“Can you hold still?”, I groaned over the psionic channel between myself and Ephi, “It’s only going to take longer the more you squirm around.”

The mouse-woman let out an exaggerated sigh—the first proper one I’d ever actually heard from her that wasn’t just the vague mental concept of ‘an expression of frustration’ like our conversations normally were. As ashamed as I was to admit it, animal body language was hard. Even after months spent with my animal companion, I’d only just scratched the surface of understanding it. I’d spent that same amount of time away from humanity, and even still the instincts came right back to me at a moment’s notice.

She rested her head in her hands, elbows on her knees as she sat on a hastily-constructed wooden stool I’d prepared out in the greenhouse.

“I’m trying,” she nipped back over our link, “Everything just feels… weird. I don’t even have my fur anymore. I’m so much more sensitive to the air and the cold, like I’m—”

“Naked? That’s literally why we’re doing this. Just hang in there for a few more minutes while I finish up taking measurements.”

For now, she was stuck wearing something a bit like a poncho—in reality, it was one of our spare blankets with a hole cut into it for her to put her neck through. I had some skills related to working with textiles thankfully, and a decent amount of linen to work with thanks to our flax crops. Certainly not enough to fill out an entire wardrobe though.

Not for Miss Mighty Mouse.

I’d never been much of an expert in fashion back in my previous life—adding in the “medieval” and “female” modifiers only made me less certain of my ability to make something workable. I had Ephi help with taking her own measurements; I created strips of linen for her to wrap around various parts of her body, then had the manamites snip them down to a proper length.

I’d called Libra over to help at first, but she had frozen in place the moment she’d spotted Ephi from across the greenhouse, back arched and tail low. I gave her a brief explanation of what had happened, but for the moment she seemed content to keep a healthy distance away from our other employee. The fox slunk along the edge of our communal farm and into the stockpile where we kept our food, casting worried glances to the side.

So for now, it was just Ephi and me. Once her measurements were taken, the rest of the work fell to me.

“That’s all I need for now, I think,” I remarked, “No point in just sitting around. You’re free to move around, just… take it slow. Stay close to the walls so you have something to brace yourself against. If you keep falling like that, I might have to start cushioning the walls and floor.”

Her face twisted into a scowl and her ears twitched, chiming back, “The people we ran into before made it look so easy. Anyways, you don’t have to worry about me, it was just a one-time mistake!”

It was hard to take her claims seriously with the throbbing red welt swelling up on her cheek.

Whipping up some smallclothes for her was my priority and would be good practice for dealing with the complexities of tailoring for a flexible, human-like body. I could sew together fabric with machine-like precision, but I still had to rely on my diligence, skill, and planning for the design itself. Perfectly-printed garbage was still garbage, after all.

After running through a few prototypes, I managed to make some acceptable garments. Socks were easy, so I used those as my ‘lesson one’ on my self-education journey. Once I got those down to a science, moving on to the rest of Ephi’s wardrobe was just a matter of patience and creative application of acquired knowledge.

A pair of pants? Oh, that was two very long, baggy socks with the toe part removed, joining up at the neck into a combined larger sock. A shirt? That was an extra-wide sock with a neck that narrowed in on one end, and one half-sock on each side for sleeves. Sure there were other bits in there as well, but it didn’t take long to realize that the sock was the base unit of tailoring.

Iteration was the key to success. When Ephi tried on an initial model, it was never a great fit. With each passing attempt, this changed. No material was wasted, my manamites effortlessly consuming the failures and rebirthing them anew until we came to a workable final product. There was little in the way of glamour or beauty to the garments—they were all cut from the same fabric and of the same aggressively-beige color, but that mattered little.

It was functional—a proof of concept that showed I could make something even better, given enough time and experimentation. We were in a unique situation, one that had its benefits and drawbacks. We had an acceptable supply of linen, and [Transmutation I] would allow me to create leather from any spare biological material. Wood was easy to harvest and shape, and metal even more so.

With enough work, I was certain that I could make something truly special.

“How are you feeling? Are you tired, or do you think you’re good to keep going for a while more?”, I asked, “It’s getting a bit late.”

