Strangely, when another survivor from the work camp found his way inside my Domain, I wasn’t disappointed for the extra obligation. If anything, I felt pleased. It was probably because I’d get to test my designs against two people. That opened up my options, let me make tests specifically for two or more people to complete.

But the real options I wanted were still out of my reach. I needed a sample of whatever magic I wanted to make it myself, and I’d need a lot of samples to figure out how magic itself worked. As to automation…

Corin was coughing. I’d startled him pretty badly. His reaction amused me.

Well?

“Pardon, uh…”

Temul.

“Temul. I don’t know how other Domains are automated. I just know that they are. I’m not an expert or anything.”

That was disappointing. I turned the majority of my attention to the second trial. There were still a few pieces that could be touched up, and some sections that could be modified to account for two people. Though it was more like one and a half, I supposed, since Ember wasn’t Awakened yet.

“So can you do anything with that magic sword?” Ember said.

Corin blinked. “That was really the soulstone?”

“Yep. So, the sword?”

He shook his head and drew it. I was glad they seemed interested in it. When I’d found a copper deposit I’d spent way too much time trying to figure out if I could combine mana crystals and other materials. Mana crystals were basically rocks, and copper alloyed with some tin made bronze, so I’d hoped it could also be alloyed with mana. I succeeded, and decided to make money and the sword out of the result, because why not. It was pretty.

“It’s just metal combined with mana. A lot of nobles have stuff like this as status symbols. Awakened use them too but it’s not really for the magical properties. Mana crystals are really delicate, but when they’re alloyed with metal they take on the properties of that metal. Awakened can still use the mana inside it though, so they like to use weapons and armor made out of it just in case they’re in an emergency. They can cannibalize their gear for a burst of power.”

Well, I’d made it because I thought it looked pretty. But now I knew. I needed to find iron so I could make steel and then combine that with mana. I bet it would be doubly useful. Or I could look for titanium—yeah, I could replicate any rare metal now, couldn’t I? Why not take advantage of it? I bet there were trace amounts of pretty much every metal inside the stone of my Domain. I peered at the molecular makeup of a patch of stone. There were a lot of trace metals and I had no way to tell them apart.

So I sampled every one and copied the pure form of the metal until I had large cubes of each metal. There was a shiny cube that I recognized as zinc, and another of iron. There was copper here too. I took a short break to continue working on the second floor, then went back to the metals. I drew out tin, nickel, lead, cobalt, magnesium, and tungsten before I finally found titanium. I wished I could also draw out the heavenly set, but those metals didn’t leave trace amounts anywhere. They either had enough to stay intact or they dissolved into nothing.

Well, that sorting was done more quickly and easily than I’d ever done it when alive. I felt a bit of nostalgia before I suppressed it. Now was not the time. Ember and Corin were discussing whether or not to move on to the next trial. I hurriedly linked the mana crystal for the next trial to it with a teleport.

This one would be effective no matter how prepared the Awakened was. I could actually pull Ember’s spear away from her and store it somewhere else so that I could replicate it. Of course, that wasn’t my only motivation. She had some intriguing magical spheres in a pouch. For fairness, I took everything from both Ember and Corin except their robes, then let the teleport put them in the two separate starting areas.

Next I focused on my ants. I’d ignored them for far too long, my indecision on how to treat them leading to me just leaving them alone. I sent a thought to the leader.

Be ready for movement.

The big black and purple ant froze in the tunnels, its antennae twitching. It sent thoughts out to the other ants, then sent a thought into the air.

Acknowledgement.

Without any more delay, I swept all of them into my mana and teleported them to the entrance chamber.

Guard.

They had magic, though I hadn’t really paid much attention to it. I didn’t want to rely on the random mutations of animals for magic, and I really didn’t want to have to persuade one of them every time I wanted to cast a spell. But I’d felt the forest shake and the most likely explanation for that was a demon. If I wanted to be pedantic about it, every animal in the Nightetch Woods was a demon, but they only had a little bit of the red Hellmouth mana in them. If a demon that powerful found me, I’d need the ants to help me hold it off long enough for me to channel enough mana into the demon to kill it. Assuming that the quake was the result of an ability anyway, and not just massive size. In that case I was abandoning this entrance and moving everything I wanted to keep down near my soulstone and sealing off everything that might be near the surface.

The ants swept through the entrance chamber like they’d planned it, each taking a certain position and communicating small bits of information to the others. They were alert, more so even than I was. They were detecting movements from outside of my Domain. I eavesdropped on their thoughts to get a clearer picture of what was going on.

Once I had that picture, I recoiled from it. A huge burrowing creature had just collapsed a mountain. I wasn’t safe here, no from a demon of that size. With something that big it would find my Domain in time and crush it if it stayed here, and then it would find and crush me. I had no way to defend against it. If it headed toward me, my only chance of survival would be to take my soulstone out and flee.

I checked the humans’ progress. They were close to the end. Once they cleared the second trial, if the giant demon hadn’t left I’d tell them to come up and we’d all run far away. The demon occurrences around Braithen were much too high. Something big was happening and I didn’t want to be anywhere near here when it went down. That spider demon that had destroyed the work camp shouldn’t have been able to even get close if they had even one powerful Awakened stationed near it.

The demon was definitely headed in my direction. If only it wasn’t a burrowing demon, then I could have gone with my original plan and just withdrawn deep underground. But this one would sense me.

The humans had stumbled out of the second trial’s exit, exhausted but satisfied. They’d grabbed their stuff and the baubles I’d put out for them and were busy congratulating themselves.

Time to go.

After that message, I pulled them back to the entrance to my Domain, then put my own soulstone there.

Big demon coming. Who knows how to navigate?