Chapter Six

Three, tangentially located in the alley behind Pa Pa Jiang’s Chinese Restaurant, New York City, Day 8

Barely an hour had passed since Three had relinquished its miasma pool to its creator, and since it emptied as fast as it filled, Three had no chance to use it now. At the moment, it was stretching out some corridors between its second floor rooms, creating curving and intersecting loops designed to lead invaders back to earlier rooms in the floor, starting at the beginning and slowly expanding it toward the end of the floor. At the moment, it was expanding between its second and third rooms on the second floor, but the telltale signs of another incoming conversation from its creator distressed it.

Three tried to ignore the conversation, but then the conversation connected beyond its control and then its creator was talking, “Three, you are a terrible dungeon, a complete disgrace! Was that really all the miasma you had? Are you really just on your second floor? How pathetic of a dungeon are you?”

Surprised at the rush of vitriolic insults being hurled at it, Three was too stunned to respond, “I thought so!” she exclaimed, as if Three’s silence proved her point, and then a sickly sweet tone entered her voice, “So, I thought of something wonderful, that’s going to help you, oh, so, much.”

Instantly, the only thing that Three could think of as being helpful came to mind, and blurted it out, excitedly, “You’re going to give me my miasma back?”

“Of course not!” she snapped, aggressively, before returning to her sickly sweet tone, “I’m going to give you some direction, so you know what to do, and are no longer confused.”

“Confused? You’re going to explain why you need miasma?” Three asked, trying to follow the thread of conversation.

“You really are stupid aren’t you?” she needled, then gave an exasperated sigh and continued, “Here, your guidance. You are no longer allowed to build traps or corridors, and no more wasteful mazes.”

Three was horrified at the thought, “Please, creator, I’m begging you, if I don’t have those there’s no way I’ll even survive!”

Its creator laughed, her cheerful tone making Three wish it could feel sick, “Oh, you’d better, you have to conquer humanity after all!” and ended the connection in the middle of another bout of laughter, all while Three just had to pause and figure out what, exactly, it could do.

In the end, without creatures, Three’s first thought had been to make up for them with mazes and traps, slowing and dissuading their progress. The inability to make corridors was just another blow, as they were an efficient way to construct those mazes and space out rooms and floors. In the absence of more traps and mazes, Three’s only real delaying tactic was to make a large number of rooms, and perhaps give the rooms innate obstacles, such as slopes or difficult terrain, but it didn’t know where terrain ended and traps began, so it would ultimately have to find out with the flash of pain signifying it couldn’t do what it was doing. Exasperated, Three began to build out its fourth room on its second floor, its half-finished corridors now condemned to be dead ends.

As Three was working on building its fifth room on its second floor, it was surprised to get its first invaders: a rat and a cat, which had been struck by several of its pit spikes, which made it feel better. Usually insects would be drawn first, being small life forms, they should’ve been attracted before larger creatures like those that had appeared in Three’s dungeon. At the same time, it appeared the rat would be suitable prey for the cat, so it was likely that their chase brought them to its dungeon instead of the natural lure.

The cat was almost dead, and if the cat had the misfortune to die, then Three would be compelled to provide the resulting miasma to its creator. The very thought of that was frustrating, and so Three decided it would be best to take over the creatures and make them its first monsters; even though doing so would be horrendously inefficient, it would be far better than giving their miasma to its creator.

Focusing on the cat, Three began to gather mana and focus on channeling it into the cat, sustaining it through its injuries while it diverted some of its focus and mana to a sorcery to lift the cat and move it to the floor beside the pit>. Three didn’t want to risk failing, so it had to divert its entire mana flow into the two magics, making sure to divert overflow from the sorcery into the channeling, helping to keep the cat alive. That meant that it ultimately worked, but about halfway through three lost control on directing the channel, causing the cat to naturally pick up the slack.

By the end of the process, the cat wasn’t in its original state, it appeared maybe half again larger, though it was thinner now, seemingly fit. Most significantly, the cat appeared significantly younger, and healthier, all traces of its wounds gone. Three decided to consider those results, and compare them to the results of other creatures it obtained, as they may prove to be the standard effect of unregulated channeling, or something else.

Three then tried to claim the creature, to override his mana with Three's own, except that was already the case? That was deeply surprising to Three, why don’t creatures have their own mana? He wondered, then proceeded to ‘claim’ the cat, to tell the mana within the cat that it belonged to Three once again, and then he began a telepathic connection with the cat, “Hello, my name is Three, what is your name?”

Rather than talk back, the cat sent back a memory of a childish voice saying “Ms. Winters,” apparently the creature wasn’t quite smart enough to outright talk for itself, though it could understand to a point, something Three would have to work on.

Three then instructed Ms. Winters, “Catch the rat, but don’t kill it, I want you to pin it down.”

Ms. Winters obviously was excited at the challenge, and sprung after the rat in a pounce, though he missed, then ran after it. The rat was actually quite a good dodger, running along walls and dodging under or around Ms. Winters, tricking the cat into running into the wall, several times before Ms. Winters finally pinned the rat down, quickly sending an eager impression to Three, who responded with a “good job.”

It had taken long enough for Ms. Winters to catch the rat that Three now had enough mana to channel it into the creatures again, though not nearly as much as it had already spent the first time. Regardless, it split the mana between Ms. Winters and the rat, letting them both naturally channel it.

The result of this was surprisingly as expected, both grew larger, though the relatively mana spare rat almost doubled in size while Ms. Winters maybe grew a fraction of an inch, probably due to its already existing large natural volume of mana at the present. It was only slightly harder for Three to claim the rat.

Now officially in control of its first creatures, Three inquired “What do you know of the outside of here?”, getting two very different responses: the rat imagined a toxic hellhole nothing would enter if it had a choice; Ms. Winters just imagined an alley, a dirty stone passageway. Three wondered at the difference, but then realized that Ms. Winters had been in pretty awful condition to begin with, and might not have noticed in its chase, “Did you not notice the conditions?”

Ms. Winters sent out a sense of uncertainty, so, no he probably didn’t know the conditions. If it really was so toxic outside, how would Three build its population of creatures? All it had was two males of different species and no access to miasma. The only option Three had was to hope it was possible to improve its creatures to the point they could serve to bring it more, and would at the same time improve as defenders, the cat and rat Three had seen would be poor defenders against most foes, but if it could develop them into monsters then they may serve well.

First, however, Three thought, I need to expand, and I need to improve them some more, no point if they don’t make it back, and got to work.