No Need For A Core?-353: Moriko’s Pet Project

No Need For A Core?-353: Moriko’s Pet Project

Moriko glared at the set of options being presented. Or, she would be glaring, if she were 'looking' at them with eyes. It was one thing to learn how to see mana in general as part of learning how to cast prayer-spells, but seeing mana forms at this level of detail and learning how to read those details was much more annoying.
She needed to select her boons, but so far, she wasn't feeling very inspired. The best idea she'd had so far was to select the baseline energy affinity and elemental affinity boons for everything, to give all their inhabitants a little more resilience and maybe turn that into a multi-elemental combat style for some of them. It certainly seemed useful, but she was certain that she should be able to put together something more fun and interesting.
Bah.
"I need to take a break," she said to Kazue and Mordecai. "You two have already taken most of what I'd want to take as my first pick, so I want to try being extra creative, but my mind is just chewing on the same ideas." She could see the structure of the mana forms attached to Kazue and Mordecai's portions of their core, but duplicates would not form for her, even when she tried to structure them herself.
"Such a luxury to have so many choices; yet another little thing for me to be jealous of," Deidre teased. She'd been invited to listen in as part of being able to share more thoughts, ideas, and options with her other self, who had not yet selected all of her replacement boons. That trip was being delayed until Moriko was ready to form her avatar and go back with them, as Mordecai and Kazue were still feeling concerned over how rough her transition was. Getting everything settled and equalized with things like boons and bosses was part of the process of making sure that she was ready.
If there had seemed to be any trouble with Svetlana, they might have hurried back while Moriko was recovering, but Svetlana's sudden growth had the army wary, along with the confusion and consternation that had been caused by Mordecai's eruption from the ground while Svetlana had been stealing most of their military supplies.
The army seemed to be reorganizing quickly, but it was greatly focused on ensuring they had enough supplies to feed all the soldiers and other such immediate necessities, and this left them with little ability to prepare for another march into Svetlana's depths.
Especially as a good portion of the camp followers had taken Svetlana's offer of refugee status, when her newest zone had encompassed their encampment as well as the military one.
This growth had also included claiming what used to be Dimitri's estate, and Svetlana had found several hidden books along with several other interesting things that had been overlooked when the estate was raided by the Trionean military.
Much of this information had come from Kazue’s avatar, whose parents had almost immediately driven their wagon into the mouth of Svetlana’s dungeon to provide extra safety for Svetlana, but an interesting amount had also come from Kuiccihan. The kingdom's spy network had supplied the nexus with considerable interesting tidbits to chat about, and she'd shared them over tea with Satsuki and Deidre, with the tea table placed over the border of the two nexuses.
Thinking of Svetlana reminded Moriko of something she had been meaning to ask. "Mordecai, you had to rush me here to make sure my core could merge with yours — were you sure that would work? Um, and what would have happened if we hadn't gotten here in time?"
"I was not entirely certain that it would work," Mordecai admitted, "but if hadn't, we would have still been able to bring you in as a subsidiary core, as long as you were in our territory. The closer you were to our core, the more likely it was that we could merge your core with ours. As for what might have happened elsewhere..."
He hesitated for a moment before continuing. "Svetlana's territory would have been very difficult. Once your territory started forming, it would have been very difficult to move you out, especially as the two of you would have been in immediate conflict. The easy solution should have been to make you a subsidiary, only that requires the subsidiary to be able to surrender while feeling overwhelmed or conquered. Given that you are a faerie queen and were part of the team that had just conquered her territory, that would have been difficult for you to feel sincere about, plus you might not have been able to think clearly. No one would have been happy with that arrangement anyway."
Moriko found that to be quite the understatement.
"While we were traveling, the rapid changes in environment should have made it difficult for your core to finish forming enough for it to start claiming a territory. From the books we've received, I believe this is part of why no nexus has been born under the caldera where Bellona trained. There is a powerful flux of energy there, but it is too unstable for a core to fully manifest before being overcome. If it started to happen anyway, I'd have dropped to the ground to be safe; I don't know what sort of nexus could form in mid-air. At least, that close to the ground."
That piqued her curiosity. "What about if we weren't close to the ground?"
"Well," he said, "I am again not entirely certain, but I have heard rumor of a nexus that had somehow formed solid clouds that floated, not unlike an archipelago in the sky. Other than that, I am even more uncertain how your territory might have formed. I do not believe it would even have been possible on the other side — no nexus has ever formed there that I know of, though I also do not know of any other nexus that can reach across the way we can."
"I was so worried," Kazue said, "Even after Mordecai assured me that one way or another, you would be alright. The idea of you being stuck out there somewhere instead of being able to come home, I just don't even know what I'd do."
She was so sweet that Moriko wanted to kiss her. Unfortunately, Kazue's avatar was not here, and Moriko was waiting to form own her avatar, per Mordecai's recommendation. "Well," she teased, "if I had gotten stuck with my core out there, you know that at the least I'd make sure to get my avatar here in time for the tournaments." Hmm. "Wait a moment, I think I have an idea."
Moriko played with her concepts for a moment, then tentatively pushed out her idea into the mix of energies that could potential boons to be claimed. There were some shifts, but she wasn't very good at reading new ones yet. "Could you verify what these do?"
