《From the ground up》 Prologue Deep in the inky blackness of the void a Demon is jolted awake. Trapped, she knew that she was fading away. She had not talked to anyone in over a millenia and was starting to panic. She knew that she was female, knew that she had been in the void a long time, but other than that she knew nothing. She had lost herself to the void. Suddenly the reason for her awakening had revealed itself, someone was summoning her. A bright portal appeared in the void shedding light on the infinite darkness. The demon was relieved, she had been about to die, if not half dead already. She ran to the portal. --- The life of a 20 first century magic user is not as amazing as it sounds. At least Asa Newcomb thought so, he was the youngest in his family and over all a disappointment to his spymaster parents. Spymaster! You must be thinking, how awesome and edgy would that be. Of course, all this meant really was that Asa had to use a fake name with anyone other than family and was expected to be a master in the arts of stealth by the time he was 3. This is what had Asa down, he was not a prodigy in the arts of stealth like his father, mother, or sisters. Instead he was more proficient in the more obvious brute force versions of magic like his wind and telekinesis attack spells. This series of thoughts that he had the last two years of his life is what put him in the position that he was in now. Asa¡¯s back ached. He had been hunched over a summoning circle for hours on end and still he was not finished. Asa had stolen from his father¡¯s library of books, not really stolen as he was allowed to have them, but saying he stole them made him feel cool. He had stolen the oldest book on demonology (the study of Demons) in his father''s library and was copying a Demon''s summoning circle out of it. Stupid, yes, bound to get him killed, yes, but if he could land a contract it would make him stronger and hopefully make up for the fact that he wasn¡¯t good enough in the eyes of his family, so that finally his dad would stop being such a colossal ass hole.The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. Asa put the finishing touches on his circle 4 hours and a lunch break later. This was the moment he had been preparing for the past couple weeks. Reaching for the pure mana produced by his soul he touched the edge of the circle and started channeling. The summoning circle appeared to flip and bend itself into a portal with only infinite darkness on the other side. At first he thought that he had failed the summoning, but then out of nowhere a feminine figure wearing black smoke like a cape jumped out of the portal and into the summoning circle. Asa analised the demon with his eyes. Judging from the smoke this was some kind of stealth Demon, it probably had two offerings at best. Asa frowned, when demons were summoned to the mortal plane they traded offerings in order to get some time away from the void, usually the offering was servitude for several years, or a new type of magic. The less offerings the worse each one would be and the less variety of choice. ¡°Hello¡± Asa said, attempting to start a dialogue. ¡°Hello¡± the demon said in a monotone voice. ¡°What are you offering¡± Asa said. ¡°I only have two offerings, one that lacks details and the other is servitude for 40 years¡± Asa¡¯s Frown grew deeper what use was a servant that didn''t give him strength. ¡°What does the one that lacks details do¡± ¡°It makes people stronger¡± the Demon responded ¡°a least I think so¡± This improved Asa¡¯s mood considerably, without thinking too much about the possible effects of this contract, Asa agreed to both. The world then exploded with light. --- Now for a second let¡¯s establish something, what Asa did with the Demon was not very intelligent. The Demon could have easily been lying to him. Remember, never trust a Demon. --- Asa looked around, and saw nothing. The sting of the bright light hurt his eyes and he tried to put his hands in the way to get a break from the pain but it did nothing as he found that his limbs would not move. Asa struggled briefly against the invisible bindings then he went limp, this was what he had trained for since he was three years old, after all the only thing that he was good at in spymaster training was escaping. He made a blade out of wind, with a thought he condensed it into a thin sharp blade that could cut through steel. He slowly turned his hand around and started cutting into the invisible bindings. When the blade of air made its way through the bindings the light illusion fell apart. Asa looked around. He was half standing in an empty flat plane that seemed to go on forever without any identifiable landmarks. There was nothing to look at out there so he turned his attention towards himself. He was strapped to a large metal table in a starfish position with one of his arms free, near him stood the Demon and a glowing man in a suit. They were having a conversation but Asa couldn¡¯t understand the language, it seemed to be heated through. Asa started to cut his other hand and his leg at the same time slowly liberating himself. This is when the Demon he had a contract with noticed him. Without missing a beat in the argument she cast a spell of pure demon magic, in coiled along the ground from her ankle and started snaking along the floor to Asa. At first he resisted squirming out of the way of the tendril but it grabbed onto his wrist and started spliting and coiling it¡¯s way around his body. Unfortunately for Asa and the Demon the man in the suit noticed Asa¡¯s struggles, but by then it was too late. The black material had