It was the threads, the bloody threads, It couldn’t be anything else! But what about them exactly? I tried making them thicker, wove more soul essence into them but nothing worked, at least not until I started to combine them and thread them together while making them thicker slowly.

That seemed to do the trick and things just kinda worked from there, well, the Ratling didn’t explode at least.

If it worked was yet to be seen. The soul and core seemed stable too, the entire enchantment seemed to take on a life of its own, slowly accommodating to the Ratling’s metaphysical space.

Time to test it!

I condensed a ball of water the size of a basketball and sent it flying towards the Ratling’s real boy while keeping an eye on his metaphysical one. The ball of water splashed against the Ratling and the threads of soul essence within it flared up just before contact, shifting to resemble the water resistance thread within the core of the enchantment just as the water made contact.

They slid off harmlessly, dripping to the floor and evaporating a second later after I reabsorbed it.

Success!

It was interesting to see how it worked, and how it accomplished what I wanted it to. I never pondered too deeply about how my previous enchantments worked, just that they did. This was eye-opening, to say the least.

It made me want to compare the two, just to see how different they were. That would have to come later though, when I had a proper room designed for testing only, which shouldn’t be too far off.

Now that I knew that one part of the enchantment was working I was going to assume that the others will too, hopefully that was the case. I copied it then moved on, it was time to try something new: multi-layered weave enchantments.

Technically I had already done that if one considered different resistance threads a separate enchantment on their own, which they technically were but I refused to see them as such, as it all came together to make a single enchantment with a single purpose.

If one wanted to get technical a more suitable term for them would be modules. Anyway, it was time to layer another enchantment on top of this one.

Wait, wouldn’t it be better to modify the Ratling to replicate what I wanted with biology instead of just using magic to insta fix it? That would be cheaper, and I could compensate for my lack of knowledge at key points with magic!

That's what I did when I willed them to have abilities at the cost of soul essence, I think, still wasn’t sure. Now I had two more things to test and compare, the list just kept on getting longer!

I spawned another Ratling and pulled some soul essence from my pool and sent it towards the Ratling with all the jaw extending enchantment, just much more detailed this time.

I also included the new version of the upgraded Ratling I had in mind. Its body instantly shifted as its jawline and mouth elongated, growing out a few inches and fur fell off its body as lean but defined muscles spun themselves into existence. Dark and bark-like skin followed shortly after. Popping sounds rang out within the confines of the first floor as bones shifted, broke apart and rearranged themselves.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

I blinked, then looked inside and saw even more changes. Cells unspooled themselves from soul essence and shifted, growing agitated and energetic as they shifted and moved under the command of my soul essence, tissue bloomed, huge sections of some organs simply dissolved, replaced by the newly formed tissue.

The bones within its mouth were particularly special, composed of a Rokacrystal, bone and iron composite. The cells within marrow had tiny crystalline structures too, also made from the same stuff.

Holy bread, you could do this?

I never expected to discover a new method of making changes to monsters while experimenting with enchantments. This made my previous method of simply willing changes into being seem extremely inefficient now, the more you know I guess.

I never expected the extremely wide jaws enchantment to completely shift the biology of the Ratling to better use the ability. Was this the right way of modifying creatures for dungeons? It made sense, I never wondered if there was another way though, simply because I could just make it work magically, incompatibility and logic be damned.

With a bit of soul essence even biology couldn’t do much to me!

Anyway, this was very enlightening, it explained why my previous method of making custom creatures required so much manual work from me. I could portion off a part of my mind that could make minute adjustments and basically mimic the process I just witnessed but why would I do that?

This was the superior way, and I would be using it going forward. Why didn’t I try this before? I felt dumb but in my defense I had a lot of stuff to do and this world kept on bombarding me with stupefying things, like that magical city for example.

Such a thing defied reason and logic but so did I, it shouldn’t be too surprised that such things were indeed possible. Then there was the pesky group of adventurers that came, clapped my Ratlings, got ready to clap my boss then chickened out.

I still found the entire experience very amusing, though I didn’t get access to spatial magic or the insane healing potions they had. I was still happy for the materials that I did get.

Anyway, back to experimenting.

Where was I? Ah, the upgraded Ratling, the metaphysical space of this Ratling was empty, which was interesting. The enchantment had thoroughly woven itself into the biological makeup of it, which was very interesting to say the least.

The sheer complexity of it all boggled my mind, I could feel very, very thin threads of soul essence entangled with everything, down to the atom.

This was really meticulous, more than I could ever be, unless I got an upgrade.

My mind immediately began spinning other ideas, what if I used this method with more than one enchantment? Would they clash or would it manifest as more altered biology?

Only one way to find out!

I shifted my attention from the upgraded Ratling and spawned another base one. Then I pulled an even larger blob of soul essence from my pool and bombarded with what I wanted. This Ratling should be tough, resistant to harmful elements, agile and strong.

Just to be on the safe side I pulled out another sizable blob of the stuff and combined them, then shoved it into the physical body of the Ratling.

Flesh melted away and gave way to muscle tissue but that soon dissolved too until only a pristine skeleton remained. I was creeped out by the fact that the Ratling had only two organs which was the brain and eyes. It made sense though, organs were a weakness I wouldn’t allow, the brain and eyes were already soft and delicate enough.

The brain was an integral part of their makeup though, as that was where the soul settled and operated the vessel from. The eyes were more of an axillary part but still important.

Anyway, what was this?

Had I failed? Was this too much soul essence? Did I need more conductible materials?

The skeleton then shifted and I paused as I sensed my dungeon instincts pulling knowledge from my pattern database, from the section related to Steel, Rokacrystal, and Iron.

I felt like I could cut it off at any moment and I was going to just do that until I sensed a change within the skeleton. The ball of soul essence I pushed into the Ratling exploded outward, unspooling into what looked like trillions of threads that began to rapidly weave a blood-red alloy of steel, Rockacrystal and iron over the skeleton.

Holy cow!

It was coated within the stuff in mere seconds, then I felt a tug on my pattern database again, the feeling split and I felt two more tugs, one pulling on my knowledge of plants, materials and animals and the other going into the makeup of the EmberTree bark.

A pink, stretchy and robust membrane filled with microscopic holes wove itself around the brain of the Ratling a second later, followed by the spontaneous appearance of muscle tissues around key parts related to movement.

Dark and wood-like flesh sprang into being a second later, covering up the exposed skelton. A round pink fleshy organ with extending tendrils grew out the space within its ribcage, then its entire body filled up with a white, creamy-like liquid.

The tendrils of the fleshy organ then exploded in growth, connecting to all the newly opened pores within the Ratling’s skin.

There was a wet splashing sound as the eyes of the Ratling manifested, multi-colored and wild, even without a soul.

What sort of creature did I accidentally make, dear god?