This fruit really did taste like kiwi he’d decided as he was munching on his fourth fruit from the trees he’d grown. He had never received the offered meal at Benjamins haven and was quite hungry. The last meal he’d had consisting entirely of rat a day ago. Usually consuming the amount of energy that was in the fruits, as they contained several times what was in each of the first little rat cores, was enough to tide him over. However, after the first he started drawing the energy out with his domain first, and using it to improve that. There was no reason to let the energy go to his body when his domain was so useful and getting more so with each little bit.
The fruit was slowly filling him up while the energy was slowly improving and growing his domain. Each little bit making it easier to identify and differentiate between different types of energy and other metaphysical things he could see. In the meantime he’d collected a nice little pile of seeds for new fruit trees and planted one on each of his grass tiles. Even with just allowing the ambient energy to grow them they were already his height by now. That was after drawing in all the useful energy from the surroundings and just letting the waste ones do the work. Waste not want not.
It was interesting to watch the trees do their work. He hadn’t been able to identify the mechanism they were using, but they were still able to fill their fruit with usable energy despite the air being free of it now. Not only that but they were taking in many different kinds of waste energy and putting out one specific type. While still an energy he had no idea how to use it might be easier to test and discover one if it was all of one type. Then branch out from there.
He’d also planted a few of the different seeds Cederick had provided. The few he’d tried turned out to be a mix of the two most similar to cotton and aloe. The aloe plant looked exactly like one he’d seen before back on earth. Yet cracking open a leaf showed the contents were more like the soap he’d had in the bath than a moisturizer and healing salve. Although who knew if it could be used for that purpose as well. While the cotton equivalent was very different. It had large flowers that turned out to be made of a fiber that you could pull apart into strands. Instead of the ball of fluff like the one back on earth.
Messing about with them a bit had shown they could indeed be mashed and twirled together into a type of lumpy yarn. Maybe if he eventually got or made a spinning wheel and comb he could actually make some nice yarn and either crochet or knit something better. Although he’d need to learn to knit, his mother had taught him the basics of crocheting things like hats and gloves. Though he knew from some late night random youtubing for patterns that although crocheting was more versatile it also couldn’t be automated while knitting could. But that was ages down the line.
For now he’d made decent progress on his garden and turned his attention from the plants for a while to survey his little kingdom. He now had 8 little fruit trees, one fully grown and the other 7 rapidly catching up. There was the new reddish stone tile that Cederick had provided. There were also the 5 hidden rat tiles that he couldn’t see but could sense. Cederick had claimed he could rearrange his haven but hadn’t explained how. Though Ozzy had been able to connect different havens to his own. He could probably find out how to move around some tiles inside one.
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He should have known that thinking something would be easy would jinx him. Even then it hadn’t really set him back that far. Just had to figure out that the squares domains and membranes which were gained through murdering the rats were not as interactive as the havens despite them having the same basic structure. He'd been trying to get them to connect like he had his and the rat havens. He’d beat his head against that wall for longer than he’d want to admit. Eventually he knew for sure they were effectively inert. What got him on the right track was remembering the fact that Cederick could do this and couldn’t see the things he could nor reach out to the domains in the same way. Which in turn reminded him of how Cederick had stepped onto the red stone tile as it appeared in his haven.
Trying to imitate just that was the simple solution it appeared. While stepping into the place he wanted a tile to be he envisioned it there and as he stepped down there it appeared. Although once he understood the method he was able to utilize his domain for the same results, meaning the process was much faster and less taxing. Essentially he’d been trying to interface directly with the squares and the other one he wanted them to touch. What he had needed to do was interface with his haven as they apparently somehow belonged to it not him. Which suggested some possibilities and In the end he’d arranged his Haven in a similar manner to Benjamins. With the stone tile now connected to his recliner’s square where the grass used to connect. As the start of an eventual pathway. Then to the right of the stone the first grass tile followed along by the rest in a single row so as to eventually be a grassy lawn next to the path. Then he found a similar, but slightly different method to align the rat havens alongside their compatriot grass tiles making it all nice and tidy. He couldn’t really say it was his design but there was no reason he had to come up with his own yet. He could always rearrange things later.
With having started the process of setting up a pathway and since there was still no sign of Cederick returning yet, Ozzy decided he should get to work on expanding it. Feeling the connection the stone tile was related to he reached through and examined the place with his extra senses. As expected there was an imp flapping away there in the darkness. Which was odd as it could have easily come to rest on the tile yet it flapped continuously to keep itself afloat. That wasn’t important to the current goal though. Even though this haven had already donated a tile, and Cederick claimed it wouldn't again Ozzy couldn’t see a reason not to test and confirm. Dispatching of the deformed baby monster was swift and apparently painless as it never even made a noise. Taking its core back he waited and watched. No new tile. As the warning label suggested.