surrounded Asa completely, the man yelled something in the language that Asa didn¡¯t understand and shot a blade of white hot fire at him. It was deflected easily by the black material and flew off into the distance, The man turned to the demon but she was already gone. Frowning the glowing man looked straight at Asa. ¡°Whatever you do, do not trust her¡± Then Asa was pulled from that plane by the demon''s magic once again it looked like he was peering into the void. A thumb pressed itself into his forehead and he fell fast asleep. Prologue part 2 Asa awoke in an empty void. He couldn¡¯t feel or see anything and was beginning to get worried about it, he wasn¡¯t even able to sense his own body. Asa considered what could have happened, the Demon had brought him somewhere while he was sleeping. It was at this moment that Asa remembered the advice of every demonologist ever. ¡°Never trust a Demon¡± A little too late for that Asa thought. Suddenly the Demon appeared in front of him, and he could see. ¡°Hey dumb ass,¡± the Demon said ¡°rise and shine¡± ¡°What did you do to my body¡± Asa said trying and failing to get the anger out of his voice. ¡°I made you stronger,¡± The Demon said cheekily ¡°at the expense of the souls of your immediate family¡± Asa never cared deeply for his family, in fact he hated them, but, never in his life did he wish for their deaths. The thought of extracting their souls and using them to fuel his spells was a thought that he did not even consider. This pushed Asa over the edge, he channeled his rage into a blast of pure mana and force. The demon was hit and was sent spiraling through the air out of his line of sight. ¡°Well,¡± the Demon paused to spit out a glob of black blood which floated in mid air ¡°that¡¯s the first time anyone has rejected my offer before hearing it, who knew that there would someday be a demonologist that cared about his family.¡± After a few seconds the Demon spoke again ¡°Wow, not even begging for mercy or for me to reconsider and give you the offer, demon¡¯s have really lost their fierceness in the eyes of the human¡¯s haven¡¯t they. Well, i¡¯ve wasted enough time on you already¡± The Demon pulled her fist back, and hit what was left of Asa¡¯s body. The hit sent him flying, Asa passed out. The Demon watched as the blue magic orb flew off into the depths of space, Twenty more gullible souls she thought then I will be a Demon lord. As she walked into a glowing portal she paused for a second, maybe I need a few lessons on human interaction. --- A single magical glowing sphere shot through the universe at near light speeds.Stolen story; please report. It flew through entire galaxies, for the first ten years of it¡¯s flight it pierced straight through planets like a bullet taking some of the smaller pieces in its wake. The planets did not do much to stop it but eventually that combined with the forces of gravity from the suns it was passing managed to slow it down enough for it to get caught. The glowing orb slowed into a tight orbit around a younger star. Slowly the debris settled and the universe went back to business as usual. But around one young star a planet started to grow, the cloud of debris caught by the orb began to condense around it. It compressed and compressed until the orb disappeared from view, slowly but surely a new planet was formed. The debris that didn¡¯t go into making the planet turned into the planets 3 small moons and one large moon. For 10 billion years the planet slept, an atmosphere was formed, water came to the surface, the ground was carved and life took root. After his age long slumber Asa had finally awoken. --- Once again asa awoke in the darkness, this time though it was self imposed, he had his eyes closed, he yawned, and opened his eyes. Then he closed them just as quickly, instead of the familiar one viewpoint he was greeted with over 100 000 billion viewpoints all across an entire planet. What scared Asa even more was that his brain treated this like it was a normal thing, his head didn¡¯t even hurt and he felt good and well rested. Now that he expected that surprise he opened each of his eyes slowly. Asa had never been into nature, he prefered to stay at home and read on his phone or study magic. But, with his new ability to see the entire planet he was in awe. The planet was similar to earth but hotter, there were four main biomes, one was the frigid ice areas on the poles this area was cold but not deep of winter cold, more like end of fall cold. The next area was the ¡°planes¡± which was mostly just flat grassland with a few lush forests that seemed to be from some sort of fairytale. The third biome was the desert one, it was so incredibly hot that it could melt wax with just the air temperature. Finally there was the ocean, the ocean was similar to earth''s ocean. Asa noticed that the planet was not too well developed, the planet was just filled with animals there were no creatures that were very smart on this planet. Asa decided to get in a little closer and see what kind of animals there were on the planet. First he checked out the winter zone, the zone was filled with animals that looked like twisted versions of earth''s creatures the rabbits were bigger with long tails that they used to jump from strange trees that had branches sticking straight out to the sides, there were wolves that had four horns two facing forwards two facing backwards, there were even some bears that stood upright and had tusks. Asa was confused, if this was a different planet, why are all the animals so similar to earth''s animals shouldn¡¯t they have evolved differently? He mentally shrugged, whatever