This place wasn’t Earth.

Sometimes that fact slipped my mind. There was a surprising amount of overlap in some ways—plants and animals that seemed to be lifted right from it, as well as the hints of other earthborn visitors to this world. On the other hand, there was still a great deal that didn’t resemble Earth at all.

Minor additions like new animals, like the ripper cat or barkworms that burrowed through trees, sure—but there were also modifications with further reaching implications. The stars in the sky were entirely different as far as I could tell, though I had never been an astronomer to any degree in my previous life when I’d had a meatsuit of my own. The moon that hung overhead glowed the same welcoming pale ivory, yet at the same time was wholly different—it surface lacked the lunar maria and imperfections that gave Earth’s moon character. The ‘man in the moon’ had simply never moved in.

Featureless and flawless, it was an unavoidable reminder that this place wasn’t home.

And truthfully, I knew almost nothing about what this world was. A parallel world? A vivid hallucination?

Whatever this place was, it had its own rules, only just askew from matching to the ones I’d grown up with. A place where moon-juice had power, where mice could hold steady employment and where buildings could have opinions.

It was beautiful, at least. The stars weren’t lonesome wanderers in this sky—they were glittering fish in vast, colorful schools amid clouds of stardust. There was no light pollution here, so as the night grew darker the black sky came alive.

With this turning of the heavens came the time to test my creation.

The starfont in the greenhouse absorbed the light of the cosmos over the hours, only slightly changing in hue from the slight exposure. By the time the dawn was near again, it only emitted enough light to match that of a dying candle—but this would have to be enough. Opening the valve, I allowed this nectar of the stars to flow down into the safety of the darkness below the earth, sealing it right back up shortly after and refilling the pool.

Streaks of orange and fuchsia burned over the horizon as the sun returned to reclaim its throne amid the sky, chasing night away. I was nearly certain that my creation would work as I intended—after all, how could it not, assuming I was following all of the rules? Still, I felt apprehension as I watched the contents of the subterranean cistern, waiting for some dreadful moment where its faint light sputtered out and faded away.

It didn’t.

At the very least, this opened some possibilities for us: no longer was the starfont entirely off limits. While there was some minor risk of revealing ourselves no matter what, with a light this faint I was confident we weren’t going to be attracting adventurers from miles away like bugs to a flickering lamp. I’d need to find a new place for the font if I was to fully submerge the greenhouse beneath the earth, though. This concern wasn’t at the forefront of my thoughts though; we could address it when we actually reached the point where such a possibility was within reach.

With the cistern buried deep beneath the earth, I felt sure that even another bad reaction like the crystal had given wouldn’t be a cause for alarm—and I’d be able to play with it during the daytime even.

So far, I knew that dipping certain materials into this mixture intrinsically changed these into something wholly new, though I’d only had minor successes in my previous experiments. Shimmerwood and Moonstone were useful at least, but the rest of my materials hadn’t resulted in anything usable.

I spent a brief period in the morning experimenting with the pool again, using my newly expanded repertoire of materials and dipping them in like a slavering gourmand dipping hors d’oeuvres into a fondue pot.

As a pleasant surprise, both metals seemed to react with the pool’s contents, glowing and morphing from small nuggets of copper and iron into something new.

❖ Stellarite ❖ A white metal created from astral-infused iron. Possesses passable durability, and will gradually repair itself to its original shape when damaged or deformed via mundane means. ❖ Orichalcum ❖ A pale-green metal that possesses high resistance to elemental magic sources. A hard material that can form a very sharp edge, but its low density makes it a poor choice for any kind of blunt weapon.

Given that I only used very small samples to experiment with, I didn’t drain much of the pool’s concentrated energies. Still, I was pleased that I had such useful materials at my disposal now, even if it would likely only be in small quantities for the moment.

I messed with [Transmutation I] for a while after this to satisfy my own curiosity and see if there was much else to discover in there. Sadly, attempting to use the skill on any of my rarer materials simply returned an empty tooltip—but that didn’t mean I couldn’t transmute a common material into something new and experiment with those.

Stone didn’t have much utility for transmutation now that I had access to metallurgy on my own and crystal was still blacklisted from the pool. Interestingly, biological material seemed to have a surprising amount of possibilities through [Transmutation I].

