Ephilia wasn't really mad at me over my faux pas, thankfully--though I still apologized for it. Serves me right for not checking closer, not that I'd ever really had much interest in mice genders until I really began to talk with one. After our tour of the garden, there was still much more to do if I was to level up today.

Looking at what I’d accomplished through the day, even with never needing to sleep or take a lunch break, I still couldn’t help but feel impressed at what I had accomplished.

Sure, it was a just a hole in the ground—but it was big, it was fancy, and it was mine.

Until the roof situation was handled, it would remain closed off from the central, secure heart of our home. At the very least, today would be the big one.

I was one mana and six percent of my experience pool away from meeting all of the criteria to ascend. Assuming I could close the distance and finish out that last stretch I needed to collect, I could ascend today. By mid-afternoon, if my pace held up.

So, completely anticlimactically, I chose to finish off this race by building featureless hallways branching off of the greenhouse. Hardly any glamour in something like that, but I wasn’t going to plan out a new project solely for the sake of it. Hallways were useful. I could use hallways. Once I actually had a need for something else, I’d already have the dull busywork out of the way and could get right into making the rooms.

The manamite horde chewed through rock like butter at this point with all of the new recruits I’d made for it, which had the pleasant side effect of increasing the rate I gained experience directly. While Ephilia was out trying to find some more seeds to bring back, I pushed myself up one percent at a time.

It wasn’t much for a grand finale, but I crossed the finish line cheering either way.

Experience Requirements Met.

SHARD OF COALESCED WILL has increased to LVL 2.

SHARD OF COALESCED WILL has gained 2 skill points.

WISDOM has increased by 1.

PERCEPTION has increased by 1.

[Transmutation I] took one of my skill points, no contest on that one. The second one I’d deal with later. Once my mana capped out at some point within the next hour, the time would be here.

“Hey, Ephi,” I gave her a prod, “It’s just about time. Would you mind sticking around the house for a bit? Last time I ascended, I ‘lost’ a few hours. I’d feel a lot better if I knew you were somewhere safe.”

“Oh, okay. Boss, do you wanna seal the place off before you do, just in case?”, she replied, peering up at my core from the floor below.

That wasn’t a bad idea, actually. Following her advice, I did just that and shut down the entrances, closing the shutters and sealing off the periscope and greenhouse entirely. Nothing in or out except the cool, autumn air.

With that, my vault now felt more like a waiting room to me, staring at my mana counter for the moment where my time would come.

About ten minutes later, it did.

My core shifted and crackled slightly as it discharged all of its stored mana, the energy illuminating the room in a blinding glow far more intense than I’d ever seen before, yet it didn’t blind me at all. My mind felt like it was swimming, carried on invisible tides up and down, the crystal that I called a heart swelling outwards in size to something nearly the size of a fist.

Ephilia sat below, watching dumbstruck. It was hard for me to focus on her, though. Hard to focus on anything. The swells grew taller, and I found myself submerged.

Ascension from [[Shard of Coalesced Will]] to [[Fragment of Coalesced Will]] complete.

Maximum MP increased to 100.

Durability increased.

New Feature Unlocked: [Manamite Specialization I]

New Feature Unlocked: [Material Infusion]

Range of Influence increased to 50 feet from walls.

Criteria for next ascension:

MP: 100 / 100

Minimum Wealth: 25

Minimum Level: 5

Minimum Employees: 3

Required Facilities: Prison

Slowly, my senses dredged my aching mind back up from the depths. Not quite asleep but not quite awake, I struggled to right myself.

“How long was I out for?”, I grumbled, reaching out through [Core Link] clumsily.

“Out for? You only started maybe five minutes ago. It’s done already?”, Ephilia’s voice called back, ringing loudly and ricocheting through my senses.

“That’s all? Eugh. Feels like how I imagine a rubbing alcohol hangover feels,” I complained, realizing a moment later I’d have to explain, “That’s uh, just an exaggerated way of saying it feels like death.”

Checking my status, I was able to confirm that it had gone off without a hitch at least, even if my memory of the event was a bit hazy.

