Chapter 16: Node Network

  Now that I had the various essences of Mana to work with, I had to see if they would properly fit into the conception of the world. Fortunately, I had kept Mana separate from actual matter, so I didn’t have to explain why something as prolific as air didn’t have a direct essence yet.

  Still, I had to come up with ways for everything to work and make sure I didn’t have any huge gaps. For example: if something wanted to use magic to fly… what would it use?

  I was fine with flight being a little complicated to pull off. And after working with this system and designing it for hours upon hours now… I already knew how flight would work.

  I really should take a break soon, I thought.

  But I wanted to get everything ready so I could turn up the Time Dilation while I took a rest and let the mutation rate handle things.

  But first, I had to finish setting things up.

  Now that I had Mana types, I of course had to tweak the various creatures already using magic so they could interact with them properly through Mana conduits.

  This part was easy.

  Mana conduits could process one type of Mana into another, with varying efficiency depending on a creature’s particular affinities. I was going to leave a lot of that up to evolution, but that brought up a question: How, for example, would the sea serpent I’d made use ice magic?

  I knew what ice magic would consist of. It was a combination of Aqua and Cruxis.

  Aqua was easy… water would naturally color pure Mana into Aqua Mana. But living in the ocean… where would they get Cruxis? It wouldn't be common in an ocean full of water, which had a nature that contradicted what Cruxis stood for.

  I thought of a few solutions. Then I decided… I didn’t need to solve that. That was something evolution could handle. And I was actually curious to see how it would solve it.

  Still, it brought up a larger issue:

  Where would the various types of Mana come from?

  And I still had a lot of other things to handle with this system.

  For now, I concentrated on the first problem… because the second involved some uncomfortable decisions I wanted to put off a little longer.

  I spent a few hours going through various materials – like iron, stone, and so on –to tweak what Mana affinities they would have.

  When pure Mana bubbled up from the Magicite layer – just as I’d set it to do earlier – it would filter through these various materials. Certain ores would have affinities, aside from the obvious ones like Cruxis of course. I could probably make some magical materials if I wanted to… but that could wait.

  This kind of passive filtering technique wasn’t very efficient, though. It was especially bad in certain areas that just wouldn’t get the Mana they needed to support good biodiversity.

  I did have a solution of sorts: If I could create Mana nodes – small local concentrations of colored Mana – then that could serve as a way for magical creatures to get what they needed.

  The problem, of course, was that I had no idea what needed what.

  I’d designed the system out of creativity. But the fact remained: a certain level of balance and statistical analysis was needed to make it actually work. I knew this. And I even knew enough math to recognize that my previous self had probably had some experience in the sciences.

  But just because I had some knowledge didn’t mean I’d be able to solve this correctly… or in a reasonable amount of time. If I had subordinates or something to check my math, maybe I’d be willing to try it.

  But for now, I had to rely on the interface. And while I’d been relying on it quite a bit, my earlier mistake had taught me that it wasn’t a foolproof solution.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  It actually brought me back to something I had been considering for a while but hadn’t had the chance to try. I knew I would have to eventually, because the Magicite shell would store up enough energy that I would need to let it out somehow, or else reduce the input into the system. But I didn’t want to do the latter.

  I mentally reached out toward the interface, but then paused, remembering that Orpheus was still here. While she didn’t volunteer information, she had sometimes been able to tell me what was and wasn’t possible.

  “Orpheus,” I said, turning around to look for her.

  This brought me almost nose-to-nose with her because I hadn’t noticed she was still sitting on my shoulder. Even so, it took her a moment to respond… she blinked as if she had been zoned out.

  The moment her eyes focused on me, I continued my question.

  “I hate to bother you. You seem a little distracted, but… is it possible to have my interface automate things? Like set up triggers, or make recommendations based upon certain parameters?”

  The fairy blinked at me again, but this time the response didn’t take very long.

  “Such a thing is possible,” she confirmed. “The automatic expansion of your original universe was one such thing. The interface is also already set up with some functions that let it analyze and give warnings, which you probably saw during your earlier mishap with the vegetation dying out.”

