Time almost seemed to flow differently while I was working along the seafloor. There was some initial strangeness as I acclimated to the aquatic environment, like some lingering human instinct that kept insisting that I stay close to the surface out of fear that I might drown.

No matter how many times I shoved the feeling back down, the parts of my mind still under the sway of the ‘hairless ape’ protested with fervor.

Stone can’t drown, though. I was probably safer down here than I was on the surface, even.

There was little risk of being seen by people should any pass by overhead. There was no passage through the bay, nor any place to make landfall within—aside from miraculously scaling the sheer cliffside, anyways. Even then, such a thing would certainly be impossible; the seafloor’s depth was unpredictable, and the jagged outcroppings piercing up from the shallowest parts near the cliffs could gut a foolhardy sailor’s ship easily.

To any experienced captain, this cove would seem like the dagger-filled maw of the sea itself, eagerly waiting to grind its crooked teeth against their hull.

In short, they would find little reason to enter this newly-annexed territory of mine. Even if they did, they’d still have to have the acuity to notice the granite veins I’d constructed through a veil of swirling dust and foam. It was already a stretch of the imagination, and that was assuming that they’d somehow recognize it as the work of a core just from sight alone.

This was probably the closest thing to exploration that I’d gotten to do all on my own, so I enjoyed the change of pace. I stretched my branches outwards, for once not having to worry about keeping myself hidden as I made myself familiar with the area.

The pillars of kelp were some of the biggest features of the area, swaying in the current like leafy chains holding the surface and the seafloor together. These seemed to be the center of the ecosystem. The smaller fish rarely darted beyond the reach of their leaves, using them as a sanctuary. Near the bottom of almost every tower, there were at least a few of those strange, spiky-looking crabs, nipping at the lowest-hanging parts of the plant but leaving the central stalk untouched.

SEA FLAIL LVL: 1 NAME: undefined

Skills:

[Defensive Stance]

HP: 9 / 9 CATEGORY: Animal MP: 0 / 0 SPECIES: Crustacean SP: 13 / 13 SIZE: Small XP: ?? GENDER: ♂ STR VIT DEX INT WIS PER 4 5 2 2 2 4

A sea creature that scuttles along the ocean floor, generally sticking to the shallows. While not directly dangerous to humans, its spike-clad armor can deliver a painful jab to those trying to catch it. Its egg sacs are a well-known delicacy, colloquially known as 'sea apples'. Resynthesize:

Cost: 30 MP

Interested in catching one to test their viability as a food source, I spent a while attempting various methods of capturing them. My first try was to simply build a cage around one of them while it ate, but the light of the manamites quickly sent the creature into a defensive posture, scuttling away before I could finish. My attempt at an aquatic owl-smasher was far less effective than my one on the surface had been. It was far slower, and the movement of the water simply helped push the sea flail away before they collided.

Since active methods weren’t accomplishing much, I decided that I’d set up a few crab traps around the floor of the bay along with some bait. They were little more than stone-barred cages with entrances shaped like funnels. As the finishing touch, I added bait: half of them got a bit of mystery meat from my pool of biological matter, while the other half I added some snipped-off leaves of kelp into. With that settled, I wanted to extend a bit further down the slope leading to the open sea to confirm what I’d seen.

By the time I’d gotten out of the mouth of the cove, Ephi was wrapping up her first hunt—as expected, returning home empty-handed. She warmed up in the greenhouse for a while before turning in for the night.

I turned in a short while later. While I could have continued to build in the pitch-black of the night with my limited sense of the immediate area, there was little point in rushing ahead blindly. Until the morning came, I spent my efforts on improving the borehole connecting down to sea level, widening it and adding a crude spiral staircase twirling around its outside.

There was more I wanted to do down there, plans for the future once we had resources to spare. A lift from our main floor down to the bottom of the borehole. A base of operations for salt harvesting by evaporating seawater would be a great fit too. Perhaps a pool where we could store and potentially breed fish or sea plants. For now, it simply ended in a cube-shaped hollow at the bottom of the stairs.

