I’d been keeping the manamites busy over the past few days. They were diligent workers as long as I kept an eye on them. That was great in some ways, but it also left me far less “leisure” time to let my mind drift or plan things out. If I lose my focus, they have a tendency to go "on break" and forget what they were working on. If they weren't just mindless constructs, I'd definitely be handing out a few write-ups. Still, I’d managed to stockpile away quite a bit of stone, dirt, and even a small amount of wood from gnawing at the roots of the tall pines surrounding me.

It's lovely busywork; having the mites out and about is completely free and doesn't add any sort of strain to my mana at all.

Still, the mites could only venture a certain distance away—maybe about ten feet away from my outer walls before they start to shimmer and unravel, so I can’t simply send them off gallivanting in search of exotic materials or new treasures to bring back for me.

My [Core-Touched Mogo Bush] has been growing at an astonishing rate, taking up a sizeable portion of the interior of my room. It’s not that bad though—I even used my [[Self-Synthesis]] a bit to tidy up the area so it’s not just growing through the cracks in the tiles. Now it has a proper area of soil to grow in, a circular clearing surrounded by a ring of bricks. Really just solidified the whole 'abandoned sinkhole being reclaimed by nature' aesthetic. In other words, I thought it looked quite nice.

Or maybe I was just at the point where even the smallest accomplishments could impress me.

All of that has just been practice, though. To keep my mind preoccupied, and to keep me from feeling tempted to spend my mana on other things. Simply put, my goal was above me.

The crow.

Its nest sat all the way up there in the branches—far out of the manamites’ reach, but it seemed like it was my best bet. I’d managed to resynthesize a berry to grow and change under my guiding hand. I had an option to resynthesize the mouse children, but not the adults. Simply put, the theory I was going off of was that I couldn’t do such a thing to a fully-grown creature… but if there was a crow’s nest up above me, didn’t that mean that there could potentially be eggs up there too? If I could get one down here without breaking it, I could try and resynthesize a crow and maybe, just maybe, create one bound to my will, able to scavenge for more coins for me. It was worth a shot, at least.

Getting the eggs down would be the first challenge though, and one that I wasn’t entirely sure how I’d approach. I certainly couldn’t just topple the tree--breaking the eggs wouldn’t do me any good at all. With it too far out of my reach, that led to my next epiphany. I was going to resynthesize one of the mice.

And the berries were going to be my bait.

Sure, I could try to just nab the first little one to peek its head out, but with how much of an investment this was going to be, I wanted to make sure I had my pick of the litter. Once the bush had berries, I’d have the mites cut them down and assemble them into a feast right outside their burrow. I figured this ought to catch their attention and draw a number of them out. Then, I’d figure out which one I wanted and make my move.

Five days. Until then, I needed to hold onto my mana and not let go.

MP: 22 / 50 ( + )

It was just a matter of time. Five days until fully-grown, then however long I’d need to wait for the berries.

It was gonna be great.

The bush was doing even better than I had expected, thanks to a rainstorm that rolled in. It had been a non-stop drizzle for a while now, but I certainly wasn’t bothered by it. Without a ‘body’, I didn’t really have to worry about feeling cold or wet in the storm. If anything, it helped a bit; I’d been using the chance to tidy the place up a little bit using the mites. I'd even buffed up their numbers a bit, as my mana came close to capacity.

Now fully-grown, the bush’s efforts were entirely devoted to fruit-bearing. Even then, it was still estimating nearly two weeks for the first batch, which was way too long for me to consider just sitting around and hoarding mana for. If I capped out, that would be ten full days of mana down the drain just to ascend and get more skills... skills that would require mana to use. Until I found a way to secure a method of gaining income, ascending just for the sake of ascending would have to wait. Besides, even a single extra coin would cut the amount of time I'd have to wait in half.

The mice hadn’t been leaving their holes as often lately, but I wasn’t too alarmed. I figured the storms had them spooked, considering how long the downpour had been going on for.

Though I hadn’t really seen the crow leave its nest recently, either. It had spent a number of days just laying around in its nest, before flying off three days ago. It hadn't returned since then.

Huh.

Well, if it was going to be a slow day, that was fine with me. More time to work on home improvement. The walls here had never been in great shape, to tell the truth. The floor was uneven, sinking down low in one corner with thick layers of moss growing thanks to the near-constant presence of humidity over there. The walls, reliable as they were, could clearly be seen struggling against the weight of the ceiling and the earth piled atop it up above. I’d already begun work on reinforcing the structure to the best of my abilities, and surprisingly it worked a lot better than I would have expected.

