"Looks can be deceiving!"

"Take for instance, this fluffy rabbit!"

"It looks cute, bu- AHHHHHHHH! OUCH! NOOOOO!"

~Someone who didn't take the proper precautions when making a wildlife documentary. RIP Sam

I stare at the sky in horror. Then I stare at the tower intensely, spotting small dots walking around the outside of the structure. I explode my territory in the spire's direction, covering kilometers in every direction. Even downwards to some extent. I had been holding back before, but now, I wanted to know.

The closest part of my territory reached halfway to the tower, and as I fought the influx of information from expanding so much, I looked at it. I could see them much better. They certainly weren't humans of any sort. More like bipedal >>Tigers<<.

Okay. I thought. That's interesting. I continue expanding my territory closer and closer towards the tower. A bit more than an hour of expanding later, I hit an invisible barrier. It flashed with a green light and my territory gained cracks. I stopped expanding immediately. That hurt! It was like my finger (if I had any) was smashed by a hammer. I slowly filled in the cracks and expanded around the barrier. While expanding, I decided to take a look at what was going on behind the barrier.

A black and orange striped muscular tiger-man (and that's saying a lot) scanned the area where the forcefield thing was hit with glowing yellow eyes. Glowing eyes? That's weird. He raised his furry eyebrows and shouted something to a relatively skinny tiger-woman holding a staff. It was something along the lines of, "Grr grrerrr rrrr gerrer." The tiger-woman raised her staff into the air and closed her eyes. A purple glow started gathering at the top of her staff, and a second or two later, a thin beam of that light shot up to the top of the tower. She seemed really focused on doing that, so it must have been hard to do. A moment later, and she opened her eyes. They were glowing purple too. Arcs of violet electricity sparking all over her face. She brought the staff down with a boom.

My expansion, almost halfway around the barrier, stopped. My territory within a kilometre of the barrier then got dispelled like dust blown away by the wind. The tiger-woman returned to normal and nodded at the tiger-man. He grunted, slammed the butt of his spear down onto the ground and returned to standing guard.

I mentally yelled in pain. OWWWWWW!!! My mind felt like someone used it as a punching bag, then tossed it into a trash compactor. I took a few hours to calm down and for the pain to go away. I looked at the tower and at the other thousands of tiger-people that could potentially kill me with a few movements with a deep sense of despair. I will definitely stay away from there as much as I can. I thought with fear. I created a few thousand cockroaches near the tower and set them to alert me if something big happens. Just in case. I don't want to be caught off guard.

To get my mind away from that, I decided to look for dead animals to absorb to protect me. I did a brief scan of the wide open field and spotted one candidate. I mentally smiled weakly. Yeah. This will get my mind away from the terrifying tower in the distance.

~~(5 hours later)~~

Phew! Finally finished absorbing them. And WOW. They are worth a lot of Mana. I started creating one in my empty room. It took just ten minutes to do so. A pink bird appeared. It took maybe 2 T1 Mana to do that. I found it buried a metre underground in the forest. Just bones, but somehow, I recreated it with flesh too! It was a small white feathered bird. Half a metre tall. BUT! It cost a 'lot' of Mana, so it must have magic or something, right?

I order the bird to show off its special abilities. It leaps into the air and does loop de loops around the room. That's cool, but show your MAGIC abilities. The bird stops doing tricks and lands on the ground. It poofs into a big soft ball of fluff and blinks at me. Okay... I paused from the sheer amount of space it now occupied. Next! I moved the bird to my core room, ordered it to stop looking so ridiculous, and started creating the next creature.

I found the dead body in a small tunnel in the plains. I actually had to expand my territory even more down there to reach the body. Though, that was not my original intention. I just saw a long tunnel and I got excited. Anyways, 5 minutes and 1 Mana later, and the tiny snake appears. Show me what you got! I told the shimmering green snake. A masculine voice appears in my head. I mean for you to show me wha... I stopped communicating. You can speak?! I asked the snake with surprise. Huh. What other special abilities do you have? I paused. Apart from your ability to speak with your mind, that is. The snake looked upwards thoughtfully. The snake looks down in (apparent) shame. Uhh. I thought, not really knowing how to respond. No thanks. Do you have any special attacks? The snake nodded. Yeah. The snake wiggled a bit and scrunched his face up a little bit in concentration. He screamed in my mind. I instantly got a head(core?)ache and screamed back. AHHHHHH! He responded with and we just kept screaming at each other in pain. The first one to stop screaming was me. That was because I passed out.

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~~(1 minute and 27 seconds later)~~

<-ou okay? Are you okay? I am really sorry. Are you okay?> I woke up to the snake around my core and looking at me with concern in his sky blue eyes. Wha- What happened? I asked sleepily. He unwinded himself from me. That was you screaming? I asked him angrily. I don't remember much, but that was YOU?! He hid his head in his coils. Just... I sighed. Go to your room. He looked around in confusion. A hole in the side of the room appeared. There. The snake slithered through the tunnel and looked back sadly just before he reached his room. He slid into the room and curled up, softly murmuring poems and drifting off to sleep.

