The gloves are off now. I need more creatures. Cytra will be my largest, most favored creation, but as long as she is safe from harm, anything I can make is fair game. My eggplants worked rather well, but not well enough to do what I want, so I’ve got a new solution. I said I wanted to make a pond, and I have.

It’s not very large compared to something like my tree, but it is more than large enough to be transformed into my spawning pool. It took a full day to work out an aquatic version of the eggplant, but I’ve set the plants to grow without hatching anything more complicated than aquatic bugs and such for food. Why? My duck has a friend, and I’ve set the breeding pair loose in the pond.

I hope they will populate my domain plenty of ducks for both normal duck things and for experimenting. It’s also time to get some larger creatures. I’ll start with a mouse. The designs for a creature like this are rather complicated, but I think I can make a proper R.O.U.S. with enough time and room for error. In that sense, my limiting factor is my amount of blood mana.

I’ve got a solution, though. My experiment for making metal mana, or whatever it ends up being, was a failure, but in the process, I’m pretty sure this plant can turn any type of mana I put in the ‘water’ section of the design into whatever I put into the ‘air’ section. Naturally I leave it as water for the intake, and set blood as the outtake.

This isn’t to be a baitplant, but a bush that exists in its own isolated ponds for the sole purpose of converting as much water mana into blood mana as possible. I have no idea what it will look like when it is done, and I’m sure I won’t want to.

My strawberry experiment worked, but I’d say that with a question mark and not a period if I was putting it on an academic paper. It’s quite shit to be honest. I’m embarrassed to call it a strawberry, but the standard issue swarmbug test subject seemed to gorge itself on it more vigorously than with the leaves. I decide to name this plant aquaberry, naturally I alter the design to my aquatic design and dump it into the duck breeding pool.

So now I have two pools. One with the soon-to-be-disgusting processing plants, and one for breeding ducks and experimenting. They fill the space the druid so graciously cleared for me. The rest of that particular space… I’ll just let it grow naturally how it will.

All that is left is to wait on stuff to grow, Cytra to wake, and… Hopefully not, but likely more people will show up to look for the druid. On second thought, no waiting, designing time. I’ll make something from scratch this time… Maybe something specifically designed to be my ‘deer’ equivalent, since I haven’t seen any around.

I need to put bone mana where I want the bones to be… Hold on. How would I specify that I want the creature to have digitigrade legs? I can only make structural designs and then vaguely ‘will’ stuff, but bones feel too precise for that. Oh well, experiment one. I don’t have enough bone mana from the druid to make more than two or three experiments, so I guess I’ll start small.

When I finish, I zoom out and take a look at my design from the height of a human head, and I think I like how it looks. More specifically, I think it will turn out to be more of an exceptionally large capybara than a deer, which will also fill my R.O.U.S. niche. It also means I need to make Cytra larger again to compensate. Always biggering and biggering.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Speaking of, I think she’s about to wake up. Yes, she clearly is. The way she’s stirring reminds me of the way puppies move when they’re tired or have just woken up. Preliminary checks, the ‘purple’ mana I put in her brain area is… diminished, but present. I suspect most of it just disappeared or something. The ball of mixed mana is still there, though, and it looks sort of… condensed. It occupies less space than it had before, but there is less mana loose in her body, which seems to have coalesced in that ball. I dub this ball, for all intents and purposes, a second heart. Manaheart.

Gently I prod her with my feelers, and send a thought through to her. Are you well? I nearly jolt back to orbvision in shock as I ‘feel’ a response.

‘Yes.’ She didn’t jump, like we established previously, but she actually spoke back, the same way I now think she hears me. How much do you understand?

‘Everything, from the moment you just connected with me.’ Ah, so even if I’m talking to myself, she can hear me, so long as I have the connection up?

‘Yes, master.’ Master? I didn’t tell you to call me that.

‘But you are? You created me, elevated me, and even gave me the human’s memories. I thought you’d done that to-’ I… gave you her memories? I didn’t get her memories, though, how could- The purple mana. Memories. Noted. Do you have any questions for me, before I begin asking many of you?

‘Three. Why did you make me?’ That’s a tough one. I think I have two answers. As for why I made you a spider, it was to see if I could. As to why I have favored you… I guess I’m more attached to you than to my other creations.

‘That… forgive me, I don’t have any more things to ask, after hearing that.’ It is quite alright. If you’re ready, I’d like to hear everything you saw in that woman’s memories that you can share.

‘At once, master.’

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Ok. I think I have a more complete picture of this world now. The druid was named Erika, no surname. Cytra doesn’t know much more about the personal details of her life, though. She did find out more about me and mana mutants, though. Apparently, there are three main ways mana mutants occur. Naturally occurring mana saturates a creature or plant by pure chance, causing random mutations. These mana mutants are what the druid thought I was, up until the moment I sent the wasps after her, apparently.

Then she thought of the second type, dungeons. Apparently, dungeons have something called cores, which is probably what I am, and they use these to control mana. In order to defend themselves, and sometimes for other goals, dungeons can create mana mutants, as well as other things Cytra either didn’t get the details of, or that Erika hadn’t known. As for why dungeons defend themselves, the hypothetical ability to do exactly what I’m doing, manipulating my landscape and making mutants, is considered highly dangerous. Enough that there are prices on shattering dungeon cores. So I'm a dungeon. Neat.

The final way mana mutants occur is as byproducts of other powerful, mana fueled beings just sort of… existing? Cytra poorly translated a story Erika probably barely remembered about a wandering monster causing mana mutations wherever it went until it was killed.

I wanted to pick Cytra’s brain about more stuff from Erika’s memories, but decided to let her go off and explore the world with her new apparent intelligence and evolved form. She’s abandoned most of her old webs, and set up some new ones. She’s much larger now, so I think she’s looking for food sources that would actually sustain her.

Regardless, knowing that I am a dungeon, and that someone will most definitely be coming to try and kill me sooner or later, just for existing, it is go-time. I set a couple eggplants to spawn my deer-R.O.U.S. things, name pending, and make sure that they will be able to hatch out of their eggs and make it to the shore of the pond safely. My duck breeding program is proceeding nicely, the rest of my ecosystem is performing…

Hang on, did I accidentally make my processing plant a flesh pit?