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Chapter 30; Forge of schemes

  Falc looked at the schematic he had created as a basis for a potential 'Slime apostle 2', and he wasn't exactly satisfied. Slime apostle 2 was supposed to lead him to a [Rare] monster schematic, with it seeming that the mana flowing into the nuclei of elder slimes was the key to that goal. Directly leading to the conclusion that slime apostle 2 would need a lot more weaves, and a total of twenty weaves was quite easy to provide.

  But he also wanted a couple of air weaves included for the extra mobility, and a load of condensed weaves along with maybe a full-weave or two in order to kill even the resistant sentients.

  Now that was all fine, he made a D-11x3 and a D-17-0 before. The amount of mana he could use wasn't as restricted as back then either, though still he'd rather just use normal mana if it weren't for air mana's beneficial effects.

  Still, he could just compress the mana into a D-2x20 and add two or three air weaves into the mix for its effects. Obviously he'd let the accidental masterpiece twirl once again try to let his legacy be inherited with multiple sets of musculature, though the specifics of that were still in the design phase.

  And though it wasn't exactly a major investment, it was still just a prototype and a somewhat probable chance to waste about 520~ mp. It wasn't a particularly large amount, it could even be said to be an easily waivable amount. Still, he had time to refine his design, and wasting mana wasn't really his style. He kind of needed that mana for refilling the kill room with a few triple weave acid shot slimes- Slimes with three slime sized weaves to use- And he also had a few ideas for expansion.

  -Expansion for the official part of his abode, the original dungeon he had made in the beginning was not ever supposed to enter the public eye, and there was no reason to expand it from what he could tell.

  With his new stature as a juvenile core, Falc felt slightly worried about one thing. Whether or not more sentients would come after him with this change, they probably wouldn't. Sentients were little cowards that would run away when danger showed up, with the appearance of all of the x20+ slimes making an appearance it was pretty obvious that they would scurry away to whatever hole they resided within.

  But what if, because of that, the more dangerous sentients came. The stronger ones, the ones that gave enormous amounts of essence in comparison to others, the ones that appeared together when slime apostle 1 had established their hegemony. That could mean, when there were more dangerous monsters filling the slime plains, more dangerous sentients would come for some strange reason.

  Though he honestly didn't find it likely new powerful sentients popped-up, in case the duo of essence downpour were incited to once again invade him and attempt to reach the lower recesses where there was literally nothing to stop them.

  He needed a lot more of a buffer to feel safe, a lot more. A lot a lot, and it wouldn't harm to make the buffer a bit more dangerous too for a burst of essence.

  One of those buffers, well, more like 'Harvest areas' was the slime plains. It was a great place, really, truly an incidental stroke of genius that got him a lot more essence than he would've ever expected when it was made. But it was dangerous, it frightened a few of the less essence rich sentients into only entering the little introductory stairway and the 99.99% unfinished subterranean whirlpool. It wouldn't be the worst idea ever to restart construction of it.

  But it wasn't a proper buffer of sorts, except if he chose to make it the real pathway to his core and make the current real pathway a dead end, even if it seemed kind of annoying to do that.

  The test box, while honestly just a little box to test stuff in, would probably be a pretty good little bump, but it wasn't a real apostle tier obstacle. The sentients had already overcome the kill room, and the test box wasn't exactly filled with purposefully formed anti-sentient measures. And to be totally honest, if they had already arrived that far, any sort of stalling tactic which he had already used before would be just that; a stalling tactic.

  And even then, it'd be less effective if sentients could learn, which they seemed to be capable of.

  Unless... He used their ability to learn against them.

  The three paths that lead out of the now conquered kill room which did not end in the collapsing cone trap with a bottom diameter of 29 meters, instead had 5 rooms that were 2 meters high, 4 meters long and 4 meters wide. All of which connected by a 1 meter in diameter tunnel aimed directly upwards that went up only a singular meter, making the scheme's height cost at total of 14 meters.

  Though with four tunnels worth 1 meter in height and five rooms worth 2 meters, Falc was a little uncomfortable with how close it would come to the surface with its less stable and hard rock. Though not worried it would collapse and open the highest room, if, by some not so miraculous means, sentients once again evolved... Too dangerous for Falc's tastes.

  So, he needed something that could work as a way to reach a bit deeper but also act as a buffer, just something inconsequential overall. He wasn't exactly sure about a sentient's ability to wade through different circumstances, but his idea probably wouldn't halt them much.

  First, he looked towards the test box, specifically towards the tunnel that led out of it. The place it led to was quite a large hall that led to an upwards stairway, no super precious scheme had been incorporated and as such it was easily thrown into the garbage in favour of something a little more inclined to descent.

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  He made the tunnel about 3 meters long, not much in all honesty, though that was just what he wished for. Then, at the end of the tunnel he made a 1 meter tall, 1 meter wide, 3 meter long aiming at the direct opposite direction of the tunnel which descended from 'The tunnels' to the test box.

  Then at the end of said room, the last square meter was used as the basis for an excavation. One to bring about a square hole angled away from the entrance at a degree of 45 degrees with it smoothed surfaces went downwards and forwards 9 meters, meaning that it was approximately 12.73 meters long- Give or take a few thousandths of a meter.

