Marigold – A LitRPG

 

 

Aurum - Year 1 - 2 Months later. 

 

Over the last few months we have been implementing our research into magic. One of the main advances came with Muck, my new pet, who looked like a fat cat. He was soft and nice to cuddle, and he spent the day sleeping without worrying about anything.

When we "created" Muck, I thought he was a real life form, like me or the boys, but Muck is more like a golem or something like that, if we removed the core, or he ran out of Mp, he would "die" but if If we filled the core with mana again he would "revive". It's like switching between on and off. Muck could also generate living mana! And he became the second "generator" of living mana in the colony, the amount that Muck could produce was ridiculous, about 0.01 per hour, maybe that's why he sleeps all day under the workers lights, to conserve energy.

Muck was also extremely resilient, his [Verdant vitality] skill allowed him to simply negate any damage from sharp weapons, or bruises. To deal damage to Muck it was necessary to deal a lot of damage at once or to deal "magic" damage, whether using mana, or throwing Muck into a fire.

Another thing I noticed about Muck was that he couldn't evolve [Skill] levels but he could still gain Xp, I don't know how this works, but Muck can only gain Xp by consuming the essence of life, since he won't do anything with 0 attack.

Another progress we made was in regards to spell research, the spell casters managed to create a spell called [Mana Bubble], which was nothing more than a cheap imitation of [Life Echo]. The magic allowed them to create a bubble made of pure mana that could grow depending on how much mana was used. The bubble didn't cause any damage, unless you were a fly, but it was strong like a plastic bag and could even serve as storage bins.

The bubble had a natural duration of about 1 week, and anything inside it rotted much more slowly, be it food, resources, or even mana! The bubbles coudn't be used for attack, but could serve as mana "batteries". We just needed to put crystals full of living mana inside the bubble, so that the mana wouldn't decay quickly as it normally does.

Mana still decayed, even inside the bubble, but it was about 20x slower, and the development club was working to create more powerful versions of this spell.

We also made a lot of progress in relation to biology, I didn't have much knowledge about specific subjects, such as nano-physics, advanced physics, Biotechnology, astrology or Botanics. I had read some books about this in my library days, but I was more focused on cheap romances and fantasies. In addition to focusing a lot on my shoujo mangas.

If I had known that I would be reincarnated in a strange world, where all the knowledge of a technologically advanced civilization could help me, I would have swallowed the entire library I worked in, and would have gone after more. I know there's a lot of useful things in my head, things that the beacons are still "defragmenting", but so far they haven't been able to rescue anything really useful, besides recipes from Tik tok, and some astrology concepts and the concept of a coliseum .

The advance we made in biology was with our little friends, the Wappos, with some experiments we discovered that we could not alter their [Species] with [Drops of Life] but by injecting large amounts of living mana into their bodies or they would die miserably, turning into a pile of rot. Or a mutation would happen! Of course, only 1 in every 80 Wappos got this mutation, but we had a lot of Wappos to do this experiment, and their death was not in vain, since everyone who died became Xp.

The Wappo name that had obtained a mutation was Char, the mutation made him spit out a black liquid that accelerated the decomposition of plant matter. It wasn't that great, but it still seemed useful. We also discovered how Wappos "reproduced" I always thought they just threw a cloud of spores into the air, and everything was resolved. But they had to find a partner, they didn't need to look for a male or female, just someone willing to be their partner, so they buried themselves in the ground together, and all the magic happened under the ground. Then the 2 Wappos released a cloud of spores into the air, which gave rise to dozens or hundreds of other Wappos.

The little guy who had the black goob had already managed to have children, we knew because there were other Wappos who began to present the same anomaly as Char, even without going through the "selection process", which showed us that the mutations could be passed on hereditarily.

I also got level 8 in [Lay Eggs], (finally). And I chose [Alchemist] and [Historians]. Both classes seemed to be pretty cool. Alchemists could mix substances within their bodies, and produce unique new substances. In addition to providing high resistance against poisons, and the ability to create a mental "glossary".

Historians were basically "archivists" they could store events and memories, and use them when necessary, beacons could kind of do that too, but historians could "mark" memories and pull them whenever they wanted or felt necessary. They could also warn the hive of certain dangers and remind them of bad events.