[TRANSMUTATION I] ❖Biological Material 10 ↔ 5

(1 MP) ❖Tanned Leather ❖Biological Material 10 ↔ 2

(1 MP) ❖Raw Bone

Biological matter didn’t like being added to the pool. Hell, it wasn’t like I enjoyed the process of summoning a goblin meatball and tossing it into the magical mystery pond myself, but the additional bit of vileness came as it pulsed and throbbed for a few moments, expanding and contracting before congealing into something like jelly and vanishing into the waters.

Bone just dissolved without quite as much of a spectacular showing, as did the leather square I tested.

As the sun rose, the residents of my halls began to awaken and begin their morning routines, with the fox going to bathe and clean herself while Ephilia inspected the tea plants and helped herself to a small breakfast from our stockpiles of foraged food.

I gave a quick “Good morning” to each of them and laid out the plans for the day, something I’d been developing into a bit of a habit now that it wasn’t just Ephi and I around. Our newest employee was to continue to acclimate herself to her new life here and study her magic as often as she could, as well as try her hand at hunting in the surrounding area when her interest in academic pursuits waned.

Ephi and I were going to experiment with the starfont today—my goal being to make a proper piece of magical equipment in the same vein as the ring I’d given to the fox. This was unknown territory, but that just made me all the more interested to delve right in now that we could do so safely.

“Alright, so what I’m thinking is a suit of armor—or something close to it. Practical and lightweight enough to wear everyday, but still protective,” I explained while Ephi hopped down the stairs to the bottommost level, “I’m not too familiar with making armor or clothing, much less for a mouse, so this might take some experimentation.”

“Why not just get… I dunno, ‘Armorsmithing’ or a skill like that?”, she chimed back.

“I… could, I guess. But I’d need the skill point to do so and I’m still a bit away from that. Besides, there’s not that much of a need for it just yet—I’d rather put my points into things we can get more use out of than once or twice per employee—at least until we have a few more employees to speak of.”

Curious, I looked through my skills menu to try and locate something like ‘Armorsmithing’ under it, locating a few relating to it ranging from general [Armorcraft] to more specialized skills like [Advanced Platework] and [Chainmail Mastery].

It was an option, at least.

Ephi took a seat at the side of the font while I began to estimate some measurements for her, constructing a wooden mannequin in a rough mirror of her shape and size. On this, I began to mess with crafting something she could wear.

It needed to be flexible, so cloth or leather seemed like a solid choice for a base layer. A vest seemed like a good blueprint to begin with. Having a place for her front legs to go through would help keep it secure, and I figured that her sides and back were the areas most in need of reinforcement. She watched curiously as my manamites began to weave a cloth garment over the statuette, with lighter fabric over where her joints would be and heavier, quilted fabric across her torso.

I had her try it on at this stage and move around in it for a bit, and the two of us collaborated on some adjustments to it.

“It definitely needs some way to secure the rear end of it, it’s swaying all over the place as you walk—once we put anything heavier on it, that will throw off your balance pretty badly,” I muttered, half to myself and half to her.

“Yeah, I can feel it,” she nodded, taking it back off, “Maybe something over my tail might help?”

I lengthened the garment further, adding a loop for her to slip her tail through at the back end of it. This seemed to help a bit, though I had to pad the loop to keep it from digging in or putting too much pressure on the base of her tail.

Once we had it refined to the point that it felt comfortable enough to move in, I began to make additions. Small amounts of leather padding to the hips and back would make good protection, along with some extremely-thin plates of orichalcum in places where they wouldn’t interfere with her movement. In truth, it resembled a horse’s barding more than anything a human might wear, but that was what would work best for a quadruped I figured.

Fastening the orichalcum was a bit of a problem, as I needed it to be secure and not bounce around much. Leather ‘pockets’ would hold the plates, which would be fastened even tighter against the garment via fiber laced through evenly spaced holes across its surface.

I’d hardly count it as heavy armor, but it could easily save her life against the talons of a bird of prey or the jaws of a wolf, at least briefly.

Putting this on took Ephi a considerable amount of effort more than before, as it lacked some of its previous incarnation’s flexibility and lightness. Still, she managed to wiggle her way into the suit and get it secured, her nimble paws tugging her tail through the loop to fully don her new suit. Rolling back onto her feet, I heard the thump of metal.

“Heavier,” she chimed, returning to pacing around the area as a slower, more deliberate pace. She almost resembled a trotting horse with the way she was carrying herself, only missing a doll-sized knight atop her back to engage in a joust. “It’s not bad though! It feels pretty sturdy—way better than some dumb ring.”

