Argul looked at his new interface appreciatively. “Hey nice change Alyra.”

Alyra’s chat popped up again. “Thanks! You better appreciate it!”

Argul skillfully ignored the last part and looked through the changes. He found his age odd, it couldn’t have been that much time since he woke up. “Hasn’t it been only like 2 to 3 hours?”

The chat swayed from left to right. “Nah, it’s been nearly a day. I would guess that next to the system occupying some of your processing power your race has the ability to accelerate or slow down its perception of time, but you would have to do a bit of testing. You played with your mana manipulation for a rather long time.”

He was intrigued. The system utilizing his processing power was a bit off putting, but he guessed it had to work with something.

Alyra’s chatbox changed into a hand and waved at him. “Don’t worry about it too much, mum. The system will take some of the processing power of every being inside of mana and the more things there are, the less an individual loses.”

Argul nodded to himself mentally. He wasn’t comfortable with the idea of something having a power like that, but he also had no clue about the rules that governed Alyra’s ability. At least it would hinder everyone equally to make things fair.

He sighed to himself and set the thought aside for now, musing about his ability to change his perception instead. “Well the time perception thingy is going to take some time getting used to, but it’s not the weirdest ability for a quasi immortal. Could you maybe notify me after like 2 hours are over when I’m experimenting with things?”

The chat transformed into an hourglass. “ When I have time, you do know that I have a lot of things to do.”

Argul couldn’t really complain. “That’s fine by me.” As long as he had no mortal friends, time only had a small meaning for him.

Now, he finally wanted to get to work and look at what he could do with his templates and his floor. The first thing he did was naming the moon Luna, a rather unimpressive choice, but Argul couldn’t care less.

Next he tried to open his template menu, but staring hard at his screen sadly didn’t work. Alyra would have to integrate another menu for him, so that he won’t have to do a special action every time. It would be nice at least.

When Argul concentrated on the Luna template a few options and some information on atmosphere and the structure of the moon and the composition of the soil appeared in his mind.

And boy was Luna resource poor. You could basically enrich it by bleeding a bit over the place. Hum, that might have been a little too exaggerated. There was also a fair chance that Alyra and Argul simply didn’t know some of the materials that could be found on the satellite and would remain ignorant of them.

Anyway, the things he could adjust were temperature, how the landscape should look like, how much of the day the sun shines - Argul had no idea where the light came from in his domain but it somehow was there - and a few other things.

It felt like one of those research trees in strategy games, so there were likely more options that Argul didn’t know as of yet.

Sadly he couldn’t adjust gravity for now and the form of his domain would likely stay spherical. He didn’t mind too much, though it could be a bit weird later on.

Argul played a bit with the options and thought about what he wanted for the first floor. Ultimately he accepted his settings and hoped he could change some things later on. A screen appeared again, detailing all the options he had chosen.

 Floor 1

• Luna (moon) surface

• Night hours 10

• Daylight hours 14

• Night temperature -2°C to 10°C

• Day temperature 10°C to 25°C

• Events:

• Meteorite

• There is a 1% chance of a meteorite falling every month.

• Comet

• There is a 1% chance of a comet passing and causing a phenomenal lightshow every 3 months

• Earthquake

• There is a 1% chance of a local earthquake of random strength every 6 months.

Proceed?

Y/N

Argul proceeded and felt himself being moved. It felt like someone was unfolding his innards and folded them back again only to unfold them another time. He did not like this feeling, it was extremely unpleasant, though thankfully it only lasted for an instant.

It took him a few minutes before he settled down again. Thinking about this experience, he would likely have to get used to it in the future. Otherwise he would have to go through this feeling everytime he gained more stats.

Now that Argul knew he had a domain he could tell that he literally perceived everything in it at once. It wasn’t that weird though, since most of it didn’t happen consciously. Only a cone similar to the field of view of a human required more active processing from him.

After experimenting for a bit, he managed to change his active point of view and move it around in his domain.

While Argul did this he noticed that soil and rock had started to grow from underneath his space rip. It looked as weird as it sounded and he tried to get a feeling for what his mana did to create the soil. 

Why his mana was able to do things he could not do, Argul did not know, but he was sure he would find it out one day.

This time he did something different and suddenly there was a lot of white around him. Where the soil grew the white dimmed and became gray before it disappeared.

So mana could be seen, Argul was just stupid for trying to feel it. He adjusted his mana sense instinctively, so he could have it active all the time and still see things normal.