The mouse gave a half-hearted shrug, cocking an eyebrow. “I’m not tired at all! Why, did you have something you needed from me, Boss?”

“In a way. Come over to the gym.”

“Oh, I know this! The humans carry these with them,” Ephi chimed as she plucked a spear off of the ground, hefting it in her hands as she tested its weight, “Is this why you called me over? A gift?”

“I mean, I don’t know if I’d call it a gift,” I scoffed, “It’s a weapon. You’re going to want one of these to fight with. It’s how humans fight since their teeth are fragile and their nails aren’t sharp. You hold it like that and try to poke the thing you’re fighting with the pointy end.”

She rolled the wooden haft between her fingers for a moment as she shifted her grip. “Oh, okay. I can do that, that sounds easy! Thanks, Boss!”

“Hang on, we’re not done yet. You’re going to need to practice with it a bit. That one is basically just a sharp stick—we’ll upgrade you to a proper one once I’m sure I don’t have to worry about you stabbing yourself with it by accident.”

Her lips pressed together, disappointed and defiant. “I’d never do that.”

“I said accidentally. I’m not saying you’d try to. Anyways, don’t worry about breaking that one while you practice. Try and hit that thing over on the other side of the room.”

Ephi’s eyes turned upwards, glancing away from the spear towards the target dummy I’d set up for her. Nothing fancy, just a linen bag full of dirt dangling from the ceiling. She stepped forwards, tilting her head as she examined her mock opponent. “So I just poke it?”, she asked, almost sounding more like she was asking for permission than confirming.

After getting my approval, she wrapped her hands around the spear’s handle and tossed her body weight forwards. It pierced through, a rain of fine soil tumbling down like sand from an hourglass. Her aim had been off quite a bit, only managing to nick the side of the target, but her strength had been enough to send it straight through.

“Ha! Look, I stabbed it! Did I do it right?”, she cheered, her tail wiggling excitedly. Her hands released her grip on the weapon, which fell to the floor with a dull thud.

It wasn’t as if I’d ever had to spear something in my own life, but I could still tell that she’d need a lot of work. Rather than using her arms, she’d basically pounced forward spear-first and let the target catch her. Her strike had only just hit the outer edge of the dummy, and she’d immediately dropped her weapon.

Sending out my manamites to fix the dummy and clean the dirt off the floor, I tried to be gentle with my criticisms. “It’s a good start, but we’re adding this to your chores. I want you to spend some time drilling with this every single day. Keep your feet on the ground and your eyes on your target. You want to keep your grip with both hands. If you lose your weapon, you’re going to be defenseless, so pull it back once you strike. Got it?”

Not wanting to be stuck fixing it manually each time, I set up a managermite and a small choir of followers for it, giving it the directive to fix any tears in the dummy, as well as clean the floor and refill the bag each time that needed doing. I probably wouldn't keep this squad forever--only until Ephi was comfortable with her weapons. It was a bit of a resource drain otherwise.

Ephi watched with lukewarm interest, fingers tapping on the handle of the spear.

“Alright. Give it another shot and remember what I told you.”

Narrowing her eyes, she adjusted her posture a bit, knuckles clinging tightly to her weapon as she took a step forward, her upper half rearing back before lashing out like a snapped spring. Still clumsy, but the result was far more acceptable, ripping through the bag and sending its newly-christened crew into panicked overdrive.

The mouse gave a glance upwards, eyes half-lidded and a self-satisfied smirk crossing her lips. “Easy,” she chimed over our link.

On the plus side, anything she managed to hit would certainly regret ever being born, judging by the way the spear’s sharpened tip had shattered into oblivion when it impacted the stone wall two feet behind the target.

Assuming she ever managed to hit anything that wasn’t stationary with that technique. She had easily spent a full two seconds winding up.

After repairing her spear, I set up a table with a few other dummy weapons as well—wooden swords of various lengths, hammers, and axes for one hand or two, along with my first attempt at crafting a bow.

It wasn’t very pretty, but I assumed it would work with a bit of practice. Arrows were trickier, but I figured I might be able to use pine needles for the fletching.