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Continuing with his plan he connected with the second imp haven and repeated the process. A new tile appeared as expected. This time though he was waiting and watching the process with all his senses honed in. The wave of energy released from murdering the Imp burst out from its body and when encountering the membrane of its haven reverberated back toward the center. Well it did so everywhere except where Ozzy's domain was currently breaching it. There the energy continued through and formed a new square and domain to go with it in his own haven. Remembering again the tile forming when Cederick stepped back he realized it happened as a connection between the two was formed. Where in this case there was already a connection, so a new square formed immediately,
Taking a step forward he again reached out to the next Imp in line. He robotically dispatched it and watched the resulting creation of a new little haven inside his own. While doing so his mind had wandered to when he’d fought the intelligent rat. Well afterward when he’d returned and no new tile had greeted him. Something tugged at his thoughts suggesting a possible cause. His mind was brought back to when he’d connected the first rat haven to his own. When he’d been thinking of the havens like cells. How they might move and interact. One such interaction, if they were alive, would be reproduction. What if these squares weren’t like the tails of lizards being dropped. The havens could be creating seeds or eggs here that could somehow later on become havens themselves. Maybe the chained havens were males while the ones that gathered intelligent occupants were female. That could be tested easily enough Though he figured he could finish his current task first. At least as much as he could.
Moving on from one Imp to the next he began expanding his pathway to match the grass tiles to the side. As he advanced he realized something was different with the imps compared to the rats. The imps weren’t getting bigger. Not their bodies anyway. Their domains though were getting further and further from their skin as he moved forward. The fifth started showing signs of a membrane and from their forward it became more complex and dense. It was actually becoming a resistive barrier to his improved domain extension by the 7th. Though compared to the rats' improved skulls it didn’t put up as much. He was able to get to the eighth without even getting concerned. He was mildly surprised after killing it that only the ninth imp haven showed up, not some other connection. It might have been a little too symmetrical if it did though. With that task completed he moved on to the experiment he’d devised.
Walking toward the first of the rat havens that were connected to his he stepped into it. The rat inside shrieked as per usual, but he ignored it. With his new shoes there was nothing it could do against him. From this new vantage point he reached out to the second one with his modified domain and dispatched it quickly. He was surprised to find that the haven he was standing in did indeed gain a square from the other in the same manner that his had. So they weren’t gendered. They could both gain and give a tile, but the intelligent rat didn’t give one. He pondered for a moment before realizing how easy it would be to test this further.
Stepping back to his Haven for a moment he skipped the second rat haven as it currently had no occupant and he didn’t want to muddle the test with that variable changing. Instead he stepped into the haven with the third rat. Again a screech greeted him although this one he had to do something about, but he didn’t want to kill it. Reaching out with an unmodified portion of his domain he formed a little dome barrier around the rat and could hear its cries silenced as he solidified it. Reaching back through a direct connection to the first rat haven he sliced through its occupant as if it weren’t even there. He waited a few moments but nothing came. No new tiles appeared.
Once more he stepped back to his haven and examined the one that now held no rat, but two squares. He didn’t want to step into it otherwise the new rat wouldn’t spawn. Instead he opened the veil between the two havens so he could more easily see them. Sitting down in his recliner he got comfortable and watched. Not wanting to miss anything he intentionally closed his eyes and allowed his other senses to do the watching instead. As he waited he examined the haven. It’s domain and membrane were not large enough to easily hold two squares. The edges were warped from something resembling a sphere into more of a rectangle. It wasn’t straining and it could likely hold a few more squares before it would. As he thought this a new rat appeared. When it did so there was a flash of energy as the central square was replaced with a new one. As this happened it almost looked like a whole was blown in the side of the haven. And the other square was pushed out of it.
He could feel it separate from its origin haven and meld into the mix of all the other nodes out there. Though he could still feel it despite being separate since he’d touched it before. It felt different than any of the other nodes he’d seen. It felt essentially no different from the squares inside his haven. Not entirely lifeless but a bare slate open to the void. Not so much pores as gaping holes that let anything in. He’d keep an eye on it and see what happened. This gave him some ideas though, for how he could prosper here in this strange place of squares, domains, and membranes.