They were basically the "genetic instinct", they could make a soldier who had never seen a [Spiny Caterpillar] in his life know all its weaknesses, strengths, dangers and any other useful information. Beacons could do this type of work too, but it wasn't their specialty, and with the addition of historians, beacons were able to focus solely on transmitting information and keeping everyone connected in a single "network".

Another event was about the werewolve and Ciel, first we discovered that they weren't werewolves but "kobolds", and that they came from a village called "Alfeni" and were running away from something called "Black Corruption", the continent we were it was no man's land, the most powerful kingdom in the world was that of humans, and the closest of us was that of beastmen, there's other groups, such as Demons, and Elves.

The Kobolds were part of the Beastmen, and the group of Beastmen were composed of humanoid beings with animal characteristics.

The elves lived in seclusion in a forest in the far west, and humans dominate the east continent, the human continent was the largest of all, and in the far north was the capital of beastmens. Humans praised a so-called "Goddess of morning" and hated anything that was not a human being (Racists). The beastmen had a god called "Astrawoul", who was described to me as the "Progenitor of all beasts", to the extreme south was the continent of demons, and Hilda didn't know much about them, just that they were hunted by humans, but had a good relationship with beastmen.

The existence of demons scared me a little, and Hilda's lack of knowledge about this mysterious race irritated me, she didn't know much about humans, elves, demons or even beastmen! She only knew things in general, and common knowledge. And we also had the fact that her knowledge could be 'outdated' since she was a bit of a peasant, and these people are always the last to know everything.

Another thing we learned from Hilda was that skills could "change", if I used a skill to cut bread, to chop wood until it evolved to the next stage, I would gain a version of the skill that better suited my needs.

So the skills were never random, I had only managed to evolve [Create honey] until today, but that was still valuable information.

Ciel and Hilta also started to get along well, the two of them were a bit crazy about religion. Hilda praised her god, and Ciel prayed to me secretly, while pretending to pray to Hilda's god.

Hilda and Ciel's relationship was completely built on lies, Hilda and Ciel's contractual bond was not 'strict', so it allowed both sides to lie to each other, Hilda dove head first into it, and opened her mouth like a maritaca, but Ciel never really trusted Hilda, but he still liked how sincere and kind, she was. Sometimes he felt bad for lying to her so much, but Ciel was very good at keeping a poker face.

The boys didn't feel comfortable around Ciel, not anymore, so I had to force him to stay with Hilda until we got everything we could out of her. We provided new clothes and food for Hilda, and "took care" of her, brushing her fur, and cleaning her body. All in an attempt to make Hilda trust us, after all, no one would suspect that cute bees that look more like fairies, are secretly planning to rob all the information you have, and then dismiss you as old trash.

Some other kobolds came after Hilda, she spoke to them, and then came to beg Ciel to "send" help to her people. Since we were supposed to dance with the music, we sent the resources without delay, and asked Hilda to get more "Stories from the world" to entertain us.

The game we were playing was that we were bees sent by god to protect those plains for a reason that could not be mentioned, we wouldn't cause any harm as long no one got too close, and we were only friendly with people who "served" the same god as us. And all we wanted from Hilda was for her to tell us stories, world history, popular stories, or personal events. From there we could extract many things from Hilda.

When she said things like "That day I was going to the grocery store." We played dumb and asked "Market? What is this? What is it for?" to discover how Hilda's world worked. With methods like this, we discovered that everyone uses gold coins as money, gold seemed to be an abundant and worthless substance. So it was perfect to use to create the coins, the coins were divided into 5, each with a higher value, but all made of gold.

The kobolds used more of a "barter" type of system, they were more like, "I'll trade two chickens for this baby pig." Only humans used the currency system. But if other species wanted to trade with humans they needed to know how to use these currencies, so everyone knew at least the basics.

Another thing we got from Hilda was some worrying information, something about a "demon lord", she asked us if their god had sent us to protect them from him, but I didn't even know there was a demon lord here.

This information was worrying, and Hilda didn't know much either, just that he was the cause of the "Black Corruption", and that the "heroes" failed to defeat him.

