With her core rolling along the corridor to the 6th floor, pushed by a constantly appearing wall built behind her, her 5th floor was finally complete with her core coming to rest in the cavern just below the last one of her 5th floor. Having arrived in the deeper level she dedicated the processes necessary to once again open up a bit more of her dimension tap, hoping some of the more advanced creatures of her 5th floor would start to make their way down.

Waiting for the first beasts to make their way down she observed her upper floors in the holotank. She continued with the trend of building larger and wider caverns to house her creatures, with her 5th floor having a single large cavern, interspersed with columns disguised as rocky mountains, that instead of ending in a tip connected to the ceiling. The height of the ceiling on her 5th floor was also nothing to scoff at with the highest point reaching some 20 meters high.

While her 5th floor was so far only covered with mostly grasses and only the beginnings of some trees bushing together in young forests her 1st to 4th floors by now had full-fledged forests that could be mistaken to some ancient forests she knew from before, with the growth bonus to plants from her manalights being truly impressive.

The northern Edge of her cavern had a waterfall falling down, with a small lake forming at its base that then fed into 2 separate rivers spreading out in smaller and smaller offshoots throughout the giant cavern feeding the moisture required for most plants.

The water falling down was fed by the smaller streams from the floors above, but now finally enhanced with water created directly from her mana. With her 5th floor she had finally made the decision to sacrifice the processing power required for the creation of a consumable matter. Especially since deconstructing water at the end of the two rivers, where they entered small collection chambers in the walls of her caverns, provided only minimal returns compared to the mana required to create it.

Climbing around on the pillars, holding up the ceiling of her giant cavern, goats and the offsprings of her first bobcat shared their territory in a constant game of cat and mouse. The bobcats until her 5th floor had developed in a predictable fashion with strengthened claws that could grip the sheer cliff of the pillars and heightened reflexes and strength.

The goats however, coming later to her domain, had to develop in a surprising fashion to be able to adapt to their lifestyle sharing their territory with such a strong predator. They managed to develop a method to send flickers of emotion and impressions to one another, using their horns as some sort of antenna to share short pulses among their kind.

With this they were able to work together in a not seen before fashion, ambushing sneaking predators with the help of early warnings of specially designated lookouts along the face of the cliff. Should a bobcat be spotted approaching they would try to sneak up behind it or on its side and push it off the side of the cliff, defending their territory and their young ones.

Allison made use of this behavior by adjusting the descents into her 5th floor around these pillars, forcing potential invaders to make their way through their territory, though that did force her to pacify the goats actively whenever another beast decided to descend further down the floors.

Though with each passing year the number of beasts descending decreased as populations established themselves in an equilibrium on each floor. Only her lowest floor still showing signs of active migration. New species could still make their way lower, though once a strong population of a certain species had established itself she tried to discourage the migration of any more.

Similar things happened with the deer herds and rabbit warrens that made their way to her 5th floor. Anything within the 1st to 4th floor would only be slightly strengthened versions of normally found beasts, the mana concentrations not dense enough to allow for the critical accumulation levels required for the mana to react to the subconscious desires of the beasts.

Once they made their way to the 5th floor and survived for a year or so they tended to develop in areas that could be surprising to people unfamiliar in the way primordial mana could be used to make alterations on a subatomic level in reaction to a structured desire that was attuned to this mana.

Some birds even found their way down to her 5th floor and started nesting on the ceiling and other inaccessible places around the giant cavern, with only minimal populations found on higher levels. Except for a speed increase and some impressive fireworks to show off their mating prowess however, they did not develop in any meaningful way.

They achieved their ability to produce small sparks around them by nibbling on the manalights she had embedded in the ceiling during the night cycles, incorporating their heat producing capabilities in their feathers, thus giving them the ability to make small sparks go flying when they ruffled their feathers.

The rabbits on her 5th floor soon developed the ability to slightly influence any and all earth particles surrounding them. Whenever a predator would get close, they could dive down into the earth as if it were water and close up the tunnels behind them.

The deers were the most surprising of all. Deers were the preferred prey of the wolf packs prowling the flatter plains of her 5th floor. They made their homes in the caves in the sidewalls of the caverns and generally preferred the darkness, coming out at night to hunt for food. Their improved eyesight and especially their ability to gather splotches of shadow on their fur helped them blend into their surroundings.

The strategy developed by the deers to combat the advantage the wolves had in the dark, was to start nibbling on pieces of manalight broken off by the birds above. Though non-functional when not connected to the ceiling they still had the same properties as the functional ones above.

Unlike the birds however they managed to concentrate their ability on the creation of light instead of heat, creating splotches of bioluminescence on their fur. This constantly lighted up their surroundings and denied any approaching wolves shadows to hide in.