I stared at him. Just stared. This... I removed my focus from him and then looked at the bright side. At least I won't be alone, even if he is annoying and hard not to forgive. I stopped to think about my feelings. Instead of him being my minion, it's like he is my friend. I more closely examined my emotions. ...Or child, which I guess could be true since I DID create him. Golden red light shone throughout my dungeon and blinded me. Whats happening?! I thought with worry and fear. It slowly dissipated and what it did was... Nothing. Weird.

Hey, snake, what do you think happened? I asked him. He didn't answer. Snake? Hey, snake? I started getting really worried. I focused on his room. He was not there. All that was left was a single scale. No. I shook my core in denial. No. Nonononono. NO! I shouted and everything rumbled. My dungeon, the plains, the forest, they all shook. Crackling golden-red chains sprouted out from thin air and wrapped around me. I wiggled my core around in futility. The chains sunk in and targeted two specific things. One was the snake pattern.

ERROR! Pattern removal unauthorised!

ER- Overridden by [System Administrator]

The pattern was really stuck in there, but once the second line on the screen appeared, it easily peeled off and a bundle of chains occupied the space it was in. NOOO! The pattern got ripped to pieces by the strange mixed energy. The chains then reached into my soul. It wrapped around a particular series of memories and pulled it out. The chains then retracted to the point in the air they originated from and disappeared.

~~~~

Okay... Next! I move the bird to my-. I stopped my order. The bird was already in my core room. And it was looking at me weirdly. What? It squawked and poofed into a big ball again. I had a weird sense of deja vu. I shook my core... Couldn't do that before, and started creating the sna-. I couldn't. What?! The snake pattern disappeared! Never mind. I thought in disappointment. I'll create the next one I guess. But before I did that I noticed something. There was a tiny tunnel in the core room! And it had my territory in it too. I looked through the tunnel and found a small room. In the middle was a scale that seemed oddly similar to the scales on the disappeared snake pattern. It felt important, so I absorbed it.

Alright, next creature! Coincidentally, this creature was the first one I found. It was rather large too, compared to the others. I weaved the Mana into shape on instinctual prompts and after draining 10 T1 Mana from me, it landed heavily into the empty room. It was a cow. An average sized one too. It had horns that curved forwards like the rest, and its fur was light brown and long.

The cow blinked and lowered its head. Its mouth moved along the stone floor and stopped. It eyed a large chunk of rock sticking out from the wall. It lumbered over and bit down on the rock. The rock shattered into many pieces. I observed with surprise. I did not know it was so strong! I moved my focus over to the grass the herds of cows, or Should I call them buffaloes? They look like those buffaloes in some pictures I saw in my past life. Anyways, the buffaloes were chewing on grass. It looked like normal grass. I made a cockroach appear next to a blade of grass and ordered it to eat it. It did so easily. What could cause these buffaloes to have such strong bites then? I scanned through every herd in the plains and found the reason after a few minutes when I looked closer.

A mound of grass rose up in front of a small herd of buffaloes around 20 strong and formed into a large buffalo shape. In its eye sockets, blood red plumes of fire sparked to life. It bellowed and charged at them. The herd quickly responded by entering a formation. The 5 fastest ones surrounding the grass monster and harassing it, the 7 big muscular ones in the way of its charge, charging at it in turn, and the rest quickly getting away from the fight. All of that happened in just 2 seconds. I really have a long way to go to stand a chance against anything, don't I? I sighed. Just before the grass buffalo hit the charging buffaloes, the fast buffaloes got out of the way. Then they collided. The grass one got chunks torn out by the other's horns. The normal buffaloes also took damage. One unlucky buffalo got stabbed in the head by a grass horn which pierced right through and exited through its butt. Another buffalo got hit by the grass monster's head, well,

head on. The buffalo's head simply exploded on impact. Once the grass monster broke through the lines of buffaloes, they all gained a bright red aura centering around their jaws and their eyes turned bloodshot. They turned around, mooing menacingly, and charged from behind. The grass beast couldn't change directions fast enough and got literally ripped apart by the furious wild cows.

Well, that answers my question. I laugh nervously.

I focus my attention on the buffalo room and saw much fewer shards of rock. I also saw a much happier (and chunkier) buffalo.

Look at you! I laugh for real. You're fat! The buffalo snorted and continued eating. Heh. I look at my dungeon which consisted of two rooms and my core room, and my minions that consisted of some cockroaches and a single buffalo. I know how to improve that. I internally smirked while looking at the buffalo chewing on rock.