Bloom

The forging of a planet!

It sounds like something nice and easy right?

Ha...ha...haaaa…

No, it’s a pear-shaped show.

Obviously!

Since I didn’t know how long it would actually take me to forge the entire planet, I used Time’s Shadow to accelerate time around me. This costed a fraction of my power, in the area of around five percent.

For the girls, namely Dryad, S’neli, and Mishra, it would appear as if a time lapse photography was occurring.

However, for me…

I had to agonize through every crucial choice.

Take water for instance. It’s all swishy and swashy, but when one has to coral it in space, the damn crap freezes, instantly! Compressing ice is, in a word, challenging. Which means I had to carefully convert it back into water, and then compress it from there. This took an enormous amount of time to perfect.

I might need to look into the Dao of Aqua in the future…

Another issue was with the solid things.

When you first learn, that different substances have different melting points, it’s not that big a deal.

It’s a much bigger deal when trying to melt an entire planet at once.

So of course, the first thing I did after the explosion was figure out what went wrong.

After that was several days, to me, of carefully smelting out the different metals into separate components. That was a fun bit. When melting right off the bat failed, I ended up just grinding everything into a single massive pile of powder. From there I chemically reacted out everything I could, in every way I could. Most of the metals separated into their pure forms, eventually. From the outside it probably looked like a massive science experiment, gone horribly wrong. A few times I had to burn suspicious looking growths that would probably give me nightmares if I was a real human. Things get tricky when bacteria turns into super powered goo with enough Chaos flame applied.

After I managed to get all the metals out, and all the dangerous new lifeforms dead, then I had to start with stone.

Stone is not to be confused with dirt.

Whoever tells you they are the same, is ignoring the enormous amount of time required to turn one into the other.

Dirt is also partially alive, with trillions upon trillions of bacteria living and breathing in it. Eventually I had to trace the genetic makeup of the largest bacterial family trees to pre-cursor ancestors. From that point, I sealed the ancestor bacteria away, to be re-introduced to my new planet later.

After what felt like ages, I started melting things! Each mineral was given a separate ‘pot’ formed from Flame and space elements. After a few experiments I managed to reach equilibrium with all the different ‘pots’.

Now the real fun started!

Since the planet Vespar was hollow after I ate my fill, I had to resize the entire thing.

Like a jeweler fitting new ring, I compressed everything as much as possible. This made the gravity rise on the new planet, but that’s fine.

With the addition of Chaos energy, creatures residing on the planet will be able to cultivate their bodies and resist the gravity.

I really didn’t have many references to other planets, so, I cheated a bit…

Earth 2.0!

Bigger!

Heavier!

More filled with metal treasures, ancient dangerous beasts I saved from extinction, and plants!

What? Did anyone really expect me not to remember the plants?

I might have tweaked the plants a bit when I remade the planet, however no one should immediately notice that…

…except the ones that get eaten, but that’s their own fault!

I started with lichen, moss, and the basic small fungi. Then I introduced insects, then more plants, then larger insects, and step by step a food chain was created. From there it was easy to copy the entire thing out, separating species by region, habitats, and so forth.

When all the important stuff was finally done, I turned to my passion…

Trees!

Forests!

Dark evil trees that devoured souls!

Bright holy trees that gave majestic powers!

Enormous forests that spanned three quarters of continents!

I…might have gotten a little carried away at some parts…

After almost thirty centuries of time, I finished my planetary masterpiece.

Collapsing the field generated by Time’s Shadow, I watched as a planet teeming with life rotated in front of me. The core of the planet was made of Chaos gold surrounded by a sea of magma moving slowly in concert with the motion of the core. A gentle spin began after I released my hold on the planet.

Forty-five percent of my power was drained, and it wasn’t over yet.

Moving the new planet into a leaf I created specifically for this, I used another forty percent of my power. A small sun appeared far enough away to ensure life was maintained on the planet. Another ten percent of my power used the leftovers to create two moons to circle the planet.

The last step was re-introducing all the races I had managed to save from Vespar.

Humans, dwarves, naga, beastkin, and more started to appear in the various regions of the planet. While they were within my leaves, I’d frozen time around them to prevent mass death by panic, or old age.

With only five percent of my power left, I felt exhausted.

As the various races discovered their planet anew, a titanic rush of Order swelled through me.

Faith, spread by the Cult of Wood placed among the different races flowed into me.

And finally…I started the process that had been halted for so long…

With the increased power of my soul, with the blinding flow of Faith…

I grow once more.

Dryad could handle the rest, it was time for me to take a long sleep to recover.