The world also had heroes, but I didn't know if they were like those heroes from another world, or local heroes, and Hilda didn't know either. All she knew was that in the beginning there were 7 heroes, and nowadays there is only 1.

Hilda's information was valuable, but very "broken", we couldn't extract anything really useful from it, just general-picture things. We knew that the humans of this world were assholes, (at least in Hilda's eyes), the Elves were Neets, demons remained an iconite, and there were gods, heroes and demon lords.

The most useful information in my opinion was everything that Hilda knew about the forest where we lived, the forest was popularly called "forest of the fallen", but had other names such as "Cursed Grove" or "Dreadwood Forest". The forest was called that way because it is common knowledge that the forest are "Cursed", according to the story that Hilda told us, several centuries ago, this place was a kingdom called "Luminus", which defied the heavens, and as punishment all The land and people on it were cursed, becoming monsters and beasts out of their nightmares. The curse was so powerful that to this day everything in the forest is deadly.

Heroes tried to conquer it and failed, as did several other kingdoms and species. The place had beasts of the highest level, and was known for "bringing down even the bravest knight".

I had been born inside this place, but far from the center of the forest, I was closer to the edge. And even Hilda's group that only went through a relatively "Quiet" part suffered serious losses.

The place seemed to be really dangerous, I still vividly remember the wolf that killed Mr Rabbit, apparently he wasn't the most threatening thing in the forest by far, so I was lucky to get out of there soon as I could.

---

 

Now I was doing my magic tests, as I spent most of my time isolated in my quarters doing nothing, I started to dedicate myself to magic. My mana regeneration was relatively fast, and I don't know if that has anything to do with my species, but it helped me do my magical experiments more easily.

What I was most interested in was [Mana Manipulation], the skill allowed me to infuse my mana with "intent". Mana normally had no intention, ordinary mana was just energy, while mana with [Affinity] had a certain intention, living mana always tried to "heal" or "correct" errors in living beings, serving as a non-harmful substance to the body, but if I could put intent into the mana, then I could make the living mana do other things, like cause damage, deformities, or mutations.

"Bring me another Wappo."

I was now conducting my "friendly" experiments with the Wapoos, we had dozens of them tied up in the corner of the room, and whenever I needed one the soldiers would drag one to me.

When the Wappo was in front of me, I started injecting living mana with the intention of making him sick, and after a few seconds some black spots started to appear on the Wappo and he was visibly shaken by it.

'It worked out! I finally managed to do it, putting intention into mana isn't easy as it seems, at least I didn't have to kill so many Wappos this time...'

By injecting more living mana into Wappo I had the intention of healing him, and returning him to his previous stage of perfect health. But that wasn't what happened, the black dots on Wappo began to spread, and soon he began to wither, and fall to the ground, he wasn't dead yet, but he would soon die to the disease.

"Interesting.... I intended to cure him, but instead I accelerated the disease, is it because the disease is also considered a living creature?"

The Wappo remained miserably on the ground, just spitting out a yellowish liquid, and shaking, while I analyzed him and my historians wrote down all the events, without caring about Wappo's suffering.

"Take care of him, we don't need to extend his suffering, and I don't want to risk letting this illness escape to the other Wappos."

"Yes!"

Soon a single soldier walked up to Wappo and kicked his head until it is completely crushed, then grabbed Wappo's body and walked away to throw him away.

All the Wappos that were "victims" of my experiments could not be consumed, or thrown to other Wappos, so we had to take the trouble to take them a little far from the nest, but nothing that was really difficult.

"Bring me another Wappo, a big one this time."

Soon another Wappo was in front of me, and I started injecting more mana into him, this time charged with the intention of "Contaminating" him, just causing a weak, common disease, nothing that would kill him, something that could spread easily, and  wasn't  lethal, something like the flu.

Soon the same black dots appeared on the new Wappo, but this time he began to expel white goo from his mouth and cough.

 

 

'Wow! I already knew that spells existed, but it's still incredible to see that I learned how to cast a spell!'

 

 

'Damn! I don't know whether to feel happy or offended, is the system telling me that I "corrupted" life energy, to create this spell? Or is it just that life energy has a lot of "by-products"?'

Using the spell, I realize that it's basically the same thing I had already done with Wappo, but now my claws had a tainted purple aura, and when I touched something this aura entered that object.

