“So...” After a minute of just processing the variety of stand-out monsters just a few minutes of real-time running the game, Rick finally breaks the silence. “Yep. Eva, how long has Eralith been running in-game?” Despite there being no face for her glasses to rest on, she still manages to make it look like she’s pushing hers back up the bridge of her nose. “It has been approximately 2 months in-world so far, I slowed it down to real-time when you asked me about monster leaders. I’ve been running a surface-level real-time projection so your monsters aren’t speed up while you watch.”
“Huh, well that explains it. For now just pause the world completely while we review them all. So, which one should we watch first?” Rick scratches the back of his head, looking over the list. “Well, the komodo thing is going to be the start of a dragon-like line, right? Might as well see that. Plus seeing what it thinks about being on a floating island could be pretty rad.” Shrugging at the response, Corrin presses the view button for the Tri-horned komodo and watches as the projection fades and turns into something new.
[Begin Transmission]
When the spawning happened, The Island of the Eye was large enough that the automatically generated life on the island was able to flourish. The trees here had to ‘evolve’ with very little lateral space in mind, so they took on a different way of gaining sunlight than land-born trees. The trees here stretch high and thin into the sky, highly elastic to bend in the strong winds, not unlike reeds in that way. They also don’t grow branches, at least not in the traditional sense. Each species of tree has a different shape or pattern, but they all grow their leaves directly from their trunks.
In juxtaposition to that, the various grasses, herbaceous plants, and bushes grow thick and close to the ground, both because they don’t have to fight the trees nearly as much for sun space and because the winds would tear any taller, thinner plants away on a bad day. In this same vein, naturally spawned insects, lizards, and mammals either burrow into the thick, loamy soil, have developed some method of strong traction to stay attached to the tree trunks, or have ‘evolved’ to fly.
The tri-horned lizard came into being at the exact same time as its brothers and sisters, spread along the island evenly. Despite being lizards of several different species, they all knew when they saw each other that they were related in some way. This didn’t mean that they couldn’t dispute with each other for territory, as the tri-horned lizard had seen some of the naturals do when they came into contact, they simply weren’t inclined to do so without reason.
Tri-horn was a bit of a peculiarity compared to his other brethren, for there was only one of him. The brothers and sisters that were closest to him in appearance had taken to him, saying that he smelled of them, which he noticed too, but there was always that small divide of knowing he was different. That divide lead him to becoming more adventurous than most of his comrades, pushing him to explore their island rather than settle down into a single territory.
He went uncontested in his wandering, the only creatures that could threaten him would be the Landless Ones, those who were not bound to the trappings of this island or the many others that Tri-horn could see from the edges of his own, but at the same time never stayed long on any one island. He could feel that same connection from them that he could with his closest brothers and sisters though, and knew that unless they were truly starving they would not bother him.
As the sun and moons made their cycles, and he and his siblings grew larger, Tri-horn noticed something odd. When they were younger he and his siblings would play a game, climbing up the reed-trees to see who could climb the highest without falling. He would always win, climbing to the very tips of the trees, but there was always competition for second place. However, he noticed that as they grew larger, it became harder for his brethren to climb as high as they used to, until eventually the only ones who still climbed the trees were there smaller cousins, the ones who could climb just about anything.
Not him though. For some reason, even when the trees groaned and bent all the way down to the soil, he never slipped off of their bark and leaves. This was odd, considering he did not have the sticky pads of his cousins, which was the source of their ability to climb even his own smooth scales when they were too lazy to walk on their own.
This held even when climbing the slow-rising edges of their island, and for so long as he did not try to climb beyond a specific angle, he could climb to the very edge of the edge itself, above the greenery to the rocky lip of their island ‘shore’. What he saw over that edge he could barely put into words. Other islands, so many more than the few he could glimpse from the tops of the trees when he was younger, all riding on top of a bed of clouds.
