I followed Nicau as he went back to his den.

We had picked our conversation back up, discussing the various powers of Calarata—not in quite the detail I would have wanted, unfortunately. It turned out that being a… pigeoncatcher meant little more than having some ammo to bribe a dungeon. He had not been even remotely well-connected. Ah well.

But you didn't have to be royalty to understand magic.

Most those in Calarata were vagabonds and drifters, desperados in search of a lawless place to hawk wares or do the jobs no one else wanted to do. Fitting, really, that I'd landed here. These were the types that would have stolen my hoard; the vicious little bastards who didn't care if there was a sea-drake sitting on top of the silver as long as it was silver. The Dread Pirate had simply been the boldest.

I'd been challenged before, of course. There was always some young princeling looking to start a kingdom, or a commoner determined to win the heart of some royalty, or a wizard hunting for ingredients to some spell. They had all perished.

I shoved the thoughts down before they could go anywhere more… unpleasant.

But my previous assumptions were mostly correct. Two types of magic users, enhancers and casters. Mages swore themselves to one element, wizards to none, priests to a specific deity. All standard wear.

Calarata, in particular, was for adventurers. Mages were more common, because there was less need for a general purpose alright-with-everything when you were building adventuring parties. They needed precision and a small window of things done right. Thus, mages.

Nicau did mention plenty of people with shadow specific powers and damage prevention enhancers. Lovely.

But he wasn't a trained magic user, no matter the power now awake in his chest. So he could only offer me tidbits and make me think of greater threats.

So I watched him, hovering intangibly above his shoulders as he padded back into the kobolds' den. The chieftess greeted him with a warble but didn't stand up, staring with furrowed scales at the pile of mangrove sticks in front of her.

Ah. I'd interrupted him trying to show them fire for our talk.

Well, that was a little incorrect; they'd already seen fire a handful of times before, whenever he'd managed to spin and twist it into existence, but it wasn't a precise thing, and even less so now that he was trying to teach them how to do it. Already kobolds gnawed into charred corpses or used charcoal-covered spears to draw meaningless symbols of the wall, one fresh-hatched kobold stared with wide amber eyes into the fire burning at the back of the cave. They hadn't let it run out yet, too nervous, and the mangroves were getting picked dry of any branch they dropped. Soon they would have to start cutting them down.

I couldn't wait to see what happened there.

The chieftess hissed, claws wrapping around two sticks as she scraped them against each other, trying to whip up the little ember she'd seen Nicau make. He warbled back, the language still primitive enough I couldn't immediately understand it, and sat next to her; half a dozen other kobolds, the oldest and strongest, shifted closer. This would be a lesson for them all.

But they were learning.

Back when I had first selected the schema, it had mentioned how they made up for their diminutive size with their intellect and traps. And now that I understood how powerful it was to have a schema start intelligent, I could see how well they were progressing. I would shove my own hand into the mix soon, because as nice as fire-sharpened spears were, I wanted them to use my iron veins to make weapons, but they were moving along. Moving pleasantly along.

Before long, I knew that they would be true threats. Which was exactly the sort of thing I'd been hoping for, thank you kindly.

For now, I watched Nicau sit and teach the kobolds, whipping his own pair of sticks at each other until smoke curled against the air in pale tongues. Only fire-drake descendants were around him, the few forest-drake and rock-drakes I'd managed to shape busy elsewhere. Maybe this would help them unlock their latent fire abilities.

Not that I particularly wanted fire-drakes over sea-drakes, but I'd take what I could get at this point. Already some were close to evolution, pushing through the handicap of being on a higher floor with less ambient mana. I found myself very intrigued as to what they could become.

Rihsu was a fluke, I knew that. Her deep maroon-purple scales didn't match any dragon patterning that I knew, and I guessed it was because it was a mixture of her previous scarlet combined with Seros' blue-green. It was less her own species and more an indicator of her unwavering loyalty. But the others wouldn't be like that; they were more classic kobolds, worshiping the dragons but not close enough to swear to one.

Would more swear to Seros, if he interacted with them? Hm.

Probably. I didn't particularly want that.

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He wasn't even a dragon.

I still considered it terribly rude that I hadn't had any kobolds.

My bitching and moaning lasted as I left the kobolds' den, flying out to my other floors; on the fifth, the greater pigeons and baterwauls had been in merry battle with the swarming wasps, each side losing just about as many numbers as I could maintain. The eye-blight butterflies had finally finished their metamorphosis, turning into delicate, gossamer-winged things absolutely covered in eyes. An exorbitant amount of eyes, really.

Over a dozen stood on their wings, every different shape and hue; anything to make them look similar to a creature. And their fuzzy antennae burned with psychic power, ready to make any fools who dared look in their direction pay.

