You can’t imagine how excited I am. Even without any knowledge of how childbearing works for rabbits, I can tell that it is about to happen. She has been holed up in her den since yesterday and hasn’t moved much since.

Subtly, I have been focusing mana into the rabbit hole so that the new rabbits will have a better start at life. At least, that is what I hope the effects will be.

This will also give me a chance to verify that my assumption on the baseline mana usage of rabbits is correct. I also want to confirm that just as with grass, baby rabbits don’t take any of the aspects from its parents.

My current rabbits have had no problems finding food not have had any issues with predators. Besides occasionally having to flee from the spider stalker, they have led a comfortable life, and it shows in mana distribution.

Right now by far the majority of mana flows towards increasing the size of the rabbits. I will call these rabbits, rabbit eaters. As the only thing they are really built for right now is eating.

I will keep my current rabbit eaters as a class but tweak them to be more adaptable. Right now, about thirty-five percent of all mana taken is used for growing larger. Being larger is useful in these environments as that means more can be eaten which again leads to more mana being absorbed and a cycle is started.

However, as I want more rabbits that will have to survive in different environments, I will send some of that mana flow to blood vessels to make them more disease resistant. I will also expand the current to the fur to expand defensiveness and stomach so that more types of food can be eaten.

I will also reduce mana flowing to the eyes, ears, and nose as I expect these rabbits to be unable to avoid predators anyway.

These rabbit types will thrive in environments which are deficient in food sources, but therefor also lack predators. They can eat almost anything, but they are sitting ducks to any hunter around.

For a second type, I want to specialize my rabbits into faster creatures. More speed doesn’t just mean that they can run away from danger, but it also means that the feeding grounds can be more expansive.

That means I won’t have to send much mana to the stomach, and growth will only be detrimental to the rabbit. I will need to expand on the hind legs as well as on the senses so it can run away whenever it senses something approaching.

For now, I will lead my rabbits to all be rabbit eaters, as I don’t want to risk one running into neighboring zones. I will keep this second path on the backburner for now.

As I watch the mother give birth, I confirm six rabbits are being born. I also confirm that for every rabbit born, five mana points are absorbed from around it. I wonder what would have happened if there was no mana around. Would the infants be born dead or maybe just much weaker?

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I also witness that the small infants immediately start absorbing mana from their surroundings. It may be close to nothing, but it means that mana does not necessarily have to be harmful to them and that I can run some experiments on them.

I plan to divide the litter into three groups. I will take one group and enhance it right from the start. I will give each of them half a mana point now and start building rabbit eaters. I will then allow them to grow as they would and see what happens.

The second group will be allowed to absorb half a mana point, while only guiding it towards the correct parts. After they have reached that level, I will then add a tenth of a mana point to their growth and see what the effects are then.

And the last group I will allow to grow as they otherwise would, except that I will guide their mana paths for them.

What I want to test here are a few things.

First of all, I will be able to verify that me enhancing and forcing mana into a living being will not adversely affect it now or its future growth. If there is a difference, the first group should not end up where the other groups are.

Secondly, I want to confirm between the second and third group that the age at which I start forcing mana into a creature has no impact on the final result.

And last I want to confirm that my new rabbit eaters are viable overall. I will be able to compare the mana that these rabbits get with the mana absorption of their previous generation.

My expectation here is that the first group will outpace the others right from the start as they should be stronger right from the start. This means that they will reach an endpoint sooner, at which point I will have to think of further specialization.

I can already foresee possibilities here. Perhaps they reach a point where they can already eat anything around, and I can lower their stomach requirements to almost nothing.

Maybe the current configuration leads to a rabbit that can barely move, or one so weak that it can’t dig a burrow anymore.

I might even have made a rabbit type that can’t have any offspring.

Without testing, it is impossible to tell.

I also need to differentiate between them. Luckily these rabbits are not going to be able to tell what I call them so I can make it easy on myself and just give them numbers.

So rabbit one and two are going to be in testing group one. Three and four will be in testing group two. And five and six will be in testing group three. Seems easy enough.

After I provide one and two with half a mana point each and guide the mana to where I want it to go, I notice immediate effects. Immediate unwanted effects.

You see, as most of the mana goes to overall growth of the rabbits these newborns are quickly growing about twenty-five percent larger than their brethren and their mother is freaking out a bit.

You would think that after ten weeks of non-stop testing and figuring things out I would at least be aware of the variables in play. But then I find out I completely missed the psychological factor.

My spiders are solitary creatures, so there is nothing around to react to rapid growth, and the spider itself is getting a power boost so it will probably feel elated.

Grass doesn’t show any emotion anyway, so I have no idea if it even reacts to the enhancements I am giving it.

Now this is the first time I am enhancing part of a social pack, and thereby I learn something new. I wonder if it just means this is something that my creatures can get used to eventually or if I need to find a way to sneakily improve animals when nothing else is looking.