Except, when he looked down at his island, he saw not the cloud bed he was expecting, but an unfathomably long drop, down into what seemed to be like the small pools of water that formed on the island after a rain, but so large that he could not see the edges of the pool, and so deep that it simply faded into blue. He saw that the bed of clouds the other islands rested on were white and fluffy on the top, but below that, between the forever-pool and the islands, they turned dark, almost black. And within those black clouds, he saw light.
A flash of light here, another one there, spreading and splitting almost in the way that the little streams do, and yet gone in and instant. As Tri-horn watched the lights, mesmerized, he realized that the lights were followed by the rumbling roars that had been with him his entire life. They were so constant that they had simply faded into the background noise, along with the buzzing of insects and scurrying of mammals, but paired with this light show he never knew of before it suddenly seemed so crisp.
He didn’t know how long he sat there, simply staring into the beyond, wishing for once that he was one of the Landless Ones so that he might be able to reach for those wonderful, powerful lights. He almost didn’t notice that it was night time until one of his siblings eventually found him, hissing at him from the ground below in worry. Staring out into the air in front of him for a moment more, he twisted his head to call to his comrade and placate them, his horns facing the great beyond. And then his world went white.
When he came too, he felt as if he had been sunbathing for days, his muscles relaxed and warm and full of energy. He rolled over onto his legs and stretched luxuriously, before recognizing the frantic hissing beside him. Opening his eyes, he saw one of his sisters, strangely staying a foot or two away from him despite her obvious worry. It only took a moment more for him to realize why.
The plants around him were charred black and crumbling away in places, and his scales were covered in little flashes of light, like the clouds in the great beyond. As he looked around, he saw that the spot of rock he had been resting on while he cloud-watched was glowing red, and the plants just under it were either charred or withering like they had been baked in the sun’s heat without their roots to sustain them.
Even as he watched he could see the light crackling along his scales fade, but he could feel within him a surging power, and he knew, in some odd, instinctual way, that he could call upon that power again should he need it. Placating his sister and walking back to their nesting grounds, Tri-horn could not keep himself from flicking his tail happily. He knew why he was different now. He was blessed!
[End Transmission]
“Man, the story-compiling software is top class.” Corrin mutters under his breath, devolving even further into incoherent murmuring as he thinks about where to take the center island’s creatures. “Wait, what do you mean?” Rick breaks him out of his murmuring fast, he knew that if Corrin got the chance, he’d go off in his own world for a while just to think out all the options. “Hmm? Oh yeah, well you don’t think that a lizard would be that eloquent, do you? Yeah even the first-spawned dungeon monsters are smarter overall than ‘naturally’ spawned creatures when the world biomes start up, but he’s still just a lizard.”
“Huh, never thought about it like that. I guess it makes sense now that I think about it, one of my monster starters were slimes and when I viewed them I’d sometimes get caught up in soap operas about their lives.” Rick looks off into the distance, apparently reminiscing about the enthralling stories of how slimes lived their lives. He shook his head after a second and turned back to Corrin. “Anyways, you pick the next monster to view, yeah? Your world after all.”
Corrin waves him off as he responds. “In a minute, I want to set up some stuff for the islands before I forget. Eva, could you raise...let’s call him Tres for now, could you raise his libido? I don’t want to lose his subspecies, and that lightning rod trait is very useful.” Tapping his chin in thought, he tries to think of how best to encourage the growth of wings in the different species on the islands.
“Also, could you raise the mutation rates of the monsters on the islands? Even with them being isolated in small populations it shouldn’t run them into the ground if one or two lizards per generation end up having two tails or something if we can increase the chance of getting something good like an extra set of arms.” Looking over the list, Corrin eventually decides on taking a look at the variant shadow-flame on the list. He took a risk making them, so it would be nice to see what happened to them from their point of view.
[Begin Transmission]
When the black flame first spawned, in those first moments when it was what it now considers to be incomplete, there was panic. When it was still only one half of a whole, it could not exist in the same place as all of the light in its home, if it were like the scaled creatures that lived on the lip it would describe the feeling in those first seconds as excruciating pain. Being what it was however, it simply knew that it was in trouble. Its form was dissolving in the presence of so much light and heat, and it needed to find some way to make it stop.
