Ozzy had just ended the life of the fifteenth rat using his not so classy tactic of flooding its haven with his domain, surrounding it and suffocating it. At the moment this was as far as he wanted to go just brute forcing the problem. That and he was getting a little nauseous again from the use of strangulation. Seeing the thirteenth imp overpower him so easily had only given him so much drive to do whatever it took to advance. While he still wanted to grow in strength, knowledge, and increase his land he no longer felt the need to do so at any cost. Well there was that and there was the fact that with his unexpected reversion to using unaltered domain, even this underhanded method was starting to fail against the rats. The fifteenth had been incredibly difficult to hold in place while it whipped itself around trying to get free.
The spoils from all this gruesome murder was far less than he'd have gained just going after the first few rats. Especially when taking into account the smaller rats were replaced so much faster. He'd been hoping to find another intelligent rat, or person maybe, but so far that hadn't happened. The one intelligent rat had netted him more energy than hundreds of the smaller rats, or the equivalent of hours of raticide. If he met somebody he could actually interact with peacefully that would be even better. He was feeling a bit put out that Cederick hadn’t shown back up yet. It’d only been what felt like a day, and he knew he’d felt a little overstimulated from the last visit but he definitely didn’t last the week he thought he would.
While he'd been able to add several more tiles to his haven it wasn't all he could do. Extending his domain he performed one of the functions he was thinking some of those he'd met so far hadn't discovered. Connecting to the sixth rat haven he began the process of attaching all of them to his haven. From the sixth all the way to the fifteenth he connected them down the right hand side of his pathway abutting the grass tiles. With all of them connected he did the same with the imp Havens. Well up to the twelfth. He was a little frightened of what might happen if he connected the thirteenth.
He also opened the veil to his haven to get a look at all the attached Havens. Which made his seem just that much larger. The little gap of missing gras tiles on the left side of the path annoyed him though. A quick utilization of the first rat tile fixed that right up though. And with that he'd done all he could with the rat and imp Havens for now. But there was still one last haven he'd connected to before that he hadn't checked in on yet.
Benjamin's haven felt a bit like a tin can when reaching out to it. A solid unbroken shell of a surface with just the one opening on one end. The shape was even a bit reminiscent of a can as well. Likely due to the layout of the squares inside. He sat for a moment examining its exterior while he contemplated using his domain to reach inside. There were easily several hundred tiles inside there, and from what he could see only about a dozen or so were taken from each specific type of haven. Meaning there should be thirty odd lines of havens he would be able to gain access to if he could only touch those tiles again while looking for connections.
The fact he hadn’t thought to do so while there was frustrating him, and driving him to nearly put caution into the wind to gain that windfall. Yet his experience with the thirteenth imp gave him pause. That and he still had hopes to possibly restore a relationship with Benjamin despite the poor non meeting since he was kicked out before actually being introduced. Not to mention with the alterations to the haven it was likely Benjamin would see him if he was even able to get inside. There was a possibility he’d know even if he didn’t succeed in breaching the membrane. Hell for all Ozzy knew Benjamin could already know and be stewing in there right now. He paused for a moment at the realization of him stewing in what was effectively a tin can.
With a chuckle Ozzy pulled back his domain and turned to something else to occupy his time. Since he’d already interacted with all the havens he had a connection to and was still on a break from experimentation he did need to increase his domain strength. The imps domains were getting larger and denser by the square and his was apparently no match for even the thirteenth one. He could tell that in an unmodified state even comparing it to the earlier imps it was lacking. Which was odd as his was now several meters past his body even when pulled in as tight as he could get it. He’d continued to absorb all his stocked cores until there was only the one large one left and he still didn’t feel like it’d actually increased in strength.
When he’d been using his modified extension against the imps he could feel them resist his attacks ever so slightly more in each new haven. Even if their domain barely got larger each time. Which is what suggested to him they were denser. Which made him curious. He’d never actually tried using raw domain against them. Which meant he had no idea at what point his was stronger, on par, or weaker than theirs. That was at least something he could do while continuing to improve his domain. One might argue integral to it. Sure he could simply modify his domain again, but the imps seemed to be getting stronger with just their raw domain not by modifying it.
