Like Christmas morning I came out of my meditative state and eagerly checked the depths of the pond. My 4 original shiners have bred to almost 200! Fish had high egg counts to begin with and when combined with my assistance the little guys have quickly filled the pond. I also saw several problems emerging amongst my joy for future tinkering.

First problem being the 4 original shiners. They were all dead. I had forgotten in my excitement to order the fish not to seek out food and only take my ambient mana like the salamander. As a result they had turned to cannibalism. This was great because several were ready to evolve, but I felt bad for the pseudo starved fish. From now on the “Don’t eat each other without permission” law will be a dungeon standard.

Even if I wanted to feed them like normal fish, I don’t have access to any aquatic plants or smaller fish to feed them. The fish originally in the pond had most likely eaten whatever scraps fell down the waterfall, eventually starving when the supply ran out. I tried placing some Red and Luminous Shrooms around the ponds edge, hoping their mycelium would soak up enough water to create a new evolution similar to the Vampiric and Slime Shrooms.

In the meantime, I sent out my Sun Salamander, who had been sitting on a rock eagerly watching the swarming pond, to go and cull the population. As soon as the creature heard my command it leapt into the pond and got to hunting. My experiment proved a great success as with every shiner eaten I got a message from the now automatic [Remote Absorption]. While each shiner only gave me about 2 mana with some of the oldest and largest giving me 3, they added up by the end of the massacre to almost 50 mana.

Almost 2 days’ worth of passive generation in maybe half an hour. My sun salamander hauled its bulging stomach out of the pond and lied down on its rock with a satisfied look on its face, licking his lips. Sure enough, its efforts would soon be rewarded as a new message entered my mind.

*YOUR SUN SALAMANDER HAS REACHED THE EVOLUTION THRESHOLD! 2 OPTIONS AVAILABLE PLEASE SELECT AN EVOLUTION OPTION.

1. SOLAR SALAMANDER: While originally named for its bright orange colors the Sun Salamander does indeed have a small affinity for fire. A full-grown Solar Salamander can leave burn marks on any unlucky predators who happen to grab it.

2. LUNAR AXOLOTL: Sun Salamanders that spend the majority of their lives near, and hunting in, water begin to awaken a secondary affinity towards it. After becoming a Lunar Axolotl, the salamander will lose its affinity with fire but instead grow more aquatic features and the ability to manipulate small amounts of water.

Interesting. It seems the system has decided to give me more information about what my creations can evolve into now that multiple options are available. It didn’t take much time for me to make my decision. After all the main purpose of my salamander was to hunt the schools of small fish. “Lunar Axolotl’.

*LUNAR AXOLOTL SELECTED

Luckily the Sun Salamander wasn’t the only creature able to evolve. Some of my second-generation shiners also had reached their own threshold. Just like the salamander multiple options were open to me.

*YOUR COMMON SHINER FISH HAS REACHED THE EVOLUTION THRESHOLD! 3 OPTIONS AVAILABLE. PLEASE SELECT AN EVOLUTION OPTION.

1. SILVER DARTER: This evolution of the Common Shiner will increase the individuals speed enough to avoid most large predators. Darting underwater in streaks of silver these fish are seldom witness in nature

2. FANGED SHINER: This evolution of the Common Shiner will enhance their already bloodied mouths by adding sharpened teeth designed for tearing flesh. While small the Fanged Shiners hunt in schools.

3. LONG TAILED SHINER: This evolution of the Common Shiner will greatly increase the size of its tail, increasing its overall power and charging speed.

Before making a selection I checked the possibilities of my other ready to evolve shiners and realized I could actually get at least one of each evolution. The most common evolution by far being the Fanged Shiner. Which was probably my fault. At the end of my little evolution extravaganza I had 3 Silver Darters, 8 Fanged Shiners, and 3 Long Tailed Shiners.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

The Silver Darters lived up to their name and were easily the flashiest of the new species, the green light of the mushrooms reflecting occasionally across their scales. My Fanged Shiners only grew a few centimeters and didn’t change color but if you looked closely you could see the large fangs poking out of their mouths. Finally, the Long-Tailed Shiner’s tails had grown to about 4 inches in height and gained a yellow stripe along the edge.