In an act of desperation, it reached out to a spark of light and heat, penetrating through the light to grab onto the small speck of burning fuel and its shadow. The black flame nearly didn’t make it, but just as it was beginning to fade away, it felt something burst inside of itself. Suddenly, it was not just the shadow on the wall, now it could feel the warmth and light around it without needing to shrink away. No, it was the light and heat, but it was also the cool and shadow. It was creating its own shadow, feeding off of the heat and the darkness both.
As its companions followed its lead, some making it and some not, the black flame could only marvel at itself. Its flame was as black as its shadow, and its shadow shone through its inanimate cousins as if it were a light itself. It could feel that it had control of both, though the fire felt almost alien. Having a new body alongside your first would do that to someone, it guessed.
It took several cycles of the great light above, the black flame relishing both the shadow it helped create and the light itself from its fire body, before it learned how to do more than just float in place. Every movement caused its flame to flicker and weaken, but soon enough it was able to move around smoothly without needing to rest every few moments. Something else it had noticed was that it could move its shadow body freely, even over the red rivers that radiated light and heat.
Something about that seemed off, when it was incomplete it was formed with some basic knowledge, something like instinct. It knew that if it were still the way it was, it would have to follow the regular shadows and how they fell, moving without them would weaken it, similar to how moving its fire body did at first. Now that it was its own shadow, that restriction no longer applied.
Exploring around its home and siblings, a few things stood out. Its fellows, still learning how to move in their new forms, all had shades of color to their flame. Getting closer, he could tell that it was a part of them, hidden in shadow until exposed to their fires, like impurities in their selves burning and turning into something new. It new it was the same, it was simply that its color was as black as its flame, so it didn’t stand out.
Their home was interesting, rivers and pools of the red, hot liquid, all leading into a massive lake in the middle of their home. The black flame could tell that there was...something in that lake, deep, deep down, and although it felt like an ally, it wasn’t sure it wanted to try and provoke it. There were other living flames too, now that it was paying attention, these ones the regular colors of fire. They seemed very emotional and prone to nearly tearing each other apart fighting and immediately after cheering each other up. Quite the odd ones, them.
On the lip of their home, in the distance, the black flame could see the scaled, solid ones. They also felt like allies, even if they were alien to it. As it approached, it could see much smaller versions of the allied scaled ones, skittering around the black, glossy stone of its home. It could tell these were not allies, and that when it was incomplete it would have tried to hide in their shadows, but now it only felt a distant curiosity over it.
To its surprise, when the lizard’s shadow walked over its own, it started writhing in pain, its outer layers blackening and hardening. Soon enough it stopped moving, and the black flame felt a wave of energy course through it. It could eat the life from their shadows! Indeed, when it moved its own shado body away, the lizard’s shadow seemed as burned as its solid body. It should probably learn to control that, actually, it wouldn’t want to hurt its solid allies on accident.
Learning how to do this took several more cycles and a few more small lizards, since it was not only an effort on the part of its shadow body, but on its flame body as well. Eventually it learned how to lower its shadow bodies heat, to the point that the lizards seemed to actually quite like its presence, skittering after it whenever it moved it around. The black flame found this...enjoyable. In fact, it could feel a small buzz of that same energy flowing through it like those first few lizards, just in much smaller amounts.
It could see now, this was similar to the paths a shadow could take in ho it interacted with the living. Either hunting them down and gaining large amounts of energy in bursts, or bonding with one and gaining a smaller, but steady supply of energy. Personally, the black flame thought the later option was better here, since the lizards came to it and it didn’t need to bond to any one lizard.
It taught this to its fellows, communicating with them in something slightly different from the way that shadows should speak from its memories, and soon enough they all had little clusters of the small not-allies. It might have been a good idea to do the same with the allies on the lip of their home, but they were quite large and something was telling it that it would need to be as large as them to properly take advantage of their large shadows. New instincts from its new form, likely.
