"Easy….Easy!" Rory waved his hands at Eia, urging her to slow down.

"I am taking it easy," The serpent literally hissed.

"Yeah, but that was some seriously delicate work," Rory muttered as he stared at the serpent.

It was a good thing that Eia didn't use her mouth to speak, as there was currently an oversized diamond of red glass precariously held within.

"If you had such reservations, surely it would have been better to figure out a better way to do this."

"Yeah, but it was easier to handle it like this," Rory said. "Careful!"

Eia rolled her eyes as she carefully slithered up the side of a gushing magma fall, the magma pouring into a massive hole in the ground, an underground lava lake hundreds and hundreds of meters below.

"Or why couldn't this have been done in a more convenient location?"

"Feng shui," Rory responded as if that answered everything.

"I do not know what that is."

"Vibes," Rory waved it off. "Like, the energy and feeling of a place."

"You mean the innate conceptual alignments and affinities of a place, the genius loci."

"So, you know what a genius loci is, but not feng shui?"

"One is a real word."

"They're both real words," Rory countered.

"If you say so, master."

"You spent far too much time around Apostolos," Rory sighed. "Either way, careful."

While Rory had thought he had seen impressive magma falls from time to time within the volcano, the location they were at now took the cake, like the Niagara Falls of lava. It was stupidly massive, and the sheer presence of the place was awe-inspiring, especially the enormous cavern hundreds of meters below, where the magma fell freely into it.

What Eia was currently doing was playing Frogger as she slithered up the side of the gigantic magma fall, dodging streams of magma pouring down the side.

While Rory could have tunneled up the side, the genius loci -how Eia knew of a genius loci was beyond Rory- would be unbalanced if he disrupted it too much. Therefore, he'd decided to have Eia take care of delivering the package up the magma falls.

As for what Eia was carrying up the magma falls? Well, that started with a particular question Rory had found himself mulling over recently.

Where are all the Fire Elementals?

Was it the most pressing of concerns for Rory? No. Was it also bothering Rory beyond a belief?

Yes.

We're in a volcano! How are there not Fire Elementals absolutely everywhere?

It was a rather dumb thing for Rory to find his thoughts preoccupied by. Still, the longer he went without seeing any Fire Elementals, the longer something stubborn within him began to fester.

Fine. If Fire Elementals don't exist, I'll make some myself.

Now, Rory wouldn't deny it was probably a stupid thing to set his focus on, but there were bound to be benefits.

Such as….

Or….

Uh….

Because… reasons?

Alright, so Rory didn't have any immediate reasons, but then not everything he did required a perfect explanation for why he undertook it.

Having calcified his reasoning as just because, Rory had begun setting himself to his task of making an artificial monster.

So, what do I know about Elementals?

In traditional media, Elementals were depicted as living embodiments of elements, almost like living energy.

Aside from that, there wasn't much else for Rory to go off of, or so he thought, until he recalled one book or movie he had read once where they were depicted as having an elemental core to house their 'true' selves.

What had followed had been a rather extensive session of planning within his Mind Palace, not wanting to fuck up and force himself to waste monster cores. Since he'd come to these floating islands, his reserve of monster cores had increased four hundred percent from what he'd ever had in the past.

That is to say, he had managed to obtain a total of eight monster cores. They were still extremely scarce, but not quite the once-in-twenty-years level of rarity that they had been in Ehkorrus.

Considering all the monster cores came from volcanically aligned monsters, there was less 'editing' required of the cores, which made Rory's life easier, but that didn't change that for what felt like months he spent planning within his Mind Palace, any time he had free time he was within the mental realm coming up with ideas before scratching them off.

In the end, the plan was one of his initial ideas that he had put on the shelf for the time being.

First was the core itself. There was still a lot Rory didn't understand about monster cores, but now was a perfect chance to learn. One thing he did know was that they were damn incredible receptacles for nearly a universal scope of differing energies.

Another thing Rory had learned, though not specifically about monster cores, was that the echoes of a will could exist, something he had encountered with the final version of blood weave he had ever used. The echoes of the wills of the monsters used, of their essences, had just barely nudged his thoughts and actions, the tiny effect they had was imperceptibly small, so that he hadn't even understood that he was being swayed to begin with.

With those two data points, an idea had been born. Given that a monster core was, well, the core of a monster, there was a very real possibility that the distant echoes of the monster they belonged to still lingered, almost like the shadows burnt onto surfaces after a nuclear explosion.

If he could render everything but that echo from the monster core, then nurture it with his blood essence, he might just be able to create the kernel or seed for a new speck of life.

It wasn't that simple, but it was the gist of Rory's plan that he had decided upon.

After that, Rory had spent some time experimenting with some of the monster cores he had collected. Using every skill and technique at his disposal, Rory had slowly managed to 'peak' inward toward the monster core, locking onto the floating traces of varying concepts and such within, pruning them like a gardener would prune unwanted branches, stems, or flowers.

Once there was nothing left but a faint vestige, echo, or impression of the will of the monster the cores had come from, Rory had moved on to the next stage. Pricking his finger, Rory dropped a single droplet of blood onto the first core, examining it as he used his Architect's Essence Inscription to infuse the core with the essence of his blood droplet.

