulate nature mana. Class bonus: Nature mana outside of your body will hail your presence and will want to please you.

I felt what little nature mana was left in the wake of Gaia suddenly start surging towards me. With a quick thought I began to increase my nature purity.

I did not leave my room after that. I didn’t need to eat because of my stomach. I didn’t need to sleep as long as I spent a nice chunk of mana for the nature buff of wakefulness. I had to drink water, but I could control the mana in the air to saturate me.

I began to study everything I could revolving one thing. First I experimented with every type of mana. Buffs, debuffs, everything. I even used the combinations of two mana types to see what each of the effects would be.

Like this one month passed. My fairies had different tasks during this month. Why should I be wasteful of such a resource. With the help of my ‘planter squad’ of fairies, I planted the spores of healing into every corner of the residential part of the city. The healing potency got so great that by the end of the third week, it actually spilled over and covered the adventurer’s arc. The spill over wasn’t nearly as potent though.

The potency stopped increasing after that. It seemed as though even selective breeding had its limits. From what I was told a few random adventurers came by, and mentioned that this place hadn’t been here when they started their adventures.

After that one month the people from DI contacted me. I thought it was time to come out, they had other ideas.

They even went so far as to have my mother make the suggestion, although I could feel the emotions coming off of her even through the visual only link. I didn’t need inspect to tell me she didn’t want to make this offer.

It all boiled down to one sentence. “Son, do you wish to stay in this world longer?” Of course I did. I was finally getting a huge powerbase.

“How long mom?”

She sighed as tears weld up in her eyes. “They want you to stay in there for a year. They’ve already contacted your school. Should you accept your school will let you come back in from where you left off. They even said we could talk to each other via video message once a week IRL.”

Hearing my mom use the term IRL was somewhat funny. It was dampened by the realization that I wouldn’t be able to see her except for once every five weeks. As soon as I thought about the fact that I hadn’t seen her for so long tears even began to form in my eyes.

She took a breath to steady herself. “The only reason I agreed to bring this up, was that they agreed to give you five shares of DI. Just with those five shares you could get enough money to live comfortably for the rest of your life.”

Even this mom was doing for my sake. I thought about it for a moment, then a lightbulb went off. Ok, I actually just summoned Sol right above my head.

“Sure mom, I’ll do it. How about you get a pod yourself? Then we could see each other whenever you don’t have work!” I felt like a genius at that point.

She only hung her head. “DI employees are ‘strongly advised’ not to play DIVE. It would seem like it created favoritism for employees.”

I quirked my mouth to the side. Hmm, I was really hoping that would work.

“Mom! I have an idea. Give me a bit, next time we meet I’ll have it ironed out! Then we can see each other whenever we want.”

I hung up the call, and went to work on my idea. It wasn’t that much work actually. I just had to ask EDI to get EDITOR to speak to me.

EDITOR wasn’t as pleased. “What do you want Brenton?”

The voice was deadpan, like a parent that just got called to the school for their least favorite child.

“Simple. I want you…” I outlined the plan.

Basically I’d build a humanoid empty shell. Then when my mom wanted to play EDITOR would connect her to it. When she wasn’t there her body would simply meditate. Which was a good way to increase her proficiencies without her having to do any work.

Of course EDITOR refused, until I offered to owe any one favor that didn’t ‘go against my morals’.

EDITOR agreed, and gave the news to my mother.

Of course I now had to spend five in game years in DIVE. That might be tough, but I basically got everything I wanted out of it.

Since EDITOR didn’t specify the type of body I could create, I went for broke. Taking in all of the elemental essence I began to shape them inside of the body of one of the players that had died near the city.

I did much the same thing that had created the Quasi Chaotic Lifeform.

Instead of just a lamia’s heart, I spent a good deal of sway I had with Davros, and had him get me a dragon’s heart. I basically had to agree to let send an unread message to an unknown individual. He had to figure out who to get to send it.