As the great light above rose and fell time and time again, the black flame noticed that the little lizards were changing depending on what shadow they rested under. Their scales seemed to change color depending on what the color of the shadow-flame they rested under was, but rather than changing to the same color, they changed to the opposite color. Yellow lizards under purple flames, orange under blue, each color having its opposite, and white under its own flame.
This change seemed to also affect the lizards personalities, as well. The yellow ones seemed to be more jittery and flighty, darting around with speed when hunting for their small insects. The red ones seemed more aggressive and territorial, warding off any not of their own when they got too close. Each of these little packs of lizards forming what it could only describe to be tribes, even though they were much to instinctual to do so on purpose.
Under its own flame, the slowly paling lizards seemed to not experience any specific personality changes, but they seemed...smarter. Their eyes had a glint of intelligence to them, however primal it may be. When they were hungry, they would hunt together, chasing down the larger insects and having one of their pack distract it while another would bite it from behind. The black flame even noticed this in a stray insect as well, its chitin had turned bleach white and stayed inside of its shadow nearly all the time.
As the cycles continued to pass, a new development occurred. The lizards started to lay eggs, and when they hatched their scales were much more brightly colored than their parents, some even developing specific patterns in different shades of the same color. Their personalities were also more strongly cemented and more polarized than their parents. The black flame’s lizards and insects offspring were not excluded from this phenomena.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
As the newborn, bone white lizards grew, they developed even more than their parents could have dreamed. They formed scouting parties, looking for where the insects were most concentrated, and would burn the small amounts of plant life to ash near the red rivers, mixing it with the clear liquid that fell from the skies on some days and managed to collect in small pools farthest away from the red rivers to create a black paste. They would smear it on their scales so that they didn’t stand out as much against the black stone, hiding themselves to sneak up on their prey.
Once the insect, a small eight-legged creature, laid its eggs and died, its babies were the same bleached white as its mother had turned, but seemed to almost go beyond that. If the black flame looked at them from the right angle, it could swear that their chitin was just a little see-through. Rather than the other eight-legged insects when they were born, these ones worked together in a group, not only with each other but with its lizards as well. They used their threads to make traps that insects could not get out of, making their hunts much easier on them both.
All of their lizards had made their own little achievements, and they had all obviously gotten smarter with the next generation, but the black flame’s lizards and insects were especially so, and that made it quite a proud little flame indeed.
[End Transmission]
“Wow, I didn’t know that monsters could affect naturally spawned creatures like that. I mean, I know dryads and elementals and stuff can affect the land and the flora, but they only affect animals indirectly from the changing environment. Aren’t the shadow-flames spirits?” Rick scratches his head in confusion as they watch the lizards rapidly change in the monsters shadows.
“I think it’s because the shadow-flames are somewhere between a spirit and an elemental now. Since the shadow-flames came from shades that would use shadows to attack the soul directly, it becomes much easier to modify the lizards the way they do.” Pondering over what to change about things in the volcanic area. “Eva, for the Pure Variant shadow-flame could you name it Umber? It’s a word for black and it rhymes with ember.”
“Will do!” As the name section for the black flame they had been watching changed, Corrin deliberated on what to do here, before eventually deciding that he wanted to see where the flames and their little animals would go from here without any interference, at least for now. Instead he looked through the list and looked for the next pick for what monster to view. “Speaking of dryads, let's look at this haunted tree with the proto-dryad designation.”
[Begin Transmission]
They did not know when exactly they came into being, but they do know when they noticed. They were small, compared to the others around them. They felt that they were different, aware, while the others around them seemed to simply stand where they were. The sun caressed and baked their bark, and the shadows hanging like a fog around them soothed and comforted them at the same time.
They were...alone. They knew that there were creatures similar to it, in a distant way, flitting through the woods around them, but they were so fast and never seemed to really notice them. Even the little shadowy ones, the ones they felt the closest to, didn’t notice the connection between them consciously, simply staying in their branches shadows longer than the other ones.
Although they felt bad about this fact, it was in a distant way, just a disgruntled feeling more than anything. As they observed their surroundings, they eventually started to notice something odd. They were drawing something in from the air, the soil, even the fast creatures that skittered around them. It felt filling, in a way that the air in its leaves and the soil in its roots weren’t.
