It wasn’t exactly the skill I would have picked, but her reasoning wasn’t baseless. That was what I was concerned about most. Not just picking something blindly but thinking through a complex problem with long-term consequences to it and making a decisive choice.

She was clever and had a free spirit, and I wanted to make damn sure I didn’t ruin that by making her into a mindlessly-obedient drone unable to act without me passing orders down to her.

It just took her a little while to get there.

“…No no no, wait, hang on,” she blurted out, rubbing her little head with her paws, “Maybe not.”

“Well, how about you start with coming up with some pros and cons for each?”, I suggested.

“Okay, okay. Gigantism sounds like it could be useful. I’d be stronger and able to carry more stuff back to home when you ask me to, but at the same time I’d also be a bigger target and it would be a lot harder for me to sneak around, which means I might end up in bad situations more often and get hurt,” she explained, adding, “And we don’t even know exactly how much bigger I’d be. If I could take this and regeneration, I think it might be a good choice…”

“Mm. And, not that it’s a huge deal, we’d have to adjust the way the dungeon is set up a little. Bigger mouseholes and all. Pretty minor concern compared to the rest, though,” I remarked.

She crossed that one off and knocked off iron claws a moment later too. Most of the time when she attacked something, it was with her fangs, which she was much more comfortable with. The ‘plague cloud’ got thrown away next, though her reasoning stopped at “it sounds gross”, even when I tried to push her a little bit on it.

Which left the tail upgrade or the regeneration effect.

I knew where my vote rested, but this was ultimately up to her.

“So there’s no other details about either one?”, she asked, grasping for anything she could.

“Not a bit. I can’t look deeper to see any numbers or anything like that. We just have to take them at face value until after we pick. Really though, if you’ve ruled out the others… offense, or defense?”

“Well, I never really fight anything bigger than grasshoppers or beetles so I’m not sure how useful the tail would be, but I guess it just depends on the type of venom… and we can’t know that yet. For regeneration, you can still heal me with that one skill once a day.”

“Yeah, and my mana is less of an issue now.”

“Right. So if I get hurt, depending on how fast the regeneration is, it might just be better to use that skill instead. I don’t think I want the regeneration, in that case…”

I nodded. “So, you’re going with the tail then? Interesting pick,” I chimed, preparing to move forward only for her to nag me to stop just beforehand.

“…You’re not supposed to eliminate every choice, Ephi.”

It took the better part of an hour for her to finally make her decision, and at that point I was starting to worry she was rushing her choice along just to finally get to sleep despite me telling her we could pick in the morning.

Gigantism.

That had been my third choice, behind the venomous tail-stinger and regeneration effect.

I trusted her judgement, though. If that was what she wanted, then she had to have her reasons—even if it meant I had to start making adjustments to the dungeon. From the walkways I had created for her to travel around, to the mouseholes, even to the periscope—it would all need to be adjusted.

After I selected it for her, I got to witness the ascension’s effects as an observer rather than a victim as she curled up in her hammock, eyes drifting shut. It was almost cute--at first.

Then she started to grow. Like a veritable Alice in Wonderland, she began to expand in size at a startling rate. Almost as if watching a balloon expand, her entire being swelled outwards over the span of the next fifteen minutes, her hammock straining under her growing form—at which point I realized that she was about to outgrow the interior space of her home in short order. The manamites frantically got to work pulling her room apart, ripping the walls down just as her growth came to a stop.

Absolutely speechless.

She’d gone from three inches in length, tail excluded, to nearly triple that. Hell, she was bigger than I was, or at least my core.

There wasn’t really any question on it: she was going to need a new room.

It was free construction experience, at least.

I worked through the night to dig out something substantially bigger for her adjacent to the core vault, adding in a few tubes connecting to various parts of the dungeon so she could travel around easily if needed, though they were less like cute hamster tubes now and more like plumbing pipes.

The inside of it I tried to make as spacious as I could, constructing a much-larger hammock for her along with a few other scaled-up amenities throughout the rest of the night while she slept. I started on a bath as well, but didn’t get the water flow finished before she woke up.