  Then said tunnel was lengthened horizontally in four cardinal directions, thus cutting into the previous diagonal hole at the end, and the four pathways were all 1 meter wide and 1 meter... High? Anyways, it had the same proportions as that which gave birth to the quadruplets. Then those four went on for a total of 5 meters, nothing special. Then went directly up for a mere 2 meters.

  But, only the east pathway- The one to the left- led to a room, which Falc just made a regular 2 meter high, 4 meter wide and 4 meter long room with a total volume of 27 cubic meters.

  With that done he connected the next part of his 'Original' and trashy conduit to the outside world and filled in the part that he had decided to replace. Then finally tested one thing he wasn't exactly sure about, he filled up the section connecting the two new rooms with water.

  But, it overflowed, the water of the part that decided to the crossroads went below and water forced its way up into the second room. Troublesome, Falc would need a bit of time to deal with that, or at least how to deal with it. At least it seemed that the water did not cut him off from his mana flow and anger his instincts to never before seen highs.

  Then, the question was how to keep the water from getting in the way, and an answer was quickly found. Instead of using air as a means to stop any attempts from the rudimentary water-based air valve from, he intertwined a weave of mana through the rock of the second rooms entrance and a layer of water as well. Still, to make sure, a few more weaves were created.

  Then he cleaned up the water which had over flowed and filled the little diversion and got to business. In the middle of the room he had made, on the ceiling a tunnel just like the previous scheme, with only a singular little meter in diameter and length to its name.

  Then, with the tunnel and room taken as a blueprint, the schematic was copied over four times.

  With that done, it was obviously time for another steep drop. At least, from what Falc could see, sentients didn't particularly like steep inclines. And this time, he decided to file through any records of sentients overcoming them just so that he can refine the standard design to be in line with anti-sentient design philosophy.

  There were three main methods, one was to get some spike thing and wedge it into the floor forcefully and attach a rope to go down which was then used to both ascend and descend, another was to use some kind of spike or multiple spikes to forcefully wedge into rock in the side of the incline as to pull oneself upwards or lower oneself down, and the last was to use their 'Hands' to grab onto distortions and outcroppings in the incline to pull themselves up or let them descend safely.

  Though the last one had appeared only twice in his records out of the multiple dozen ascents and descents, it was the easiest fix. All he had to do was rid it of its distortions and outcroppings, making it completely smooth. At least, practically the same as it being perfectly smooth.

  Then the spikes... He couldn't come up with an easy answer, honestly. Like sure, he could remove the spikes from the rock by just creating stone and forcing the spike out, which would make the rope irrelevant, great. But the second one, which was usually used initially when climbing wouldn't be possible, because rock creation wasn't that fast and for some reason it was even stunted heavily around a sentient; he had just tried it.

  But, he was kind of busy doing a lot of stuff, so constantly checking if a sentient was interfering with the artificially designed rock face's artistic value would be a pain. Then an idea came: Why not just use some of that extra self which was basically useless most of the time, and let it do all that busy work?

  It could work, it probably wouldn't need that much outside of a meager helping of mana, all it needed to do was detect any distortions caused by spikes and then fill them in. Not that big of a deal, even if had to fiddle a bit with the slime creation pipe-line so that some regenerated mp would be accessible by the protector of the environment which had been born mere moments before.

  Now back to it, that tunnel would be 4 meters in diameter directly downwards which took up some space in an outcropping of 4 meters high, 4 meters long and 4 meters wide separated from the last room of the five room long sequence that had come just before it by a mere 1 meter in diameter tunnel at 5 meters in length.

  The created tunnel was a total of 10 meters deep, as to allow for something of... A... Larger scale.

  What would be of a larger scale was not certain yet, but a new blockade was certainly necessary and the possibility of a large scheme was important. Maybe a slime, maybe something else. Slime apostle 2 was indeed in the works, why not give it a nice diameter of like 10 meters?

  Well, it'd cost a lot of mana.

  But... It would also have a gigantic weave which would allow for a D-10 or greater full weave to have a semi-reasonable refill period.

  Still, he wasn't sure just yet. Though he was sure of one thing, he wasn't making the room be at the end of the tunnel, no, he made a room at the bottom, a 3 meter high, 6 meter long and 6 meter wide room. Though, then he thought for a moment 'Is 10 meters enough? Is it really enough? It's not like I can't have a little more room...'

  In the middle of the newly created room he made an exact replica of the tunnel below it, after which he decided that the intermediary room was due for a smooth make over as well.

  What he would use the newest room for was still something he didn't know, but he did have an extra 23 meters of height to make use of. Quite a good amount, maybe he could even make a slime plains 2. It did make a bit of sense to do so...

  Slime apostle 1 was born of the nursery known as the slime planes, there was a bit of sense in the idea that slime apostle 2 needed a slime planes 2 to be brought about.

  ...Nah, that'd be a pain. If the sentients got through everything before that, then they could get through another slime plains, and he didn't have the mana to fuel another slime plains.

  He directly connected the end of the second section of tunnel to the original route and disconnected and filled in the now useless section of artificial cavern.

  With that done, he went and looked for something else to do.

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