There were only a few hours left till discovery so I began to prepare for discovery, pulling back the patrols of my cave wolves so they wouldn’t come into contact with the invaders at first. I can detect anything inside my territory after all so I have no need for them to act as scouts after all and I want to culture a false sense of security as well as drawing my discoverers in deeper. I changed the patrol paths of my Tyx slightly so there would be more near the blocked of sections and less by the entrance so they’re harder to discover at first, I ordered all the ambush units to be stationary and I gave the pack vipers an order to move closer to the fern patch my hammock is inside. I can’t order them to enter it and assimilate immediately as that goes against their nature however I can at least change their tendencies to be a little more aggressive for the course of the raid. In addition, I gave all my representatives a unique order. I gave Spencer the order to hide under my hammock, either to make a run for it with me in tow or to strike anyone who attempts to attack me directly. I gave Null the order to have her pack stalk the intruders, only staging small assaults whenever it seemed they were about to rest. I ordered Zhao to kill their unarmoured combatants if he had the opportunity to do so unnoticed and I ordered Jian to take the rest of the Reavers and follow slightly behind one of the large Tyx patrols while staying hidden, she was told to ‘Lead an attack when you find a good opportunity’. I was hoping to test the decision-making ability of my monsters.

Kivi and the Tunnellers, however, where a difficult group. I wasn’t sure if I wanted them to be changing the tunnel structures, I didn’t think it would have an impact when the tunnels where first being explored but at the same time it'd make good practice. In addition, I didn’t know how to order them. If I were to leave them cementing the walls, they’d be at risk of being attacked but I can't put in both a ‘stay far away from the invaders’ and a ‘cement the walls order’ at the same time. I decided to try staggering the orders. I’d give 40 an order that reads ‘Cement the walls with the cement group’, 40 I would order ‘carve out tunnels with the tunnelling group’, then I’d have 10 with the order ‘fill up useless tunnels’ and finally I'd give the last 10 the order ‘lead all the other Tunnellers away if you detect invaders’. For now, I'll make the order be for wolves instead of invaders and see if it works, I will place Kivi in the detection group in order to try and increase the ‘leadership’ that the representatives develop.

After giving out all of the orders the Tunnellers seem to separate themselves into their groups with decent enough effectiveness, I also notice that the ones order to create tunnels seem to concrete their own walls as they go. Kivi didn’t do that when I ordered it to carve through some of the rubble so maybe they decide whether or not to apply the concrete based on if they’re ‘making’ something or if they’re ‘destroying’ something? Definitely going to be useful later on at least, even if they are a little bit slower than when carving out a tunnel without cementing the walls, they’re many times faster than if they were having to cement the walls after the fact. The tunnels only being a meter tall would have been an issue but they seem to have eschewed that by grouping up into fours where they all are entwined round each as they dig like the fibres in a rope being bound round themselves.

Now for the real test, I take Vier from Sechs Eins’ pack and order him to go towards the section that all the Tunnellers are working on, as he approaches one of the patrol group raise their head and twitch slightly before letting out the characteristic warble of their kind that made you feel as if your organs had turned to jelly and were getting rearranged inside you. The Tunneller dashed backwards as more of its Kin began to follow behind and the other five on patrol did the same thing before linking up with Kivi’s horde, the sight of the Tunnellers all making a mad dash through the winding labyrinth of tunnels as a single swarm was quite honestly both horrifying and mesmerising. It was awe-inspiring. After they had made an escape and continued on for a few minutes they all abruptly scattered as one before looping back around to re-join at the cavern they had begun at. This, definitely, seemed exploitable. Not in the way where I benefit either, in the way where as soon as the adventurers realise all the Tunnellers have going for them in combat is their insane health pool they start abusing this as a tactic to farm them like livestock. I gave Kivi its order, the ability to decide the next construction location. This means Kivi isn’t on patrol anymore but if my understanding of how these orders work it's likely that the Tunnellers will start distributing themselves into these roles on their own now they know how, they’re bound to obey my orders but that doesn’t mean that they need them. I updated the orders to allow slightly more freedom for more adaptive decision making and switched the patrol target to invaders, after which I called it quits with the Tunnellers.