FRAGMENT OF COALESCED WILL LVL: 2 NAME: "Boss"

Traits:

Skills:

[Botany I]

[Biology I]

[Creator's Insight]

[Mech. Engineering I]

[Textiles I]

Features:

[Manamite Creation]

[Self-Synthesis]

[Manamite Specialization I]

[Material Infusion]

HP: 13 / 15 CATEGORY: Elemental MP: 100 / 100 SPECIES: Dungeon Core MP Rate: +25 daily SIZE: Tiny WEALTH: 5 XP: 0% STR VIT DEX INT WIS PER 0 5 0 9 7 8

Nascent heart of a world-born entity, crystallized from soul energy. Exerts control over a localized area.

Manamite Horde (0 / 200):

0 Manamites

0 Managermites (-0 MP/d)

Criteria for Next Ascension Tier:

Level: 5

Wealth: 25

Employees: 3

Cost: 100 MP

Facility: Prison Virtual Hoard:

➤1,112.0 Raw Stone

➤455.3 Loose Soil

➤0 Biological Material

➤347.1 Raw Lumber

➤22.8 Plant Fiber

Well, that was one thing I could check off of the growing list of objectives I needed to address. How had I lost health? Was ascension supposed to hurt?

“Are you gonna be alright, Boss? You sound kinda out of it.”

“Yeah, yeah. I think I’m fine, just takes some getting used to. I’ll open everything back up—if I’d known it was only going to take a few minutes, I wouldn’t have bothered in the first place,” I started to explain, my voice trailing off as I finally registered something else odd.

My manamites were gone. All of them.

And my mana was full, despite having just ascended.

It took a moment for me to jog my memory given how long it had been since I’d bothered to even inspect that [Manamite Creation] tooltip. Right, right. They deconstructed if I lost consciousness, which also answered why my memory of the whole event was shaky. It was a nice surprise that I got refunded for them, though.

Though I’d lost a few in the process, it seemed. With my max mana being one hundred, anything over that seemed to just be gone as far as I could tell.

Groggily, I began to shape the beginnings of a new horde one by one, when I caught myself. I needed to look at my new features, considering one of them seemed to involve the mites.

⬘ Manamite Specialization I ⬘

Allows creation of managermites.

Upkeep Cost: 3 MP per day.

Horde Impact: 10 Mites.

Managermites direct and control other mites in place of the core, allowing for delegation or automation of basic tasks. A single managermite can only handle a certain number of directives and can command up to twenty mites at a time.

TYPE:

Passive

CATEGORY:

Core

Definitely an interesting one that I could already see some use for, though the upkeep cost put a bad taste in my mouth. I wasn’t concerned about the hit to my manamite limit, but with a price tag like that I couldn’t just use these things frivolously.

⬘ Material Infusion ⬘

Grants the core the ability to infuse certain raw materials with astral magic via liquid moonlight. This process requires construction of a starfont with access to the night sky to collect liquid moonlight.

Please see [[Starfont]] for additional details.

TYPE:

Passive

CATEGORY:

Core

This was the one that Cheshire had pointed out to me. While it sounded interesting, it was certainly a bit cryptic as well. My mind jumped to the shimmerwood his shrine had been constructed of, realizing that this might be related somehow.

If so, then having a way to make more durable, fireproof wood seemed nice. That stuff even had the benefit of not rotting with age, something I’d felt intensely jealous of when I’d first spotted it before reminding myself that I had only been here for a few months at most and my buildings rotting out was the least of my current concerns.

Finishing up forging a set of manamites, I brought myself back up to an even sixty of them for now, leaving myself forty mana left for other things I had to address. I couldn’t resynthesize the tea plant just yet since it would sprout once I did so, but I did still have to work on Ephilia.

I’d leave that for tonight. If I did it now, she would just continue working even if she might actually need the rest. If I held off until nightfall, I could at least guarantee she’d get some sleep afterward.

There was a full schedule for the day anyways, so we’d do that later. I sent Ephilia out scavenging for the day to continue to bring back seeds for us to cultivate while I returned my attention to the greenhouse. Considering that I didn’t have a ‘starfont’ quite yet, [Material Infusion] wouldn’t do me any good so far.

