Ozzy thought about those different possibilities for a while. He sat back and relaxed in his recliner to do so. Shutting out everything around him including closing the veil between his haven and the rats. He wasn’t murdering rats, or Imps and harvesting cores. He wasn’t testing how havens reproduced, if that even was what they were doing. There was no gardening being done. The squares in his haven weren’t being moved around. No new squares were being added. There were no new havens being connected to his. Ozzy wasn’t even examining his surroundings with his new senses.

All of those things could without any doubt bring him increased strength, insight, speed, and any number of other benefits for sure. What none of them could do for him was make decisions. None of them could parse information for him. Those actions wouldn’t re-evaluate the situation for him. And for the first time he wasn’t starving, dehydrated, or completely lost and alone. Finally giving him some time to take stock. Which he’d only realized after taking the time to sit and watch the processes around him. So he shut it all out and went over everything he’d experienced so far, and all of the things he’d learned. going over all the little notes he’d made so far in his notepad. All the things he’d forgotten to write but thankfully remembered naturally. The one’s he’d initially thought were unimportant but now seemed to have more meaning.

There was a lot to mull over. Wherever this was wasn’t even a place per say. Maybe it had been at one time, or maybe it would be eventually but it seemed like something of a fractured reality. Separated by walls of nothingness that, as they took up and contained no space, were no distance at all to traverse, but he still didn’t understand the way it was traversable. Scattered throughout the nothingness, or maybe all sitting atop one another, as Cederick seemed to think, were the havens.

Another mystery themselves. So far it seemed most likely they were some life form which captured and housed living things to utilize the waste energies given off by them. Different havens could bond with and contain different types of entities. Which looked to be tied to the size and density of their domain. The chained Havens which all attracted the same type of occupant seemed to imply some intelligence behind them. Whether that intelligence was their own or someone like himself linking them together was unknown. This was added as a note in his little book. As he hadn’t really thought about it before. There was the seeming reproductive function of the havens which he still hadn’t fully tested but he was making headway with it.

There were then the intelligent entities that could traverse between havens. Even a reasonably intelligent rat had been able to move between them and grow his own haven. Likely just a drive based on hunger but regardless of the drive he was able to do so. That rat had been nearly stronger than himself. Its skull too dense to penetrate with the tools he had created and even now still relied on. Only the fluke of strangling it had allowed him to prevail.

He’d been incredibly lucky that those he’d met that were more intelligent than a rat and obviously significantly more powerful than him were willing to cooperate. Despite the blatant gap in their capabilities they both showed a clear fear of others. Cederick had only given tidbits on the matter but the early introductions he referred to did not sound remotely cordial or safe. Any questions about Cederick's haven were similarly glossed over. Ozzy didn’t miss that Cederick had never brought up the possibility of visiting it. Meanwhile the only haven he had visited of another intelligent and open person had been locked down in ways he didn’t know were possible. After that person’s rejection Cederick still didn’t offer to visit his haven. At the time he hadn’t noticed the reluctance but it was clear now.

Then of course there were the cores, the domains, and the membranes here. All but, one of which he could only interact with due to his accident. Though the fact that the Imp’s domains were naturally increasing where the rats didn’t suggested others had these abilities as well. In the imps case they seemed to be natural to them. They might be able to connect to other domains and see them as he could. There may be someone watching him right now. He nearly opened his eyes and other senses at that, but there was no point. If they were watching him they were watching him. He hadn’t seen any indication of it when he did have those senses active.

With everything he’d learned so far one simple truth seemed to ring true. This was not a safe place. Cederick and Benjamin both seemed afraid of what was out there. Yet both were likely stronger than he was. Cederick’s cells seemed to be made of some combination of physical and membranous domain material. Which looked many times stronger than his own, or the imps domains or membranes. He also drew in energy in a large vortex around himself seemingly without trying despite lacking any indication of a domain himself. He hadn’t seen Benjamin but the fact that Cederick trusted Benjamin to house him, while he didn’t trust doing so himself suggested he was even stronger.

Which brought him back to Benjamin's rejection. While at first he thought this might be due to bringing him in unannounced, there were suggestions that this might not be the case. The significant modifications to his haven suggested he shared a similar ability with his domain that Ozzy had. Which brought up the possibility that simply seeing that Ozzy had been modifying his domain caused Benjamin to reject him. A stretch true, but from everything he’d seen and learned it was definitely feasible.