Digging the borehole out to a properly-traversable width took me until just before sunrise. Once I was finished, I checked on the crab pots. I hadn’t caught anything, though one of the non-vegetarian death traps seemed to have caught the attention of a sea flail.

Its spiky exterior was just preventing it from navigating into the trap correctly, snagging on the bars each time it tried to squeeze in.

After sending Ephi out on her second hunt, I went back to adjusting the crab pots to allow the flails easier entrance, occasionally checking my vision at the furthest point down the slope of the sea.

While the slope of the cove was mild, a few hundred feet beyond the neck of the bay the seafloor simply began to fall away, plummeting down into the depths at a sharp angle. It was there that I saw my first leviathan.

Or a part of it, at least.

It was large enough that I nearly mistook it for a part of the landscape when I first noticed it drifting past. Its shell was monstrously-large, perhaps as wide as the entirety of the greenhouse. The multicolored surface of its helix-shaped shell was marred with signs of age, battle, and even several patches of barnacles.

From the mouth of the shell erupted a mass of milky-white tentacles and a single unblinking gold eye. Its gaze flowed past me as it swam onwards, my existence apparently beneath its notice.

ELDER MIRAGE NAUTILUS LVL: 74 NAME: undefined

Skills:

[Ironclad Armor]

[Current Control]

[Water Jet]

[Defensive Stance]

HP: 560 / 562 CATEGORY: Animal MP: 0 / 0 SPECIES: Nautilus SP: 280 / 290 SIZE: Titanic XP: ?? GENDER: ♂ STR VIT DEX INT WIS PER 212 265 98 18 72 51

A gigantic, long-lived mollusk that earned its name from encounters with sailors. Seeing the top of its shell breaching the water in the distance, they would sail for it thinking they'd found land, only for it to vanish beneath the waves by the time they'd gotten closer. Resynthesize:

Cost: 12040 MP

It was all I could do to watch dumbstruck as the titan passed through. It faded away into the undersea fog as little more than a shadowy splotch, until even that was gone too.

Something like that would one hell of an employee to have at my disposal.

Or enough meals to feed us for years if stored properly. Not that we had any way of killing something so gargantuan and well-defended. Even if it were on land, we'd be hard-pressed to even dent the thing. In its home turf, we'd be sitting ducks.

A bit unsettled at the discovery of something so far out of our league, I resumed my work on the crab traps while avoiding continuing any further beyond the safety of our cove. There were other things out there too, though they only emerged when the nautilus had long since moved on: eels with scales that made a muffled rattling noise as they swam, stingrays that swam in a V-formation like migrating birds did, and others. None of it really compared to the titan we'd seen, though.

Ephi’s second day of hunting was equally as unsuccessful as the first. She was improving, but only time would tell if she was doing so at a quick enough pace.

I managed to be a bit more successful with my endeavor. Catching the crabs turned out to be the simple part—hauling them back, on the other hand, was far trickier. The cage was too heavy for my manamites to tug around as they could with smaller objects, so it came down to engineering. I managed to catch two in separate pots, though bringing them home had occupied most of my time over the past few days.

Killing and then deconstructing the crabs where they rested would produce some extremely unappetizing meat, so that was something I only considered as a plan for if all other measures failed. It had taken some effort, but I had managed to get them into the holding area at the bottom of the borehole by building a shoddy underwater crane that could pick up the cages via a hook and lift them from the seafloor.

It had taken far more trial and error than I would have liked, and every aspect of it had to be managed manually. It got the job done at least. As a result, we had two crabs ready for slaughtering and cooking once I got them up the stairs.

Making enough rope for a second crane used up every last scrap of fiber that I had remaining, but it was just enough to allow me to lift them to the top level of the dungeon. After that, I left the rest up to Ephi; I made a wooden pushcart for her to load them on for easier transportation, and she helped haul them to the kitchen once she was home from her hunt.

