First thing in the morning is checking my mana pool, it gets big, bigger than the previous days, good. Second thing is to check on my little crabs, the two hatchlings and the last egg are fine, great.

Third thing is to look at the current population of my inhabitant creatures. Some bats, lots of crabs, more fishes and an enormous amount of bugs. All that is good. But I need to make sure my creatures have enough to eat in here. The bats are eating some bugs in the cavern, but are mostly taking their meal outside, so no worries. The crabs are eating the fishes, and the fishes eat the bugs and the moss, algae, and corps floating around before being automatically absorbed by me. The bugs are eating the same things as the fishes.

For now, the ecosystem can sustain itself, but as the local predators will gain strength in my dungeon, they will need more food. And since the bodies are being absorbed, the creatures can’t eat as much as before on them. I need to improve the base of the food chain, namely moss and algae, that will allow for more fishes and bugs and more food for all the local beings.

Before starting experiments with the plants, I make sure to provide my little crabs with fishes to kill and eat.

I start to focus my mana on some algae in the river’s water and soon they start to grow faster, I try the same with the moss and they grow faster as well. It seems that the plants only need some mana to grow big and fast, I won’t need to bother myself often with that, I just need to make sure every morning there is enough of it to feed all the creatures. And as the mana concentration in the air of my dungeon grows the plants should grow faster and bigger by themselves.

I have an idea. I select a little alga and quickly poor as much mana as I can on it. At first, it grows a lot and then it stops. It’s dead. I can mana poison the plants too, but they are more resistant than the animals to that method. Next, I poor mana into a patch of moss, as expected it grows a lot, but I don’t stop. I continue to infuse more and more mana in it. And as the moss expands in all directions and grows really big I start to feel a slight connection between it and me. I continue, but it doesn’t connect with me in the same manner as the crabs did, the connection is still better than with the dirt, the air or the water.

I try to infuse mana only in a part of my moss and even if it grows everywhere, it grows faster where I concentrate. It means I can guide the growth of the plants. After a few more experiments with other plants, I learned that I’m able to really direct the growth path of the plants I claim as part of my dungeon. That’s great, probably someday I’ll play with them to try to make something funny out of those plants.

Hold on a second, I just thought of something. If I’m able to infuse mana into crab eggs and plants to make them grow faster allowing me to claim them, maybe I only need to slowly infuse mana into the local adult creature to claim them. Until then I pour so much in them that they always ended up poisoned. I’ll try to infuse mana more slowly.

I pick a little fish, a harmed one, it just escaped a pincer from a stray crab. I start infusing my mana into it, but more slowly and more steadily than before. My experience with the eggs allows me to better grasp my mana control. Its injury starts to heal fast, I have seen injured fish and crabs, and they never heal that fast, plus it doesn’t add to the knowledge I gain back until now. Unfortunately, when the wound is completely closed, the flesh continues to grow, it grows too much and forms a deformity on the fish’s side. The fish is really ugly, I continue to use it as a test subject but I don’t want to keep it. I pour more mana in the fish and try to make it flow evenly in it. I want the mana to be equitably spread in the fish, not to go wherever it wants. Through a mental effort, I managed to do it, the mana flow evenly in all the fish, but it is not mine yet. I continue again, and again, and again, and again… Like for the eggs, I must not put too much mana, but I don’t want to wait for hours before seeing the result, so I continue steadily and slowly. ‘Less mana and more steady flow’, that was my mantra by then. Less mana and more steady flow. Less mana and more steady flow. Less mana and more steady flow...

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Victory!

I feel a connection with the deformed fish! I managed to claim an already born creature! Victory dance!

As a reward for the fish - it was a good test subject after all - I decide to let it live it's life, I only give him the order to stay in my domain.

Wow, I feel tired. Claiming a fully grown being is much more taxing than claiming and hatching some eggs. I also spent a lot of mana on the plants earlier. I’m going to take a nap, but before, I need to resupply the fish reserve for my little crabs. They are growing fast, I think I’ll soon be able to let them free in the river.

When I wake up I perform my ‘morning’ ritual, my mana pool is a little bigger than yesterday, the crabs are fine and the creatures' population is still as healthy as before. The little fish I managed to claim is dead, well too bad. Like when I make my first experiment with the captured crabs and fishes, some of them started to show signs of growth, that good. And as I forcefully grow some plants I find a good surprise.

I can feel a connection to some of the bugs. Not all of them have it, and it’s not a strong connection, but it is there nonetheless. I’m connected to the younger bugs that fly and crawl near the plants I claimed yesterday. Let think a bit about that. Bugs eat my moss, breath my air and drink my water, then they reproduce and lay eggs in my moss or my dirt, or my water, or even some dead fishes, after that the larvae continue to eat my stuff. The bugs are constantly bathed in my ambient mana, it seems I don’t need to force my mana in creatures to claim them, as long as they live inside of me and eat and drink stuff infused by my mana they will automatically be claimed by me? That’s great! The bugs are the smaller, have the shortest life expectancy and faster growth rate, and they are the first to be automatically claimed, it must mean that the bigger the creature, the longer it will take. Ok, I can work with that, but I want it faster.

I start frantically claiming all the plants in my dungeon then as many bugs that I can and soon I’m tired. I replenish my crabs’ fish reserve and go to sleep. Tomorrow I will claim more creatures.

The following days I claimed all the fishes and crabs in my dungeon, it took me a full week. The bugs were all automatically claimed on the third day. Also, the last crab’s egg finally hatched, it was fully claimed when it came out of its eggshell, that made me very glad. Now my mana pool is a totally different league than before my claiming.

For the bats, I only claim one yet, for two reasons. First, those creatures are the biggest in my dungeon, so I need to put a lot more mana in them. Secondly, they pass a lot of time outside of me, it means they take a far smaller part of naturally infused mana in them. That made them really more complicated to claim. But I will prevail.