And that was how he ruined the first core. The essence contained within even a single droplet of blood was too much for the vestige within the core, so faint that it was, completely overwhelming it, like trying to hydrate a man dying of thirst by crushing them under a tidal wave.

Having learned that lesson, the next core went better as he infused his blood essence painstakingly slowly. It was almost like trying to fill a bathtub one teacup at a time, but it had to be done that way if he didn't want to overwhelm the tiny ghost of an echo within the core.

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Spending god knew how much time doing just that, Rory had finally stopped when he felt that the faint echo of a vestige was less of a faint echo and more of a baby vestige, an actual kernel rather than the 'idea' of a kernel.

Now for the harder part.

What came next would be…. Difficult, to say the least. With the core containing the tiniest spark- a seed of potential- that alone wouldn't be enough for what he wanted to do, there was just a lack of conceptual weight and significance, like a leaf in the wind.

He needed to feed and nurture it with energies that weren't his own; any more of his blood essence would destabilize the entire thing as his own personal weighting overwhelmed the vestige.

And Rory had no better tool for that than his most infamous rune, the Living Rune.

Which was how his second monster core shattered. The moment he attempted to add any inscriptions to the core directly, the entire thing exploded.

Thus, Rory had to restart from the beginning until he once more had another prepared core. Even his most delicate touch felt like precariously taking a sledgehammer to a fragile piece of glass, which was odd given monster cores weren't all that fragile.

Something about inscriptions and cores disagrees.

Trying again, he had slightly better luck as he was able to adjust his methods, inscribing a few runes before his third core exploded.

And again.

Rory wouldn't call himself a prodigy or an extremely fast learner, but when he learned a lesson, he tended to lock onto it. If he were gifted at anything, it was trial and error and connecting those successes and failures to other efforts as well.

Seeing similarities between Gem Crafting and his work with inscribing runes upon the monster core, his fourth core exploded only because an ill-timed sneeze caused his knife to press an inscription just a percentage too hard; the entire thing shattered due to an accident rather than a personal failure.

His fifth core went without a hitch, which Rory was thankful for, given that he only had two cores left. The first core he'd received within the floating isles was currently being used as a pneuma battery for the majority of the 'base' so far, meaning that of the eight total cores he'd gotten his hands on, he only really had seven that had been usable.

Had being the key word, given Rory only had two left if the fifth core shattered.

With the core prepared, Rory wasn't done yet. Elementals were aspects of their environment, meaning that the core would have to drink in the energies of the volcano. That said, he had to be delicate about it, even the energies of the latent volcano affinities would be too much for the fledgling elemental 'seed' if his blood essence were anything to judge by.

So, he needed a body that would 'filter' those energies. Not just that, the body had to be a temporary casing, else the elemental was unlikely to break free, much like the eggshell of a snake or crocodile couldn't be too tough lest the baby within find itself trapped.

With the material limited to something fragile enough that a freshly minted elemental could overcome, but was still a suitable 'affinity membrane,' Rory quickly decided upon a single material.

Glass.

It wasn't as if Rory hadn't worked with glass whatsoever over the last two decades or however long he'd been active on Aelia; it just was rarely the first material of choice. Usually, if he wanted something of a similar nature, he defaulted to crystalline materials. The problem with such materials in this situation was that genuine crystal would be too durable, going against the primary prerequisite that the material be fragile enough for an elemental to break free of.

Knowing he couldn't use crystal and it had to be glass, Rory then set about deciding what kind of glass. Truthfully, it wasn't much of a difficult question to grapple with, primarily due to the lack of varied materials to work with. Shattering boulders of the abundantly common steel-colored stone, Rory continued to shatter them before sifting them, only to grind them down, rinse, and repeat. Once he had a large amount of 'pure' steely-grey dust, Rory then took a single basic unmapped gem and placed it within the heart of his swirling magma pool over several days.

While the basic gem was being bathed in magma, Rory finally retrieved a small amount of Nigredo, reducing it to a concentrated powder in much the same fashion as he had with the original stone boulders.

Finally, when the gem had been bathed in magma for long enough to have adopted a constant state of rosy-red coloration, Rory crushed it into dust and mixed the three powders before adding them to his flash kiln. Unlike the magma forging, the flash kiln could reach much higher temperatures than even the magma forge, albeit with far less control and persisting for much shorter durations.

Once the mix had been melted into a rosy-red glass, Rory began to encase the original monster core within the casing. As the glass cooled, he added several runes to the entire thing until it finally hardened.

Examining the entire thing and finding himself pleased, all that was left was finding a proper 'nesting' ground for the fledgling elemental. It had to be somewhere with a high concentration of non-stagnant volcanic energies, constantly in flux, much like elementals were often depicted.

That had taken quite a bit of surveying and tunneling until Rory had finally managed to find the massive magma falls, many such cavern pockets sporadically buried within the volcano.

Which finally brought Rory back to his current moment, watching Eia slither up the magma falls with the elemental fledgling carefully held within her large jaws.

