The plant was slowly growing not from the lack of mana or biomass but because it was spending majority of its energy on separating elements from dirt, any carbon it took was separated directly into solid blocks that will be used to terraform the planet and as fuel for my crafting.

I wanted to make this planet warmer by releasing greenhouse gasses, by raising the temperature all life on it wouldn’t need to spend as much energy on keeping themselves warm. Additionally If I find any sort of ocean or underground lake I could begin synthesizing rocket fuel, because it is just hydrogen with some nitrogen. It is a splendid fuel but also its explosive enough to deter any primitive civilization.

I was currently micromanaging the network while the plant which I dubbed for the ease sake “Floral Decoupler '' was working under a giant pile of dirt. I might need a helper to achieve maximum efficiency. Because as of now everything was running at like 70% of its capacity, some stuff like the plant was running at full capacity but the network wasn’t good at moving the various dusts of pure elements with its roots. To achieve my goal of maximum efficiency I stripped all of my armor and upgrades beside mana pathways from my left arm and cut it off. I stopped the bleeding from the new stump and the limb that was lying on the floor.

As it was and still kinda is part of me it would fully consent to all of the changes I was going to make. I stopped the decoupler from working and took it aside while I submerged myself in liquid mana still holding the limb.

First I shoved mana and biomass into it and then began guiding the changes. Firstly I made it look like a centaur, but with insect carapace on the lower half. It was also smaller, only reaching up to 170 cm at its tallest in adult form while standing upright. I didn’t want it to be big and menacing but small and fast. The next thing I did was to slightly change the human upper half. I got rid of bones that were limiting the reach of movement, instead of bones that protected but made moving freely harder I placed flexible chitin on the outside and more muscles in the inside.

The creature was now quite heavy but I wasn’t even halfway done. I made its legs shorter but more agile, I also decreased its length. I did that to place the center of gravity closer to the ground which would allow for more stability and higher speed in difficult terrain. Now it was time to take care of the genitals. I originally wanted it to be retractable in arms for males and in the transition part between two halfs for females, so males could just touch them there and be done with it.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

I scrapped the idea of retractable genitalia, but my next thought was splendid, males will just lay fleshy eggs and then have a special limb that will unload pressurized sperm onto the eggs, it could also serve as last ditch diversion to flee. While being nonsensical the idea was quite common, there were plenty of animals around the world that sprayed liquids at the opposing party to deter them from attacking.

I did as I imagined, I placed the limb near the place where a normal stallion would have his genitalia. I created the egg organ and the exit from which the eggs would pop out will be on one of the sides of the lower half. The upper half was mostly just muscles for fine manipulation and being able to bend in almost anyway. The lower half as it was covered in chitin was mostly organs like hearts, 3 of them to be exact and 2 brains.

First two hearts were for external circulation, that is giving muscles all of their necessary nutrients and oxygen. The third one was solely for supplying the internal organs In the case of the first 2 hearts failing to do their job a group of blood vessels would contract and pull a wide emergency artery that would supply the muscles with everything they need albeit slowly.

The first brain was for moving and accomplishing tasks, while the second one was for preprocessing information and managing internal organs and blood flow in case of injuries. There were 3 lungs, two in the lower half and one in the human torso for more efficient oxygen supply.

The other organs were mostly the same as the horse albeit they were modified to for more capacity. In the end I made the creature’s comfortable position. Since it couldn’t really sit I made the creature comfortable while being slightly hunched over on slightly bent legs. Human hands either in the air looking like a human trying to balance on a rope or along the rest of the body.

For sleeping I made it find comfortable to curl up into a ball, for napping or resting it would curl its legs under its sides. The eating habits would be mana and a lot of biomass for growth till adulthood, while being fully grown the creature would eat mostly biomass produced by various managroves not in the network, they can still eat the ones in the network but they would find them unappetizing.

For growth stages, once an egg is fertilized it would begin growing a tiny human about 50 cm after 2 days the process would be complete and the human would get out of the egg by clawing through it or by eating it from inside out. Once free the human would either train with others in its current stage or follow the creature that fertilized the egg around. It would eat a lot of biomass for 10 days during that time it would grow to 1 meter high.

After reaching that height it would look like a teen with normal horse lower half during that time it would explore a lot and occasionally help around. It would need about half as much biomass as the lower stage to grow to the adult version although it can eat more and do stuff around in a high mana environment to become a mana variant.

Mana variant is essentially a smaller adult reaching at most 160 cm and having blue chitin instead of the normal black, it is weaker as it has less muscles but it's capable of handling a lot of mana.

I was dead tired and the pool of liquid mana was almost exhausted as I turned my limb into an unfertilized egg of a new species. I placed it into a corner before using my own blood as makeshift sperm to fertilize it.