The creature creation system appeared in front of Ben's eyes. "Creature type… insectoid. Not like I have much choice. Size, hmm… considering the space I got, I'll go with large. Physical features… four arms, four legs, compound eyes, ant jaw. As for intelligence… animal level should be enough. They just need to do simple work anyway."
[Processing… Making final adjustments and calculating final cost…]
[Complexity: 10 | Cost: 180 Mana, 210 Biomass]
"Register as Krell Worker," Ben muttered, sliding the screen aside and moving on. He designed two more types. The first, Krell Cargo, was similar to the Worker but with a medium-sized body. The second, Krell Soldier, had a large body like the Worker but was reinforced with enhanced carapace—a body part he got from the Ant King.
[Processing… Making final adjustments and calculating final cost…]
[Krell Cargo | Complexity: 10 | Cost: 120 Mana, 140 Biomass]
[Krell Soldier | Complexity: 13 | Cost: 276 Mana, 320 Biomass]
Ben's brows furrowed as he read the mana cost. He had completely overlooked that huge limitation. Biomass wasn't a problem. Mana? Yeah, that was a different story.
[Mana: 124/250]
'Even after upgrading the pickaxe, my mana capacity didn't increase at all. Is this because the system is still hibernating?' Ben thought, rubbing his chin.
Since the artifact was linked to him, he should be growing stronger as it became more powerful. Otherwise… how was he supposed to advance? Just by collecting parts from consuming creatures? Ben let out a heavy sigh. Hope it doesn't work like that… otherwise, I'll have a hard time getting stronger.
Shaking off the thought, he climbed up through the trapdoor in the ceiling and found Elvira still busy harvesting crystals. Her method was unique—first, she blasted them with scorching flames until they turned bright orange. Then, with a sharp slash of wind magic, she cut them down and used telekinesis to gather everything in one spot. It was slow, but efficient. Each time she did it, she harvested tons of crystal. A huge pile had already formed—enough to easily fill a few trucks.
"Elvira, you can put it all down now. Your lab's ready," Ben called out.
Elvira's eyes lit up at his words. With a flick of her hand, the massive pile of crystals floated into neat, long lines, then shot toward her lab, following the mechanism Ben built. Watching the process, Ben asked, "How fast can you make those things fly?"
"Depends on the size and weight," she replied. Ben hummed in thought, then crafted a bullet—a small, sharp drill-head projectile, about 5 cm long. It had a tapered tip and a spiral body like a drill. He placed it on his palm.
"Try shooting this as fast as you can." Elvira immediately got what he was thinking. Using magic to launch projectiles wasn't new—some species even used bows as their main weapon. But for a mage, shooting physical objects with magic was inefficient—it was way cheaper to just fire arrows from a bow instead of burning mana for each attack.
Still, she didn't complain. She pointed her finger at the bullet. It floated, then—
Swoosh! BAM!!!
The bullet pierced through the air, slamming into the tunnel wall in no time. Ben narrowed his eyes, inspecting the result. The bullet dug in slightly, then shattered into pieces.
"Try again, Elvira. This time, make it spin before shooting it."
"Spin first?" Elvira frowned, not understanding what Ben was trying to achieve. The bullet floated up again, but this time, she made it spin as fast as possible, creating a high-pitched whizzing sound before—BAM! She launched it again. This time, the bullet pierced through three stone blocks before finally stopping.
"That's good!" Ben's eyes lit up. "Elvira, if we mix it with Eldergleam Crystal—one with an explosive effect—the result will be even better!" His mind was already busy, thinking about creating a gun that could fire these bullets. Unfortunately, he had no real knowledge of gun-making. If he tried now, it would take endless trial and error, something he didn't have time for.
But Elvira didn't look excited. "A one-time-use object imbued with magic is called a Talisman. But it doesn't work on any object. The bullet is too small. We need something larger to store the magic properly. And adjusting the trigger to make sure it doesn't react to high-speed movement will cost more mana and space."
"I see… Oh well, not like we can use it now anyway." There were too many things he needed to make first. The gun itself, for one. As for size, he could work around that by using something bigger—like a cannon. The shells would be larger, so it wouldn't be a problem.
"Anything else? If not, I want to start working," Elvira said, clearly more excited about testing the Eldergleam Crystal's full potential than whatever idea Ben was cooking up.
"One more thing—can you share some of your mana? I need to create some Workers, Logistics, and Soldiers." Elvira hesitated for a moment but then nodded. She needed a lot of mana for her experiments, but holding onto it would just slow things down since Ben's mana was so limited. If her mana was like a massive lake, then his was just a tiny pond.
A few hours later… The base had dozens of new inhabitants. There were six Krell Workers, four Krell Logistics, and two Krell Soldiers. Ben assigned the Workers to start gathering Grimslate. He needed tens of thousands—maybe even hundreds of thousands of blocks to finish the base.
Two Krell Logistics were placed under Elvira's command to assist with her experiments, while the other two were assigned to transport all the Grimslate collected by the Workers to a stockpile area.
For now, Ben create a 7x7 space next to Elvira's lab to act as a temporary stockpile. He also put stockpile of food there for the krell to consume.
As for the Krell Soldier, he left behind one to stand guard took the other one with him to explore the area. Right now, he had only one real concern— Finding a good source of mana. Something like the Red Gemstone.