Now, with all my preparations in place and all my orders given it was time for... well, nothing. All I had left to do was wait, I experimented with my spells to familiarise myself with them and not waste this free time but mostly I had nothing to do. In this moment of peace, as my mind finally found itself free to think in this period of silence. For the first time in a week, I really took a moment to examine myself. I had been far too accepting of my situation for my circumstances to ever allow, I had thought that feeling of my emotions being suppressed was a part of being trapped in that void but even now I feel mostly nothing. I still have emotions; I just don’t feel trapped by them anymore. Even now, as I wait on my first encounter with the outside world, I don’t feel consumed by worry, instead only a faint anticipation. I mean, I'm going to have to kill people! That should freak me out at least a little, right?

But no matter how I think about it I feel nothing. It’s like eating meat, sure if you think too hard about it, you’ll feel a little guilty but you’ll be right back to not caring as soon as your attentions anywhere else. I just have this passive disdain towards the idea of people, it’s not as if I'm consumed by bloodlust or hatred or anything just a faint thought that ‘They’re inconvenient’ which makes me feel distasteful of them. The idea that this, just situation as a whole, is affecting how I think and feel however. That. That is horrifying, the idea of my thoughts and emotions being altered by some outside source always terrified me, I mean those two things basically are what make you, you! Without them you’re nothing, definitely a top number 1 or 2 existential dread. I suppose feeling, less. Having your emotions slightly subdued the way mines are, is the best outcome of all potential ‘Emotional Manipulations’ but I still hate it. I despise it. I wonder if it has something to do with me not having a body? I mean technically I’m just this little egg looking thing, maybe I’m not biologically developed enough for a full range of feelings yet and that’s why everything but my excitement, curiosity and anticipation are completely repressed. I wonder how I go about hatching myself then... I suppose it’s another thing I just need to wait for. My current situation I’d say is objectively superior to a more biological body but I’ll need one to properly capitalise on alteration so I suppose if I use it to fight back serious threats and also for emotional fulfilment aside from that I guess it doesn’t matter much.

I’ve got an hour left now, all my resources are at full and I’ve sent a mass rest order that will last for the next 50 minutes so all my creatures are on top form before combat, I’ve prepared barriers with a fusion from haste on all my Tyx by creating the small spell crystals but leaving them in my network, each one comes with a passive mana drain but it allows me to bypass the cast time restriction in a way since it takes over almost 2 hours for those to expire if they go unused. I’ve also prepared 20 curses and the same number of mud-binds and poison-blades, I left the curses unfused since the darkness fusions where all very vague. ‘Hex’ for fire dark, ‘Ritual’ for earth dark, ‘Scourge’ for air dark and ‘Blood’ for water dark. While what the fusion elements meant was easing enough, in fact I even got an intuitive understanding: Hex, was used to place permanent debuffs to a target as well as having some nasty damage options; Ritual allowed you to carve spells into the ground making them ‘permanent’, something of a theme with the dark fusions; Scourge was a type of soul attack magic that left lifelong damage and Blood magic was used to drain life force to power spells as well as having other effects that could forever alter someone's bloodline; either having some unique effect on their descendants, usually positive, or creating an effect that was like b-tec Alteration.

No, understanding them was easy. What I was worried about was I hadn't a clue how they effected the actual spells themselves and I was unwilling to test them on my creatures or my territory due to the whole ‘permanent’ thing. I had created on of each fusion for curse and then stopped because my entire passive mana regeneration was now being spent on maintaining spell crystals.

10 minutes left, the rest order has expired and its business as usual for the creatures who have returned to their prior instructions. I don’t have much in the way of certainty if it comes to when the exact arrival will be I need to be prepared at all times, I can keep this up for the best part of five hours before the mana drain will screw me over. Don’t want to know what happens if I hit zero with all these still active in my network... I get the feeling it would force me to make good use of my high health values. Definitely not fun.