  Her heels drummed lightly on my shoulder as she fully woke up from her trance and looked more like an animated little sprite than a simple doll.

  “I don’t know what your interface looks like,” she continued, “but I do know others have set theirs up to do mass analysis before. You should be able to control the interface to do that. But without knowing what your interface is, I don’t know what approach you would use for that.”

  I nodded to her. “Thanks. That’s actually all I needed. I didn’t want to go hunting for a way to do that if it wasn’t possible, or wasn’t allowed. I could do this as a Rank Two?”

  “You may,” Orpheus confirmed. “Your interface will warn you if you are attempting to use a feature beyond your rank. In your case, something particularly complex, or which relies upon an Epoch you have not reached yet, may be barred from you.”

  That answer gave me everything I needed… but this time, I kept talking instead of letting myself get sucked into my work for hours on end without saying anything.

  “Was I boring you?” I asked Orpheus. “I know I’ve been stuck into the work for several hours.”

  Orpheus shook her head.

  “I don’t exactly get bored. But what you were doing was fairly obviously groundwork. I knew I wouldn’t see the results of it in a way I could assess for a long while, so I directed my attention elsewhere while you were busy.”

  Her heels tapped on my shoulder again, like she was fidgeting idly.

  “To tell the truth, this is a normal thing that I would do. You’ve been remarkably fast in building up your world. Most new Administrators struggle with topology far too long. And the ones that don’t usually just copy their home universe’s topology… and quickly fail.”

  She turned her head and tilted it, looking at me with a hint of emotion this time, one eyebrow raised.

  “You might say you’re moving almost as fast as those who rush it,” she said, “but you’re having much more success. Your original failure with the ecosystem notwithstanding.”

  “Huh,” I muttered. “That’s interesting. So I’m a statistical outlier, you’re saying.”

  She nodded. “I’ve seen this before. But it is relatively rare. It just means that you’ve had a lot more of my attention for much longer periods than normal.”

  “It doesn’t bother you, does it?” I asked.

  She shook her head again.

  “No. If anything, it breaks up the monotony. While I do not truly get bored as you understand it, I’m not a completely emotionless entity either. And I can find myself getting interested in something new.”

  I had a whole truckload of questions about that, but I really didn’t want to get into the philosophy of what made a person think and feel without a body… not yet.

  Instead, I went back to focusing on my interface. I dug through it, selecting menus and trying to look for what I wanted.

  When I found it, I felt really stupid.

  This interface had been made just for me, so of course what I wanted would be exactly where I’d expect to find it in a game interface. Namely, further up: a Scripting tab had appeared.

  I, of course, knew what programming was. But I didn’t need to actually write any code for this, even though it looked like I would. It was more of an abstract concept of scripting, where I could link together concepts visually in my mind, and it would give me the result I wanted, if I was careful enough.

  I let Orpheus know that I was going to be zoning out for a couple of hours again. I figured that was just the polite thing to do. Then I spent those hours figuring out how to create an addition to the interface that would overlay what sort of Mana each area would most benefit from.

  I didn’t want to just give every zone what it needed, because that wouldn’t provide any evolutionary pressure. But the overlay did give me a better idea of what kind of interrelations the various lands had, and what kind of node density I might need.

  I almost started placing them manually.

  Then I got smart.

  I directed the interface to use the overlay as a basis for where to put the nodes, and then alter that map of nodes based on random factors.

  The world was large – there were literally millions of potential nodes – so I just biased the system's probability toward “no change,” and figured the outliers would do the work of seeding chaos.

  I set a few of the nodes I knew I’d need in specific places as static, like an Umbral node near where any of the darkness mushrooms grew, so they could feed on it… and then I just let the interface go.

  So that is how all the elemental nodes were placed in my world.

  Not through divine intervention. Not through natural balance.

  But through a glorified dice roll.

  Because I thought that would be more interesting.

  What sort of intelligent species should our MC make?