By this point, Libra had gotten used to her colleague’s new form enough to not jump out of her skin every time the mousegirl moved unexpectedly, so I tried to guide the two of them on how to properly prepare and cook them as a team activity. Without butter, salt, or any other seasonings I wouldn’t have been too keen to eat the result myself, but they were surprisingly united in enjoying the meal. When they were done, I deconstructed the shell and the bits that were left, not wanting to let anything go to waste.

As long as I didn’t overfish the area, they’d be a decent food source. I had the two of them try a few other things collected from the depths as well—kelp and mussels, though neither one was very popular. Maybe we just needed a better way to prepare them aside from just boiling or eating them raw.

For the third day, I chose to focus most of my efforts on accompanying Ephi and ‘helping’ her hunt in whatever ways that I could.

She set out from the entrance and I locked the door behind her as usual, trotting off into the snow to scout the surrounding area. We were heading northwards today, with most of her previous efforts having been concentrated around the river valley to the southeast.

Even just the short few days that she had already gotten had done wonders for her ability to move around safely. Her legs were steady and she rarely lost her balance, even if she still wasn’t anywhere near the level of being some legendary huntress. We spent a while going over how to quiet her movements, but her impatience made the glacial pace of movement required to do so into a serious source of frustration for her. Controlling her footfalls took far more effort than sneaking had as a mouse, and even then it was only a half measure.

“If I see something, I can just chase it down,” she scoffed, crossing her arms, “It’s just a waste of time to even try, I’ve been failing at this for days now.”

“You’re not going to see anything if they can hear you coming from a mile away. You ought to know that yourself. Anyways, you don’t need to be perfect, you just need to be good enough,” I reprimanded, “It’s that, or we can try to change up our methods and go for different prey.”

She leaned against a rock, deep in thought for a moment.

“…People?”, she finally hit back towards me, sounding unsure.

“No, not people,” I sighed, “There are three responses wild animals will have to something big and scary—like you—coming into their territory. Running away, finding a place to hide, or defending their territory. The ones that run away are the problem, they’re going to be gone before you ever even knew they were there. The ones that hide, like burrowers or hibernating animals, those are probably our best option. Just start heading northwards, we’ll see what we can find.”

With a shrug, she hopped off of the rock and began the trek northwards. This was still ‘my territory’, dotted with eyes that I’d tucked away in hollowed-out trees like a legion of ever-watching security cameras. I had a rough idea of everything going out outside, or at least as far as my vision would carry if the weather was rough. The sky was clear today thankfully.

Our first destination would be a thicket up to the north. There were at least a few hares in the area, occasionally popping out of their burrows like soldiers peeping from a foxhole.

The lone member of the rabbit tribe that was still topside scurried off for cover before Ephi got within a hundred feet, but that was alright. My goal today wasn’t for her to chase them, but rather for her to try something else.

It took her a while to find a safe path through the labyrinth of brambles to get to one of the many entrances to the burrow.

“We’re going to tag-team this one, alright? I’m going to spook them out of their burrow, and you’re going to catch one. It’ll be good practice,” I explained. I had already done most of my preparations while she was on her way over, extending one of my subterranean stone veins close enough that I’d be able to work my magic. I was certain that they’d run if I started trying to trap them in any way, so that wouldn’t work.

So that was the plan, of course.

She dropped to her knees above the burrow, brow furrowed as she kept her eyes locked on the hole. “Like this? Or should I be giving them the poke-poke?”, she asked, pantomiming a spear-jabbing motion.

“Either. They’ll probably keep running unless you put them down in one hit, but they probably won’t get far. I’ll leave it up to you.”

Giving a resolute nod, she steadied her breathing, opting to try to grab one with her hands as it exited.

Spooking the rabbits was comically simple. A few twinkling blue lights appeared at each of the den’s exits but the one Ephi was perched at, beginning to construct a barricade across each. In reality, just their presence alone was enough to dissuade the hares from trying those exits. When a few more manamites appeared at the very center of the largest hollow of their den, the superstitious creatures bolted, dozens of white-furred paws scrambling for purchase in the loose earth as they frantically searched for an exit.

Luckily for them, there was still one open.

