There was still a lot to do after Kanva and the two big kids left. I hadn’t expect work so soon but I can’t really complain. Compared to Fravit, Kanva provided 10 times the dungeon points and 100 times the mana. I could use a little more work on my first dangerous level, considering how little actual monsters I had.

It’s a mix of an upside down forest environment, with a hilly and snowy terrain. To begin with, cats should be pretty comfortable here. Let’s try something here.

Going through the saved patterns, I pull up the cat. Then I essentially stretch it out until it’s jaguar sized. It’s not particularly difficult but the mana expenditure certainly goes up. Adding and adjusting muscles for the larger frame is a bit of a hassle though. After making a few of them and making small adjustments, I was pleased to see them climbing the trees and leaping from limb to limb without much problem.

Then one that’s a little more tricky. I pull up a snake pattern and a bird pattern. I carefully add only the wings to the back of the snake. The wings do not like being attached to a cold blooded animal. I had to pump a serious amount of mana into the creature after creating it to keep it from dying. It eventually seemed to evolve? Near the implant site, scales were pushed aside and feathers grew out in between. I had to add even more mana into its monster core until it was able to use a bit of wind magic to help it fly. It wasn’t particularly agile, but let’s make a few of them and see if anything comes of it. What’s the difference between a dragon and a reptile with wings right?

….

Heeeeey. It might cost a good deal of mana but I wonder …

Once the idea got stuck in my head, I couldn’t help but start messing about with various animals. Millipede legs on a snake was surprisingly easy. Small wounds I guess, so it only took a little bit of mana to make it viable and not like, die. More difficult was things like adding more eyes to things, like a kitty. Adding non biological material was way beyond that. I mean, it was easy for things like a metal snail shell, but replacing my antelope scales and insect exoskeletons with metal turned out to be pretty tough. I was actually stuck until I realized the iron bark trees that incorporate metal was pretty much what I was looking for. Not that I ever want to try to mix plants and animals ever again. It took some serious refining to get anything decent. On the plus side I made a nice pond in our living area with real gold scaled fish and they look really pretty.

I guess I lost myself a little. Sometimes I get stuck on an interesting problem and just throw myself at it. As they say, something’s gotta give. I spent more mana than I really wanted to. Glad my dungeon territory covers a large enough area to give me a decent amount of mana every day.

Lastly my dungeon points. I have more now, but all the interesting things took exponentially more points to buy. For now I purchase juvenile forest nymphs. They look like bunches of sticks and vines and leaves that form a general shape of a child. They aren’t particularly strong, but they’re good at taking care of the plants. They can use minor nature spells as well. When I created some of them, they strangely enough had no problems standing upside down on the root covered roof. Well. Whatever. I let them do their own thing. Interestingly, it seemed that they like to nurse from a tree with sweet sap. They could be considered the first humanoid monsters I have but… Well it seems they still act and think like animals. To help them out, I try inserting a monster core into several of the trees and adding mana, but I don’t know if anything happened or not. Seems it’s not that easy to just make treants.

I’ll also buy slimes. A bit cliche, but they are useful. They are these semi-clear semi-pastel colored blobby boys. For a professional, it probably wouldn’t be very hard to hit or remove that monster core just floating in the middle. Welp they don’t cost very much mana to make so it’s easy to make a bunch of them. Let’s throw a few into those fishing ponds, a few on the upside down forest to drop down on people, a few crawling through the snow, and just some easy to spot ones crawling around on the ground. Gotta give the adventurers some easy to spot things to distract them. Well, for now there’s not much challenge though. Hopefully I can get something big and strong for people to confront face on soon.

----------------------------------------

Through the next couple of weeks, I played around with researching my new little creations. Funny how even if they’re a part of me, they’re still their own selves and have lots of interesting things we have to find out in person.

Slurp glorp plurp

…

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Shlurp grop glrpppp

This is both disgusting and oddly satisfying. Saeri and I was sitting there poking a slime. It more or less had the consistency of… well… slime. It could somewhat change its consistency but it’s mostly just a ball of slime.

I feed the slime a rock and watch it slowly dissolve. It seems like the inside can get pretty acidic but it can also control where it’s acidic since it doesn’t damage our hands while the rock is dissolving. Of course we didn’t just start by sticking our hands in.

[Saeri] Yah! No. Bad slimey.