As a reward he had to make the system’s blinking stop again. He sighed.

Congratulations

• You created the skill Sense Mana

• You can perceive mana with all your senses!

• Normally it would need a lot of proficiency for this skill to be passive, but you seem to be somewhat of a natural.

At least Argul now had this skill. 

He decided to go back to watching the floor grow. It was fascinating, pleasing and in a weird indescribable way comforting for him. It might be because he wasn’t surrounded by nothingness anymore as well as the ground giving him some sense of familiarity.

The growth of his floor looked a bit as if somebody was adding infinitesimal small blocks of soil at high speed to the already existing matter, an overall satisfying display.

Once it reached deep enough it changed to adding some kind of stone. Argul had no idea what kind of stone it was, but it was of a darker gray than the soil and also harder than it.

He was so caught by the strange sight that it took until about half of the floor had grown for him to stop watching. 

He didn’t really want to know how much time he had just wasted, because while the floor might grow at a visible pace, it was still an exceedingly slow process. In the end though he didn’t care all that much, knowing that he had no age limitation.

Argul’s floor now had an area of about 5000km², an area he could fill with flora and fauna. There were craters scattered all over the floor like it was a real moon, the only difference being that there were no leftovers from any meteorites yet.

He suddenly had a strange thought. Wasn’t he supporting flat earthers with the looks of his floor?

Oh no! What should he do now?

Jokes aside, Argul got back to work. While experimenting with ribm sounded exciting, he would have to be careful not to create some abominations, so he went with something easy and uncomplicated for the first try, grass. 

As Argul thought about this, knowledge of what he had to do appeared in his mind. 

He did as he was told and started to slowly push mana into a small area while focusing on the image of grass. At first Argul took it slow and tried to get a grasp of how much mana he had left based on the feeling he got from his mana sense. 

After spending about half of his mana, Argul got a lot more comfortable however and started to accelerate the process. All in all it took maybe 30 minutes until he had spent 100 mana and stopped.

Nothing happened for a few seconds and Argul was about to complain to Alyra when silver leaves started to sprout out of the ground. The color alone told him that something had definitely not gone like he had planned.

The silver grass grew at an alarming rate until it reached a height of about 40cm. It was like watching a time lapse, only that Argul was sure time was going by at a normal pace.

When the growth of the leaves of the grass slowed, extra stalks with some sort of seed pods grew and stopped when they reached a little higher than the beautiful silver grass blades.

The plant sometimes reflected the light, making it glitter in the light. Yes there was light, thank you very much..

Now came the boring part, Argul had to wait and decided to try the time thingy to speed up time for himself. At least he had something to watch now.

One of the seed pods exploded and Argul immediately brought his time back to normal. 

Never having seen something move that fast, he was now sure that he could change his perception of time. If he could slow it down more than what he thought of as normal it would be even greater. 

So many possibilities! Imagine slow motion combat, not that Argul could fight that good or had any intention to get into a fight. He would rather not.

Alyra’s chat box appeared before him in gray, not the normal blue. Not the best sign he had ever seen. “Oh no, now you have done it mother!”

Argul was pretty damn sure that she had waited on purpose before she had said something. “What?” … No answer. “Can you please tell me what is going on?”

A new screen appeared, a bit bigger than necessary. 

Achievement made: The ULTIMATE Weed

It wasn’t enough to create grass able to grow on the moon, no, you had to give it the ability to change itself with mana, to adapt to almost every environment in the universe. You created THE weed. The bane of all farmers and gardeners. It will be revered as god and dominate countless worlds. It will be cursed as demonic creation by all who really don’t want to have more work to do on their fields. No matter what you do, a stalk of this plant will remain somehow somewhere.  What comes next? Zombie mushrooms? No, stop! Don’t even think about it, for the sake of the universe!

All plants classified as small gain a moderate growth bonus (Skill : accelerated [m] growth (small) ) INT +1

Argul's core moved once more, but this time he was prepared and his vision stayed where it was, so it was more manageable. He still didn’t like the feeling.

As for the grass, whoopsie? Sorry? Nah, he was definitely not apologizing for accidentally creating the perfect plant for terraforming. “Hey Aly, it’s not that bad you know.”

This time a humanoid form without any details appeared and put its hand on its hips. “Tell that all the poor souls who will have to root out that weed.”