"Careful!" Rory called out one final time until the serpent crested the fall. There, at the very top of the magma falls, was a tiny patch of land, a speck of an island within a coursing river of magma.

Her scales turning to crystal, Eia splashed through the magma, fording the small distance between where she had crested the falls and the tiny island. Her scales, perfect for absorbing and diffusing excess energies, quickly began to glow with an abundance of energy, worrying Rory for a moment. Thankfully, the serpent didn't dawdle or splash around in the magma for fun, reaching the small patch of land. There she remained for several minutes as her crystal scales returned to their standard appearance, as he gently placed the glass-encased core upon the center of the land patch.

Returning quickly, Eia glanced at Rory.

"Now what?"

"Now I wait," Rory answered. "You're free to go do other things, just be careful if you spend much time past the mid-way rung of the mountain."

"I do not intend to find myself ambushed by the shell woman."

"Heh, shell woman," Rory snickered for a moment. Considering the state of her large amounts of armor when they had first seen her, he could see the semblance of her being clad in something like a shell.

No longer needing Eia's assistance, the serpent quickly left, off to hunt more monsters. Rory, meanwhile, sat himself cross-legged at the base of the magma falls, staring up as he crossed his arms as well.

Well…... Time to wait.

Spooling up a second mental thread with just enough awareness to be consciousness of the outside world, Rory plunged into his Mind Palace. Because of the effect of the time dilation within his Mind Palace, Rory couldn't grant an external mental thread too much processing power; the differing time flows were extremely disorienting to the point of nausea, defeating the point of trying to focus.

Time passed as Rory remained seated, eyes occasionally blinking but otherwise vacant of any thoughts. With the actual bulk of Rory's mind within his Mind Palace, he spent a considerable amount of time playing around with differing ideas and schematics for the future, how he wanted to shape his volcanic base, and the like. So far, he had excavated around twenty rooms; only a few of them had a real purpose at this point. Even with superhuman abilities, that much digging and construction took a significant amount of time.

Not much ornamental architecture had been added to date, with only a few sporadic additions here and there, such as the draconic 'faucet' within the main workshop. Yet even that addition had some practical purposes; the inscriptions within caused the magma to be heated to even higher temperatures as it spewed from between the stone dragon's jaws, which he had purposely designed to emulate Chinese dragons of folklore.

Hmmm. I wonder if dragons exist? Wait, of course they do, how can they not? I guess the real question would be, what tier would dragons start to appear at? You'd think in a volcanic region, you'd see some dragons, but I've seen none so far. Hell, I've seen more mammal-esque monsters than reptiles, which seems odd, but then if I had to -oh, wait a minute!

While his thoughts had initially been on practical contemplations, over time, he had found himself musing about… less essential subjects. It was during just such a session of fanciful, albeit uninspired thoughts that Rory was finally dragged out of his Mind Palace as his nearly brain-dead external mental thread noticed a sudden change.

Unknown to Rory, he had spent two entire months sitting upon the ground, watching until at last, from the top of the magma falls, a crack of energy rang out.

Once more in the real world, Rory jumped to his feet, activating his eye skill as he examined the top of the magma fall two hundred meters away.

There, the glass-encased monster core stirred, as something began to glow within, its intensity increasing. As Rory watched, the monster core within the glass started to turn molten white as it dripped and melted, before exploding outward as the glass containing it shattered.

Eyes wide, Rory watched as something emerged.

"Hot damn," Rory said, amused by his shitty pun.

Atop the magma falls, a thing now 'glooped', the only word Rory could accurately describe what he saw. He had expected a ball of living flame, a flame elemental, but clearly, he hadn't been quite correct in his assumptions.

Nascent Primeval World Ichor Elemental

Level: 1

An elemental of primeval origins, the first of its kind to ever exist. It combines the elements of volcanic nature alongside the conceptual affinities of blood essence, forming an elemental of the World Ichor affinity.

"Alright, so…. What the fuck?" Rory snorted, surprised and amused all at the same time. "Not exactly what I was going for."

It was vaguely shaped in the form of a ghostly wisp, like a cutesy decoration one might find around Halloween. Floating above the small patch of stone atop the magma falls, it dripped golden magma, similar to the high-purity magma that flowed throughout the volcano. It wasn't exactly the same, though, as it was just a tad darker, the color you'd get if you mixed ninety percent gold with ten percent crimson, almost like crimson gold jewelry.

The newborn elemental raised its 'arms,' wispy little nubs, as if staring at them. After several seconds, it turned to look at Rory, its two floating white orbs, eyes, locking onto him.

Huh.

As a level one elemental, Rory wasn't too worried; it would have to have a level that operated along the lines of what a world spirit did for level one to be in the least bit alarming. Even still, it was somewhat concerning when the elemental rode down the magma falls before crossing the gap, shimmering in front of him.

"Err, hello?" Rory said, unsure how to respond as the strange elemental hovered in front of him, looking up at him no taller than a child.

Rory, still uncertain what to do, waved at the elemental. The elemental, in response, stared down at its wispy nub arm before copying the motion, doing its own 'wave' back at Rory.

Ahh fuck.

Rory shook his head as the elemental copied the motion.

"There I go, adopting children again."

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