The first plant that came to Argul’s mind for the third floor was another type of grass. The idea for this one actually came from Alyra’s comment on walking rock grass when he had first woken up, not that it was going to be walking around or anything like that. 

The grass would glow, though, and if the temperature sank beneath 5°C, it would cover its leaves in a layer of conjured rock, essentially turning off the light. Once the temperature returned to 5°C, the rock cover would recede.

This would give the floor something akin to a day-night cycle and tell people the temperature next to the cold ass air. 

He wondered what would happen if the temperature was rapidly changing around 5°C. Maybe the grass would have some kind of disco mode?

Silly thoughts aside, he activated his [ribm] skill.

Now, hold your breath. The plant actually had green leaves, even if they were a bit short compared to those of the moon grass. Argul thought he would never see a green plant evolving from his ribm on his Luna floors.

Then again, the color green was an indicator for chloroplasts, the things that did all the photosynthesis, and it was weird that this grass, deep underground, would have them, but the moongrass didn’t. Maybe it had something to do with the more intense radiation on the moon’s surface, but Argul didn’t know.

A weak green glow lit up the cave. While it was not enough to illuminate the whole thing, it did offer at least some kind of light source, and the more grass there was, the brighter it would be.

He identified the grass.

[Glowing sheath grass]

This is a small plant. This kind of grass generally grows in caves and is adapted to survive cold temperatures for prolonged times. It has a weak glow caused by chemical processes inside the leaf. To shield the leaves from temperatures below 5°C, the grass covers them in a layer of stone.

To complete the mystic atmosphere he wanted to create, Argul only needed some friendly fireflies, which left him waiting until his mana was up to a hundred again. 

Argul wanted these fireflies to be able to live on every floor and to be able to glow differently depending on the temperature. No, they wouldn’t be larger, just a bunch of fireflies. 

He left the colors of different temperatures to nature, and, of course, they got a weird ability because of this.

[Mind reader firefly]

This is a small animal. These flies originate from the mild Luna caves of [Argul Agren]. They are somehow able to get a limited reading of the mind of creatures around them. Mind reader fireflies use this ability for two purposes: to sense a threat and display precisely the opposite of a color a creature associated the current temperature with.

Because why wouldn’t Argul’s fireflies get the ability to read minds just to fuck around with their surroundings! 

Couldn’t they get something more normal, like having a speed burst ability? 

It must have something to do with his snarky mana. There were not that many other options, none he could name at least.

Fighting against his own mana was kind of useless. Maybe it would get better once he was more in tune with his mana, but by then, he was likely creating weird shit just because it was more fun.

Argul returned to creating plants, the next being a berry bush. Once fully grown, it had white berries and green leaves and was about 40cm large.

[White berry bush]

This is a mid-sized plant. This bush grows in caves. Its berries actually help to see in the dark and are often eaten by the cave’s inhabitants. If a berry is exposed to cold temperatures for some time, it will change its color to blue and will additionally apply a coldness effect when ingested. 

This time he even got something useful, a nice change of pace compared to mind-reading fireflies and diarrhea-inducing fruits. 

Argul still had a problem with his third floor, as he wanted the crazy cold plants for his fourth floor but didn’t want his third one to be boring compared to the fourth one.

His next plant was a tiny flower. It had a red stalk and small red leaves that grew close to the ground. Its blossom was purple, and the flower’s red roots spread on the ground surface, not underneath it. 

[Red cave herb] 

This is a small plant. This flower grows in cold to mild caves. Their roots grow mainly on the cave’s surface to ensure that only others of their kind grow around it. They tend to fight other plants for more growing space.

When eaten, this herb has a pain-numbing effect.

Alyra came walking in and looked concerned at him. “Mom, you should take it slow, you know? Take a break and do something different than fulfilling your floor’s requirements.”

Huh? But wasn’t what he did right now his sole purpose for the time being? 

“Hey Aly, why should I do something else?”

Alyra sighed. “Mom, I know that you love what you are doing right now, but you have to admit that you are not the most creative of minds.” 

She created a bunch of tables and graphs. “You like to analyze and compare things and view them from different perspectives, and you think about some things too much.”

She made a waving motion with her arm. “Screw that. The moment you have some time, you think about everything too much, which is exactly why you always try to distract yourself.”

Then she pointed at him. She would have likely poked his chest if they had bodies. “Nobody will care if you don’t put that many thoughts into your floors now and then. Most people would just rush the floors to become stronger.”

Argul frowned absentmindedly. “But it just feels wrong, you know, not putting too much thought into my floors.”

Alyra deflated a bit in frustration. “Mom, you are the only one of your kind and have nobody to compare yourself to. You expect too much of yourself and needlessly pressure yourself with that.” 

Her expression became strict. “I’m also aware that you miss having a body to freely move around in. You should learn to express your problems to others. You had the same problem in your previous life, too, don’t fall into old habits.”

He was speechless. That…

Actually, what she had just said was right, and he was now highly thankful for having her. “Thanks for looking out for me, Aly. Guess I would fall into depression again without you and wouldn’t even notice it.”