“Well, it’s still not done yet—next comes the magic,” I reminded her, “Go ahead and take it off. I’m going to whip up a simple one to test the pool with first before we risk the nice set.”

I didn’t waste much time on the armor for the practice run, simply whipping up a cloth mouse-gambeson like the foundation I built the armor on and having the manamites drag it over to the pool. I took a moment to examine my creation beforehand.

🞚 Cloth Mouse-Gambeson 🞚

Category: Equipment A simple cloth vest crafted to fit the form of a rodent. Offers little protection from hazards or the elements.

Next, I had the mites lower it into the waters, light rippling through its fibers like blood through capillaries.

When they pulled it back out, the light stayed, slowly flickering out over a few seconds until all that remained as evidence was a change to the tooltip and a decrease in the pool’s glow.

🞚 Moonlit Cloth Mouse-Gambeson 🞚

Category: Equipment A star-touched garment meant to offer some protection to the vitals. Provides a small increase to thermal resistances and vitality.

Tossing this to the side, I took Ephi’s armor and began to do the same with it.

🞚 Moonlit Mouseknight Barding 🞚

Category: Equipment A suit of armor inlaid with orichalcum plates and leather padding. High effort, though of novice-tier craftsmanship. Provides a bonus to vitality and strength when worn.

As far as I could tell, there didn't seem to be any way to dierctly influence the statistics that were offered, though they seemed to be based on what the piece of equipment being infused was. The simple armor had provided bonuses that seemed more in line with what might benefit a piece of clothing, while the armor was better suited for combat purposes, it seemed.

If this carried forward, I imagined that this system would distribute this power in a way that fit the purpose of whatever I put into it. Perhaps there was a way to influence this, but for now this seemed to be the pinnacle of what I could make: items infused with small bonuses in power to one or two statistics.

Honestly, it seemed perfect.

Every little bit helped, and I wasn't going to turn down a 'free' boost to my employees. After all, if they were going to get into trouble, then I would want them to be wearing armor anyways--and if that armor just so happened to be a little bit stronger for no extra cost, there wasn't any reason to not use it.

Having my mites hold it up for Ephi to slide into now, it was mostly the same as it was before, only this time I could see its stats reflected on her tooltip. If I could stack this together with other items and accessories...

Well, surely there had to be some kind of limit to how much of this I could put on a single employee, right?

Ephi was over the moon about it, her amusement and giddiness flooding over our link as she cantered around as if showboating for an invisible crowd. I probably didn't help with her ego in this case, as I was actively cheering her on.

It felt a bit silly to have her 'battle-ready', but really it could serve two purposes with how I'd designed it: protection from the elements, and protection from just about anything else.

Ephi kept her armor on for the entire rest of the day, much to my amusement. The fox just looked confused to see her all decked up in such an outfit, likely still getting used to such things after a wild upbringing and sudden rise to sapience.

She made decent progress on her spells today at least, a bewildering amount actually: I found her meditating up on the surface, catching me by surprise since I hadn't even noticed her leave. Still, she was just below fifty percent on having that sun spell mastered, and I couldn't help but admit that I was excited to see it in action once she did.

"How have you been finding magic so far? Well, training for it, anyways?", I asked her.

She perked up, seeming a bit surprised to hear me. "Oh, it's enjoyable. I like the quiet," she remarked, "There's something that feels different about being outside alone ever since they change. I don't know how to describe it. A feeling of 'happy' loneliness."

"Yeah. That's not too uncommon, I know a lot of people treated things like that as a hobby where I came from. Going out into the wilderness to find themselves or something like that. Just don't stray off too far, I can't help you if you're outside of my range."

"Very well, I will stay close. I have no intentions of running off. Also, I meant to bring this up before, but you seemed busy. I have been thinking about my name like you asked me to. In truth, I do not know if I have the words for it, but I know what I wish to be named after," she chimed, standing up.

"And what would that be, then?"

"I would like to be named after the stars in the heavens above. Can you help me come up with a name for that?"

Huh. Now that was an interesting one. "Sure, if you'd like. Well, I don't really know if any of the stars of this world have names at all, but I can tell you some things about the ones I used to know. People used to look up at them and find patterns, and they'd make stories of these patterns. We called them constellations--we'll start with some of those."

We spent a while out there, going over the meanings of the constellations as best as I knew them. I never really was into astrology, so my knowledge was limited.

"Libra sounds good enough. I will be Libra."

"Good enough? Are you sure? Because names are usually a 'forever' thing."

She nodded. "I am who I am--a name will not change that."