I agreed when I placed that stipulation. Making deals with people I don’t like really seems to pay off.

With the massive, the size of my body, dragon’s heart I began to work. It took me another solid two weeks to get it perfectly correct. I sat in the grassy area watching as the sun and moon rose and fell continuously.

The mana I put into the heart was a more powerful version of the one I used on the lamia. I constantly funneled my mana into it. After two weeks the heart had been completely saturated. To make this more clear. Even while I wasn’t paying attention, I had my auto skill pump 100% of my regenerating mana into the heart.

So I was studying while the heart hungrily drank in my mana. The small burst at the beginning wasn’t even enough to wet its appetite. That thing was a real monster. I could only imagine who Davros wanted to send that message to.

The mana in the heart didn’t dissipate as long as I kept sending more mana in. During the first attempt I did a bit of experimenting though. If I stopped for whatever reason, the mana would quickly fly out.

So I just put in all but like 100 mana, then put in 20 mana per second. That was my mana regen.

When the heart had absorbed an unimaginable amount. My calculation skill told me it was exactly 25,000,000 points worth of mana. 25 MILLION! How is that possible!? It took a bit over 14.5 days to complete it.

I began to shape the massive mana, and make sure my spell was perfect. Just like with the lamia heart, I made the mana in the heart begin to change. I did the exact same thing, just with more power and better precision.

The heart began to pulse. Every pounding of the heart shook the large cavern I was in. Of course I was in my dungeon while I was doing this. I didn’t want the gods to know I was creating something so powerful.

The entire reason I could see the sun and moon were because I showed Quasi how to make glass basically. This new dome of glass was considered to be part of the dungeon. The grass and trees flooded the area.

The heart began to pound faster and faster. At that exact moment I made my fairies join in. Not to pump more mana in, but to keep me and the heart safe.

Under the exertion of my will, the heart began to shape itself. The thumping grew more and more rapid. The heart began to take human shape. It was fucking gross to watch though.

It took another 12 hours to finish taking shape. It was an almost perfect replica of my mother. To make it take a specific shape, one had to perfectly know the object in question. I knew my mother very well. While her body proportions would be generally the same, certain things would be no doubt different. I didn’t even pay attention to those certain areas as I made the heart take shape.

When it was done a huge light of every color I’ve ever seen burst forth. Within the time it takes to think Quasi was there, bowing on one knee.

The figure before us stood stock still for a moment. Then bent her fingers. She twisted her body a bit, and looked at us.

She came running at us with a girlishly cute smile.

“Brenton! You did it! I’m so happy.”

She wasn’t running at us, she was running at me. When she got to me she gave me a big hug. She was far stronger in body than she was in real life.

I smiled back at her. “Mom, welcome to DIVE.”

Spoiler :

Stats WindowNameVoice0fReasonClassMana EnchanterRaceTrue ElfRacial ClassKingLevel 45Health: 100Mana: 3280[4392]Stamina: 500Current Title: Chosen of MarHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 25(20)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/sStrength52Agility50Wisdom250Intelligence328Endurance51Dexterity50Luck0Vitality50Charisma35Compassion105Leadership67Logic28Piety89Unused Stat Points0Fame1685

Skills WindowSpeed Reading Novice Level 20 Exp 00.00%

Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Apprentice Level 49 Exp 99.99%

Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection Expert Level 75 Exp 00.00%

Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 20 Exp 00.00%

Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 21 Exp 5.01%

Group Skill: Magical Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00%

Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23%

Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00%

Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00%

Group Skill: Breakdown Apprentice Level 25 Exp 12.64%

Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 60.43%

Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 00%

Group Skill: Body Enhancement Adept

Group Skill: Task Master Apprentice Level 50 Exp 00.00%

Affinities WindowLight70%Water75%Wind25%Nature100%Metal50%Earth90%Fire25%Darkness100%

Purities WindowLight10%Water75%Wind15%Nature65%Metal5%Earth75%Fire5%Darkness10%