He thought about it before he came to one of his default answers to problems, denial. “Better not, farmers are even worse than the church when they are collectively angry and I don’t want to have to deal with that.” 

Argul shuddered at the thought. Religions? They would send their knights and that was it. Farmers though? They would come and hunt him for generations until the problem, also known as him, had been solved.

Alyra agreed. “Yeah better not.” 

Argul tried to identify the plant, but, well, as the skill didn’t exist yet, that wasn’t exactly going to work. First come first work, as the saying definitely did not go.

But how would one create the skill identify? 

Argul thought about it for a bit trying to get an idea before he started. At this point he would already call it a spell rather than a skill, not that there was that much of a difference between the two things.

He tried to guide his mana to the plant and then back to himself. Nothing happened, so Argul tried to gather his mana and thought of his daughter, but it was still not working. Alyra was basically the archives and imagining a connection to her was a lot easier to him than doing it to something that had no physical existence.

Next he sent his mana back to the plant and thought really hard of Alyra’s position as archive operator. He didn’t want to think hard of his own daughter, that somehow sounded disgusting.

This time he got some kind of response, a feeling as if something was putting a bit of pressure on his nonexistent skin, but Argul achieved nothing more and so repeated what he had done a few more times with the same result every time. 

He was obviously going in the right direction, but was missing something. Or Alyra was trying to break his core because of his weird thoughts, but he hoped that wasn’t the case.

Argul tried to visualize what he was doing to get an idea of what was missing. A circle for himself, a circle for the plant and a circle for the archive. Every time he thought of the archives there had to be some kind of connection… 

A connection! Man, Argul would slap himself if he could. He had no connection between the plant and himself as of yet. 

Argul tried again, but left a thread of mana between the grass and himself, which took all of his concentration and focus and got some sort of impression of the plant containing everything one could know about the plant. It was just so much knowledge that he couldn’t pick a single thing out of it and everything just kind of passed without him remembering.

Alyra or at least her avatar fell in from the top of his view.

Congratulations 

• You created the archives restricted skill: Identify (1)

• The skill displays everything you know about your target. Even knowledge you have forgotten may be shown. The skill does not display false knowledge.

• You can upgrade the skill through quests.

She could really just stay with him… Maybe she liked doing all these weird entrances?

Anyways, Argul decided to use his new skill on the grass.

Plant 

A small type of plant that has the ability to change itself to adapt to new environments. This specific plant adapted to the environment of the moon Luna. It uses the low gravity of Luna to spread its seeds. The seeds are too lightweight to fall to the ground and conjure water around themselves to achieve the required gravitational pull to fall to the ground, while also providing a source of water for the environment.

Quest completed: It grows! (1)

• You created a plant. All plants in your domain receive a small growth bonus (skill: accelerated [s] growth (all) ). Growth boosts do not stack! WIS +1

New Quest: It grows! (2)

• Requirements: It grows! (1)

• Create 5 plants!

The grass might just be a little bit of a survivalist and considering that it was his first time ever using his ribm skill it was a true monster. Nothing he could do against it anymore though, it was already too late.

Argul focused on the other screens and had to say that his quest reward would come in handy. More mana regeneration and less time spent waiting he could very well appreciate.

He noticed his new skill had some restrictions however and wanted to know what that was about. “What is that restriction about Aly?”

A book appeared on his interface. Alyra’s avatar pointed at him and then drew a line to the book. “You tried to connect the skill to the archives. Skills connected to the archives can only be attained through archive quests. You can also only upgrade the skill in some small ways through archive quests.”

The avatar turned back to face Argul. “Otherwise people will just walk around and know everything. It would kill their impulse to search for new knowledge and I want new knowledge!”

Argul muttered a bit to himself. “Makes sense.”

Then he brightened up a bit. “Is it possible for me to name something but leave the option open for other sapients to name it?”

A number of heads appeared and Alyra pointed at them. “Yup! Though it’s likely that they will just go with your name if it is feasible. Otherwise the name will always be the most used by the public, but scientific names can be given under the right circumstances. These can only be given once and won’t change ever again.”

That was good, Argul did not want to be the reason for species with bad names. “Nice, then let’s call this beauty moongrass.”

Alyras Avatar nodded. “That one is likely going to stick.”

After that Argul used identify again.

Moongrass

• Provides water for the environment.

• [+]

The rest of the plant description got minimized, which Argul appreciated, he could remember everything exactly as it had been anyway. He opened his status again.