probably some magic bullshit. He explored the rest of the biomes finding similarly changed creatures to the ones in the winter biome. Seeing as night had fallen on his personal planet he decided to go to sleep. Asa closed his eyes, but sleep refused to take him, and then he realised something. Only half of a planet was ever dark at a time, so that means that planets are always awake, which means he¡¯s never going to sleep again. Noooooooo he thought. Asa reopened his eyes, and blinked a few times. Reflexively, for some reason he had focused on the centre of his planet, and he saw his core. At the very centre of his planet was a massive floating blue ball that rotated lazily in the opposite direction of the rest of the planet. What was amazing to Asa though was that floating around the blue ball was playing card with images of the creatures of his planet on them and a few thick magazine like catalogues. Asa was confused, what was this. Then Asa had an idea, one of the first spells that he had learned from his father¡¯s library was a telekinesis spell, he had not tried to chanell mana yet. Asa cast the spell, and he felt the familiar tingling sensation of mana running through him. He focused on the cards, pushing them in the only direction they would go, inwards. The moment they touched the ball Asa was flooded with knowledge, he now knew how to build and create everything on this planet, and he knew that he was now very much more powerful. Part 1: the first creature Asa immediately was filled with a desire to make something and so he went to work organising his thoughts and the information he had learned from the cards. He mentally prodded the new knowledge, pulling it into himself piece by piece. The knowledge seemed to be divided into a couple categories, creatures and ecosystems (how to build successful creatures and ecosystems), manipulation and powers (god like abilities to shape the earth itself and send lightning bolts down from the sky) and finally general knowledge (farming, rock formations, coastlines it was all there). Asa looked at his world with new eyes. With his newly unlocked ¡°manavision¡±, ¡°auravision¡± and ¡°soulvision¡± Asa could see the secrets that no human mage had ever seen before. The intricate patterns that curled and twisted inside of all the living creatures, he could see the leaking energy of the aura revealing the emotions of every creature and finally the souls smoky and white at the centre of every living animal. Asa gave himself a couple minutes to deal with seeing things on 4 different levels. Now armed with the power to create Asa set out to make this planet truly his. He started by pulling the weirdly disconnected archipelagos together into one giant continent that spanned from one pole to the other, the entire continent covered about ? of the planets surface and spanned all of the different climates. Then he set out to create some things that would be impossible without his insane mana capabilities, starting small though. He first created the home of a sentient race he wanted to make later, bug people, it was a huge tree that was so tall it made it ? of the way up to the top of the troposphere and had a diameter the width of Japan. On the end of each branch was a massive leaf that could easily hold up a small town, and to top off the tree he gave it its own ecosystem of bugs and mammals. The second thing he created was an upside down lake, he reversed the gravity in that area and put a piece of land floating in the air as the bed of the lake over all from the outside it looked like an endless waterfall that stretched into the sky. Asa created and he created spacing his wonders out far enough that each state sized area would have a magical wonder in it. He made ice palaces, glass mountains, forests of glowing mushrooms, underground places where glowing crystals took the place of the sun and moon. Once he was done making wonders he started doing the little details, all the oceans, lakes and rivers were carved into the ground by him and each ecosystem was edited into sustainable balances no matter what the climate could throw at them. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. Two days later, as counted from his brand new palace¡¯s place on a second continent that he made, Asa stepped back from his work and there was not a spot on the entire surface of the planet that he had not touched, and then he became bored. So Asa took a step into his new realm of creator, he made his first animal, to him it was not very impressive, a squid like being that could go on land and in water by using it¡¯s 236 tentacles as legs. The being had tentacles on its face too and what used to be it¡¯s head was now a 3 meter long tail that ended in a sharp triangle shaped blade. But, that wasn¡¯t enough for Asa, it didn¡¯t look deadly enough was the problem. So Asa fixed the problem, by making all of the tentacles end in hook like bladed feet. Now this was a creature that was terrifying. And Asa let 20 breeding pairs of them loose in his new born world. They immediately fell onto the beach of continent, but there was something strange about their mana channels, after they managed to get up a tiny amount of mana that seemingly came out of nowhere summoned a blue window into their eyes. Asa was confused, where was this mana coming from, after seeing another blue window in the eyes of a few of the smarter ones he traced it back to its source, a crystal similar to his core deep in the ground. Floating up to it he found strong mana streams that extended through the earth from crystal to crystal each crystal was on a connection of 8 lines and passed