As the fish all began to adjust to their new bodies, the glowing form of my salamander began fading. My little amphibian had grown to almost a foot in length and the orange over its back had completely disappeared. His body now completely overtaken by the whitish blue underbelly with the shades getting darker from top to bottom. Now it had 6 pink little feelers poking out of its cute white, and webbing between its 3 clawed toes on each foot.

Shaking a little as it came out of the orange light the little feelers around its face began to glow a pale white. With the evolution emptying its stomach my little amphibian eagerly dived back into the pond.

Taking a look at my pond from across the cave I was proud of what my little ecosystem was becoming. Although a problem other than the food supply was appearing.

Space.

While the pond was wide and deep enough to keep my small Shiners comfortable the new Lunar Axolotl easily took up a sixth of the whole pond. Luckily, I had recently gained another new skill, [Terraforming]. I hadn’t had a use for this skill yet as most of my mana was being sent towards [Expansion]. But now that the dungeon had become comparatively larger it was time to start influencing the space within. And I knew just where to start.

I quickly learned that to [Terraform] cost much less mana when compared to [Expansion]. It was so cheap in fact that when I slowed down to focus on specific details my mana was actually increasing. But this cheap process only applied to breaking things down. When creating substances like stone or water the mana cost almost tripled. Not to mention I had to have a template of a substance before I could create it.

My first and obvious goal was to expand the pond to improve my new mana farm. I made the pond much deeper than the 2 feet it had been. Now it was almost 5 feet deep, reaching halfway through the cave where the ceiling drops. With the bottom of the pond sloping from my shack outwards. This created a sudden five-foot drop-in altitude directly in the middle of the low ceiling. A trap I planned to expand more on in the future.

I also used [Terraforming] to expand the pond all the way across the cave. Now it was like my shack had a protective moat around it. My final [Terraforming] job was creating smaller dens for my Shiners and their evolutions to breed in. These were small tunnels too thin for my Lunar Axolotl to swim through. Each traveling into the cave walls for about 2 feet. This was to ensure that my predators would never exhaust their food supply and thus my mana supply.

Now that the major [Terraforming] was done it was time to change the ecosystems balance a bit. It had become obvious that my Lunar Axolotl was the apex predator of my pond, but I decided that there was simply too many fish for it to eat by itself. To save mana I only created 4 more Sun Salamanders. This was an expensive purchase that took 2 whole days to save enough mana for, but it would be worth it in the long run.

There were two reasons I bought Sun Salamanders over Lunar Axolotls. The first of which was simply the mana cost. A single Lunar Axolotl would likely cost more than twice the price of a Sun Salamander. This was too expensive for my small ecosystem to generate at the moment. The reason second was to learn more about the evolution system. I wanted to see if I could guarantee the evolution of one of my creations without direct influence. As I already knew what the requirements for a Lunar Axolotl were, they would be the perfect test. Another opportunity to learn would be by having at least one of my salamanders evolve into something different. This would show me just how different an evolution would make a creature with different elemental affinities over simple physical traits.

Speaking of elemental affinities, my Lunar Axolotl was quickly improving. At first, he had only been able to push and pull small waves on the surface. After some practice and leveling of his own however he had graduated to creating small vacuums of air underwater. Using these it would hunt the large Long Tailed Shiners by diverting water from their gills. Since it was already this adept after only a few days of hunting, my excitement for what could be coming was quickly growing.

Taking a look at my updated pond I felt an immense sense of pride. While I was worried about my situation I can’t deny that this little project had been fun. There was just something calming about focusing wholly on one thing at a time.

Anyway, I guess I can sit back now and let the mana just roll in till level 4-

“Uncle Ford?”

Dangit.