Alyra smiled a warm, comforting smile at him. “It’s okay, mom, that’s what I’m here for, and yes, I know that saying that doesn’t really make it easier for you, but if I don’t say it, you wouldn’t even think about speaking about such things to others.”

Damn. That might have been the first time someone pointed out his failures in a friendly way. He usually had to listen to a lot of endless ranting, only for the person to tell him he would end up on the street someday if he didn’t change. What Alyra had just said meant a lot to Argul because it showed that a person cared for him and not only his future.

He took a break to do the one thing he had put on hold for now, the one thing he feared the most right now. Ironically for him, that meant he had to think about his future. 

In his previous life, he had always considered committing suicide when he thought of the future. He still had no idea why or when he had truly lost the sense of being alive, of wanting to live. There were a lot of personal problems and minor problems with his family that weren’t really that obvious, and probably a lot of overthinking too. If you came down to it, you just noticed that the world was a shit place.

At 17, he had thought about suicide for the first time. Really thought about it, not speaking about it in school and analyzing the problem. In school, many of the involved emotions don’t get noticed or aren’t as much appreciated as they should have been, in Argul’s opinion. It also didn’t help when he had seen himself in the typical depressed person and had just laughed it off in complete denial.

By age 18, he had difficulties enjoying himself or having positive thoughts about anything. Somewhere along the line, he lost his connection to the world and started to live his life as if he was detached from reality. 

Completing his A levels had been pretty much his last goal in life, and afterward, he had been even more hollow than before. 

The biggest problem, though, had been that he had never brought his concerns to light, never tried to speak about his issues, and there had never been anyone he felt was safe speaking to. 

Likely he himself had realized too late that he was, in fact, not okay, and all the people he knew, even his family, had already lost importance to him. It had left him in a weird spot, living his life like a hollow husk with what, for him, might be fragments of the past around him.

Rationally he had still been fully aware that his friends and his family cared about him, but emotionally he was not, and his emotional side had a lot more weight in that topic.

It did not help that nobody had ever noticed him going to his favorite spot on a cliff at night, always crying but never strong enough to jump. Ever since the first time, it had not been his favorite spot anymore.

At 19, he had tried to kill himself multiple times while slowly sinking into a bottomless abyss. He had somehow even managed to fail to hang himself without anyone noticing.

One day he had lost it. It was cold outside that night, so he thought if he couldn’t manage to kill himself, nature would help him. 

Now that he had thought about it, he could even remember going outside, but after that, he couldn’t bring up anything until he had woken up as a core. He had likely died of the coldness, not that it really mattered.

But what did he want in this life? 

He wanted to have fun and wanted to have adventures together with his friends. He wanted to learn interesting things and build the craziest artifacts. He wanted to travel through space and see the universe with his own eyes. He wanted to grow strong enough to protect what he cared about. While doing all this, he wanted to build the most awesome impossibility into an endless ecosystem containing all the craziness of nature. 

He wanted to live a free life full of fun and maybe a bit of excitement.

Alyra was right. He couldn’t just build floor after floor, not that he had planned to. 

Argul should figure out how to gain a fleshy body, and if he couldn’t come up with something cool for a floor, he could always add new ideas later. There was no need to stress about something like his creativity being nonexistent most of the time. 

The whole next day, Argul brainstormed ideas for creating a body. 

During this time, he randomly created two new plants for his floor. One was a yellow flower with a single stalk, and the other was a small bluish cactus. They both didn’t have any unique ability, but in Argul’s opinion were plants he could imagine growing in a tundra. 

He started the next day by adding something that could have been mice if it weren’t for the long claws and six legs. They were good at digging and created a whole new system of small tunnels inside his floor. 

The rest of the day, he trained his space sense. Argul was able to let it stay on all the time, but it was tiring to do so and hindered his ability to concentrate for long times after a few hours.

He left his floor alone for 6 days after that and focused entirely on creating a body while discussing his ideas with Alyra. 

She might not be able to create something new, but she still knew all about magic and mana he and nature knew and was thus able to point out things that wouldn’t work or could lead to unwanted problems.

On the sixth day, he got an idea for the predator he still needed on his third floor. He created a black fox. 

The tip of the ears and the tail were colored red, and the tail had really long hair. Out of their mouth grew two large sharp-looking fangs, and they had an evil glint in their eyes.

[Lunarian cackle fang]

This is a mid-sized animal. This fox is a nocturnal predator that can also live in caves. They have two large mana-strengthened fangs to hunt larger prey. While they usually hunt alone, to hunt bigger game, they often form groups.

Lunarian cackle fangs like to play with their victims, using a panic-inducing cackle that would make most grown-ups pack up their things and run. Their cackle is especially effective inside caves, and one can often hear them hunt through large parts of a cave system. Sleeping there takes a special kind of person.

Two screens appeared.

Floor finished!

[Level up!]

Argul saw the effects of his strength increase this time. 

The whole space structure shifted, and then he watched as his mana added more to the already existing structure before filling up the new space. 

He now had an idea of how to optimize his portals, making them more stable and less mana intensive, but he still wasn’t powerful enough to do it. 

After watching his mana create new space for a bit, he set his floor to continue growing and opened his status.