The Discarded, Half-Eaten Apple Core New Life

I Hate to Admit it, but Marshall was Right.

The people in Canberra had nothing to worry about Infernali attacks. Well, not anymore. During the last two months, they fought a horde of Infernali from a single direction. Southeast. Can you guess why? It's because every single Infernali in Australia was coming our way. The magic of the World Tree sprout (hooray, no longer a seed!) was drawing them here to die like lemmings if lemmings were soul-eating demons bent on destroying the world.

I mean, more destroyed than it already was.

The Guardians riding around on the buggies finally snapped out of their boredom. They were fighting an all-you-can-kill buffet of fresh demons. Australia even had its own Infernali types.

One of them was the Balcangooboa. Yes, the name of the beast was a portmanteau of kangaroo and Balboa. Rocky Balboa. The damn demon was a fast close-quarters pugilist that could punch through an inch of mundane steel. Levels between seventy and almost a hundred. Still in the range to give some Exp to the lower-leveled Guardians.

You can see why we had almost no Guardian here. They would drive back, resupply, sometimes swap their vehicles' batteries, and drive out into the outback to kill more things.

At least we had no other World bosses breathing down our necks.

*

*

Creating more upside-down Saturn V rockets was automated with a few rules. One, shine a beacon at an angle. Two, Replicate a Saturn V rocket using a template. Each rocket cost me around half a million DM. Three, move the rocket to position in a ring around the base. Four, use only 33,334 points of Materialization speed. I had a new rocket every 15 minutes, four per hour, and 96 per day. Since the rest of my Materialization speed was used up on various tasks to maintain Speranza, I had a lot of free time.

I decided to shore up my Skills. Some of them were really neglected. Looking at you, spellcasting Skills. The truth was, I was not meant to be a spellcaster. Why would anyone put a Dungeon core at the front lines?

Marshall's hired mages... Or should I say, court mages? Yeah, because I figured out (eavesdropped, actually. It was not my fault the man babbled outside his privacy wards) one of the newest sub-Classes the guy took. Marshall was a [Wasteland King]. He got people to worship me but to swear allegiance to him. He also counted as a worshiper but I suspected it was only because of the Bless bonuses.

Oh well. Magic. Marshall's mages were trying to teach me the intricacies of magic but my pre-Apocalypse XXI century sensibilities were deeply rooted within me. Yet, I indulged them and acted exactly as they wanted. It mattered not. Magic was a matter of intent. Of belief.

"Larry, you bastard, you were right all along."

The platypus was curled up around me, taking a nap. "Eh? Contractor, was this a compliment or an insult?"

"A passive-aggressive compliment! The best kind!"

"If you say so... Thanks!" He went back to sleep.

I remembered when I gained four ranks of Divine Spellcaster at once. Fuck, so this is it. Magic was all about make-believe. But if I had to deal with bullshit monsters that could vaporize six hundred miles of the planet, I needed all the bullshit make-believe I could.

So, I believed. Or at least tried. I embraced my plant side. I was a living apple. Crystallized but still not an animal, bacteria, fungi, or... virus? Yeah. Sing the song of my plant people. Believe I can shape plants as easily as I could shape matter. The very fabric of nature. Oh. fuck. Yeah. I could pull 200-foot-tall giant robots out of thin air, spun out of whole cloth. Out of no cloth.

I focused on a tree and commanded it to show me a spooky Halloween face. My Skill was called Sorcery and Daydream had told me Sorcery was all about emotions. So I channeled my spookiness and recalled the jump-scares I had when playing FNAF for the first time.

> You learned the spell, Plant Shape: Channel MP into a plant and restructure its form. Cost varies with the degree of change.

Cubic melons. Larry-shaped zucchini. Shiny apples. Instant topiaries. I could even cram more trees in my Green Energy sanctuary now. And yet it was not enough. I wanted to affect plants anywhere in my domain. I found a berry bush inside Speranza that had no berries and forced my spell to work even across a whole dimension. When it didn't work, I tried using a channel of DM to bring my MP there.

> Your Knowledge and Experience improved your Plant Magic Skill to rank IV

You can affect plants anywhere in your domain, by paying an additional (100 - 5*Rank)% of the spell's cost in DM.

Plants affected by your spells enjoy a bout of vitality for (3*Rank) days.

> You learned the spell, Animate Plant: Spend 500 MP for every cubic foot of plant matter. That plant becomes animated with animal intelligence and mobility for sqrt(Intelligence) minutes.

I took these spells and tried to pen them down on a tome. With the aid of the mages, we managed to formalize them into Wizard notation. Then I revisited the spells I traded back then but gave up trying to learn. Book smarts, book smarts. Casting spells from Liber Magus' perspective was stiff. Rigid. Formulaic. The opposite of Plant Sorcery's freestyle bullshittery. But at least it made better sense. The mages could tell me what I was doing wrong by checking the formula with my pitiful attempts.

We spent weeks doing this. Months. I brought the mages to my sanctum and made them green with envy as I sucked in millions of MP from the trees. I could cast spells forever.

> Your Knowledge and Experience improved your Liber Magus Skill to rank IV

Spells cast from written medium have (10*Rank)% more range.

You can overcharge a spell cast from a written medium. You may choose to lower the effective rank of this effect. Doing so increases MP costs by (20*Rank)% while increasing all parameters by (8*Rank)%

People studying spells you transcribed into written medium enjoy a (5*Rank)% better learning rate.

> You learned the spell, Book Aegis: Enchant a tome of adequate to protect you. The tome will grant you a shield denying 1 point of damage for every ten pages it has, up to sqrt(Intelligence + Wisdom + Willpower) points of armor. Damage that bypasses your protections is directed to the tome. Each page can take 5 points of damage before they crumble. The cover burns to ashes when all pages are consumed. You may pay extra MP to prevent damage to the tome.