The first one shot out of the exit before Ephi could so much as twitch, her hands clapping down on nothing but thin air. A geyser of bunnies burst forth behind that first one, the mousegirl pouncing forwards and managing to wrap her arms around one of them as the rest flowed out into the thorny undergrowth. She stumbled back up to her feet, clutching the squirming rabbit the way a child might hold a stuffed toy won in a carnival booth.

“Just making sure, this one’s for food, right?”, she asked, struggling to keep her catch from hopping free from her grip.

“Yeah. No point bringing on another mouth to feed just yet.”

She gave a cheerful nod and, with a single motion of her hands, made the rabbit’s body go still.

I tried not to let myself overthink it. Ephi and Libra needed food to survive, just like every other living thing. Eating a creature capable of intelligent thought seemed wrong. Since I could seemingly take any animal and instill that sapience into it, did that potential make it wrong to eat them too? It was a weird notion that sprung up in my mind occasionally, and one that I did my best to avoid.

The reality of it seemed to just be that it was a simple matter of us versus them. If all creatures could gain the ability to rationalize and speak, it wasn’t as if I could just expect the world to starve just to cling to its morals.

It was easier to just not worry about it too much.

The rest of the hunt was downhill from there. We certainly could have caught more rabbits, but I had no desire to wipe out their population in our area and deny ourselves a long-term food source.

Besides, I had another goal in mind that revolved around getting them to spread out over the area: using them as bait for larger predators. As they fled out beyond my reach, there was a chance that they’d eventually have encounters with the many threats of the woods. If this happened and they managed to retreat, they’d probably try to pull back to the relative safety of their burrow again—and lead the beasts stalking them into my sight. Ephi wasn’t quite ready to fend off anything that could put up a serious fight, but we’d still have some time to prepare.

With just the one hare in tow, Ephi returned to our own burrow. It took her a while to skin and prepare its meat as neither of us knew what we were doing, but I had her set the fur aside now. As far as ratings went, it was a crowd favorite, ranking well above even the crab meat.

Unfortunately for all of us, rabbits didn’t grow on trees. This sort of meal would have to be a rare treat for the time being.

“When do believe we’ll be ready for my turn?”, Libra interrogated, her fangs ripping the last bits of meat remaining on the bone held between her front paws, “I understand that times are tough, but it seems like we’re on an upwards path now.”

“Soon. I’d like to wait for the end of winter, but it seems like you’re pretty eager to move on ahead with it,” I responded, working on preparing the slightly-damaged pelt for use.

She continued to gnaw for a while in silence. “I could help hunt too,” she added.

“I agree. But having both of my employees in the process of learning how to move around again would put us in a bad spot. I’m not trying to invalidate your points, just explaining my thought process on this,” I replied, “We’re not short on mana at the moment though, so I think a bit of a boost would be fair given the circumstances. You’ve been understanding and patient so far and I appreciate that.”

“A boost?”, she chimed in, tilting her head.

My mana pool had nearly filled already by this point, and I was still firmly against allowing any to be wasted via overflow. As a consolation prize and to reassure her that I wasn’t just playing favorites, I decided to invest a bit more than usual.

Experience Requirements Bypassed.

FOX KIT has increased to LVL 4.

FOX KIT has gained 2 skill points.

DEXTERITY has increased by 1.

VITALITY has increased by 1.

Experience Requirements Bypassed.

FOX KIT has increased to LVL 5.

FOX KIT has gained 2 skill points.

STRENGTH has increased by 1.

PERCEPTION has increased by 1.

The resulting mana surge left her dizzy, her fur standing on end as if under some intense static charge.

“A boost,” I shot back, “I’m putting one of the four skill points into upgrading core link so our connection is a bit better. The other three are yours to do whatever you’d like with.”

Our link went silent for a moment as I enhanced it to the next tier, the connection now just as strong as the one between Ephi and I. “It feels as if I just shoved my head under the snow,” she complained, her vision hazy and unfocused as I peeked through.