Mordecai answered first. "That theming-type one is for martial disciples, so any of our inhabitants who specialized in chi-powered combat would fall under that. I've seen mages as a theme type before, but this one is new, and sounds very much like you. These look like style boons, but not ones I've seen before. Give me a moment. Ah, I see, I think. This part here lets us offer various special challenges, and delvers can declare which challenges they want to undertake, if any. Oh, oh, that's really nice, let me make sure I have this right."
He took a few moments more poking at them, and then said, "The challenges make it harder to complete a delve, but they do not give extra rewards. Instead, mana is channeled back into the delver as appropriate for the challenge. For example, with these boons, if Shizoku took on a no-spells and no-alchemy challenge, and only fought physically, then she'd have the normal improvements to her body amplified. This other boon here builds on both that challenge system and our multiple paths, so with it we would get a new challenge mode that, once someone declares they are taking it, allows us to force them to clear a minimum of two paths for each zone. Deciding which two paths is part of declaring they are taking the challenge. And of course, this third boon is an advancement for a triple challenge."
Moriko liked those, and they were pretty much what she had in mind. "Anything else new? I didn't see anything I didn't recognize, at least, not fully formed."
"Mm, no, not fully formed. It looks like they could possibly synergize with other boons or future changes we make to the nexus, but nothing that is ready to reveal itself yet."
That was fine by her. "Do you see any problems with me taking those?"
"No, they should be fine." He laughed briefly and added, "They are going to make us feel a lot like an oversized dojo."
"Perfect." Moriko reached out for the mana patterns and nudged the ones she wanted into the proper nodes attached to her portion of the core matrix. Each node that formed was a little larger than the previous, allowing her to attach larger, more complicated patterns, many of which had been previously revealed as potential selections for Mordecai and Kazue
Once she had her set of four new boons, Moriko reached for one that Mordecai had pointed out previously, that would enhance their inhabitants whenever someone sufficiently strong challenged a zone. It built on a boon that Mordecai had previously selected, which enhanced only their bosses.
After that, Moriko considered the remaining options before her and decided to build upon Kazue's boons. There was one that ensured all their inhabitants would be imbued with at least basic medical knowledge; after that, Moriko chose one that would boost the minds of all their inhabitants even more.
This meant that even their slimes and other simple creatures would have minds nearly equal to an average adult, and with that in place, Moriko could then select a boon that would let any of their inhabitants understand and talk in any language that the cores knew, even if they wouldn't have otherwise been able to talk at all.
Now they had the capacity for a lot more inhabitants, but Moriko wasn't sure she was ready to be very creative here yet. This didn't mean she didn't have any ideas, however. "So, Menhit's cubs, they're pretty much adults now, right?" The caracal had been quite the handful when Moriko had hauled her back to the nexus, but the pregnant cat had been quite happy to accept a new home once she was here. "I was thinking maybe we could sort of copy the various chains for dire rabbits to them, but with a stronger emphasis on elemental energy, so one that had fire attunement wouldn't necessarily breathe fire, at least not at first, but would be able to manifest an aura of fire and burn foes with their claws and bites. Ah, for winged variants, why don't we continue to use owl wings, like Umbrowl has?"
"Oh, I like that," Kazue said. "Here, let me show you how the templates connect to each other. These would be the changes you want here and here."
Moriko carefully watched Kazue's first modifications, then slowly copied the process, giving Mordecai and Kazue plenty of time to catch any mistakes. When she had finished her work, the caracals now had an evolution path as they got older and stronger, right through to becoming nekosune, using a template similar to the one for the usagisune. Huh, that was an interesting sensation. The small jolt of mana recharging reminded Moriko of Kazue’s complaints of having to learn everything herself to earn additional mana for the nexus. Now that had happened for her, though this seemed smaller than Kazue had described. Or maybe it was that the nexus had so much more mana to compare it too.
Once she was confident in her work there, she shifted her attention to another species of animal that the nexus had not done much with. She suspected Mordecai had simply been keeping them relegated to some of the more general upgrades given to the wilderness creatures, in part to keep Kazue from thinking about it too much, but Moriko felt that Kazue would be just fine once she got through her initial reaction and actually thought about it.
There were no other changes Moriko wanted to make to the templates, so she simply copied everything she'd done with the caracals to the foxes.
"Oh, elemental foxes? That's... wait." Kazue paused a moment as she thought about it. "If you just give them the exact same path, we're going to re-evolve kitsune‽"
Mordecai's mental sigh sounded both a bit resigned and a bit amused. "Yes, that is exactly what our wife has just set in motion."
"What?" Moriko asked with exaggerated sincerity. "Perhaps I just wanted to have a larger variety of pretty boys ready to attend to my every need at the onsen."
"Moriko!" Kazue said, sounding scandalized.
"Or perhaps we should surround our husband with more fluffy-tailed kitsune girls, and put your painting talents to use. We could make him look like one of those old-fashioned kings, though maybe we would want to put leashes and collars on the girls, and I could be lounging by his side while holding the leashes." She focused her will on Kazue a little, for emphasis. "I do like taming a fox girl, after all."
If it were anyone but Kazue, Moriko might have been surprised to learn that a core could sputter during purely mental communication. It was just unfortunate that Kazue's avatar wasn't here so that Moriko could watch her blush.
While Kazue recovered her ability to think straight, Moriko started going through their zones and considering her options for zone bosses. This was trickier than simply modifying existing templates, so she ended up needing a lot more help from Mordecai and Kazue to get each of them right.

353: Moriko’s Pet Project