I'd had the lovely opportunity to watch one of them snag the attention of a burrowing rat, hypnotizing it to walk merrily off the edge of an island and plummet to its death. Glorious.

And speaking of rats, actually—one of the points of awareness I'd kept on watch on the fourth floor finally reacted, tugging at my attention until I darted off in its direction.

About damn time.

I had waited long and hard for this stubborn little change in dietary requirements.

Five burrowing rats had finally gotten over whatever stagefright I had to assume they had, finally listening to the elder mage ratkin. Because she was right. It had taken far too long for the little pissants beneath her to realize that.

But now they all stood, hunched awkwardly in one of the little dens of the stone jungle. The horned serpent still lurked outside, slithering around with her ever-growing armada of reptiles; the twin crowned cobras had been precious additions. Though their full potential was limited by the cramped tunnels of the Jungle Labyrinth, they could kill at a far greater range than others, and that meant more meals with less loss of life. Precisely what the horned serpent was interested in.

And it was a testament to her that even though they were technically on her level, being once-evolved luminous constrictors, they didn't dare challenge her.

The horned serpent was in charge. This was known.

Just one more evolution for me, and I'd be granting her a Name. She'd well deserved it.

But for now, I focused on the five burrowing rats who had all lined up, noses twitching and eyes cautious. Before them, the mage ratkin had taken time from her busy schedule to gather precious gems from their surroundings, cluttering them together in a mana-filled pile. Most were jadestones, rippling with floral mana, but I could see the others I'd learned to shape; sapphires, rubies, rose quartz, citrine.

No diamonds. As generous as she was being, my lovely little mage ratkin was not going to give up a collector of raw mana. No, that was for her and her alone.

I appreciated that. Helped me keep track of how smart she was.

She rose on her back paws, towering over her lesser brethren even with her hunched back; with a squeak, she waved a paw at the pile of gems, whiskers twitching. They needed to pick if they were going to evolve.

I slid my points of awareness forward like a hatchling ready to pounce.

One of them, the largest and most confident, padded right up to the cluster and started nosing his way through, sniffing curiously at the mana filling the air. He reached out with his little ratty paws and picked up a piece of jadestone, also the largest and brimming with mana. His eyes flicked to the mage.

Little suck up. What was he hoping for here?

Bolstered, the others moved forward, pawing at the gems. A female with a half-missing tail picked up the single chunk of rose quartz, hugging it tight to her chest, the scar over her tail white and scaly. A quiet male with darker fur than the rest selected a sliver of jet, sniffing at it with thoughts full of subterfuge. Two siblings, their familial bond somehow surviving even on the lower floors full of danger, grabbed an opposing pair of sapphires and rubies, eyeing each other.

The mage ratkin churred her approval, nudging them all into a line. She glanced up, locking gazes with one of my points of awareness. I stared back.

Oh, I appreciated any of my creatures that had a decent mana sense.

She looked back to her followers, and mimicked bringing the stone to her mouth. The others, with only a touch of hesitation that she'd been beating out of them over the past week, swallowed their gemstones whole.

Light bloomed.

Your creature, a Burrowing Rat, is undergoing evolution!

Please select your desired path.

Ratking (Uncommon): Commander of the lesser rats, it uses its long and powerful tail to bind them to its will, forcing all those in the vicinity to serve it with reckless abandon whether their lives are kept or lost.

Arcane Ratkin (Rare): Harnessing various gems, this creature uses its growing skills to command mana as it pleases, choosing from its collection of jewels for which it wants to use at any given moment. Though it has no specializations, it can use any attuned mana-gem, given they are full.

Mage Ratkin (Rare): Unlike its arcane brethren, this creature chooses a specialization in only one branch of mana, and can now generate their own attuned mana to use as they see fit. As they study and train, their power can grow to be reminiscent of a true mage.

Ah. Glorious options. As happy as I was with the armoured jawfish, I did dearly love getting to choose.

Not that there was much of a choice, this time. Ratking was still something I was decidedly uninterested in, given that my rats were already competitive enough to whip themselves into strength without needing a king overhead. No need to install more interfighting than was already there. They had enough of a problem fending off predators.

And so it came back to the same debate as last time—arcane or mage? Both were deeply appealing; but it came down to the jewels. I only had so many, and as shown with the pitch-shark, they were extremely useful as a backup plan in case all my ambient mana was sucked away. Letting the rats use them all would deplete that valuable resource.

And, well. I loved my current mage ratkin. I wouldn't mind for her to gain an army behind her.

So I reached into the minds of her five underlings, pressing soothing mana as their stomachs tried rather desperately to reject the inedible lump currently powering their mana channels. It wasn't an easy thing—they were biological creatures and gemstones were decidedly not—but I was a dungeon, and I was much more stubborn than they were.

The jewels took root, and the mage ratkin evolution began.