I know I was excited to gain this ability to get life force, but aren't there too many bodies? I filled up on life force already, and it hasn't been long at all. I combine soul cores until all of them reach the large size, then I take two of the gently swirling cores and combine them again. If I thought combining the small cores was bad, I was wrong. Can I have that weird swirling nausea back, please. I feel like I'm being turned into spaghetti noodles, but there's nothing wrong with my body. Is this the side effects I was worried about? It calms down after a bit and I decide to practice magic a bit more while combining mana crystals instead while I wait to see if I ruined my soul or something.

Those small mana cores I got from the vicious rodents hold an awful lot of mana. I have a lot of power to work with, so I burn it on lots of nonsensical combinations of mana constructs, fully expecting to fail. I stopped playing with my spark spell after I shocked myself twice while adding in constructs, but I did manage to turn the arc red and cause it to make a weird pulsing noise when I added in a system of 3 constructs I borrowed from the constructs for mana transformation. It sprayed in all directions, including mine, so it wasn't very useful though.

I figured out how to combine the heat spell and the earth shape spell to make interesting shapes out of sand, but it was really expensive, and extremely fragile. After trying 12 times to make a tiny elephant only to have it deform as it cooled, I decided I needed a better skill set before I could make anything with any detail. I was great at making little piles of brown sand turn into deformed lumps of brown sandstone though. If only I had a tiny trebuchet... I could siege tiny castles.

I had two decent breakthroughs. First, I discovered a particular mana construct was for storing and releasing mana at a set intensity. It was a little mana capacitor. Second I discovered a little construct that caused a suction in the spell thread. If I put it in the right spot, it would draw mana through the spell on its own, which made it significantly easier to cast spells. Instead of focusing on keeping the mana constructs together while also forcing mana through the spells, I could simply focus on holding a single extra construct and let the spell do its thing. There were a few problems with both constructs, but overall they made life easier. The draw construct sometimes caused backflow: the mana would get pulled the wrong way through the other constructs if they weren't laid out with the draw in mind, causing a destabilization of the entire spell. The capacitor could overcharge, and the construct would blur and leak mana to all nearby constructs if it got too bad. Getting the draw and capacitance constructs to play together nicely was an exercise in frustration.

With the upgrades in spellwork, and the lack of any imminent soul death or any side effects at all, really, I steeled myself and combined another set of soul cores. The new larger cores looked like snowglobes with glowing green snow randomly swirling about, it was honestly rather mesmerizing. I wondered if the specks were my soul.

After crunching another dozen tiny mana cores into 6 larger ones, I was out of lifeforce to absorb. There were only piles of bones left of all the mess I had made. I even absorbed the zombie I had used for transport, turns out he didn't have the guts for this kind of job. It was time to go hunting again, but this time I could take some larger risks if I was careful. With a careful application of grow spells, I grew a thick vine door to the sun room. The hinges were terrible, but I made a bar reinforcement for the back so I could keep it shut and a vine spear which perfectly fit through several small holes in the door. It wasn't a great spear, but it would do the job a few times.

With earthshape and heat I used all of my mana twice to make a big brick of stone and hung it above the door with some rope and pitons from the dead guy's bag. A quick heat spell should drop the brick on anything trying to break down the door. I dug a shallow pit in front of it until I hit the stone below to make it harder for the shorter rats to reach the door.

You know, I used to kill rats with glue traps at home. A pit full of glue would be a welcome addition to the defenses, but if wishes were glue I'd be high on fumes right now. Oh well, an empty pit will have to do. Maybe I could heat up the bottom of the pit and hold an all you can eat armored rat bake. I think I'll try that.

I'm ready. I head out into the big holey room, ready to lay down the law. Nothing happens though, no moleratmadillows come to kill me like they did before. I can see eyes staring out of the darkness though. “You started it, you overgrown vermin. What are you waiting for, come get some!” I shout mentally, sending a telepathic connection to every set of eyes I can see. They shrink back into the darkness, but I hear yipping in the distance, and a deep growl. There's a loud scratching, and the biggest Moleratmadillow I've ever seen climbs out of one of the larger holes in the opposite wall. It's bigger than a man, covered in scars, and it doesn't look happy. They must be able to tell I've gotten stronger somehow. Either that or they're waiting in the tunnels to ambush me. This thing clearly wants a fight though, and I've never been one to dance around the subject. I ask the bees to evacuate for the battle, and ready my axe.