“Give me a few days with this and I’ll be able to defend our home all on my own!”, the mousegirl chimed, tapping the butt of her newly-reforged weapon against the ground a few times.

“Oh, even more than that,” I added, “You’re going to be learning how to hunt!”

She stared blankly at one of my walls for a moment, tail drooping down like a deflated balloon. “Hunting? But why?”

I could only guess that she hadn’t put it together on her own yet. I couldn’t exactly blame her for that, given how much was happening for her in such a short time.

“How do I put this… well, our farms produce enough food for old-you and Libra. This would have been enough to help us stretch our stockpile all the way through until we could go back to foraging again, but this is going to complicate things a bit. It wasn’t entirely unplanned for, but I didn’t think you’d end up quite this…”

She butted in. “Big?”

“Yeah. I’ve been expanding our grow operation a bit over the past few days thinking that it would be enough to get us by, but that was under the assumption that you’d be smaller. There’s no chance of that now. That ‘little snack’ you grabbed after you woke up was what you’d normally eat in three whole days. Our stockpiles won’t last longer than a week now, and our fields won’t produce enough to keep up either way. We need a way to bolster our food production in the short term, and I’ve got two plans on that front. The first one is getting you to the point that you can hunt, and the second is a personal one. I’m going to try to expand down below the ocean and see if I can figure out a way to catch some bigger fish than the ones in the stream.”

“Oh. But what am I going to hunt? Most of the animals are hibernating, or they’ve flown away.”

She wasn’t wrong.

There was still the occasional hare poking out from a snowy nest or the coldly-staring eyes of owls glinting from cavities in the trees. Other things too, beasts of which there was no earthly counterpart. A quail-like bird with mottled gray feathers that made its home near the tops of rock faces, disguising its nest while roosting by spreading out its plumage like a curtain to blend into the stone. Too high for us to reach safely. White-haired tarantulas the size of manhole covers that weaved webs across the ground while it snowed, allowing their traps to be buried out of sight. Too risky to hunt, and probably not very edible either way.

“We’ll work together. I’ll handle the tracking for stuff close to home while you go for the kill. Any amount will help. But we’ll have to gear you up first.”

If the spear had made Ephi smile, then the rest of the equipment I gave to her nearly had her vibrating from excitement.

A pair of stellarite-toed leather boots with linen insoles for comfort. A padded coat with a hood to protect from the cold. A belt to hold her tools. Lastly, a rucksack to carry anything she found while scouting.

I tried making her some earmuffs as well, but I couldn’t quite figure out a design that would work well with the radar dish ears mounted atop her head. By the time I’d finished it all, Libra was ambling out of her room, giving a tired glance up at the most prepared mouse this world had ever seen. She offered a quick greeting to me over our link but otherwise went about her morning routine while avoiding her towering colleague.

“So, anything else you wanna give me, or am I good to go hunting now?”, Ephi asked, yawning halfway through her message.

“You can start in a few days. That’ll give me some time to make sure I’m not forgetting anything and I don’t want you going too far from home for first few hunts while you’re still adjusting. Go get some sleep.”

She stumbled her way off to her newly-refurbished room after a few tepid complaints, falling into bed.

As much as I wanted to pep-talk her, this was going to be tricky. Hunting wasn’t easy, and it was likely she’d be coming home empty-handed for a while even with my help. She’d never become a great hunter without having a lot of chances to be a terrible one first, so we would just have to struggle for a while.

In the meantime, I just had to stay active in filling the newly-widened gap in our food production.

Over the next two days, I kept an eye on Ephi’s progress while focusing on our garden. We had a few staple food crops at the moment, and I’d gotten plenty of feedback over the months on them. There were mogo berries and nightberries, which while apparently good eating just couldn’t sustain a diet all on their own. Javelin root, a quick-growing root vegetable that, while nutritious, apparently had a texture similar to a block of wood when eaten raw. Everything else that we had at our disposal was a cash crop.

After a bit of debate, I elected to go focus my efforts entirely on the javelin root for the time being. It certainly wouldn’t be a popular choice, but right now we needed to focus our efforts on survival to scrape through the winter.