At a total of 3 hours and 28 minutes after the timer's expiration, I finally saw movement. A group of 10, 3 in heavy armour, 3 wearing some leather or cloth and 4 in robes. The robes where a gradient of colours but mainly shades of black and grey with some dark blue in the mix, except the robe of a slightly aging man in the centre who seemed to be giving orders which was completely sky blue. The people in heavier armour all seemed to be melee combatants. One had mostly gambeson on with some metal plating spotted around to provide extra protection and carried a short spear who looked extremely dissatisfied with his situation; another was wearing full plate and carried a large tower shield as well as a small mace dangling by their side, they towered above their party being above 2m in height while standing as still as statue, slowly scanning the area; the final armoured member of the party was some kind of cheetah person, they were covered in spotted yellow fur from head to toe and held a bardiche on their shoulder and was chatting happily with one of the robed members, well more at than with since they hadn’t gotten a response for the entire time I was observing, it was also at this point I realised that I didn’t understand the language at all. It's too be expected but still disappointing, if I could learn their plans, I’d be able to counter them. Oh, blue robes seem to have gotten irked by the cats' constant nattering and is giving them a hard time over it. Actually, other than blue robes’ orders none of them seeming to be talking at all. Whelp, guess I didn’t lose much then.

Of the three in lighter armour, 2 had bows and the other one was covered in a lot of flowing black cloth that was slightly translucent and draped down from every point of her body. She seemed to be an elf of some sort due to the pointed ears and moved completely silently, a rogue archetype I’d assume, potentially a threat if she can counter stealth so I’ll try and get the vipers to focus on her. Of the two archers, one had a small composite bow reminiscent of what the Mongol's used and was leading the group whereas the other stood at the back and had what seemed to be a compound bow, the pully made of some sort of crystal and the string almost transparent. I was sure compound bows where actually a rather modern invention but I guess the presence of magic has made this worlds development completely different compared to where I first lived. The robed people seemed to separate into two groups of 2, with the leaders being a blue robe and another who wore a dull orange. I can't be sure why they’re in the groups that there in but at least I can be sure that the two who have authority are important somehow. Add them to the top priority list.

They’ve came up on one of the alcoves, this one was too far forward so I left it empty of vipers and wolves so it seems they’ve gotten lucky for their first night. I’ll have my wolves stay back, just for tonight. I’m going to deploy some of my curses as they stop to rest which will allow my mana to regenerate again, for now though. I'll just watch. As they step into the alcove the short bow and rogue search around for a while and the short bow points out a pile of rabbit droppings to her compatriots though none of them pay any mind to the panstips, afterwards most of them unpack some bedrolls or the like and turn in after a quick soup-like meal leaving 3 of their number to stand guard. I take this opportunity to deploy my curses whenever any of them fall asleep. They change guard four times during their rest; each shift having one robe, one light armour or one heavy; notably neither the blue robe or his one of the robe-pairs ever take a shift. VIPs maybe? Something like higher ranking members? Or is this an escort? Or are their abilities important enough they get priority for rest? Definitely taking note of that. After waking up none of them seem to notice the curse thankfully and they pack up before the three that didn’t take a shift start setting up all sorts of bizarre contraptions and taking notes. Researchers, I suppose. I notice most of the devices have a myriad of multicoloured crystals that all pulse with light, another point of importance. After spending near enough an hour taking notes and another discussing (arguing about) the results, one of them goes to speak with the full-plate who doesn’t respond, instead calling the rest of her party for a discussion that seemed to illicit reactions of worry, anger, excitement or enervation from its members. I guess that means the job just got worse but also better paying.

As they went about their day the researchers seemed to want to collect samples of everything, slowing their pace to a crawl and then when they encountered my first fern patch, they went ballistic. It took them nearly another hour of what seemed to teeter on devolving into a screaming match before they continued, not before harvesting an ample amount of plant life of course but they were moving again at least. By the time they spotted the first rabbit they didn’t react anywhere near as extremely however there was some definite muttered curses and after a whole day, they had only covered a 900m worth of tunnel, and that’s distance not displacement, they’re only a third of that closer to me than when they started. I had Null occupy some of the tunnels behind them to cut of their exit and made my choice. One more day, they have 24 hours till I release the peace order, I just hope they don’t choose to leave first. I need the EXP after all.