[Transmutation I], on the other hand, seemed promising. There were a number of exchanges possible with it, though a few caught my eye in particular.

Transmutation I Raw Stone❖ 40 ↔ 1

(1 MP) ❖Raw Crystal Loose Soil❖ 20 ↔ 10

(1 MP)

❖Loose Sand

Raw Stone❖ 100 ↔ 1

(1 MP)

❖Iron Ore

Wait.

I’d been wracking my brain trying to find a way to create glass or some way to make magical sunlamps, but an answer had just fallen right at my feet. Crystal was translucent. That should work. Hell, it might even be sturdier than any kind of glass I could make, but I’d have to try it before I committed to it. As for the exchange rate, forty-to-one would have stung pretty bad if I were using the stone for anything else.

I lived underground. There was stone everywhere. I could always gather more—and besides, I just needed enough for some thin panes. Unlike load-bearing stone walls, these just needed to be thick enough to provide a little insulation from the outside and keep the weather out.

Interested in testing this, I tried to activate the skill, focusing myself onto it and pouring forth a small tithe of mana.

A new entry appeared in my virtual hoard the moment I did so, incrementing upwards at a glacial pace while my stone ticked downwards much faster. Something about this probably should have bothered me, but I was long beyond caring about things like conservation of matter at this point.

I stopped myself at five units of raw crystal, not wanting to drain my MP entirely. Now I just had to figure out how I wanted to make this greenhouse work.

Starting with a structural skeleton seemed like the best choice I could make, so I began by building an arch over top, followed by another one crossing perpendicular to the original. Next, I began to work on a criss-crossed grid interweaving between these larger beams, as well as adding some supporting columns dropping down to the sturdily-constructed aqueducts below. Bit by bit, I wove stone like thread until a framework was completed, at which point I could move on to filling in the blanks.

Going around the base came first. Even just my first few moments familiarizing myself with crystal were odd, as it behaved somewhat differently than any other material I’d used so far. Soil fell and behaved like liquid unless I compacted it, stone acted almost like fast-setting glue that I could apply layer upon layer.

Crystal felt more like delicately chiseling something into being out of thin air. It was surprisingly heavy for the thickness I was applying it, and I found myself adding additional structural braces purely out of worry as the project continued. Ten crystal was more than enough to complete the atrium dome, so I spent the rest of the day meticulously filling in the gaps in between the grid. Panel by panel, it came together until I was finally securing the last one into place, sealing the greenhouse off from the outside world.

That would keep out the snow, the rain, and a good bit of the cold as winter approached. Heating would be another thing I’d have to solve, but all I really needed to do for that was find a decent way to heat the water supply. Warm water being piped into here could do wonders to keep the temperature up. The Romans had used hot water running through pipes in their walls, I could even borrow that to heat the rest of the place too.

I’d just need fire. With the managermites I’d gotten access to, I figured I could set them to constantly feed lumber to a controlled fire somewhere if I couldn’t find a better option.

For now, it was nice to be able to disassemble the barrier blocking the garden off from the rest of home and officially welcome the expansion to our small, humble ‘dungeon’.

A well-lit room filled with dirt and water.

Next up was getting the tea started. With thirty mana left at the moment, I’d be able to drop ten mana to resynthesize the tea seeds to me now, and then have enough mana later tonight to ascend Ephilia like my plan had been. I didn’t have any idea how many plants I’d need just yet, nor how fast I’d be able to get them to start producing usable product. In short, I was basically charging into this blind.

I had the mites carry a single seed over and place it down on the carefully-planted soil in the garden, digging a small divot to place it in. Then, I pulled the trigger.

MOONDROP TEA SPROUT ASCENSION IN PROGRESS

Please choose one of the following paths of ascension:

➤ Optimized Growth

➤ Enhanced Production

➤ Alchemical Potency*

➤ Culinary Quality*

➤ Enhanced Hardiness

[Botany I] options are marked by *.

Growth rate—easiest choice of my life. I could always ascend it again later and grab some of the other ones, but the sooner it was fully grown, the sooner I could begin to collect intelligence on it.

