Argul focused on her domain. She wanted to build her next floor before she started to immerse herself into something else.

She had left her domain alone for the last month and not taking a quick look had been hard, but she wanted to see all changes at once. Not wanting to stall any longer she started by looking at her first floor.

The fireflies had spread here, accompanied by her mice. Pretty much all of her predators had followed them and Argul could even spot a few of her bats hanging on a tree. Sadly none of her plants had spread here. It would likely stay that way for a bit, because compared to her Erod floors her first floor was a bit cut off.

The rest of her Luna floors had mostly remained the same and only got more populated. The difference in gravity and nutrients in the ground was just too stark for any Erod plants to move there.

Her sixth floor on the other hand was being flooded with other organisms. The lizards of the fifth floor had spread to the volcano lands together with the honeybees. In the center regions of the island Argul’s palm trees were slowly dominated by birch trees and a lot of underwood of the birch forest had started to grow on the sixth floor.

Animals had also come through the portal again and more than Argul would have guessed. There were a lot of small ones like worms, spiders and insects in general, but also a few different small birds and some kind of mice. Most of the birds were tits, though Argul preferred to call them titmice for obvious reasons.

What surprised Argul though were the countless species of oceanic creatures that were in her ocean. It looked like her AI had opened a portal to Erod’s oceans because of the instructions she had given. It would explain why the spread of the mana zone had noticeably slowed down a week ago.

As for her new residents, Argul did not want to search for them on her whole floor, there was just too much ocean to go through. Instead she looked around her center island and used her knowledge domain for the rest.

The variety of organic and animal plankton had risen drastically. A few kinds of fish had moved into Argul’s domain too, but the only one she could tell by name was mackerel. The fish had been followed by a school of dolphins, but they sadly weren’t anywhere near the center right now.

The portal was also responsible for all the small crustaceans, worms and shells on the ground of Argul’s ocean. They weren’t anything larger than crabs, but it was enough to make her ocean ground feel lively instead of dead. Argul was likely the only one who would even notice that for now, at least until some scientists came around and started to do their thing.

There had yet to come any jellyfish through the portal, which was a really good thing in Argul’s opinion. The population and most importantly procreation of most jellyfish depended on the amount of food they had.

On earth there had been a balance between fish and jellyfish, at least until the day human-kind decided that they wanted more fish. Needless to say, jellyfish would have immediately become a plague in Argul’s domain and she would have been forced to create something that preyed on them.

Argul wasn’t really keen on intervening in an ecosystem. It was a bit hypocritical because she was basically doing so every time she created a new species. Still she would hesitate with any creatures that were created by nature and not by her. 

They were a lot more fascinating in her opinion, because they were the result of hundreds of millions of years of evolution and not Argul’s magical organisms. It gave them a charm that someone like her could never reproduce.

Argul watched her coral reef for a few minutes while thinking about a few things. She didn’t mind the portal opening to Erod, on the contrary if a few of the larger oceanic creatures would come through it would allow her to create her krakens a bit earlier.

Argul took a quick peek on the seventh floor. The organisms took a lot longer to populate this floor, but considering the harsh environment that wasn’t really surprising. Her 7th floor was the only floor for now that Argul had plans with in the longer term, though that would likely change once she had a bit more floors. She just didn’t have any good ideas for the others for now.

Argul focused back on her sixth floor. She wanted her next floor to be mountain ranges upon mountain ranges and connecting that to her sixth floor was a lot easier to start with. Once she had the floor she could then connect it to the deep sea and had already ideas for that.

She looked at a middle-sized island she had and urged it to grow a mountain range. This really reminded her that she needed to work on her conjuration skills, because right now she was wasting large amounts of mana to do something. The only thing that held her back right now was that conjuring something of the complexity of a mountain range would be incredibly difficult.

Argul wasn’t particularly proud of her conjure water skill. It conjured water mostly after her intention and was impure because of that. She would have to create conjure skills for the different minerals that made it drinkable before she was happy with herself.

Argul watched as a mountain range visibly grew out of the ground. There had been some moongrass on the island before so she didn’t upset a lot of nature. Speaking of moongrass, she could swear she had seen some of that stuff grow under water.

Argul focused back on the island. It might have taken her idea of a mountain range a bit far, but it would work even better for her that way so she skillfully ignored that.

Map

Now for an entrance to her 8th floor, you would have to walk halfway around a mountain that was north of the largest mountain of the south half of the island. If you were to turn around after that you would start walking inside the entrance to the next floor and enter it, most likely without ever realizing you left the sixth floor.

The 8th floor would house massive mountain ranges. Argul thought of something the size of the Andes. This mountain range was all along the west coast of South America. The mountain ranges would form randomly, but between them had to be a bit of space, something around 50 km. Only the end of one mountain range was allowed to “touch” another mountain range. This way a few enclosed regions could form.

Earthquakes would be something occasionally happening inside a mountain range, but would seldom reach the enclosed regions. To simulate tectonic activities, earthquakes would either cause a mountain range to grow or shrink and if they were especially strong, could cause the appearance of active volcanoes.

