Cipiteca396

Long, and kind of scatterbrained. Maybe this is the first chapter that actually represents the meat of this story?

Well, my room was still mostly empty. I'd never had the energy for exercise, so I didn't have any equipment. I shrugged and just starting to lightly jog around the edges of the room. I slowly picked up the pace until I was moving at a comfortable speed. Except, I never really hit that limit. I kept hitting the wall and getting slowed down.

I couldn't really test my limits but... I was definitely better off. I wasn't having trouble breathing and I wasn't getting tired, even after five more minutes of running. Speaking of breathing... Even though the mana crystal was supposed to replace my respiratory system, I could still feel my lungs working. My stomach felt oddly light, and the increased weight on my chest was rather uncomfortable, but there was no pain or fatigue. This was going to take some time to acclimate to.

I finally stopped and gave one last puff of breath before looking at the interface again. First of all, my clothes didn't fit anymore. I didn't want to waste CP on replacements, but maybe if I found some high quality armor, I could just call it an investment. I'd need something eventually, and the sooner I started getting used to wearing it the better.

I spent a few minutes searching through the different types of armor in the Crafting menu. I was a little hesitant. I might be better off making a crafting Creature and having them make something for me. An even better investment, especially with the Oreworms to make material for me. I sat down at the computer again and looked through the forum for threads about crafting. I quickly updated the evolution thread and a few of the other posts I was looking through first.

I fidgeted in my seat as I read through page after page of crafting advice, promising blueprints, and creatures that could fill different crafting roles. The items crafted by the Interface were all (High) quality, and even sized to fit their intended owner, but the price for multiple creatures was too high. If it was just me, I'd be fine, but if I wanted my creatures to have decent equipment I needed to find craftsmen first.

Specifically, they needed abilities related to crafting like 'Magic Artificer' and they needed high stats in Mind and Spirit. Mind was so they could create their own blueprints and make modifications based on the owner of the item. Spirit was basically a cheat when it came to crafting, since it helped the maker get a good read on the owner and helped them create the item as intended. Body or Heart were also needed depending on whether they would physically shape the item, like a stereotypical blacksmith, or just use magic to create it.

I was tempted to just grab something with high stats and teach it crafting skills, but supposedly that was inefficient. The creatures that started with abilities were just that knowledgeable. Attempts to get a dwarf to teach an apprentice creature were usually respected by the dwarf, but they suggested it would still take weeks for their student to learn the basics.

The alternative was to buy clothes from the Market. If the item was made by a crafting creature, then it could be sold for less than it cost to make it with the Interface. But after only a day, nobody really had the infrastructure or creature count to make trades like that. The few options that were available were deliberately overpriced for the sake of earning CP.

I sighed and paced around the room. In the end, I would need to create craftsmen after all, but... They would most likely be people. It was different from the worms. I could treat those like pets. Maybe some kind of golem would work? There was a certain thing that I'd wanted to look into when I got around to making my creatures. Maybe the time had come?

I opened the Creatures menu and searched for anything with a 'Special' repop tag. Like the vampires and the werewolves, these were supposedly creatures that didn't repop in any of the usual ways. Golems weren't listed here because they just didn't repop at all, but there were some automatons that could replicate themselves. Maybe some of them had crafting abilities as a result.

There were a lot of 'interesting' creatures, but none of them were really useful to me. Either as craftsmen, or as combatants. A lot of the more prolific ones were non-sapient or even non-sentient. Maybe they could work as canon fodder, but I was sort of attached to the idea of using minion making spells for that. The intelligent ones tended to have weird requirements to repop, which was sort of the point, but if I couldn't trigger the conditions they were useless to me.

The only one I found that had crafting skills was a kind of biomechanical race called the 'Fleshmeld'. Very android-like. They grew themselves in weird magic vats and molded their bodies into tools. They had good Body stats, but everything else was kind of pitiful, especially the Mind that they needed to better operate their 'Machinist' ability. At thirty-five CP, they were probably a decent option when you looked at them alone, but compared to other options... I had to pass on them.

I was just about to give up when I finally found one that looked useable. They were very similar to the Fleshmeld, but their stats were much higher. The thing that really made them stand out though was their single ability. 'Elemental Evolution'. The wording of the ability was that it allowed them to evolve into variant species that were better suited to their purpose. 

They were one of the most expensive creatures I'd seen so far. It would take me thirty hours just to make one, so if their repop rate was slow I would end up with less than thirty of them when the timer ran out. Still, something about them appealed to me strongly...

Well, they couldn't make clothes for me, and I didn't have enough CP to make one now anyways. I made a post about them and the Fleshmeld on the forum in case anyone else was interested. Then I went into the crafting Interface and picked out some nice clothing for myself. I made sure to make the most useful pieces I could without raising the cost above one CP for each item. The results were fairly nice.

In all, I had a sweater, leggings, boots and two sets of socks and underwear since they came in pairs. Yes, I clicked it twice without realizing that, and no, I didn't learn my lesson the first time. But it was nice to have something I could change into at least. I also managed to fit a few extra enchantments into the socks and underwear since they cost less than the overclothes. A simple tracking spell for the socks, and the rest was none of your business.

The sweater was long, both in the sleeve and at the hem. The leggings were a loose fit and had six pockets - like real pockets, that I could actually fit my hand in. Honestly, they were jeans, but it felt weird to call something not made of denim 'jeans'. The boots were made with thick slabs of laminated silk to make them more durable. All of it was undyed, with a slightly ethereal look despite not being transparent. Apparently a natural trait of Arachne silk, to make it harder to see their webs. The enchantments made it occasionally pulse with faint green and gold ribbons of light.

The Crafting was actually a lot more fun than I'd thought it would be. Maybe I should pick up a crafting skill instead of using creatures for it? Ah, but that would be a serious waste of time. I do have time to waste now that I'm down to... Twenty-two CP, and ready to create a Kindlesprite. But I have a better way to waste the next day.

After changing into my new clothes, I jogged around the room again. It was so much more comfortable while wearing clothes that actually fit me... I sped off into the next room, watching to make sure I didn't step in any holes, or on any worms. I managed to make it all the way into the third room before stopping in shock.

It was about three times the size of the other rooms, and shaped like a dome. The floor wasn't exactly flat, but it only lightly curved in towards the middle. The Elemental Rockworm turned to look at me even as the stone around it melted and flowed up and into its mouth. The creature waggled its head at me happily before continuing its task.

I stopped to make some calculations in my head. About an hour and a half, was a room three times larger than the one CP rooms. At that rate it would make up its creation cost in like, seven and a half hours. I might be better off creating a few of them and just letting them loose for the whole month...

I stepped back into the other room and looked at it more closely. The walls had expanded by a good bit, maybe a meter out in each direction except towards my core and the floor? Nowhere near as much as the other room though. And since all of the ore had been eaten, there was very little profit in the Oreworm for the moment. All I could do was hope it would repop quickly. I checked the hole in the center of the room, but it was too deep for me to see far into it... I'd have to follow up on the Greater Rockworm later I guess.

I briefly updated the forum with the information on the Rockworms, then went back to the dome-room. I got a little sidetracked, but if I just wanted to spend time waiting for CP to recover, then I should practice my magic, right?