Some more advanced ones even managed to concentrate their light generating abilities in their horns, able to produce a truly blinding light they could use to fight off the darkest corners of their surroundings with. This explosion of light had the added benefit that it tended to blind the sensitive eyes of the wolves and once spotted the deers had the speed and endurance to outrun any pair of wolves, unless a larger pack worked together exceptionally well.

Many more animals kept making their way into her domain from outside of her influence, though over the years that each floor took to complete only these animals had managed to develop special means of surviving so far. She was very much looking forward to seeing more development from many more beasts.

The exit to the 6th floor she placed in the southernmost corner of the cavern, on top of a small cliff that invaders would have to climb past another flock of goats roaming about on the cliff.

There was an additional ramp that led to the top for easier access, however this ramp had a small step in the middle with a little pool that the goats used to raise their young and would defend with fervor. It was not the only sanctuary that the goats claimed on the cliff, but it was by far the most convenient.

Unlike the other cliffs, this one was not connected to the ceiling, but had a platform on top that was inhabited by her very first bobcat that made it to her first floor so long ago. Like the others it hadn’t developed any special abilities yet though she felt it was on the cusp of something truly special, and enticing it to sit at the outflow of the densest mana she could produce, she hoped she could nudge this development along. Who knows, she might even be able to influence it a tiny bit!

Please let me be able to influence it a bit! She prayed to herself, as so far her research into other areas seemed entirely fruitless. Any and all experimentation she had done so far lead to a fiery and explosive result.

Hell, she couldn’t even adjust the manalights in ways that weren’t already defined in her database, it was as if she was missing something fundamental and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t grasp it. She was starting to suspect it had to do with all the knowledge she already possessed, and she couldn’t see past it to detect what is right in front of her.

At least watching that bobcat create its own unique ability should show me some insight in how this new primordial mana interacts specifically with the physics of this new world. Generating something new, spurring development.

As it turned out it took another whole week after it settled in its new nesting ground for something meaningful to occur with the new bobcat who she decided to name Lynx after its scientific name in her database.

Over the following weeks of its inhabitation of the entrance to her 6th floor, nothing physical actually changed on it, except for the standard strengthening of claws, teeth and musculature. The mountain goats on the slope to the 6th floor however absorbed the increasing amounts of mana flowing out of her 6th floor entrance greedily and started to increase their communication abilities from mere snippets of emotional impressions to something more resembling actual communication.

As a result, they got better and better at avoiding her Lynx, and she was starting to fear it would starve before anything meaningful could happen. After another 2 weeks of more and more frustrating hunts, mana finally started to coalesce in Lynx’ brain tissue and whiskers.

To her frustration, no matter how closely Allison observed the process, she couldn’t determine what the point of this new tissue growth was. Seeing how it interacted with the transmission of the surrounding mountain goats she at first thought it was a way for Lynx to intercept those transmissions, but for that there was not enough feedback to the rest of its brain going on.

It wasn’t until a week later, when the growth seemed to have reached its conclusion, that she could finally observe the point of this new development.

***

Lynx was hungry. Very hungry. She followed her instincts that seemed to tell her, that she should go to the new hunting grounds with denser mana in the air. At first it even seemed like a great idea with the purer form of the delicious mana flowing out of the back of her nesting grounds. Yet the longer she stayed here the more vexing her prey became. They seemed to constantly know what was going on around them, and even if she could corner a young one, others would appear and work together to fight her off. No matter how strong she grew or how sharp her claws became, against a group of 5 prey working together she had to retreat to try another day.

Her frustration with the teamwork of the prey grew with each day until it started to manifest itself in a constantly growing headache which only worked to increase her irritation with her inability to catch more prey. With each day that passed the pangs of hunger in her belly grew worse and worse.

Her headaches kept growing and even her whiskers started to become extremely sensitive to any stimulus, that she at first didn’t even notice when she developed a new sense from her whiskers. There seemed to be a tang of something in the air whenever she came close to one of the prey, that got thicker to the point of almost physically hindering her when her prey started coalesce into bigger groups.

This almost physical hindrance started to increasingly annoy her. She was prowling close to what she thought was an isolated young one when this new sense suddenly blanketed her again and her prey started to turn to flee up the side of the cliff she was standing on. Entirely fed up by the almost physical blanket descending around her, she angrily pushed against it. To her surprise her constant headache actually lifted, and a wave of mana passed out from her whiskers, disrupting the sensation she felt between the goats and freezing them in place from the mental backlash. Almost lazily Lynx pounced on the frozen youngling, finally managing to catch a break, happily carrying her catch back to her nesting grounds.

With the disappearance of her headache she could finally rest and with her new method of hunting, she also had a counter to the prey’s annoying method of fighting her off as a team. She was so happy she didn’t even notice that with the disappearance of her headache she also had a new contact in her mind that felt like what she remembered from her mother’s embrace when she was young. Lynx just pushed that feeling to the side as a side-effect from the headache being gone.