CORE-TOUCHED DIRE MOUSE (RUNT) LVL: 3 NAME: "Ephilia"

Traits:

[Forged Sapience]

[Gigantism]

Skills:

[Scavenge]

[Festering Bite]

[Core Link II]

[Core Bond I]

[Enhanced Vitality I]

[Enhanced Strength I]

[Athletics I]

HP: 12 / 12 CATEGORY: Monster

Employee MP: 0 / 0 SPECIES: Field Mouse SP: 5 / 5 SIZE: Small XP: 31% GENDER: ♀ STR VIT DEX INT WIS PER 4 6 4 5 3 7

A field rodent of unusual size under the auric influence of a dungeon core. Possesses enhanced mental acuity and judgement. Force Level-Up Cost: 30 MP Criteria for Next Ascension Tier:

PRIMAL ASCENSION

Cost: 100 MP

‘Dire Mouse Runt’ just left me bewildered to even think about, so I didn’t bother dwelling on it. Her stats had gone up significantly from this ascension in most cases, most notable her strength and vitality, but the effect on her dexterity seemed to have actually been negative. It was a net gain with all things considered, though.

'Prime Ascension' sounded like it could be a fairly significant milestone too, though the cost was significantly increased in turn.

“So, it’s my turn to ask how you’re feeling now,” I prodded at her as she began to stir, no longer the fuzzy little lump I’d known all this time, “I’m guessing you’re going to need some time to adjust.”

She struggled for a few moments to right herself from her position laying on her back, rolling onto her feet after a few tries and wobbling unsteadily. “I feel… sore. It’s not that bad, just a bit like I overworked myself yesterday,” she replied, still waking up as she looked around the core room, realization slowly dawning, “Wow, this place looks a lot smaller now. I guess I didn’t realize how big of a change it would be.”

“Yeah, it’s quite the leap. You’re probably the biggest mouse I’ve ever seen. Congratulations, I guess?”, I added, unsure how to really address the issue, before tagging on [Biology I] to check something, “I think I’ve got some good news for you, though.”

“Huh? What’s that?”

DIRE MOUSE RUNT LIFE EXPECTANCY: 3-4 Years

“Looks like you bought yourself a nice little chunk of time with that pick. Guess that was a pretty good choice after all.”

She looked as if I’d lifted a boulder from atop her shoulders when I gave her the new timeframe. “That’s wonderful,” she sighed in relief, slowly starting to pull herself out of her stupor.

“Why don’t you walk around the place a bit—I’m still finishing up your new room, that’ll give me some time to tidy the place up before I give you the grand tour.”

Ephi nodded, still looking a bit dazed, teetering off down the hallway and stumbling over her own legs once or twice.

Now that she was occupied, I turned my attention back to adding the finishing touches to this new room bordering mine, finishing up the fountain within that would serve as a bath. Next came a long pipe extending from the room, branching into three separate pipes that extended to the surface, exits emerging in out-of-sight places like between the roots of trees or beneath the largest bushes in the area. Now that the periscope wasn’t big enough for her, she needed new ways in and out, and this would help address that.

I sealed up the tunnel heading up the periscope as well, given that there wasn’t a need for it anymore.

Ephilia seemed impressed enough by her new living space once I got around to showing it to her, even if it was mostly just a scaled-up version of her old one with a few new bells and whistles to it. She left to go foraging afterwards, though I made her promise to stay close to home for today as a precaution while she acclimated to her new form.

She squeezed her way through one of the new exits and out into the dew-covered underbrush, and I turned my attention towards the tea plant.

Nineteen days remaining wasn’t going to work.

FRAGMENT OF COALESCED WILL LVL: 2 NAME: "Boss"

Traits:

Skills:

[Botany I]

[Biology I]

[Creator's Insight]

[Mech. Engineering I]

[Textiles I]

[Transmutation I]

Features:

[Manamite Creation]

[Self-Synthesis]

[Manamite Specialization I]

[Material Infusion]

HP: 13 / 15 CATEGORY: Elemental MP: 9 / 100 SPECIES: Dungeon Core MP Rate: +25 daily SIZE: Tiny WEALTH: 5 XP: 0% STR VIT DEX INT WIS PER 0 5 0 9 7 8

Nascent heart of a world-born entity, crystallized from soul energy. Exerts control over a localized area.

Manamite Horde (60 / 200):

60 Manamites

0 Managermites (-0 MP/d)

Criteria for Next Ascension Tier:

Level: 5

Wealth: 25

Employees: 3

Cost: 100 MP

Facility: Prison Virtual Hoard:

➤741.2 Raw Stone

➤463.2 Loose Soil

➤0 Biological Material

➤350.2 Raw Lumber

➤23.9 Plant Fiber

➤0.3 Raw Crystal

And I didn’t have quite enough MP to push it into another ascension—I’d take care of that later today.