dense mana through them. The largest crystal was on the north pole deeper than the other crystals and had an additional connection going straight down into his central crystal. Asa floated over to it, it had 1 large card orbiting it which he promptly pushed into the orb, he managed not to pass out when the information pushed its way into him and instead took stock. It was a mana net called ¡°the system¡± that was designed to keep control of his species and put a few skills of limits, he could also use the system but decided to only use it to access his Godmail account (whatever that was), thinking about the options he decided to limit the strength of his creatures to supreme (the levels of strength go pathetic, weak, mediocre, good, very good, strong, extraordinary, supreme, demon, demi-god and god). Also he took away the slaver class, no slaves for me thank you very much. What really caught Asa¡¯s curiosity was the Godmail and Godnet stuff, he opened it with his mind, Godmail was of course and emailing and messaging app like thing so Asa brushed that to the side. Godnet was much more expansive and was basically the internet complete with cute cat videos. Asa was soon lost in that net and procrastinated and watched videos for several days before realising that he had forgotten something, his land squids. Asa flew as fast as he could back to where he had left them on the beach and followed their trail through the forest observing their few days old path of destruction, so far he had only found three dead squid creatures and was pretty confident about their survivability. Content Asa floated into a clearing, and then flew back into the forest. Asa tried to forget what he saw but it was burned into his non existent retinas, he just observed his squid things mating, and it was the most scaring experience he ever had in his life. Part 2: An Assistant It took him an entire year, but Asa managed to stop his uncontrollable bursts of mental tears. Fortunately nothing really happened on his planet in the time that it took him to recover from his mental trauma so he could just get right back to work. So Asa opened his eyes for the first time in an entire year, and was surprised to find an endless empty plane of darkness. Asa ¡°felt¡± around the plane, it really was just an infinite plane of darkness, he was confused. Then he had an idea, this is like my mind palace or something, he thought. The thought echoed out into the infinite darkness. Asa concentrated, not summoning any mana, just visualising a large white mansion in a modern style. As he refined the details in his head white mist appeared and condensed into the exact mansion that he had imagined. Asa smiled, and then he shrunk the mansion down turning it into a medium sized bungalow that was a modern ranch style house. ¡°That¡¯s some weird stuff your making there¡± Asa jumped and looked over to the side. Standing next to him was, a tall drywall white skinned creature that had ears that were reminiscent of an elf. It had one eye that was the same colour as his crystal and positioned on the center of its featureless face. The creature had the same body proportions as a human but was slightly thinner, It was wearing a pair of track pants and a white t-shirt that was the same shade of white as it¡¯s skin. ¡°It¡¯s been like 3 seconds already so I hope you¡¯re done starring¡± The creatures voice was soft and flowing, and from the voice Asa decided that the creature was genderless. ¡°I mean I¡¯ve already waited a year for you to stop crying and rolling around on the floor¡± The creature then sat down next to Asa. ¡°Hello, my name is Vlad and I¡¯m going to be your assistant for the foreseeable future, I did some sightseeing while you were rolling around and your planet is actually quite nice. I¡¯m wondering if you were going for like a magical paradise because you¡¯ve done a good job at it. This conversation will quickly get awkward if you continually say nothing. Wait, are you mute, man, I¡¯m really sorry for just talking at you this whole time.¡± While Vlad was talking Asa processed the fact that they said that he had been ¡°rolling around¡±. Asa slowly shifted his sight into selfie mode and looked at himself. He was in the body of a small Child and had a rich green skin colour, his ears were similar to the creatures ears and his eyes were a dark black that looked similar to the inky blackness at the deepest parts of the ocean. He had hair that was a lighter shade of green than his skin and he was wearing a pair of beige ¡°monk pants¡± that were fastened with a dark green fabric belt and dark green cloth tying up the fabric around his calf. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. ¡°No, I¡¯m not mute¡± Asa said ¡°He speaks¡± Vlad shouted, dramatically throwing his hands out to the side and looking up into the sky. ¡°My name is Asa and, umm, what did you mean by assistant¡± ¡°Oh that, every single god gets and assistant that helps them manage their planet and consul them on any issues that come up. Also, we help gods find their domains (their focus, their area of rule, whatever you like to call it) your domain seems to be nature and magic focused.