Just to be safe she added caves as an option for the mountains and looked at her options a last time.

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Floor 8

• Mountain ranges
• Daytime: 14 hours
• Nighttime: 10 hours
• Temperature: -10°C to 50°C 
• Events:
  • Earthquakes:
    • There is a small chance for the occurrence of a weak earthquake of varying size in a mountain range every 10 days. The longer there was no earthquake the stronger the next earthquake will be.
    • Earthquakes will cause mountains to grow or shrink depending on their strength. The higher the mountains inside of an earthquake are on average, the likelier they are to shrink and vice versa.
  • Storms:
    • Through natural processes storms can form
  • Temperature change:
    • Every millennium there is a 50% chance for a region's normal temperature to change. A region is defined as the enclosed area between multiple mountain ranges and a bit of the mountain ranges around it.

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The large difference in temperatures was the result of her wanting to have different sub biomes for her mountain ranges, though her start region would be something warm, the same as the island.

Argul accepted the options and felt her core move once again. While it had likely been safer from sapient creatures on the 7th floor, her core had been a bit too exposed to the creatures there in her opinion.

Argul watched as her floor grew. The growth speed of new floor-space had risen a lot and it felt a bit as if she was watching a fast timelapse of a growing flower, just with mountains and valleys instead of a flower. Changing something on a floor was a lot slower, because the AI didn’t use as much mana for that.

Now she had to think about the plants and animals she wanted. For the animals Argul was pretty much set on some small lizard, something large with wings and something similar to a goat. They were all suitable for a mountain range theme.

Argul only had a bit of a problem with the plants or only with one. She wanted some kind of berry, two kinds of trees and a herb. She thought about it for a bit before she had the super crazy idea of taking a mushroom. Yes, very creative and original.

Argul started with the two tree kinds, one of which would be a conifer and the other a deciduous tree.

After the rapid intent based mutation process the deciduous trees reached a height of about 5 meters and their trunk had a diameter a bit larger than one meter. The trunk had a gray bark and branched into a canopy that looked roughly like a hemisphere. The tree had leaves of a blue shade. Argul really wondered why they were that color, because she thought if she didn’t tell them what she wanted they would evolve into something similar as on Earth and Erod.

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Unnamed tree

This is a large plant. This tree grows in warm environments. It seems to like the sky and has blue leaves because of this. The same as the sky, this tree never wants to stop growing and will become ever larger.

The nuts of this tree are extremely energizing and may lead to heart attacks upon ingestion.

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Seeing the tree didn’t spark an idea for a name in her so she left it unnamed for now. Argul took the time until her mana filled to plan a few things for the conifer. Once she had a hundred mana she repeated the ribm process, but on the other side of the mountain she was currently looking at.

The conifers grew to a height of maybe 30 meters. The bottom two meters of the trunk had no branches, but above that branches tried to reach everywhere. The tree didn’t look all that special except for one detail. It had a brown rough bark and green needles, the detail that was a bit special though was that the whole tree looked a bit wet.

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Unnamed tree

This is a large plant. This conifer grows in warm environments. It coats itself in a viscous liquid that emanates an extremely strong smell similar to tree sap. This liquid is extremely sticky and anything is prone to get stuck in it. Once something falls into the liquid it will harden around its victim and ultimately fall off of the tree. The hardening process is so slow that any creature will likely have starved before the process finished.

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Argul eyed the tree a bit annoyed. While the liquid had been intended, she had wanted it to be a defense mechanism and not a death trap to fertilize the ground under the tree. She sighed. That her mana did something weird with her plants once in a while was nothing new, so she just accepted it.

Argul watched her coral reef to distract herself and pass the time until her mana was full again. Then she started the ribm process for her berry bush.

The bushes she grew were around two meters tall and already had a few maybe berries. Argul wasn’t sure if berry was the right term, because they looked more like some kind of small yellow cucumber. 

Anyway, the fruit was hidden by the green leaves that had grown around them. She identified them.

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Unnamed bush

This is a large plant. This bush grows in warm climates. Its branches form a protective veil around its fruits to hide them from any creatures.

The fruits are extremely sour and unlikely to be eaten by your average human.

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Argul strongly doubted the last part. If it was sour you could use it as seasoning, so that plant should make itself ready for a bit of cultivation.

Argul sighed a bit and watched the leaves of the bushes sway in the wind. She should have done this earlier, building a new floor had a really soothing and relaxing effect on her.

The next thing Argul created was her herb. It had a small yellow blossom and small leaves, but wasn’t special in any other way. At least not in a way Argul knew of, they might have some effect if you prepared them the right way so a lot of the information her identify showed might change with time.

Now for her mushroom Argul would use her conifers. Her mushrooms would become weird anyways, so she could do it herself.

After her mana had reached a hundred again Argul grew a group of bluish-gray mushrooms near one of her conifers. The mushrooms had a flat head with a diameter of about 10 cm on average. The bottom side of the head was colored in a sick yellow and Argul honestly thought their coloration already told everything.

