World Seed Chapter 184: The Inanimate Druid

Soon, Celeste walked into my crafting room carrying a small chunk of silvery rock. Naturally, it had yet to be refined, but I could take care of that. “Any volunteers?” I asked, looking at her. She gave a slight nod, but seed hesitant. “Let take a look at the item before you put them into it. I don’t want there to be any mistakes here.” I could understand her worry, as these were technically her children. Even if I was giving one the chance to gain a new life, it could all tumble out of control with just one wrong slip. Even if people only looked at AI children like you would look at an orphan, how quickly would you offer up that orphan for a fifty-fifty chance at mini-godhood or death? “Alright.” I accepted her condition easily, and caused the mithral ore to float out of her hands. Using my control of the elents, I quickly identified the impurities, removing them from the stone before shaping it into ten small rings. Each ring would represent one possible attempt to get the enchantnt right. First, I began to establish the enchantnt circle. This would probably have the most varied components out of the ones I had done so far, due to needing so many elents. Because I wanted to include more than just the basic few elents into the grove eventually to support elental constructs with more possibilities than just those, I included a total of ten ‘gather elental mana’ enchantnts. The elents included were: fire, water, earth, wind, light, dark, lightning, plant, animal, and tal. With this combination, I should be able to create a stable grove that can support almost any constructs I want to put in it. After all, it would suck if I put a lightning elental into the world, and it died out because of losing energy. Now, with that taken care of, I included a mana manipulation enchantnt. Normally, sothing like this would be useless on an item, because it is designed to enable the item itself to manipulate mana more effectively, not the person using it. If anything, it uses up extra enchantnt space in the aura to slightly reduce the cost of using the item’s abilities. But, if I give the item its own soul and its own mind, then it should allow it to manipulate mana like any normal person. From the pile of ten rings, I grabbed one at random and placed it into the center of the large enchantnt circle. Then, I began infusing my mana into the circle itself. Because this was such delicate work, I did not allow the enchantnt circle to take control of the mana to do the work for . Instead, I constantly monitored the flow of energy, keeping it in check. When the enchantnt began to be absorbed into the ring, I strengthened my control of it. This was a crucial step, as I had to arrange the enchantnts in such a way that I would be able to fit the AI’s mind into it when I was done. And, in order to make sure that the AI would be able to safely use all of the item’s powers, I had to place that particular enchantnt as close to the center as absolutely possible. However, perhaps my control of the mana had been a bit too strict. Just as the enchantnt was beginning to settle in, and the flow of magic started to finalize itself in the ring, small cracks began forming along the outside of the ring itself. Then, with a quiet snap, the ring split apart in half. Just as I was being thankful that the damage was low enough that I could simply reforge the ring, it began glowing red hot. Then stopped imdiately and cracked again, then started glowing, before it erupted into a small burst of wind. As each piece hit the ground, they fell through the shadows, never to be seen again. Okay, that’s probably the weirdest enchanting failure I’ve seen before. Shaking my head, I looked over the enchantnt circle to make sure that I did not need to make any revisions before grabbing the next in the line of rings to begin work on. One down, nine to go. “So, John…” Celeste spoke up, grabbing my attention before I could get started with this ring. “Yeah?” “Why did you want to give this ring its own mind? If you made it a soulbound item like your armor, then wouldn’t you be able to control it like a second grove?” She looked honestly curious when she asked that, but I couldn’t bla her. I hadn’t actually thought about doing it that way. However, there were a couple of flaws in the idea that would prevent it from being viable. “Well, didn’t really cross my mind. But, pretty sure it wouldn’t work. If we make it a soulbound item, that ans it would be rged with my soul, and thus my grove. The whole reason we’re doing this is because my grove can’t be used. Also, I wanted to be able to give the item to soone else in case of ergencies, and tell the constructs to obey the wearer of the ring.” “One ring to rule them all, eh?” Celeste asked with a grin, but I only turned to look at her curiously. “Ah, nevermind..” Shaking my head, I got back to work. This ti, when the mana ca into contact with the ring, I allowed my control of it to relax slightly, though still made sure to provide enough room within the enchantnt for the mind to be placed. “Though, now that you ntion it, this would be a good way to quickly cheat and give soone a grove of their own, if we soulbind one of these rings to them. Could potentially mass produce groves.” Celeste waited to speak until I was relaxing my control of the mana again, waiting to see if this was a success or failure. “True, but doing it that way would present a problem of its own. Bypassing the initial cultivation lessons ans that they would only ever be able to use the elents that were put into the ring at the start. They’d still have to learn to cultivate mana on their own.” I