Saturday, Challenge Four, Day 5, 1.0
Day three? Do I have that right? I made hundreds of pages of notes on day two, so it’s hard to tell. Let's keep going anyway.
Experiments for this run are minimal. This is my prep run. With the subterranean ecology thriving, I'll start introducing larger life forms. I have twenty breeding pairs of voles. I expect they will thrive in an environment with no predators. No plans for the voles directly, but they will be the primary food source for the eventual birds, which I do have plans for.
On the aquatic front.
I got some salamanders with interesting properties. The lake should be able to support them now. I'll introduce them on one side, and the dragonfly nymphs on the other to give them both a chance. I don’t really need to keep the salamanders alive long-term, just long enough to extract a core or two. Maybe experiment with them.
Insects. I have several. Rhino beetles, ants, some centipedes. These go into the forest where the rotting wood and undergrowth should shelter them from the worst of the night’s cold.
Plants. Just some hardy berry-bearing seedlings. Having anything I can pick and eat would be amazing.
The first run is just to get all these organisms in place. Then out for a four-hour break, come back in 396 days later. Harvest the leveled-up animals and check their cores.
Then the long run begins. I'll try to get at least a full year this time.
Saturday, Challenge Four, Day 5, 2.1
Decent harvest. As suspected, the dragonfly core’s primary quality is agility – not that I need agility cores. But good that it works. They are not thriving. I’d say they are scraping by. Mosquitoes. Must have brought them in accidentally. Dragonflies keep them in check.
Salamanders do fine. They retreat from the edges of the lake, toward the deeper parts. I have to go diving again. Still pays off. Regeneration is the primary quality. I want to experiment more with these later.
Bugs. Beetles are the clear winner. Strength is the primary quality of a beetle core. They do fine. So I have more experiments with them too.
Berries do great. They taste weird. Not bad. Maybe the soil lacks some minerals.
So now I have a strength core, agility core, and regeneration core. I’ll do some more tests on these.
Oh, another strange thing. The core isn’t inside the animal. I thought it might be at first since the core only appears once the body starts to fall apart. No. The core condenses from the body as it disintegrates.
I found this out by slicing up a salamander looking for the core – it lives a long time, no core found. But once I kill it the core appears. I think about what Tomas said, how people leave cores behind.
Not going to try the other elixirs right away. I have another idea.
Saturday, Challenge Four, Day 5, 2.13
One of the things I wanted to do in this run was understand Merge better. It seemed simple: merge two things together. But it only seemed simple. Here’s what I mean.
My regeneration salamanders. I tried to see if merging a regeneration core into a living salamander improved its regeneration. I cut the test subject and measured its healing. Just a scratch, really. Three days to heal.
So that was the baseline. I leveled up a regeneration core to level four and merged it back into the salamander. Tried again. Same. Still three days. I used the Titan’s core. Titanic.
The primary quality didn’t change. I didn’t know if I was expecting titanic regeneration, but I expected some change. I merged the new regeneration core into the test subject and tested again. Minutes. The same wound healed in minutes.
Axolotl. Level 3. Same as before.
So not all regeneration cores are the same. My basic identify power didn’t give me more than just the primary quality. I couldn’t tell if it was the improved regeneration that made the difference or if some other secondary trait was merged in because of how identify worked.
I killed that subject to harvest the improved core. I merged that core into a new subject and… nothing. Back to waiting three days. Whatever the supercharged salamander had wasn’t passed down in the core it left.
Needs more testing.
Saturday, Challenge Four, Day 5, 2.22
Of course the night I forgot to wear the dreamcatcher I had the colored-robe dream. Can’t remember it. Stupid. Make sure to wear it every night going forward.
Day 5, 2.25
Why didn’t the core from the augmented salamander work on a new salamander? I can only conclude that the process of creating a core somehow only takes the natural qualities of the animal into account when it's materialized.
That got me thinking. What if instead of merging the regeneration core into the salamander directly, I merged it into some aspect of the salamander. If I went by my character status, these were what the system measured.
Name, race, level, class, health, energy, focus, skills, professions, titles, traits, tolerances, abilities? Sorta guessing on that last one.
So what actually happened when I merged a core into the test subject? Did it add a new regeneration trait? Did it add a regeneration ability? I couldn’t tell. From my inspection skill nothing changed about the salamander. Which was odd. Previously, merging had made it possible to identify the changes right away. Stabilized Reed Milk, for example.
Stolen story; please report.
Do animals have species instead of race? I thought about that. With the essence formation flags speeding my absorption, I can afford to experiment.
I created a new titanic regeneration core and summoned my field around the salamander. Could I even merge something into the salamander’s species? Where was the species, physically? It didn’t really exist in a physical way, not unless we were talking about its DNA. Was that it? Did I need to target the species and have it merge into its DNA?
I moved my focus to the salamander’s species. That felt weird, like merge was looking for something to hold onto. The salamander even dropped, just a bit, before the merge found something and held it firm. So I merged the core.
Greater Axolotl. Level 3
That was different. Redoing the same experiment from before, the wound healed at an accelerated pace. Harvesting the core from that subject and identifying it left me with just regeneration. It wasn’t until I merged that core into the next subject that I was able to confirm the improved regeneration was successfully passed down to the final subject.