The odd thing is that, just like the stuff that goes out of their leaves, stuff comes out of them that’s like the something they take in, but different. It made the air around their branches and trunk glimmer a little. As the days passed, they noticed that their senses seemed to become sharper, more present in some incomprehensible way. Their bark had turned solid black and smooth, their branches had shaped themselves to be twisted and winding, and its leaves had become invisible, as if they weren’t even there.
The environment directly around them had changed too, though in a different way. The shadowy fog thinned to almost nothing, patches of grass that were once brittle and dead have turned lush and vibrant, little white and black flowers blooming in them. Even the moving creatures that came by had changed, though less from it influence and more thanks to the influences it had made.
Before, creatures made of bone or flesh that would slough off at the slightest provocation would wander through the area with no problems, and the shadows would be drawn to its branches. Now, little creatures like the fleshed ones came by, but their flesh was firm and did not fall off. They liked these creatures, but it also missed the other ones. Why did they no longer come by?
One day in particular, they encountered their first dangerous creature. At first they did not realize that it was a creature at all, since it had no body, but once the terrible wind blew through their cozy home, tearing up bits of grass and even tugging their invisible leaves off their branches, they knew they needed to do something before they got seriously hurt.
For the first time ever, they specifically tried to direct and focus their ability to absorb that something. They could tell that the wind creature had a lot of both kinds of the something they knew about inside of it, along with a lot of something else. They drew away as much of the stuff they draw in as they could, slowly weakening the wind-creature until it was barely more than a breeze.
Now that they weren’t panicked about the situation, they realized they had made a grave mistake. This wind creature was similar to them! In fact it was the closest to being like them it had felt so far, even more than the shadows! They could also tell that taking so much of their something had hurt them a lot, and with so little of that something in the area, they could…
No. They wouldn’t let that happen, not when it was their fault, when it was with something so close to being like them! They tried to reverse whatever process they used to make the first stuff into the other stuff, and although it was weak and made them tingle all over, they managed to start turning the second stuff back into the first stuff. They really needed a name for whatever all these somethings were, it was going to get confusing pretty fast. For the first and second somethings they knew of, they would call them dark and light somethings, since that’s what they remind them of.
Over the next few days, they nurtured the wind creature, filling it back up with the first something until the dark and light somethings in it were balanced once more. When they let go of the concentration needed to feed the wind that something though, it immediately started going wild again, but this time they could tell why. The two somethings that they were familiar with were warring inside of the wind, driving it crazy!
At first they couldn’t figure out why the wind was having so much trouble when they didn’t, but as they looked into themselves, they realized that that had another something too! It was different from the third something in the wind, but it kept the dark and light somethings from fighting each other, allowing them to interact and mix without violence.
For now they concentrated back on the wind creature, helping it to balance its light and dark somethings. At the same time, they tried to teach it how to use its other something to keep their dark and light somethings in balance. It would probably take a while, but they knew that the wind could do it!
And once they did, they would do the same for the rest of the area around them too! They didn’t want to drive away the creatures that used to come, and they didn’t want to drive away the ones that came now. It would find a way to help them coexist, a way to make Balance!
[End Transmission]
“Well damn, I can see why it’s considered a proto-dryad. I’m guessing it’s working off of a system where if it builds up enough of either holy or unholy mana, it will evolve one way or another?” Eva nods her glasses, Rick simply shaking his head and muttering under his breath about ‘crazy guys who get cool monsters out of nowhere’.
Corrin ignores his joking remarks, not needing to think long on what orders to make regarding the tree spirit. “I like the way it’s been going about recycling holy and unholy mana, trying to strike a balance. I know it already seems pretty set on keeping that up, but could you reinforce that idea in their head? I’m interested to see if they will evolve into some kind of hybrid if it keeps a solid balance even while it gets close to evolving. Oh, and for a name, how about Grimm? Feels thematic.”