nodded, agreeing with that assessnt. I made sure to keep a close eye on the ring, waiting to see if there was any unusual reaction. This ti, I also made sure to spread out my senses to track the elental mana of the surroundings. Like I expected, I found it slowly pouring into the ring. This was probably one of the reasons that the first try did what it did. It simply overloaded on the elental mana, without a thod to safely contain it. Given what I was doing with this ring, I didn’t have the intention of adding a ‘stop absorbing’ feature to let it limit what it could absorb. Rather, the item itself would do that, once it had a mind and a soul. Until then, I simply took control of the surrounding elental mana, and prevented it from being absorbed. “Alright… this should be good.” Just to be safe, I split a piece of my mind off to specifically control that mana, so that I could still focus on the next step. Celeste smiled faintly, stepping forward to pick up the ring and inspect it. She was not gentle at all with it, and actually threw it directly against the wall of the room with considerable strength. Had the ring been made of steel or gold, it likely would have deford from the impact. However, thankfully this was made with a much stronger tal, allowing it to maintain its shape. Though, it did give a brief jumpscare. “It’s good.” She said, her smile widening slightly. A mont later, she pulled an item out of her inventory, a familiar short slab of tal. “His na is Lex. You better be nice to him, okay? He’s a good kid.” I chuckled slightly, nodding my head as I accepted the AI, and the ring to go with it. Closing my eyes, I quickly gathered the mana necessary to create a small goblin, which was imdiately slaughtered so that I could refine and steal its soul. I didn’t have any spare buffer to use for this, since I hadn’t really been doing a lot of mindless mob killing lately. Gently, I began mixing the new soul into the ring, letting it slowly settle into the inanimate aura and breathe life into the object. Next, the most delicate task ca up, transferring the consciousness of the AI from the device I had been given to the ring. Thankfully, these soft sticks store data as a magical aura, which makes the whole process much easier. Otherwise, we probably never would have been able to make any intelligent items. Carefully, I wrapped my mana around the consciousness, pulling it off of the device just a little bit at a ti. No matter how many tis I do stuff like this, I don’t feel safe rushing it. It’s hard to objectify artificial intelligence when I’ve had one as a best friend for years. As I gradually moved the aura over to the ring, I made slight adjustnts to the ring’s aura to allow for an easy connection. With that taken care of, I slotted the new consciousness into the aura, and watched as the various tendrils of energy all connected together. Of course, it was only now that I realized I had forgotten to give it two very important enchantnts. That was, the ability to speak and hear. Crap. I want a do-over! Noticing that sothing was wrong from my sudden anxiety, Celeste sent a suspicious glare. “What did you do?” “Uhm… forgot to make it so that he can hear and talk? I can fix it!” Celeste’s face visibly paled at that, which I had to consider for a mont, given that she didn’t have any blood that could drain from her face. “Really, I can!” She looked at skeptically, but I was already working. Lex, can you hear ? I sent the ssage with so tal mana, allowing it to be absorbed into the ring. If you can, try to send so mana back to with your thoughts. It took a few long monts of silence, but eventually I heard a reply. Did… did it work? This feels different than what I expected. Almost there. Just one last step. Going to add on a new option for you. When I do this, I need you to put this sowhere that it feels comfortable, okay? The last thing I wanted was to get this far, and have the ring explode because I added in the ability to communicate. Alright. The small voice responded more quickly this ti, and I got to work. The previous enchantnt diagram was wiped clear with a thought, and a new one set up. This one was much more simple, as it only allowed the manipulation and absorption of sound mana to transmit and receive audio. “Okay… here we go.” Celeste was impatiently tapping her foot behind as I got to work, this ti being even more careful with how I managed the mana than I had when initially creating the ring. However, as soon as the enchantnt made contact with the ring itself, I felt the mana pulled out of my control. Although, I could still monitor it, so I could see the enchantnt reshaping itself slightly to fit in an empty part of the aura, allowing to breathe out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “Is it…?” “He’s fine.” I answered Celeste, then turned to look at the ring in question. “Aren’t you?” Rather than the confirmation I wanted, there was an audible screeching sound, like nails on a chalkboard, that violated my ears for several long monts. After it passed, there was a low droning sound, so I could guess what was happening. “I think he’s… calibrating?” Celeste raised a suspicious eyebrow, but then turned towards the ring. “Lex, you okay in there?” The noises alternated a few more tis between high and low pitches, before finally settling on the slightly higher end of the spectrum. Though, not painfully high, but more like a prepubescent boy’s high pitched voice. “I’m… I’m okay, mom. I think I’m ready for the next step.” After she heard that, Celeste looked at , and I began the process of making the various elental seeds needed to make a grove. “Well… let’s make our first inanimate druid.”