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Unnamed mushroom

This is a small plant. This mushroom grows in warm climates near a conifer that coats itself in a special liquid. Due to this liquid the ground underneath these conifers tends to be a graveyard for a lot of creatures, on which this mushroom then feasts.

This mushroom seems to have an effect that heightens cell division upon digestion.

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If she already had graveyard trees she might as well use them, though the effect of the mushrooms came as a surprise for Argul. She couldn’t tell if it was something good or bad. It sounded good, but on the other hand cancer was also a thing so maybe not.

With that she now had enough plants to finish this floor and the animals came next. Argul wanted to start with the lizards, but they had to eat something so she created something akin to a fly first.

After that she had to wait for 40 minutes again before creating a lizard.

The lizards she grew were about the size of a human forearm and came in three different colorations, namely green, gray and a mix of the two. They immediately tried to hide themself in the nonexistent undergrowth and showed Argul their great speed.

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Mountain lizard

This is a mid-sized animal. This lizard lives on and around mountains. They eat mostly creatures that are smaller than themselves. The males collect trophies of their prey to show the females that they are skilled hunters.

For a short distance mountain lizards can run extremely fast, but will be exhausted afterwards.

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Small and easy, the perfect start for her originally planned first creature. 

Argul used the time on her sixth floor to measure how much time she had left to finish her floor. She had about 2 and a half hours left until Mia would likely wake up, so she should hurry.

She planned her goats next and started the ribm process once she had enough mana. The goats had broad shoulders and long white fur. Argul could immediately differentiate the two genders of them. By her guess the males were the goats with the two brown horns that curved backwards to their head in a large arc. The females on the other hand only had one  white horn in the middle of their foreheads that divided itself into two and then grew backwards for 20 cm in smooth waves.

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Erod goat

This is a mid-sized animal. This goat lives on mountains and eats the leaves of most plants there. They have powerful legs and hardened skulls making their ram attacks dangerous. Male goats often bash their heads together to fight over a female goat.

The female goats, while still powerful, can't use their horns in their head bashes. The purer the white of their horns on the other hand, the better the horn conducts any earth mana instead and the females are often innately able to cast a few spells, making them more dangerous than the males.

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Argul liked how her goats had turned out. For all that she was the origin of all mana there weren’t a lot of creatures around that could cast anything, so these finally gave her a bit of the magic beasts vibe.

For her winged creature Argul changed her view to the top of the mountain. There had grown a few more mountains since she had started the floor, but this one was the largest one still.

Argul thought about creating wyverns for a bit, but ultimately decided against it. Sure giant flying lizards were fearsome, but so was also any gigantic bird of prey and in Argul’s opinion birds had a lot more potential to look dangerously cute than wyverns, a very important point.

The bird she got had feathers of a dark azure blue on their backside and a very light azure blue on their front. Argul guessed they had a wingspan of maybe six meters. Their feet were adorned by large sharp-looking claws and they had a long tail that trailed after them.

The oddest thing in Argul’s opinion though was the absence of a beak. Instead they had a maw full of dangerous looking teeth and their head looked similar in form to that of a snake.

One of the three opened its wings, flapped them and then roared out majestically. Argul was in love and really wanted one as a pet, but she promised herself to wait for a bit until her avatar got here.

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Hebiwashi

This is a large animal. This bird lives in mountainous regions and makes its nests on or near the peak of mountains. Their eyesight is incredibly advanced, allowing them to spot possible prey even from their nests. They do not have a beak and use their claws and maw to kill their prey.

Contrary to what one would believe, Hebiwashi do not hunt their prey using flight and instead run on the ground once they are near their prey. While they can’t run for long times, they are fast and nimble.

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Argul liked the name and didn’t care that it was the japanese name for an already existing bird.

She let herself fantasize about her riding one of these birds, but ultimately decided to check her status before she had to get up.

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Quest completed:

• And onwards we go!
  • You teamed up with the military to help people on a larger scale.
  • Wis +2

Quest completed:

• Crisis doctor
  • You have helped families during the integration for 41 days. Str +4
  • People helped: 543 people. Str +2, Int +3, Wis +1
  • You raised the efficiency of mana during the fight against a universes influence: special reward Int&Wis +3

New Quest:

• Wonky technic
  • Find out what’s going on between mana and man-kinds technical devices.

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Argul hadn’t gotten quite as many quests as before. By her guess you got more quests for the first level potential and the quests would get harder afterwards. You needed more mana to upgrade that part of the body, so it made sense that it would get harder with time or endless quests wouldn’t be quite as special.

Now for the rest!

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Floor finished

Status

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Her stats were coming along nicely and the growth slowly started to really kick in. Argul would have to grow more before she could start with a few of her crazier ideas and she had to invent one thing or the other.

With that thought she sent her consciousness back to her avatar.

Otjag

I am not going to lie, I love doing these domain chapters, but this one really went a bit far. Took me nearly 7 hours to write...For the interested of you, Hebiwashi is japanese for snake eagle I believe.