> You learned the spell, Shield Tome: Weave a defensive spell over a tome. The spell absorbs sqrt(Intelligence+Wisdom) damage that would otherwise be dealt to the tome.

> You learned the spell, Papercut Arrows: Permanently transmute any kind of projectile into paper for 50 MP per ounce of the projectile. They keep all their physical properties for 24 hours. During that time, they also deal sqrt(Intelligence)% extra damage and additive (sqrt(Wisdom)/2)% higher critical chance.

> You learned the Classless spell, Firebolt: Conjure a bolt of flames and launch it at your enemies. Damage based on Willpower. Range based on Intelligence.

> You learned the Classless spell, Icebolt: Conjure a dart of ice and launch it at your enemies. Damage based on Willpower. Range based on Intelligence.

These two were requirements for another spell. I had to know spells of five different elements to learn the next one but my divine spells counted as Light and Lightning. And I already knew Plant spells.

> You learned the Classless spell, Nine Elements Mystic Transformation: Pay 20% of the spell's MP cost to shift its element to any of the nine: Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Light, Darkness, Metal, Plant, and Lightning. Some effects and parameters may change to adapt to the element.

Studying magic for months made my core hurt. Developing one's skills depended on one's affinity and natural talents, the mages told me. Perhaps that's why Dungeon Architecture and Landscaping are at the bottom of the bottom.

Meh. I should work at what I was good at. Making machines that do hurt others.

I cycled through my projects. Upgrade Blackjack Six. Quantum computing and AI training. Oh. I could work with this one.

*

*

Quantum computers were a massive bother to work with. They needed a humongous setup, with temperatures near absolute zero. Also, any vibration or energy discharge would mess with the result. It was impractical to use these quantum computers in combat or anything but a safe, secluded research environment.

The promised potential was tarnished by the practical limitations of the technology. But what if... I thought outside the box? Magicless Humanity was bound by the constraints of their world. That was no longer the case, was it?

I looked at my ridiculous Perk list. If I could, I would discard some of them that make no sense anymore. Some Perks I never equip anyway. Having only six slots for active Perks, one of them taken by the ribbon was troublesome. Some warriors developed "Perk Kata" in which they would swap the Perks in tandem with their attacks, cycling through different sets at the drop of a hat to give them better combat efficiency.

Don't have that kind of patience. I'm more of a pew-pew boom boom type of Dungeon.

Then my eyes settled on one. Superconductive vegetation. Of all the problem with the quantum computers, at least half of them was due to the need for superconductivity at temperatures close to zero Kelvin.

Could I make a plant-based quantum processor? I Replicated a few processors and cracked them open. Shorn them into thin slices, then had the slices on a stand alongside intact processors. Searching around my Traits database for a suitable plant, I chose the tiny duckweed. These floating plants were no more than two millimeters wide and their cells were very tiny. Perfect for fine manipulation.

I pulled and stretched the plants, trying to copy the enchantments in the replica processor. Of course, just copying the enchantment shape wouldn't do. I also needed to copy the mana patterns.

Dungeons can Replicate almost any item they absorbed once even if they don't understand how it is created. I didn't understand shit about these enchantments here but I knew how they were made. It was a matter of changing the substrate from silica to plant but the task was really daunting.

I needed an Enchanting Class. I looked at my Status and decided Arcane Librarian was just taking up a slot.

I dropped it.

> Warning: you will lose a rank of Liber Magus. You will lose all Perks except for one. You will lose the Scribe Scrolls Perk. You will lose all Attribute points from this sub-Class.

Wait. Why wasn't Personal Library listed in there? Was it because it was merged with my code repository Perk? Before the System could change its mind, I committed to the change, selecting Speed Reading to keep. I knew what Class to choose for the free slot.

You became a Trismegistus Artificer (Legendary, Spellcaster/Crafter): Alchemy. Enchantments. Mana manipulation. Spells. The Trismegistus Artificer combines all these disciplines and many others. A single creation of theirs is so valuable it might spark wars between kingdoms.

• You gain experience by creating magical items.
• +1 Intelligence, +1 Wisdom, +1 Willpower, +2 Clarity, and +3 Base MP per level.
• You gained the Mana Sight Trait. You already have a similar trait. Merging with Dungeon Domain. "Your Domain now can perceive detailed information about Mana flows."
• Class Skill: Wondrous Magic: Weave your mana into creations of legend.

Rank I Benefits: You can increase the enchantment potential of an item by (10*Rank)%

> Do you want to use 240,000 Experience points from your deferred pool to level up this class to level 180?

I chose not. Doing so would lower my Effective level to 163. While 17 levels were not much, it would catapult the Exp received for making my giant mecha by leaps and bounds.

I stared at the circuits in front of me and finally saw the enchantments for what they were. A clever combination of several smaller enchantments that fed into one another, replicating the functionality of the electronic component that could not work in a highly magical environment.

It still took me two months. During this time, the automated defenses kept killing monsters, giving me some Experience. In reality, it only took me two months.

But I managed to transplant the enchantments on the quantum processor to an engraved piece of wood. The duckweed experiment didn't work.

> You created a (Legendary, level 175) Wooden Superconductive Quantum Computer. You gained 10,991 Experience points.

> You gained 10 levels of Trismegistus Artificer. +10 Intelligence, +10 Wisdom, +10 Willpower, +20 Clarity, and +30 Base MP.

> Your Knowledge and Training improved your Wondrous Magic Skill to rank II The size of your enchantments is reduced by (7*Rank)%.

That was just the beginning. Next, I intended to upgrade the DCSC to use this new processor. I had a ton of ideas swirling in my mind.