Everything in this told him something about how he would or would not prosper here. Just getting stronger hadn’t erased either Cederick or Benjamin’s fear. Gaining more squares wasn’t doing it for them either. As he’d seen Benjamin's several hundred tiles and Cederick had said he’d lost count of his own. Allies hadn’t made them worry less about others. Benjamin had several people living in his haven. Cederick visited many others. They had rejected Ozzy though. Whether that was something to do with him or simply because he came unannounced it did tell him one thing. They feared the unknown.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

There were things out there, especially other people it seemed, that could harm them. If Ozzy was really going to prosper or thrive here he couldn’t simply get stronger in the known things. He needed to push into the unknown. To examine possibilities others overlooked. That didn’t mean he couldn’t get stronger along the way in those he did know. He just couldn’t get so focused on one thing that he let other opportunities slide by. With that he opened his eyes and got ready to work again with renewed vigor.

His earlier testing with haven reproduction had taught him a lot but there were a few more things he needed to learn still. Moving back to the first rat haven he reached out to the second. If what he’d been told so far was true this shouldn’t change anything where he was standing. Ending the existence of the rat in the second haven caused a wave of energy as usual. When the wave hit the edge of its haven and breached through a square appeared in front of him as before. The exact cause was unclear but he’d thought this might happen. If his own haven had an occupant before him and it had killed any of the residents of the same havens he had then there would not have been squares when the same havens were attacked by him. That being if it was simply as Cederick had said. One square per haven.

The deciding factor might be that the haven had a new occupant. Though it could as easily be because the immature haven from those two havens was no longer present. He wasn’t sure if that knowledge would really help him, but he might be able to find out without too much effort. He could still see exactly which pore on the membrane had allowed the immature haven out previously. Connecting to his own haven as well as the one he was currently standing in he adjusted their shared connection. Wrapping his haven’s membrane to reach around the side that was previously open into nothing. Matching up one of the pores on his own haven with the ejecting one from before. Reaching through to his recliner he pulled out a small core and released the energy from it, though he didn’t let it go or absorb it, instead he pulled it back to the haven he stood in. Then he thrust it at the ejection point.

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It took him what felt like three hours, and thirty two of the smaller cores, to eventually succeed. The first try had seemed like it might succeed. The haven had opened wide. Not quite wide enough to allow the square through though. The next attempt with two cores had brought the aperture to the point where the square could have fit through but nothing happened after that other than the eventual closing of the same, just as it had the first time. He’d tried sending energy to the square he wanted to move as well as the ejection point. There'd been several variations of just releasing lots of cores worth of energy on the initial tile near the current resident. Who’d actually fallen asleep by then, eventually deciding the intruder was just standing there anyway, and biting his ankle wasn’t doing anything.

He’d shown some results after connecting again to his haven while releasing energy at the pore. He’d tried getting his haven to accept energy through that pore, which did result in it opening wider than before. Though the square still wasn’t ejected. During all this he had run a few other tests. First watching as the second rat respawned he could see something happen with its domain as well as the haven as it settled in. Though it wasn’t quite clear what. Just to confirm once again he killed it to find that no further squares appeared. He’d collected its core, and watched again when another was captured. Again he saw something change with the havens domain, then with the resident as it showed up. The fact that there was a reaction in the haven’s domain before the resident showed up indicated something but he wasn’t sure what.

Returning to the testing at hand he’d varied his approach. What eventually resolved the issue was a combination of interactions with his haven, the rats haven, the square and his domain. He’d used half the energy of a core on the ejection point. Another half on the connecting pore on his haven. Directed his haven to allow a visitor from the rat haven as well as pull energy from it. Then he’d directed the rat haven to move the square that he was now standing on and simultaneously stepping forward through the opening. Which finally resulted in the square moving into his haven. As excited as he was he couldn’t just stop with one success.

He had to know if this was repeatable. First he moved the square over to the left side of the path he’d set up. Then he took position back in the first rat haven. Finally he could test what he’d hypothesized. He’d lost count on exactly how many of the second rat havens occupants he’d killed over his stay here, but another joined the ranks. As he did so a new square appeared in the first rat haven. Which brought a thrill through him. That wasn’t the only thing he needed to test though. Again he performed the process of opening a connection between the two havens and shifted the square between them. Only when he was inside his haven standing on another square spawned by the first two rat havens did he find himself celebrating. Then his heart stopped for a moment as he whipped around and confirmed that the other one was still there. He’d worried briefly that somehow the second one had made the other disappear.

While the simple result of adding two squares to his haven wasn’t exactly a momentous occasion the method and repercussions of them were. As long is He could repeat this process he could effectively add an indefinite number of squares to his haven if he put the time and effort in. Likely in the process finding quicker and easier methods to do so. Though more than anything it wasn’t so much that this specific thing he’d discovered that had him so elated right now. It was the fact that he could work it out through trial and error. There was no telling if others had already discovered this method, but he wasn’t going to stop at just this one thing. He needed to know the rules of this place inside and out if he was going to survive.