Chapter 9: Developing new ideas

Ariel’s view

While I traveled to reach this town, I thought a lot about what I might do in the future. I realized there was no way for me to duplicate the computers and circuits of my old world, and that if I wanted devices with any real feature complexity, I’d have to get creative.

My creative solution was to learn to make minions. Gaining the ability to make minions from my own body, and mixing that with my item creation skill, I can make items with minds. This should enable more complex devices, such as locks that will only open for the right keyphrase, or in the presence of the right key.

Since more complex items means I may need to do more trial and error testing, I also expanded my item and minion creation to include item and minion modification. It’s limited to touch range on items and minions I’ve made, but it should still be very useful.

With a full night to experiment and make use of my growth in power I learned how to make some basic things like throwing daggers that will home in on my target. This required some weak wind magic so they can alter their flight path. They could even use the wind magic to accelerate in flight. Might be a good ranged weapon.

Then, while experimenting I realized the intelligence can be used to make my existing ideas even stronger. Just as limitations can make my abilities cost less, and let me be stronger overall, limitations can make items stronger too. A simple limit is to give an effect a short duration with a short cooldown. Making a weapon intelligent means I can have it only trigger it’s sharpening effect when it hits something. If the effect isn’t always active, I can make it much stronger at the cost of cooldown times. This should let me make far more effective weapons and armors.

For improving my own self-enchantments, I developed a trick for making minions that are a part of me, enabling unconscious control over enchantments, and creating automated magic. Because they are so specialized, they can react faster than I do. I then automated as many of my spells as I could.

An extra detail that’s probably not important: Creating minions is vastly more affordable when it’s limited to weaker versions of the same creature type. Since I wanted to mix it with item creation, I needed to have my items share the same sort of limit. As a result, everything I make now will actually be a slime, even if the properties are very different from what people expect from a slime.

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The next day, I was invited to join them for breakfast, and then escorted out of the palace. It seems I’ll not be able to stay in the castle anymore. A shame really, it was very helpful to be so close to the lord. I guess that’s two lords whom have kicked me out of their home after inviting me in now. Is this gonna happen everywhere I go?

As I wandered about town, I found myself thinking about what I wanted to do with my new life. If I understood things correctly, it was going to be a very long life. Far longer than my previous one.

I remember being pretty depressed in my past life, because of all the problems I could see but had no idea how to fix. I remember having few people I really felt close to, and feeling like there was little reason to keep living. Now? Now I feel like there’s so much to see and learn, that I have no desire for it to end. I do feel a bit lonely though.

Hmmm… how to fix problems… Well, I know the wolf lord wants tasty food. For that I’d need to learn how to make spices. An analysis ability paired with duplication of some sort might work. I can already copy basic shapes. Full analysis can be expensive though. Maybe if I have to eat something to analyze it, that can reduce cost a bunch. Duplication of spices would require expanding the range of things I can create. Keeping the production rate low might help…, but I don’t think this is a good solution.

Instead of trying to create tasty food myself, I should learn how to grow it or something. Ah! If I can make seeds that grow and replicate, I can provide spices as a crop! That’s a minion skill paired with an analysis skill instead of crafting based. I don’t really have enough spare power to make that change yet though. I only just gained minion creation. If only I could stay in the palace for a few more weeks. The hard part is it requires expanding the range of minion types I can create. Keeping it limited to seed type things that take time to grow, and are super weak may help.

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I eventually found myself in a part of town that looked a lot less well kept than the rest.

Big Man:
“Hey, lady, there’s a toll to pay here.”

Other Men:
*chuckles and laughter*

Seems I got myself surrounded by some no good thugs. After my upgrades, I’m wary of trying to knock them out. If I use too much force it could smash their jaws, and if I use too little, it’d just escalate things into a bigger mess instead of ending it fast. I really need to expand my non-lethal options.

Big Man:
“You deaf or something?”

They’ve gotten even closer now. Ugh. A sleep spell put into a breath attack should work. Normally breath+elemental magic is used for things like fire-breathing, but a sleep spell should work too.

With a little magic and a *puff* of air, the man in my face blinks a few times and then collapses to the floor. While the rest of the men stare confused, I simply walk past them and continue on my way. It’s a weak spell, they’ll be able to wake him back up pretty easily. Hopefully that’s enough to keep them out of the way for now.

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After spending the day exploring the town and figuring out where everything is, I picked an inn to stay at in a poor part of town, thinking it’d help me keep my costs down. I’d like to avoid running out of money anytime soon.

While sitting in my room and thinking about my day, I realized something: I had seen quite a few pretty ladies and handsome men, but didn’t react at all to it. No arousal, no disgust, no envy. When I tried imagining some sexy scenes, I didn’t really feel anything. I don’t seem to have any sex drive.

Deciding I needed to learn more about my body, I spent much of that night exploring and experimenting with myself. It was the first time I’d properly done such a thing, and I decided to be thorough about it.

What I discovered, is that everything felt fully functional, except that I had better control over my reactions than I expected. I only got as aroused as I wanted to, and could make it end instantly. It felt pretty weird. I remember arousal being something I had very limited control over in my previous life. Having control seemed weird… though also tempting. It would be pretty easy to lose myself in hedonism I think… from what I remember of myself, I’d expect to get bored of it eventually, but I don’t want to test that theory, too dangerous.

While I can’t say that my current state is bad, I feel like I should make some adjustments to my emotions and feelings and reactions to things. Getting a little closer to the human norm (or at least closer to what I remember from my previous life) is probably something that would make living in human society easier. I think it might also be more enjoyable to bring back some of my old feelings (how I felt about things in my past life).

Even though it was morning already I decided to mess around with my emotion settings, and as I did so I realized it can free up more power for other abilities. Apparently reducing control over my emotions and increasing their effect counts as a weakness. Being attracted to people also counts as a weakness… I can actually choose my sexual orientation.

If I actually have a choice, I think I’d favor having physical appearance not matter a whole lot, and instead make a person’s behavior and personality matter more. I’m pretty sure this is how I was in my past life too, but my memories are unclear on that. I’d like to fall in love with someone caring and kind, not someone who will treat people badly.

By the time I finished, it was noon.