Rather than having to deconstruct the walls and rebuild newer, safer ones, I could simply have the mites go through and perform immaculate repairs on what was already there, while adding additional structural supports as I saw fit. The floor came next, and one of my big projects had been to try and even it out and get the tiles looking nice. I’d managed about a quarter of the room so far.

My goal was to get this room tidied and secured before potentially moving on to expand into new ones.

It would have gone much faster if I’d splurged on even more mites, but I had bigger goals in mind for the future that required me to exercise restraint. I could always improve the place later, only then I’d ideally have a much higher rate of regeneration to work with…

The thoughts in my head came to a stop as I sensed something shift nearby. Sounds, muffled and distant, but belonging to something bigger than I was used to.

Something was coming.

Ratticus came barreling down one of the walls in a real hurry, frantically wriggling into one of the burrows and vanishing. I don’t think I ever saw him move that fast before, like the devil was chasing him.

And maybe it was. Barely a moment had passed before something with slitted, golden eyes appeared over the crest of my chasm.

It was big--its frame far larger than anything I'd seen yet, though not quite human-sized. Perhaps the size of a fully-grown doberman, and of a similar build, though its body seemed emaciated. For a few moments, it hung around the edge of the drop into my room, hesitating as it tried to push itself to drop down in pursuit of its prey, before finally leaping down and landing gracelessly on its belly thanks to the rain-slick floor.

What the hell was this thing? It looked like a big cat of some kind, though not one I could recognize or name. Certainly not a cheetah or a lion, at least; far too small and scraggly-looking.

Any presence that the rats had kept outside of their burrow was long gone by now, but the beast didn't take more than a few moments to locate the conspicuous tunnels bored into the dirt, scrambling over towards them and practically shoving itself head-first into the opening, its claws frantically scratching and raking at the soil. Its entire body shook as it threw itself at the wall again and again, before giving up trying to fit into the hole and instead focusing on excavating it instead, its spade-like claws ripping clods of soil out like they were nothing.

Oh, oh this was bad. I absolutely didn't have any way to fight back against a wild animal attack.

Whatever this thing was, it looked like a cross between a lynx and a wolverine, coated in a dull, dark-brown coat of fur. Its shoulders rose high on its back, a lean and famished body that looked like it had seen better days. The animal's eyes were spread wide, jaw slack as it assailed the wall, driven by nothing but hunger.

Dumbstruck, I tried to figure out if there was anything I could do to stop this creature in its tracks. I didn’t have any way of directly interfering, but maybe the mites could do something? They lacked any kind of offensive strength though and were far too slow for a direct attack. As quick as I could, I set them to work at the closest thing I could think of, though—barricading the entrance into the burrow with stone. While I couldn’t see into the deeper recesses of the hole, I could at least try and stop the creature before it made too much progress. In the meantime, I tried to gather some intelligence on it.

RIPPER CAT LVL: 4 CATEGORY: Beast A common forest predator that typically hunts at night. Generally hunts small prey like rodents, birds, and amphibians. Showing signs of malnourishment.

While educating, there wasn’t anything I could properly use in there to combat it—to make matters worse, its level was higher than mine. Did that even matter? That could mean that I was in over my head. Still, I couldn’t just sit by after growing so attached to these animals.

The manamites put in their best effort, but without the time needed to be able to turn the entire wall to stone, any solution I tried would be a stalling tactic at best. I tried to cap off the tunnel directly ahead of it, but without time to expand the 'gate' outwards to link into a sturdier firmament, the ripper cat was simply able to dislodge the partially-completed obstruction, digging right past it into the dark where I could conduct my mites as accurately.

Then I heard a crunch. A sickening, wet crunch as the beast’s jaws snapped shut. I couldn’t see what was happening, but I didn’t need to. I could hear the panicked, shrill squeaking of the mice in the burrow, trapped in their collapsing den as the cat began its macabre feast.

No… no… come on, there had to be something I could do here.

I recalled my manamites, sending them upwards instead, ordering them to start forming the sharpest point they could manage out of stone, pointed straight downwards. Buried in the rocky soil, the makeshift harpoon began to take shape, but every moment it took was a moment too long. They were dying.

A mechanical trigger wasn’t an option, so I’d have to rely on the next best thing and simply deconstruct the earth holding my hastily-made stalactite up. After that, just pray that gravity would be enough—and that if not, I wouldn’t draw the animal’s ire.

I needed more mites. My mana was only at thirty-two out of fifty, though. If I dropped below thirty, I’d miss my chance to take one of the mice as my own, possibly for good with how things were going. It hurt, but I forced myself to hold back, spending two mana on hastily constructing two additional mites, sending them right into the action the moment they were finished.