I sprinkled my mana around as if it were some miracle fertilizer, ascending a few different specimens from our currently-growing stock of the tuber to try and luck out with the offered choices. The first one was a dud, considering that I was aiming for anything involving an enhancement to growth speed or size. The third one ended up decent enough for me to not want to waste any more resources—disease resistance inherited from its parent, as well as an enhancement to its production and better resistance to temperature changes. I could work with it.

Libra wasn’t very pleased when she found out that I’d ‘wasted my mana’, but she settled down a bit once I’d explained our food situation to her a bit better.

Ephi planted the seed for me, fingers fumbling around in the soil as she covered it. There wasn’t enough magic between the two of us to accelerate the growth of the entire greenhouse, but it was more than enough to rush that one plant to maturity. Given that Ephi had gained a small pool of MP from her ascension, she didn’t even have to dip far into her stamina reserves to do so.

The rate at which her mana recovered seemed glacial, though.

In the meantime, the mouse continued to familiarize herself with all of the intricacies of her new form. She learned quickly, even if she was still a bit clumsy with her hands. By the second day, she’d stopped stumbling over herself while walking and was starting to get comfortable moving around without having a wall to brace herself against as a safety net.

An extremely low bar to aim for considering that I was about to send her out into the wild, but I had faith that she’d learn quickly.

She could reliably jab a stationary target with her spear, even if she rarely hit it straight-on. She experimented with a few of the other weapons as well, though the only one she latched onto was the larger axe I’d made. Everything else required her to get too close for her to move around without tripping herself up.

We’d yet to even get her to loose a single arrow from the bow yet, and not for a lack of trying.

There was only so much practice to be had indoors, though.

Guiding her to the newly-placed exit to our dungeon, I opened the gate. She ducked through, her ears still managing to brush against the roof as she stood back up to her full height, outside for the first time since her ascension.

She gave a cautious look around before glancing back towards the entrance of the dungeon, committing its location to memory. “It’s even weirder out here than it was in there. Everything is so low to the ground and there’s nothing for me to hide under,” she remarked, grimacing as her boots crunched through the snow, nearly falling with her first step until she caught herself, “So what am I looking for, exactly?”

“Today? You’re not looking for anything,” I explained, “I’ve already looked around our immediate area and there’s not much movement at all. I want you to get out there, exercise your senses and work on seeing if you can track anything down yourself. I’m expecting this to be a dry run, so it’s okay to take it slow. Walking around out here is going to be a lot different than doing it at home.”

She replied with a confident smile. “I’ve got this, leave it to me!”

Turning tail as I closed the entrance, she teetered off into the woods, her ears poking up through the hood of her coat.

With her occupied, I turned my attention to the next task on my agenda, checking back in on her every few minutes to make sure she was alright.

My mind travelled down into the bitterly-cold sea lapping at the foot of the cliffs. The very bottom of the chamber I’d been planning to use for a salt pump would serve as the anchor connecting this new section to our home. My consciousness snaked forwards like a moray eel peeking out from its hole as the flickering glow of my manamites constructed something akin to a thick, undersea cable slithering down the jagged rocks until I reached the bottom of the bay.

This would be my periscope, the scale through which I’d weigh the potential of this plan. The seas could be abundant, but they could just as easily be barren wastes with how bitterly cold things were here.

My consciousness descended into the churning gray waters and along the seabed as I explored the shrouded world below. Light danced through the shallows, bright pillars piercing through for a single breath until they vanished and reappeared elsewhere as the surface shifted and swayed. Rolling hills of coarse sand stretched into the void beyond sight, peppered with boulders that had fallen loose from the cliffs above over the ages. From this soil sprung sparse patches of teal-hued seagrass, dancing with the ebb and flow of the currents. Above these rose their taller kin, kelp-like plants that didn’t quite reach the surface, their long, slender leaves reaching out like the tendrils of a jellyfish.

There was life down here—perhaps not as teeming a tropical reef, but it was here. Skittering invertebrates hid in the shadowy crevasses beneath the rocks, feeding off floating detritus. Schools of tiny silver-scaled fish drifted in a loose formation, receding closer to each other whenever their path took them closer to one of the larger denizens of the deep. A creature that resembled a spindly-legged crab with a body like a sea urchin gracefully scaled the stalk of one of the larger plants, snipping off pieces and eating at a lazy pace.