I think that means that if I create a greater axolotl in the wild, its offspring should share the same enhanced regeneration. I’m not trying to build a super salamander to take over the world, but it’s interesting to think about.
“I know what I said,” Rem’s voice echoed off the distant rocks. “Just shut up. Just shut up.”
He stood by the woodpile, the axe buried in the stump where he’d split his fuel. His chest moved fast, shallow.
Sunlight filtered through the canopy. It lay in patches across the forest floor. Golden flowers held still beneath the leaves.
He waited. A full minute. Long enough to be sure the others stayed quiet.
He was done with them. All of them.
It wouldn’t matter. They never listened. If he could have willed them away, they’d have been gone years ago.
He drew in a long breath of cool air, filled his lungs, then pushed it out slow and steady. He did it again. Slower this time.
Then he held out his hand.
He opened his palm. A small purple core rested there, smooth, shining with its own inner light. Max level. Enhanced regeneration. Every trial, every cut, every dead salamander had led to this.
He didn’t look away.
He summoned the merge field. The core lifted from his skin. The blue square of his power snapped into place around his hand.
He fixed his arm. Locked the muscles. Held the core steady.
Are you sure about this? We haven’t done enough trials with other animals to know if this is entirely safe.
His jaw tightened. He didn’t answer. He focused.
He didn’t wait.
Power cracked. The core drove into his hand with a sharp electric snap that echoed off the stone. Pain flashed and vanished just as fast. His fingers went numb, then warm, then normal.
It was done.
The domain faded. Rem stood there flexing his hand, turning it, watching for anything that didn’t belong.
Nothing.
“Only one way to tell.”
He took out the scalpel and drew it across his thumb. The blade parted skin cleanly. Pain barely registered. Blood welled up, dark and slow.
He pressed the cut closed with his fingers. Held it. Counted his breaths.
After a minute he let go.
The skin sealed. No scar. No heat. No resistance. Just whole again.
He stared at his hand. Opened it. Closed it.
A minute passed.
“Finally.”
He pushed essence into his ring and summoned the pane. Reached inside. Pulled free a wand of illusion.
“Finally we can resume.”
Day 5, 2.41
Arcane Attunement. I finally earn a skill. Let me record the message here for posterity.
Congratulations. You have successfully cast 100 spells using an arcane device without a supporting class. You unlocked the skill Arcane Attunement.
Arcane Attunement (level 1) You can attune to and activate magical items without meeting their normal class requirements. Level this skill to more consistently use arcane devices.
Look at that, I’m a natural. And I only had to go through a thousand wands and regrow four fingers!
Day 5, 2.57
I'm taking a break from practicing with wands. I’m bored. Going to try the blindfold now. Need to learn this essence perception. I tried it earlier. It suppressed my normal sight. My eyes just stop working.
So I set up the cabin and everything I need precisely where I know where everything is. I measured every step inside and out, got it all mapped out. Now I’m going to go blind for a while. Hopefully my high essence control helps. We’ll see.
Day 5, 2.58
Three days of that and I’m done. Boring. Kill me now. And the others aren’t talking to me. I did tell them not to. But it’s damn lonely and boring here without any of them. I’m going to try to talk to them again.
I can’t live like this.
Rem sat inside the essence concentration formation on the floor of his cabin. He used it two hours every day. Each session cut five days off his accumulation time. When the power settled, he was full again. Ready for more merge experiments.
“So,” Rem said. “You’re him?”
Rem breathed out through his nose. A short, sharp hiss. He waited for the echo of his own voice to fade. It didn’t help.
“It pisses me off that he was right about me. And no offense, but you’re an asshole. You abandoned them and left me to deal with everything.”
The thought came too fast. It didn’t feel like it crossed any distance at all.
Rem frowned, then let it go. He didn’t know why.
The whole thing felt wrong. Not impossible. Just wrong in a way he couldn’t get a grip on. Like noticing a mistake in a calculation after the answer already fit.
“You don’t ever miss mom?” Rem said. “She’s your mother.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Rem said. “You didn’t want to tell her anything? You didn’t have any affection toward her?”
Rem’s jaw tightened. He waited for the anger to settle into something solid. It didn’t.
“You really are an asshole,” he said. “I can’t believe you were me.”
Rem didn't argue.
That was what scared him.
“I can see why dad missed you,” Rem said. “You were just like him.”
Rem opened his eyes.
The cabin was unchanged. The walls were straight. The formation lines were clean. The air felt normal. He checked all of it without meaning to.
Nothing contradicted what was happening.
That made his stomach tighten.
“So merge…,” he said. His voice came out steady, which bothered him. “Was that you?”
Rem nodded before he realized he had.
He stopped himself. Too late.
He couldn’t remember deciding to believe any of this.
“Thanks, Rembrandt,” he said. “They said you didn’t want to talk to me. So… thanks.”
“Yeah.”
The word left his mouth on reflex.
Rem stood too fast. The room tilted. He grabbed the table until it passed, then forced his hands to let go.
He didn’t trust the silence anymore.
He pushed the cabin door open and stepped outside.
Night closed in around him. The forest was dark. Still. Real. The cold hit his face and stayed there.
He breathed it in hard, like it could fix what was broken.
“I need time,” Rem said. He wasn’t sure who he was saying it to. “You can’t just spring this on me.”
The voice was gone.
The thought wasn’t.
