Chapter Seven

Three, tangentially located in the alley behind Pa Pa Jiang’s Chinese Restaurant, New York City, Day 40

About a month later, Three had built a dozen simple rooms and appended them to its second floor, channeling just enough mana into Ms. Winters and the rat to sustain them in place of food, which Three totally lacked a supply of. What its new rooms did offer it though, was an abundance of mana, making it ready to enhance its creatures in preparation of sending them out to gather creatures.

Diverting his attention to the entrance of its dungeon, Three was surprised to see that they had completely failed to channel the ambient mana, making no progress on their own. “Why haven’t you channeled any mana?” it asked.

Both returned impressions of confusion, they didn’t understand what channeling was, just that they had somehow not become hungry in the meantime. This was a setback for Three, as it meant it had to at least initiate all attempts to improve these creatures, and in all likelihood, others as well. On the other hand, that meant the creatures would be unlikely to advance just from Three’s mere presence, reducing the chances of the threat against it increasing over time.

With that happy thought, Three was left hoping that one day its creatures would pick up the ability to channel for themselves. Over the following day, it focused as much of its mana flow as it safely could into each of the creatures, just below the level where they got mana poisoning, focusing on skirting the fine line of mana poisoning in them both occupied a surprisingly large amount of its focus, preventing it from really monitoring the results until it was done.

The rat had grown immensely, now almost five times its original size, its short and flexible limbs had grown stronger and sturdier, its fur was now thicker and rougher, more like bristles than soft fur, overall, Three got the impression the rat had diverged from a quick scout into more of a brutish tank. On the other hand, Ms. Winters had only tripled in size in comparison to his original size, but that meant he was half again larger than the rat, his fangs and claws were proportionally larger than before, his orange tabby pattern had increased in contrast, developing darker stripes on a lighter, sandy base coat, but his overall construction hadn't changed much, still lean and predatory.

Excited at the fact that they had progressed well, Three praised them happily, “You guys have advanced well, do you think you can handle the outside now?”

The rat sent back a mental impression of uncertainty, but Ms. Winters sent back a strong, confident impression. Three was sure that Ms. Winters probably wasn’t capable of judging the issue, but enjoyed the confidence. When Three inquired of the rat as to why it was uncertain, all it could communicate was the impression of being different than it was, which three took to mean it just didn’t know. In that case, no shame giving it a shot, Three thought.

After spending about half an hour to expand the entrance so that there was a path in and out, the pit was moved behind its security tunnel instead of where Three’s new ramp was. Then, Three told them, “Okay, I’d like you to go out and scout, see how you can take it outside now. If you can, stay as hidden as you can, and bring back as many creatures and samples as you can, safely.”