These were the commoners of this submerged kingdom.

In the distance I could make out dancing shadows, huge serpentine shapes obscured by the cloudy waters. Things larger than anything that dwelled in the nursery of the shallows.

If we could catch something like that and put it on ice, we’d never go hungry again.

Curious as to their nature, I continued to extend this vein of dungeon-touched stone down into the deep, gradually eating through my stone reserves in the process. Whatever these were, I wanted to meet them.

The kings of the sea.

CURRENT PROGRESS:

BOSS

FRAGMENT OF COALESCED WILL LVL: 4 NAME: "Boss"

Traits:

Skills:

[Horticulture I]

[Biology I]

[Creator's Insight]

[Mech. Engineering II]

[Textiles I]

[Transmutation I]

[Mining I]

[Core Metalworking]

[Eidetic Blueprinting]

Features:

[Manamite Creation]

[Self-Synthesis]

[Manamite Specialization I]

[Material Infusion]

HP: 18 / 18 CATEGORY: Elemental MP: 35 / 100 SPECIES: Dungeon Core MP Rate: +24 daily SIZE: Tiny WEALTH: 6 XP: 35% STR VIT DEX INT WIS PER 0 6 0 10 9 8

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

Manamite Horde (155 / 157):

145 Manamites

2 Managermites (-6 MP/d)

Boiler Squad (5 / 20):

5 Manamites

Gym Rats (5 / 20):

5 Manamites

Memorymites (3)

Criteria for Next Ascension Tier:

Level: 5

Wealth: 25

Employees: 3

Cost: 100 MP

Facility: Prison Virtual Hoard:

[COMMON MATERIALS]

➤1011.6 Raw Stone

➤409.0 Loose Soil

➤25.1 Biological Material

➤188.1 Raw Lumber

➤2.7 Plant Fiber

➤0.0 Raw Crystal

➤11.9 Iron Ore

➤30.9 Copper Ore

[RARE MATERIALS]

➤6.1 Moonstone

➤0.5 Shimmerwood

➤3 Stellarite

➤2.2 Orichalcum

EPHILIA

CORE-TOUCHED DIRE DEMIMOUSE (RUNT) LVL: 5 NAME: "Ephilia"

Traits:

[Gigantism]

Skills:

[Core Link II]

[Core Bond I]

[Scavenge]

[Festering Bite]

[Enhanced Physicality I]

[Athletics I]

[Self-Catalyzation]

[Life Magic I]

[Stealth I]

Spells:

[Rapid Bloom I]

Equipped:

HP: 18 / 18 CATEGORY: Employee MP: 0 / 3 SPECIES: Field Mousekin SP: 8 / 8 SIZE: Large XP: 4% GENDER: ♀ STR VIT DEX INT WIS PER 8 9 6 7 5 6

A mousekin under the auric influence of a dungeon core. Possesses moderate physical stats and enhanced stature. Force Level-Up Cost: 30 MP Criteria for Next Ascension Tier:

Cost: 100 MP

LIBRA

CORE-TOUCHED FOX KIT LVL: 3 NAME: "Libra"

Traits:

[Forged Sapience]

[Mana Processing]

Skills:

[Core Link I]

[Core Bond I]

[Stealth I]

[Evasion I]

[Self-Catalyzation]

[Light Magic I]

Spells:

[Sunlight Orb II]

Equipped:

🞚 Moonlit Silver Opal Ring-Amulet

HP: 9 / 9 CATEGORY: Employee MP: 2 / 2 SPECIES: Fox SP: 5 / 5 SIZE: Small XP: 51% GENDER: ♀ STR VIT DEX INT WIS PER 3 3 5 6 (+1) 4 7

A common red fox imbued with the auric touch of a dungeon core. A cunning and playful beast that's known for causing mischief. Force Level-Up Cost: 30 MP Criteria for Next Ascension Tier:

PRIMAL ASCENSION

Cost: 100 MP