After creating a small task force of 30 ants and a few spiders, I assign the the job of picking berries, poisoning them and stashing them in the corner. It'll take a while before that rodent returns, but when it does it's gonna be sweet vengeance!!!
Now on to other matters...
I'm in serious need of an upgrade in my personal capabilities as dungeon master. Increasing my mana should help significant with that.
Remembering the cultivation novels I've read I decide to try out some techniques. First I try to move a portion of the mana currently inside the dungeon. It takes a while, but I eventually can manipulate it slightly. Basic mana manipulation... what do you know, I must be a genius! Step two is the classic whirlpool or vortex technique. This seems to be the standard gathering method used by a main character according to my memories, the odd thing is that such a basic ideas is not already widespread in use...
I manage to get the mana to rotate around my core. Slowly at first, but I keep pushing it to go faster. After a while the pine needles around me have started to rustle as my mana picks up speed. Dust is swirling around dramatically as a small vortex is formed!
Haha! I split my attention to see how effective it is. Looking through my menu... it's not doing much at all... Though I guess it makes sense. I'm just moving around mana that already belongs to the dungeon, it's not actually bringing in any mana from outside...
Although disappointed by my cultivation failure, at least my control over mana has improved a bit. Oh well, on to my next test.
I gather some poisoned blueberries, some poison shrooms, glow shrooms and needle shrooms. Time to play mad scientist! If only I had hands! I call over some ants and a spider.
I carefully direct my lab assistants to chop up and reassemble the ingredients before sticking it all together with webbing. It's a little rough so I have them make a few more prototypes. The final result isn't perfect but I've got to test it anyway.
The patchwork blueberry death shroom is my first attempt at cobbling together a hybrid using what I currently have available. It looks like a blueberry with a small red core barely visible skewered on a thin mushroom stalk.
Time to work my magic! I gather mana around my creation and start compressing. I push the mana into the hybrid and will for it to come alive. I keep forcing more mana until it starts shaking.
Poof! The whole thing crumbles and falls apart. I try again on my other prototypes. Failed! Destroyed! Crumbled! Exploded! Squished!
To sum up, it seems like my idea will not work. I get my lab assistants to pack up the blueberries stuffed with poison shroom crumbs and move it to the poison berry pile.
My DP has built up a little so I buy more spiders and send them out with the ants. Hope they can catch something bigger.
Considering my recent failure I decide to try a different method that I know works. Editing! The tool I used to create glowshrooms is making a comeback!
I buy a new blueberry bush and place it near the back. As something that provides a continuous amount of resources (food) it's a rather expensive investment.
As it's growing I open up the adjustment settings for this particular bush. It seems the changes I can make are limited by the object's DP cost. Conservation of energy or whatever. Basically I'm working with a fixed amount of resources that I can rearrange as needed. The only way to increase that is by the object slowly absorbing mana from the dungeon like my first bush has.
Time to create a masterpiece! First I need some resources, so I reduce the size of the bush to a small plant with just a few leaves and reduce the berries produced to a single one right in the middle. After these changes the whole plant could probably fit into a coffee cup.
Next I increase the size of the blueberry until it's like a big grape. The weight is causing the stem to droop so I strengthen that and expand the roots. Now even if the whole plant is plucked it can regrow from the roots.
Then I look through the list of possible changes I can make. 2 other options: I can change the leaves into needles and I can make part of the plant glow. Yes please to both. I make the berry glow ever so slightly, and increase the amount of needles. Now it looks like a spiky clump with a beautiful plump berry suspended above it. Perfect!
I examine my creation and save my changes under the name of Blue Gem Berry after spending whatever points left to enhance the flavor and smell.
One day I'll be as big and beautiful as the Gem Berry I think to myself. What surprised me with its creation were the 2 extra options available, but after rolling around the plant I notice what the trigger might have been. All the needles in a large radius around the plant have disappeared, and so have the glowshrooms. No wonder the plant costs more than a standard blueberry bush!
Enough about that though! It's time to implement my plan! I get my ants to harvest the new berry and my spiders to pump it as full of venom as they can. Then it is placed on top of the pile of poisoned berries like a crown. Only a few more details before everything is ready.