'So, spells are just a "shortcut", and more "stable" versions of using mana, what stops me from using mana to create several powerful spells from scratch? Like what I've done so far?'

'-If I may say so, the magic club already has a theory about this.' Said a Beacon who took care of my schedule.

'Oh? And what would this theory be?'

'-When using a [spell], you use less mana and time, in addition to having more ease in handling the spell, while trying to cast it without it being a [Spell], the mana cost will be higher, it will be more unstable, and less powerful.'

'I see, so it's the system's way of dumbing everyone down... The system "forces" us to take the easiest way, which is to use the system, in theory I can learn thousands of spells, but if I don't remember exactly how to "launch it" and "drive it" then it's no use. While the system does all the work for me, and only charges the amount in Mp needed to cast a stable and powerful spell.'

Is this a leash?

A way to guarantee that all [Spells] will always be "in accordance with the system", or is it just the correct way to cast spells?

Testing the spell on a Wappo, I can see that it is extremely more lethal, the Wappo ended up as the first Wappo quickly, and now I could also "regulate" the intensity of the disease, in addition to choosing what the disease would cause.

I could make the Wappos weak, drowsy, hungry, tired, angry, confused, and even blind! And all of this was definitive, or at least it would last for several days or weeks, depending on the Wappo, it wasn't like the [effects], these diseases seemed to be much more vicious and harmful. But I had a high mana cost, and the illnesses didn't seem to last long if I didn't use a lot of mana.

The amount of mana I injected into the spell determined the "intensity" of the disease, so even using all the mana from the life source, I still couldn't cause physical deformities.

'It's still interesting, the Wappos no longer serve me as "test dummies" I need something bigger to know if these diseases are really powerful. The larvae? No... We don't have many, and they aren't really powerful, the snails too, we have few, and they haven't reproduced yet. So what?....Hilda? I could know if I could "contaminate" it, and if it worked I could wipe out all the kobolds if necessary! All this without leaving home, just sending an infected kobold and letting nature do the rest.'

---

 

The next day I was at an impasse, I needed to touch Hilda to "contaminate" her, but the hive members refused to let me leave the 1st ring, so imagine touching a kobold who was our 'enemy', I still had the last word, but I didn't want to have to deal with a swarm of nervous bees.

'What to do... What to do.... I can't get close to her, but I need to get close to her to contaminate her, so what do I do? Contaminate her food? It could work... But what if she feels like the food is "compromised", this could go very wrong, so what? Do I contaminate Ciel? No... I'm not going to put Ciel at risk for this, what the hell do I do?...'

Looking at my list of skills I see the always useless [Life Echo] and end up getting an idea.

"What if I..."

Creating an echo, which looked more like a glowing soap bubble, I concentrate all my mana on the [Tainted Touch] spell on the bubble that is between my fingers, soon a purple aura begins to come out of my hand and merge with the echo of life , the bubble that previously had a friendly and serene appearance, now had a disgusting black color, and emitted sparkles like petroleum that had been spilled into water. Inside the bubble I can see a small purple cloud constantly moving.

 

 

'Wow! This shit is dangerous! Mysterious illness?! What did I put in here?! And I still spent all my mana just for "a small chance"?!'

The bubble was the size of a soldier's head, around 3 cm, and it had cost all my mana, okay I didn't have much mana, but I was still hoping for something more powerful.

But I think the discovery that I can use [Spells] in conjunction with [Skills] is already very valuable, I had no idea that this would work, and in the worst case scenario I thought the echo would burst.

'Doesn't that mean I can also use other Skills in conjunction with [Life Echo]? But what? [Create food]? [Lay eggs]? Does it work with [Radiant Renewal]?!

Going to the lake of living mana, I take all the remaining living mana, and create another echo, and this time I start focusing the skill [Radiant Renewal] on the small bubble.

Soon the echo starts to emit a pale golden light, it starts to grow a little and when I can look directly at it I see that it has taken on a golden color with the same oil-on-water patterns as the other echo, but this time there are dozens of little stars swaying. like glitter inside the bubble.

 

 

"Holy goat! Forgive me echo, I'll never judge a book by its cover again!"