Ephilia spent most of her morning trotting around the area surrounding our base, jumping and darting around as she familiarized herself with her new gait and the weight of her body, while I took a closer look at the whole ‘starfont’ thing that [Material Infusion] had mentioned.

❖ Starfont ❖

Category: Furnishing A vessel to contain water, which attunes to lunar energies from repeated exposure. Collected lunar energies can be transcribed onto materials by submersion, with higher energy concentrations being required for higher-tiered base materials. Liquid moonlight is unstable and will be neutralized if exposed to sunlight before use.

It sounded like it just needed to be a cauldron built somewhere with exposure to the night sky—and only the night sky, since it would lose potency if its contents were touched by the sun’s rays. Probably something I could already manage to make if I used one of my mechanism slots, though I’d have to be sure to remember to keep an eye on the time if I was going to keep such a thing since I couldn't automate it yet.

Well, I already had the pool at the center of the greenhouse that could potentially fit the bill if I made a cover for it. It couldn’t hurt to explore new options.

With the construction already ninety percent done, I really just had to reroute the aqueduct a bit and create a circular wooden cover, attached by a sturdy stone hinge to the ground nearby. With a few quick tests, I made sure that I could open and close it at will, but I was quickly running out of slots for manually-controlled mechanisms. I’d need to clean up some of the extraneous ones soon, I figured.

Regardless, I was interested to see what I could cook up with this thing. Sure, just about everything I did was obviously some kind of magic, but this felt close to the ‘traditional’ sense of the word: spells, magical potions, rituals, that sort of thing. If it got me some new toys to play with, I definitely wouldn’t complain.

Especially since most of the actual magic seemed to be barred to me entirely.

I’d first really caught notice of it the night after I met Cheshire, when I was trying to examine whichever skills he had that I could find in the menus.

⬘ Illusion Magic I ⬘

The wielder of this skill possesses a basic intuition of illusion magic, akin to a student's level. Significantly increases ability at identifying illusory effects and how to overcome them, as well as provides a slight increase to illusion resistance. Grants the ability to use tier one llusion magic, such as Blur, Echoing Voice, and Illusory Wall.

Skill point cost increases by 1 for each magic proficiency held.

-PROHIBITED

TYPE:

Passive

CATEGORY:

Proficiency

I checked several more of them and the results were all the same. Locked out, with no text besides that simple message in the same purple I’d come to associate with things related to core powers.

Too specialized for my own good, apparently.

This was a common case, though. Some skills were nice and easy and would fit right in for me, but others didn’t. Some were modified specifically to have a different effect for cores, while others that were entirely incompatible were “Prohibited”. Things like [Longstrider] and [Aquatic Movement I] made perfect sense to be prohibited to me, considering that I was entirely immobile. Limiting me from magic just felt odd, though.

Which was a bit of a shame, since [Life Magic I] seemed to hint at some spells that would really come in handy for our current venture.

⬘ Life Magic I ⬘

The wielder of this skill possesses a basic intuition of magics involving the domain of life, granting the ability to Detect Life within fifty feet once per day. In addition, grants the ability to learn tier one life magic spells, such as Mend, Rapid Bloom, and Thornskin.

Skill point cost increases by 1 for each magic proficiency held.

-PROHIBITED

TYPE:

Passive

CATEGORY:

Proficiency

As enticing as it was to look at these things I was missing out on, at least ascension was a permanent thing. Spending my limited mana on temporary things like spells or buffs stung the frugal part of my mind painfully.

At around noon, rain started to come down hard from the cloudy skies above, the brisk air only just warm enough to keep it from tumbling down as snow.

And this was just autumn, here. I was certainly ready to admit that winter had me concerned—for Ephi more than myself, cold didn’t bother me even the slightest amount.

One nice point to this was that it allowed me to address any small gaps or leaks in the crystal dome covering the greenhouse that the leaking drips of water betrayed, which would help keep it insulated better.

Ephilia didn’t stay out long in it, though she still managed to soak herself to the bone and wind up covered in mud, tracking it all through the tiny passageways on her way inside. I could almost swear I heard mutinous grumbles from the manamites as I made them follow behind her, tidying up the path as fast as they could.

“Hey, why don’t you try out the new bath?”, I offered, earning a scoff from her.

“You want me to use cold water to clean cold water off of myself?”