¡± ¡°Also since I am your assistant¡± I can talk into your mind Asa jumped again and Vlad laghed directly into his mind. Asa decided to focus on where the messages were coming from and found a bond between him and Vlad. Tentatively, Asa sent a thought back to Vlad. Does it work both ways Yeah but it¡¯s hard to tell where the thoughts come from when we are both talking So I¡¯ll teach you how to use godstop now. Umm, okay It is basically a ordering and trading system for gods, you can buy anything from there for a few hundred essences What are essences Once you start creating creatures the more successful your species the more essences you get, here I¡¯ll open up godstop for you since you have about 100 000 essences for making an apex predator on your first try Sweet! Purchase: Creatures and ecosystems: Sentient Flora Fauna Powers and Manipulation: Elemental powers Elemental manipulation General Knowledge: Random subject book Random creature type book Random planet building book Random culture building book Miscellaneous: Physical form Aww man, you have to buy Physical Form Why The price almost doubles every time you add a new species this is the best time to buy it, plus sitting around creating is great and all but it will get boring if you get that you will be able to interact with any of your creations, instant fun Fine i¡¯ll purchase it, holy crap it left me with like 200 essences! Haahahahahahahaha Screw you, i¡¯m buying advanced nature manipulation 1 and advanced shadow/light manipulation 1 Those are actually pretty good things to buy, next time buy advanced mana manipulation it will help out a lot now then let''s make you another portable essence factory I mean animal --- Soon Asa was arguing with Vlad. I¡¯ve already made one weird tentacle monster I don¡¯t need another one especially one designed to star in a tentacle porno Hey that is very insulting, I worked hard on this tentacle monstrosity and it is much better than your stupid land squids Shut up you pervert I¡¯ll make my own species Asa pulled his mana together and started to condense it into something he first started general with a four legged shape that was similar in structure to a dog, then he changed the head into a pelican beak crossed with a lizard he extended the neck making it strong and fluid. To finish of his new creature he made it the size of a raccoon and covered it with camouflaging scales so that it could hide on a river bank and eat small fish. There that is what I call a good animal I have to admit that¡¯s pretty good I think you should add it in That day the second of Asa¡¯s creations were spread through one part of the continent. Part 3: Two new animals Vlad was laughing his ass off. Asa¡¯s amazing pelican lizard had one very large fault, they couldn¡¯t breathe. When Asa elongated the neck he made the creatures throat too small and it wasn¡¯t able to take in the planet''s oxygen fast enough, the pelicans didn¡¯t even last a minute before dying of oxygen deprivation. ¡°It¡¯s not funny Vlad! I killed all the Plizzards.¡± ¡°Haha, Plizzards, that¡¯s what you¡¯re calling them.¡± Sighing, Asa looked away from Vlad and started to work on fixing the Plizzards. He brought out the template he had used to create them last time and used his mana to make the throat wider. Looking closer Asa realised that even if it survived the oxygen deprivation the creature still would have difficulty surviving. It¡¯s neck wouldn¡¯t have been strong enough to lift its head off of the ground and its legs would have snapped under the weight of its own body. Asa shook his head and started to fix his Plizzards. The Plizzard version 2.0 was still a river based ambush predator that ate mainly fish but, this time its neck was much shorter, its head smaller and its legs had become thicker and more muscular. Deciding that a test run was a better idea than making loads of them and having them all die, Asa placed one breeding pair on a stoney river side. Then he settled into a cozy sofa in his Mind house to see if the creatures would survive. Stolen story; please report. The two little Plizzards appeared in a flash of green light on a stony river bank in the Middle of the central continent. They both looked at their surroundings a bit before setting out down the river together scuttling from rock to rock and from tree to tree. Eventually they made it to a small looking pond that had a suitable amount of fish to sustain them for a decent amount of time, quickly before night fell they stacked rocks into a small cave like formation and reinforced it with dead leaves. They slept in their shelter safely that night. Asa thought they did pretty good, especially the little shelter that they made. It impressed him that they thought of that. Asa smiled, then he started thinking of the next creature he would create. This creature would be a scavenger he decided, later on when his world was in a sword and sorcery stage he could evolve these guys into a goblin like enemy. Asa decided that this creature would have the same body type as a salamander, then he took off the scales and exchanged them for porcupine quills mixed in with a thick and soft dark hair. As a finishing touch he added sickle shaped claws so that it could rip the flesh of of dead corpses. Asa then plopped a few test batches into the world mostly near the colder areas of the continent and called them Siklands. After a few days they became ruthless pack hunters that Asa was quite proud of creating. So far no other creatures than the land squids had accessed the system, It probably had something to do with intelligence but, Asa wasn¡¯t so sure. Hey, Vlad. What¡¯s up? What determines if a creature can access the system. Well the creature needs to be able to make decisions for themselves and they need to have at least a rating of three intelligence. That¡¯s why if you had a sentient race children would not have access. Thanks! Asa cracked his knuckles and teleported himself in front of a desk inside his Mind house. He pulled out blank paper and a pencil and set himself up. Now, Asa thought, i¡¯m gonna design my own sentient race.