“Yes sir, shouldn’t take much to reinforce that thought process.“ Looking over the list once more, Corrin decides to take a look at one of the goblin choices. They’re the closest to a human level intelligence on the list, so there shouldn’t be as many gaps in vocabulary. He decides to pick the high-empathy variant goblin, that and her traits point to exactly the kind of thing he was hoping would happen.
[Begin Transmission]
When she woke up, it was to a big fluffy ball of cute right in front of her nose. Despite it being nearly double her size, something in her told her that it was a friend, and that it wouldn’t hurt her. Not having much else to go off of, she embraced that feeling. Apparently the ball-well, mound really-of cute agreed, and licked her right across the face. Wolves are great! Wait, how does she know what a wolf is? Eh, doesn’t matter.
Getting up along with her new best friend in the world, she looked around and took in the clearing she as in, idly petting the big wolf’s fur as she did(so soft!). They were in a clearing, and there were a bunch of other wolves and goblins there with her, though only some of them had gotten up so far. Oddly enough, she noticed that all of them were evenly spaced a few feet away from each other, unlike her and her new wolf friend.
As everyone started to get up, she noticed that although there wasn’t any real aggression between the goblins and the wolves, there was still some weariness there. That wouldn’t do, obviously they were supposed to all be friends! She set to work with her own wolf friend, each of them talking with their own species, and getting them to interact with each other. Getting a goblin to scratch a wolf behind the ear seems to be a solid way to get them warmed up to each other, from what she’s seen.
The forest itself is vibrant and lush, the air is thick with the smell of damp soil and fresh grass. It seems that since she and her wolf friend helped everyone else get used to each other, they were now the de-facto leaders of the group in everyone else’s eyes. A bit daunting, but she shook off her anxiety and took the lead. “Alright guys, This clearing is as good as any to set up camp for now. I want you 4 pairs to go looking for any streams or lakes nearby, those two pairs I want gathering as much firewood as you can carry, everyone else start looking for game, fruit, and vegetables that look edible. Let’s go people!”
It isn’t long before we have a rudimentary camp set up, with a bonfire in the center of the clearing and in progress lean-to's up against the closest trees. The game and berries picked up are small, but plentiful for right now, so we won’t be starving tonight. It seems that most goblins have stayed with the same wolves they were first introduced to, which she could understand. After all, even though all the wolves are the best, her wolf was the only wolf for her.
She had noticed that her connection with her wolf had gotten stronger over the day as they worked together. What had once marked her wolf as merely and ally now marked her as a friend, which she appreciated. It meant that her wolf liked her too! She also heard what the other goblins had started calling her, the ‘Wolf Maiden’. Apparently her wolf thought that was amusing, though she didn’t know why.
As the days and nights passed, their tribe grew more entrenched in the area they were in now, setting it up as our main living area. There was a good sized river not 30 feet from us, and the food was always plentiful. The Wolf Maiden also noticed that everyone was becoming closer with their wolves, and she even noticed that the goblins were learning how to read body language from their wolves. She was sure that the wolves were learning just as much from them, too.
With their basic needs taken care of, the groups desire to explore skyrocketed. Since she was interested too, but needed to stay at the camp to keep things in order, she made a job of it, having goblin/wolf pairs team up with small groups of other pairs to go out into the wilds and scout out their farther surroundings. Although there was the occasional interesting area discovered or dangerous predator chased away from our boundaries, nothing all that special happened until a good few days after they started scouting.
One scout group came back a bit flustered, reporting about odd happenings in the forest about a half day’s travel over the river. The spoke of perfectly organized trees and plants, animals walking willingly into the maws of their predators, and other old predators allowing their younger rivals to kill them, letting the insects and plants take from their bodies.
Intrigued and somewhat concerned, the Wolf Maiden hops onto her wolf’s back(they had discovered this trick a while ago, saves a lot of time!)and leads a small group back to the forest area in question. Once they got there, she could see why they were so concerned and unbelieving. She saw a small swarm of mosquitos and other flying insects fly right into a spider’s web, a handful of them getting stuck there for the spider while the others went off, presumedly to find another web.