Slimes also have some minor shapeshifting it seems. It can form tendrils and tentacles, but it doesn’t have very good control nor a strong grip. For example, this one is slowly wrapping itself around Saeri’s leg.

[Eita] No you don’t. That’s a little too advanced for her ok? Behave yourself until adventurers come.

I don’t really know if it can think per se, but after I unwrap it from Saeri’s leg, it seems to be content to just sit there.

[Eita] Well. Off you go. I’m sure you don’t have to wait too much longer for someone to play with.

Splrt glop plrp

As the slime moves away, I go ahead and ask a young forest nymph take a little extra time to get here.

[Eita] There there. You might have gotten a little confidence but you’re still weak to surprises huh.

[Saeri] I-it’s not my fault. It was cold and slimy and weird.

[Eita] Oh? We could probably make one nice and warm for you. Want me to heat one up to body temperature for you to play with?

[Saeri] No! And it would still be slimy and weird! Look. The nymph is here. Wouldn’t you rather play with it instead?

[Eita] Too bad. I bet we could have gotten one to evolve to be nice and warm for you too. Oh well. Come here little nymph.

The little bundle of sticks and leaves came closer. It’s like somebody made an effigy of a human but didn’t have any thumbs and also only vaguely knew what a human looks like. Only with my mana sight can I tell that it’s basically a bunch of stuff being moved by mana coming out of it’s monster core.

The core is in it’s chest, not it’s head. Or rather it’s ‘head’. What would is it’s head is basically like a ball of yarn, but made of vines. It doesn’t seem to really care which way is front and back though. It doesn’t have like feet or hands or a face. The nymph also seems as comfortable walking forwards as backwards.

The thing is only about a foot or two high. I… don’t think it speaks but it seems to be able to mimic various animal noises. They definitely are social creatures, making groups and running along the roof of the upside down forest, making all sorts of chirping noises. Sometimes you feel like they’re just kids running around, but most of the time they seem like a group of birds or some other animal..

Speaking of running around the forest, it’s not like they can fly…

[Eita] Hey, can you stand upside down on this branch here?

[Nymph] chireak

It did a little jump. I’m… not sure how it does that without actual knees but it did. As it did so, little thin vines grew out of its feet and the branch. The vines intertwined and seemed to shrink, pulling the little nymph right up to the branch.

[Saeri] Huh. Is that their innate nature magic?

[Eita] I… suppose?

As they are moving about, we could see the vines quickly break and reform. What a mysterious little thing.

[Eita] Right… Well off you go. Your friends are waiting it seems.

[Saeri] And lastly …

Hssss

A snake glides in. This one has bat wings and many sharp centipede legs.

[Saeri] Here we go. Come here little snake.

I shiver a little as I watch it crawl up Saeri’s arm instead of slithering.

[Eita] I don’t know how you’re ok with that but not the slime. It’d be fine if it was a slime or snake or a bat, but the feeling of hundreds of little legs…. Ugh.

Saeri clearly looked confused as she proceeded with the inspection.

[Saeri] But it’s like solid and dry and doesn’t feel icky?

[Eita] Ugh. Whatever you say. Let’s just keep going ok?

[Saeri] Don’t listen to her little snake. You’re not creepy at all. Now let’s see. Bug legs attached strongly : check. Ease of movement : check. Flying ability : … Not so much. Just gliding huh. Well keep trying and I’m sure you’ll get there. Magic : . . . None. It would be really helpful if you learned wind magic though. I’m sure that Vance uses it to help his flight too. Well, slow and steady I guess.

[Eita] Welp. I think we’re done here. Just one last test. Practice flying ok ?

I pick up the weird creature and, to get that creepy feeling of insect legs squirming around my hand off me, quickly chuck the thing like a toy plane.

[Saeri] Ah! What did you do that for?

[Eita] Oh just to see if we can help it get used to flying. It’ll do fine. Probably.

And so it did. After ascending to a suitable height, it spread it’s wings and started flapping and gliding. I’m glad it did. I didn’t really want to hurt it per se. I mean it is still technically connected to me and a part of me. But I did want it out of here and not have Saeri be mad at me. After doing a few loops and rolls in the air, it finally glided to a stop amongst the branches. Luckily for me, Saeri forgot all about being mad after that little aerial display.

[Eita] Good. Projectile test : Check. Time to call it a day.