Scritch scratch

Scritch scratch

Scritch scratch

crunch crunch

Would you guys cut it out all ready? I'm trying to research here!

With a sigh, I unroot, and move closer to the door. I reroot right in front of it, and move all my leaves about to catch optimal sunlight while I wait. A hole appears in the door again. I grab one of the vine spears I made in preparation for a defensive battle, and as soon as I get an opening, I strike.

The spear drives into the rodent's mouth, and I feel a gooey crunch as it busts into the beasts skull from the inside. The spears are pretty dull but they're strong and I have brute force on my side. I wrench it free, and Grow the door back to a solid mass. A few strokes of my axe restore the point of the spear to a serviceable sharpness, unfortunately the wood doesn't hold up very well.

That makes this... the 12th, time the door has been breached now. Annoying. I decide it's not worth the trouble to move back closer to the sun orb.

While this research was constantly interrupted, I did gain a few things. I still have a few small mana cores, now I have one really big one. I merged 64 tiny mana cores for this, and it's about the size of a human fist. It isn't even fully charged, but I can feel it humming with power already.

Also, before I put out my leaves, I checked my life force total, and after I used it all, I checked it again and made a discovery. My life force regeneration increases when I'm soaking up light as well as putting my roots down. It's not a ton, I only get a life force every 10 minutes or so compared to every hour, but it's enough to encourage me to use it.

Now that I'm out of mana crystal I want to merge though, I'll probably have to merge more soul cores. It still makes me nervous though. I'm out of life force anyway though, so I decide to try to chat with bees a while in between door breaches.

Most of the bees are still a bit upset, and Eliza and Herman are both still sleeping. The delinquents are up and about though, and it's high time I gave them names too.

One of them is always doing complicated maneuvers in the air the older bees deride him for. Honestly I can't help but be impressed by his flight dexterity, even if he does fly into another bee sometimes because he's going too fast to stop around blind corners. I think I'll call him Bob after Bob Burnquist, maybe make him a tiny skateboard later, He seems like he would like that.

The second member of the triad seems to like pranking the other bees. It's pretty hard to prank bees, since they don't own anything, but Sam is fond of stacking small rocks on other bees while they're sleeping. I actually sent him feelings of strong negation and worry earlier to convince him to leave Eliza and Herman alone. He was a bit dejected, but he understands, I think. I can't wait to make him a marker.

The third member of the triad, I've decided to call her Josephine, seems to be into art. The other bees have been building cells, expanding the hive and making honey, but Josephine is busily decorating the inside of my torso with some wood pulp tribal drawings. She still helps out, but she doesn't sleep much. Now that there's so much space for the hive, it will take a long time to reach full capacity and approach the torso walls with the hive's mass, so I think she has plenty of time to finish. Honestly, I've been encouraging her, it looks pretty cool. A little at a time, she fills gaps in the vines with plant pulp and builds some parts higher than others, creating a sort of 3d etching. I wish I was that talented with art. At least I can say I am covered in art instead.

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Most of the other bees are too boring to distinguish themselves. They are either too dedicated to work to develop healthy beehaviors, or just stubborn sticks in the mud. None of them are getting names until they show some creativity or something.

Sitting here is boring, despite the occasional rodent murder, so I think back to when I tried to tell a story to the delinquents a while back. I've gotten better at psionics, and now I realize that I probably spouted a bunch of nonsense. The thoughts have to be framed in a way the recipient mind understands, so if I throw words and things at bees who don't use that sort of thing, they might understand a little of the emotions leaking off my mind, but they won't get much of it.

I think I have a solution though. I can make a psionic movie! They're used to seeing things, and I can kind of approximate some sentences in bee dance by now. I'm going to make a full experience movie, with sound, subtitles, the works, and put a little bee interpretive dancer below the bottom of the screen.

We'll find out how smart these bees are. I wonder if they can learn to write?

With this goal in mind I suddenly have a lot of clear problems to tackle. How to store a mind movie, for one. How to convey a full immersion experience reliably for another. I think I have some ideas... Let's ask for a volunteer!

Sam is pretty much fed up after attempt number 12 results in a sensory overlap. The sense data for sight bled over into the sound areas of the spell, resulting in a chaotic mess of noise and a messed up visual. I guess it needs more work. I decide to call it for a while, and get up again to stab another rodent and reseal the door. They're piling up pretty high on the other side, not sure how many I've killed but its enough so they almost reach the ceiling. My roots have long since tasted blood in the soil behind the door, now it's so thick the soil is turning black in patches from the bleed through.

I decide to make a hole near the bottom of the door and extend my roots. I'm going to start leaching life force from the bodies and breaking them down. If I can find a few cores in that mess it will be worth it. It's time to see how big I can make a soul core.

Ugh... there's one merged. That feeling is vile.

Blech, it never seems to get any better. It feels like my whole body is disassociating from the other bits of itself, and each piece is trying to crawl away.

After a while of doing mergers, I notice that the feeling is actually something invisible in my body wiggling and twisting around. Every merger seems to show me this thing a little clearer, and it's a mess. There's holes everywhere, and it's a patchwork quilt of different weaves. Every time I make a merger, it globs on another piece, which really doesn't attach itself very well. TO make matters worse, when I add a piece, the whole thing twists about for a few minutes, and if I add one too soon, I can see things start to tear as the twisting becomes even more violent.

Every time I do a merger, there's a little bit of damage, but now that I can see what I am doing, it's much easier to prevent it. I've gained a bit of control over the incoming soul globs, and I use it to fill holes, and extend this strange quilt by adding to the edges.

I've started letting the moleratmadillos finish clawing through the door so I can kill them and drag them through for more soul orbs, as I'm running low. I don't bother sealing the hole, they keep coming, but I'm one tree thing plugging a gap a single moleratmadillo wide. If they want to line up to die, so be it. I could use the souls anyway.

Every time I merge a larger soul orb, it gets harder to keep my soul quilt thing stable. I'm adding so much soul at a time, that it is causing deformities as I'm having issues controlling that much soul at a time.

By the time I reach a soul orb made of 16 tiny orbs, I'm too nervous to advance any farther. Then I get a dumb idea. If I get my soul quilt to shake a bit, and the ends meet for a second while it's flapping angrily.... and there! I merge another soul orb and add a glob to join the sides of the quilt together. A few more small joins and I have a soul tube! A few more and I have a jar looking thing after I seal up the end. I test it, and it works! I can just pour soul into the jar and it automatically conforms to the shape.

Can I handle a larger merger? Let's find out! I take 2 of my cloudy green 16 orbs and merge them together, pouring soul in to the space I've made. It's difficult and the soul pokes a couple of small holes as it settles in the jar, but I patch them on the fly. These new 32 orbs are really kind of creepy. They're not translucent anymore, they're black with green swirls traveling all across their surface.

Well, nothing for it besides crossing the line into 64. I'm not dying and I don't feel terrible, so getting cold feet at this point would be calling past me an idiot. Is past me an idiot? Maybe. Let's find out. All I know is that if something doesn't change, I'll be stuck in here forever. This is a nerve wracking decision, but I jump ahead and do it anyway before I can second guess.

I add more to the rim of the jar to make it larger until it resembles a tube more than a jar, and there's enough free space to fit 4, 16 orbs worth of soul in it, just in case. With a nauseating swirl, I merge and a flood of soul is unleashed. The tube quickly fills up, then soul starts globbing on in random patterns once it runs out of room... Ooops. I have no time to regret as I black out.