That alone practically screamed that something off was here. Deciding that if she didn’t do it, nobody would, she lead the charge into the strange woods. Well, charge may not be the right word, it’s more like she had them stalk through them. At first it didn’t seem like anything was going to happen, when suddenly her wolf froze mid-step underneath her. She only had a moment of panic before she realized why her wolf froze up.
There was something in the woods here, something...alive It felt kind of like what the other goblins and wolves felt like, like an ally, but it was almost entirely alien. It felt like it was staring right through her, and she didn’t even know if it had eyes! Eventually, a wave of calm and reassurance came through her connection to the thing, and presumably it did the same for everyone else, since the whole scouting group relaxed.
It didn’t take long for it to explain what was going on, apparently being able to talk through the connections they all had was possible, and very helpful in lieu of a shared language. This thing just formed one day(she had a sneaking suspicion it was on the same day that had woken up) and didn’t know what to do. So, it decided to use that feeling of connection and form new ones with all the life around where it first formed.
The Wolf Maiden had excitedly asked if it was possible to recreate with the goblins, but the creature expressed that it seemed to be a unique effect of its own, and doing so had permanently connected it to the land here. Sad for the creature, and slightly disappointed about not having that power for herself, she had asked if there was anything they could do to help out.
The creature had simply expressed a desire for companionship every once in a while, since even with the intricate web of connections it had here, it could get very lonely without intelligent life like them. In fact, it had noticed something about all of their connections, and offered to see if it could strengthen the bonds we had with our wolves.
The Wolf Maiden of course said yes, even while the others hesitated slightly before agreeing as well. Soon after she felt her bond of friendship between herself and her wolf flicker and become overlapped with the mysterious being’s own connection. Suddenly, the connection experienced a rapid growth, and she almost passed out at a sudden rush of new information. The connection between her and her chosen wolf had ‘thickened’ and grown ‘shorter’, at least that was the closest approximation to what had happened that she could describe.
She and her wolf could feel each others thoughts fluttering passed each other, going deeper than even the communication of ideas, emotions, and images that the spirit could give them to communicate. It was like she had another mind running in the background of her own, conscious and subconscious thoughts grinding against each other and forming new ideas and thought patterns from the gestalt of their different emotions and personalities.
They were still two distinct people(and how could her wolf be anything but a person, with thoughts like these?) but they were also the literal interpretation of two minds being better than one. It was...a lot to take in and process, but once they-she, did, she finally noticed that the spirit thing was panicking a little, obviously not having expected such a strong bond to form. All the Wolf Maiden and her wolf-no, not wolf, Warg-could do was grin. If they could do this for every goblin/warg pair, they would be unstoppable.
[End Transmission]
“Well that explains if the whole ‘goblins riding wargs’ cliche idea is a success.” Corrin’s humor was dry, but he was actually curious now. Did all of these ‘coincidences’ happen to everyone, or was he just insanely lucky? When he asked Eva about it, she had to do a scan of her Pocket Dungeon programming just to make sure. “From what I can see, there are in fact some systems in place to encourage synergy between player choices and random generation. Random things can and will happen, obviously, it’s just more likely to be in favor of your choices in-game. It helps obviously that you didn’t just hit random on everything and watched to see what would come out.”
“Really? That actually does put some things into perspective. I always thought the fact that the pros always seem to have monsters that just work with whatever themes they have for themselves was suspicious. I guess it does make sense that in a game with so much potential variability that they would restrict it in some ways to make it more fun for the general audience.” Rick stretches out his limbs and sighs loudly to break Corrin out of his rambling once more, getting up and stepping away from the projector to go to the kitchen.
“Yeah yeah, breaking the illusion of my favorite game is great and all, but we’ve been sitting in place for like 3 hours. Imma make some popcorn before we keep going, you want any?” Blinking a little in surprise that they’d been watching his new monsters for so long already, Corrin cracks his knuckles and lays back in his seat, letting potential plans run through his mind. “Yeah, sure. Make the extra buttered stuff!”