“Ah, my mistake—I didn’t know you were a Rodent of Unusual Sass,” I snarked back, though she had a point. “I really do have to look into hot water at some point. Maybe into proper fabrics too so we can have towels. Hey, actually… if I manage that, we could get through winter just fine. Back where I came from, people would make their pet dogs wear dorky-looking sweaters and boots to keep warm.”

I tried my best to recall a few examples I’d seen lining the bargain bins at pet stores, shoving them across our mental link and earning a visible recoil of disgust from the oversized mouse.

“No sweaters.”

“Fine, suit yourself.”

We spent a little while after that talking about her new body and her plans for it, though most of them were pretty nebulous and didn’t go beyond just ‘being stronger and maybe trying to beat up the next bird to try and harass her’.

Nine inches was big for a mouse, but I still tried to gently remind her that she wasn’t invincible or anything quite like that.

My mana hit the mark I had been waiting for soon enough, so I excused myself to attend to the tea plant for the second time. Even in the short time it had been here, it had already grown a noticeable amount, giving me a slight swell of hope that I might be able to make the deadline somehow.

MOONDROP TEA SPROUT ASCENSION IN PROGRESS

Please choose one of the following paths of ascension:

➤ Alchemical Potency*

➤ Toxin Production

➤ Dagger Thorns

➤ Climate Acclimation

➤ Hardened Root Network

[Botany I] options are marked by *.

Nothing immediately helpful was in there at all—and that was starting to set off some alarms in my head. I’d been struggling to comprehend the exact nature by which ascension worked for a while now, but I was starting to form a theory.

It was random.

Or maybe some kind of pseudorandom, based on some criteria I didn’t quite know yet. So far I had seen traits with upgrades capable of showing up in future ascensions, like [Kindled Intellect] to [Forged Sapience]. I had seen traits that I skipped show up as options in future ascensions, like the venom-barbed tail on offer for Ephilia’s past two ascensions. [Biology I] and [Botany I] both seemed to add some kind of variance to the pool of possible traits, so really that meant that it might just be a numbers game of some kind.

And instantly I appreciated just how lucky I’d gotten to roll the traits I had for Ephilia.

Maybe there was some way I could influence what came up, though I'd need to do an awful lot of experimenting to figure that out--or maybe ask Cheshire, though his answers wouldn't come free.

Without an option that would immediately contribute to the maturation of the plant, I chose to instead boost its hardiness to the climate. At the very least, this might buy me some time to get a proper heating system set up in here, even if it wouldn’t help me actually meet my deadlines.

It was starting to feel like I might just need to start planting the seeds I had the old-fashioned way and pray that I could figure something out, but I resisted for now. If the boosted growth specimen needed twenty days, then the non-boosted ones wouldn’t be of any help in a useful timeframe.

"Well, hopefully Cheshire doesn't mind waiting an extra month for the first batch," I grumbled to Ephilia several rooms away, wincing at the realization that I might have bitten off more than I could chew, "Hell, he probably knew I wouldn't be able to make it work, don't you think? Maybe he just wants me in his debt or something."

Even Ephi, for as little as she seemed to mind Cheshire's presence when he had 'visited', seemed unnerved by that. She fidgeted a bit, standing up to make her way to the garden to inspect my progress so far.

"And that's just one plant...", she replied, seeming to sense the severity of the situation, "Sorry I hadn't been much of a help lately. I don't really know what to do with any of this stuff, it makes me feel like I'm not pulling my weight."

I gently guided a single manamite directly in front of her, having it flutter up and onto her forehead, at which point one of its ephemeral limbs gave her a light bonk on the head--not that she'd feel it, the point would hopefully get across either way. "You pull your weight just fine. Besides, I know if there was anything you could do to help, you'd..."

Huh, maybe?

Curious, I opened up her skill menu and made my way to one skill in particular.

⬘ Life Magic I ⬘

The wielder of this skill possesses a basic intuition of magics involving the domain of life, granting the ability to Detect Life within fifty feet once per day. In addition, grants the ability to learn tier one life magic spells, such as Mend, Rapid Bloom, and Thornskin.

Skill point cost increases by 1 for each magic proficiency held.

TYPE:

Passive

CATEGORY:

Proficiency

"...You'd?", she butted in, sniffing at the tea plant curiously.

"Hey, Ephi," I chimed, practically feeling myself bubbling with excitement, "You ever dream about being a wizard?"

It took a few moments for my meaning to sink in, at which point her tail straightened out entirely rigid and she sat up straight, nodding her head excitedly.

This just might work, I reckoned.