“It’ll fade soon. Probably, anyways. I figure that this will make the wait a bit easier. Just hang in there, we’ll get to you soon.”

“…Well, it’s a start,” she admitted, "Though only just. My goal remains unchanged."

We spent the next hour going back and forth on her skill picks. Her first pick was [Enhanced Intellect I], but the rest were a bit more interesting.

⬘ Mental Agility I ⬘

Toggleable state of mind. When active, continuously drains SP in exchange for a boost to acuity. Initial rate of drain is -1 SP per minute, increasing by 1 for each additional minute active. Enhances speed of mind and body while active. Minimum use of one minute at a time.

TYPE:

Passive

CATEGORY:

Proficiency

⬘ Unshaking Grace ⬘

Enhances the link between the mind and the body's musculature, reducing some of the conscious mental load for maintaining balance and movement. Grants enhancements to the user's ability to remain standing on difficult terrain, such as ice or uneven ground. Grants minor resistance to chemical or disease-related effects that would impair balance.

TYPE:

Passive

CATEGORY:

Proficiency

Clearly picked based on her observations of Ephi over the past few days.

“Planning ahead, huh?”, I hummed, considering what her end goal with these might be, “Seems like you’re all-in on ascension.”

“As I’ve said so before, yes. I have no love for my own powerlessness.”

In truth, a part of me was almost hoping to ascend her sooner rather than later, even if it put us into even more danger. Our next trade with Cheshire was coming up soon, and I couldn’t help but wonder just how a meeting would go between the two post-ascension.

Practicality so often battled against curiosity and only rarely lost.

The next day was another hunt, just like before. Leaving Libra to tend to the plants, I tagged along with Ephi, planning to venture a bit further than the burrow we’d raided the previous day, into territory beyond where my eyes could reach. As such, I was wholly reliant on her senses, and even I could tell that they were a fair bit duller than they had once been in her past.

Yet, as she stomped through the calf-height snow covering every inch of the ground, she was the one to notice it before I did. Her nose twitched as she stopped in her tracks as the mouse followed her nose to her left, tracing some aroma that I couldn’t even begin to guess at the source of.

Her eyes darted downwards as she stepped closer to a thicket of brambles, squatting down to take a closer look at what she’d found.

A small amount of blood coated the very tips of a bundle of thorns, though there were no tracks to speak of to suggest where it might have come from at first glance.

But it was fresh, only just starting to crystallize and freeze in the icy air.

“Not bad,” I muttered, impressed, “I doubt I’d have spotted that. It’s not at ground level so I doubt it was one of the rabbits—besides, they’re generally pretty good at avoiding these. Maybe us ringing the dinner bell yesterday already caught something’s attention?”

The mouse took a moment to process what I was explaining, suddenly perking up. “Something bigger to hunt?”

“Yeah. A good crash course. How are you feeling? Up for the challenge?”

She gave a determined nod, though a low growl from her stomach betrayed where this motivation was coming from.

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: 31 / 100 SPECIES: Dungeon Core MP Rate: +24 daily SIZE: Tiny WEALTH: 6 XP: 49% 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]

➤712.6 Raw Stone

➤390.0 Loose Soil

➤29.1 Biological Material

➤165.3 Raw Lumber

➤0.1 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: 1 / 3 SPECIES: Field Mousekin SP: 8 / 8 SIZE: Large XP: 16% 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: 5 NAME: "Libra"

Traits:

[Forged Sapience]

[Mana Processing]

Skills:

[Core Link II]

[Core Bond I]

[Stealth I]

[Evasion I]

[Self-Catalyzation]

[Light Magic I]

[Enhanced Intellect I]

[Mental Agility I]

[Unshakable Grace]

Spells:

[Sunlight Orb II]

Equipped:

🞚 Moonlit Silver Opal Ring-Amulet

HP: 12 / 12 CATEGORY: Employee MP: 2 / 2 SPECIES: Fox SP: 5 / 5 SIZE: Small XP: 0% GENDER: ♀ STR VIT DEX INT WIS PER 4 4 6 6 (+1) 4 8

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