Just like with the berry bush, the seed hummed with energy and surged with growth for a split second, a minuscule sprout poking up from the barren dirt as its root network dug in.

CORE-TOUCHED MOONDROP TEA SPROUT LVL: 0 NAME: undefined

Traits:

[Optimized Growth]

Skills:

HP: 4 / 4 CATEGORY: Plant

Employee MP: 0 / 0 SPECIES: Tea Shrub SP: 0 / 0 SIZE: Tiny XP: 0% GENDER: --- STR VIT DEX INT WIS PER 0 2 0 0 0 0

Seedling of a Moondrop Tea Shrub, imported from Arrol. Infused with auric power emanating from a core. Fully Mature in: 20 Days. Criteria for Next Ascension Tier:

Cost: 15 MP

So that was a problem. Twenty days to mature when it had already been several days since I’d gotten these.

And I’d agreed to have a third of a pound ready within a month.

Trouble. I wasn’t entirely backed into a corner, but this definitely wouldn’t be as simple as shoving some seeds in the earth and checking back every few days. Maybe some extra ascensions wouldn’t hurt, but I didn’t have infinite mana to play with. This would have to take a high priority until I figured out a gameplan for meeting our quota.

I put a wrap on that for the day, doing my best to ensure that the plant was taking to the soil using [Botany I]. While it was hardly an in-depth look, the results looked promising enough, but I absolute needed to find a way to maintain a stable climate in here come winter or I risked losing all of my plants once the cold swept in.

I'd deal with that when I got to it.

The rest of the afternoon was spent fiddling with the set-up for that first tea plant in order to ensure it had the best chance at survival as it could manage, as well as preparing the rest of the plots for later sowing. Ephi came home with a few more looted seeds to toss into our steadily-growing stockpile, at which point I hit her with my plans for the evening.

“Alright Ephi. Tonight's the night--ready for your turn?”, I called out, determined to press forward and get some proper work done today.

“My turn? You mean for ascension? If you think everything's gonna be okay, then sure.”

“Perfect—because I want you to pick your trait this time,” I added.

She didn’t say anything in response right away, simply making her way to her hammock and laying down in it.

"You're really hung up on that. I don't get why you're so afraid of just picking it for me, especially when I've already said that I trust you," she finally remarked, staring up at the ceiling.

"Afraid? That's probably not the right word for it, but... mm. Let me tell you a story. My first job, right out of high school, a little regional pizza place. I hated every minute I was there. It wasn't because the work was bad; no, no, I actually enjoyed the work most of the time. It wasn't sunshine every day, but my coworkers were kind people and every day I got a little better at what I did. Understood the ins-and-outs a little better, discovered new techniques, that kind of thing."

She sat silent, nodding along sleepily as she listened.

"It was the manager. It's always the manager. He was a forty-something guy that had never worked there a day in his life before landing the job. He had all kinds of ideas for the place--and no time to listen to anyone at the bottom of the pole. Started pushing people hard, screaming at them over little mistakes. I caught on early. Quit while I was ahead. He stayed for another year after that, hemorrhaging employees the entire time until one day the place just... closed down. I always used to tell myself that I could have done better."

"...What's pizza?", Ephi asked, evidently missing most of the story.

I couldn't help but laugh. Yeah, that was fair--I had kind of just dropped that out there.

"It's food. Pretty good, too. My point is just--I don't want to just be the manager sitting in his office, shouting down orders from on high. You know better than anyone else what will help you do your job, so I want to trust you to have a say in it," I added, "Let's just see our options."

MOUSE RUNT ASCENSION IN PROGRESS

Please choose one of the following paths of ascension:

➤ Gigantism

➤ Venom-Barbed Tail

➤ Ironclad Claws

➤ Plague Cloud

➤ Enhanced Regeneration*

[Biology I] options are marked by *.

A few minutes of pensive waiting followed, and I nearly broke the silence to ask if she was really going to be stubborn and make me pick for her, when she finally spoke up and made her selection.

"That one? You're sure?", I asked, "Not second-guessing you or anything, I just want to be positive it's what you want."

"Yeah. I'm sure, I think. Go for it."