The wall shifted a moment later, having been made structurally unsound thanks to the beast’s digging. The dirt behind the wall rippled and shook downwards, and the bricks relying on it for support turned into a cascading avalanche of clattering stone.

The spear fell in the cascade before I'd even managed to loose it myself—too early or too late, it didn’t really matter. It pierced through the back of the creature’s neck when it tried to back out of the landslide, euthanizing it with its head still buried in the soil. And then things were still. Nothing moving at all, save for the cloud of swirling dust still lingering in the air.

Everything was still. As quickly as this had started, it was over.

My mind tried to repeat the scene internally, looking for something to rationalize what I’d just witnessed. It had all happened in the span of five minutes. What could I have even done? It was like I hadn’t even been here at all.

There wasn’t even any consolation to be had in killing the beast that had done this. It didn’t matter. This was just nature. If anything, all I’d really done was interfere in a hunter taking a hard-earned lunch. It wasn't the end of the world, just a miserable roadblock. A punch in the gut just when things were starting to go well.

Whatever this monster was, it hadn’t even been trying to hurt me. I’d lost anyways. I’d lost one of the few things I actually cared about at this point.

The mice were never really my 'pets', but it still felt a bit like losing one. Looking at the heap in the corner where I'd spent so many of my early days diligently studying these animals... I just wanted it all gone. The manamites accepted this order, and mindlessly began to process and break down the dead cat’s remains bite by bite. I didn’t really want to watch, but I didn’t have much of a choice. It was inside of me, and I couldn’t simply change myself to have less eyes. It had to go.

38.2 Biological Material added to Virtual Hoard.

Maybe that was the closest thing to a proper burial that I could give them. There was nothing left now, save for what remained of the beast’s blood that hadn’t been washed away by the rain yet, and—

A popup menu appeared when I glanced towards the uneven, muddy soil. I barely trusted my own eyes at first.

MOUSE RUNT LVL: 0 CATEGORY: Vermin SKILLS: [Scavenge] RESYNTHESIS COST: 20 MP A small, juvenile field rodent. Damaged.

It flickered up for a moment before vanishing again.

I couldn’t even see it yet, too obscured by the globs of mud and sickly-looking pools of water, but I wasn’t going to sit idly by while this poor thing suffered all alone. Desperately, I sent my mites in to rescue it, blue lights buzzing frantically in the thick swill of mud, more and more soil flooding my virtual hoard while I watched with bated breath. Finally, several of them emerged with a mouse held delicately by their mandibles, ferrying it towards me like medics carrying a wounded soldier out of the trenches.

It wasn’t moving much—not struggling against the manamites, not trying to run away. Its tired eyes darted around the room, confused and terrified. As delicately as I could possibly act, I weaved the mites around it, having them remove as much of the muck from it as they could safely manage. The picture beneath all of this was grim; it was bleeding, the white fur on one of its hind legs matted in sticky, deep red.

While this wasn’t my fault, I could still recognize a simple fact: I’d held back, purely for personal gain. I’d been afraid of setting myself back a few days. If I had boosted my manamite swarm—couldn’t I have stood a better chance at preventing this? Of stopping this creature in its tracks, or at the very least finding a way to safeguard the mice? The thought of it sickened me.

Whatever trepidation I had once sheltered about potentially using this power on a living creature vanished almost immediately as I drained the mana from myself, pouring it forth into the wounded mouse’s body. There was still a chance. There had to be.

Its eyes went wide as my light enveloped it, pouring into its very core, coursing through its entire being, leaving no part untouched.

MOUSE RUNT Resynthesis in Progress

Choose one of the following paths of ascension:

[ ] Musculature Enhancement

[ ] Iron-Infused Claws

[ ] Cerebral Boost

[ ] Low-Light Vision

[ ] Gliding Patagium

There was something that felt wrong about this. About directly deciding the development of another living being… but I couldn’t bear to let it die, either. If maybe I could find some way to use my power to help it, maybe we could find some mutually-beneficial way to live.

My new little friend… I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me for this someday. It’s the only way I know.

None of these options directly translated into healing as far as I could tell, which meant I was essentially flying blind. The only experience I had with this was resynthesizing a berry, which had resulted in a sudden growth spurt—maybe the same would apply here and just might help somehow. I didn’t really have any other options aside from just abandoning it without trying.

Focusing myself, I made my choice: intellect. For as good as any of the other options might be for a mouse to survive on its own, cunning would be the only thing that had the potential to save the both of us. It was greedy of me, but I had so few other options.

Its body began to emanate a brilliant light, matching my own in hue. Beneath the droning song of the falling rain, my little friend’s brown eyes drifted shut, as it fell into a dreamless sleep.