Examining the first imp’s domain it felt like a wispy cloud that was so small and nebulous that it wasn’t even visible. Pushing against it with his own was like waving his hand through a humidifier’s exhaust. Looking at its domain more closely he could see that the little particles which made it up were smaller and further apart than his own. He dispatched with it and tossed the core aside so he could continue to compare first before he continued improving himself. The second imp had a larger domain and its particles were closer together but they were around the same size. Again it was like a bit of vapor when interacting with it. The third’s domain was around the same size as the second but it had many more particles in it and they were much closer together. They were nearly touching like his own were. The fourth imp started to show similar improvements he had himself being that the particles themselves, not just the domain as a whole, felt both denser and larger at the same time, as well as a larger domain as a whole. Though still not matching his own density.
Moving on through the line of imps he found similar results all the way to the seventh. The fifth, and sixth both continued to increase their domain size while also storing more and more energy in each little particle. The seventh similarly had a larger domain, but it had reached about the same density of both domain and particles as he had. Which made sense as to why he really started feeling resistance there. What he’d initially thought to be a membrane when looking at them was significantly clearer now. It was more the distortion you’d see as you looked into water or a thicker liquid which appeared to be a membrane, but it was still just raw domain. The eighth, and ninth both showed similar improvements to the seventh. Simply larger and larger domains with the particles seeming to have hit a limit on density and size. Mirroring his own growth.
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With the tenth and eleventh he found that their domains had stopped getting larger. Though he couldn’t tell why yet. The particles were still at the same density and size but somehow they packed a greater punch. The twelfth imp actually had a smaller domain than the eleventh, but again it was stronger still. He couldn’t even kill this imp with just raw domain despite his domain being able to fully flood the haven it resided in. Just having more domain did lend a certain increase in strength, but whatever this imp had done had changed that equation. While he couldn’t kill it, the sheer volume of domain he could bring to bear meant it also couldn’t retaliate or even move about. With the imp stuck in one place he could examine its domain more closely.
He suspected this would take a while so took the opportunity to put the rest of his oversized domain to good use. Many of the imp havens had captured a new occupant by now and the rats were of course all present. Sending off a small portion of his domain to the first nine of each line he added eighteen cores to his stockpile. Still not wanting to alter the results of his testing, but not wanting to waste the opportunity.
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The advancement these imps seemed to have innately utilized was proving difficult to crack. Repeating the initial examination bore the same results. Each little portion of the imps domain appeared to be exactly the same size and density as his own. Yet when trying to tease out a single particle of the imps domain he could feel his own being knocked away like a child's hands. While the imp still wasn’t going all out against him, likely due to the strength disparity he eventually had to form a small membrane around its domain to keep it from kicking his own into a froth. The interconnection between the weaker parts and alteration to their structure allowed them to work together to overcome the strength gap. He also formed a pore with a few small appendages a bit like a spider's maw which allowed him to grab a single particle, and pull it through.
As soon as he’d separated the particle from the rest of the domain it decayed. That’s at least what appeared to be happening. The particle took on a faded appearance and began to vibrate or wobble until it suddenly popped. Energy puffed out from where the particle was momentarily blocking him from viewing it. When that energy dissipated he found two ‘normal’ particles. He sat staring at the particles for a moment wondering what could be going on here, and how he could parse through it to gain the strength these imps had. He smiled a bit at this as he felt like a researcher at cern probing the depths of reality with a profound realization at his fingertips. The opportunities that might come from the things he had a chance to discover were dancing around in his brain.
While pondering the possibilities he ran another round of death through the first nine havens of each side of his own. Yielding another healthy addition to his renewed stock of cores. He hadn’t been consistently going after them and yet he had built up the largest stockpile he’d had yet. That wasn’t even counting the numerous trees which were collecting and converting energy for him as well. Each tree had somewhere between three and ten fruit grown on its branches. Each fruit had something like two to four times the energy that one of the first cores held. Which was still more than the ninth cores held. With there being over thirty fully grown trees now their collective energy was comparable to the near thousand little cores he’d now piled up under his recliner square since he’d run out of room in the recliner pocket.
The massive pile of cores and the progress he was making on discovering the next step in improving his domain were making him giddy with excitement. So much so that he had to pull back from examining the twelfth imps domain as he was having trouble focusing on it. He also wasn’t exactly sure how to move forward in discovering its secrets. Instead he just sat and constructed Things that might capture the particles without damaging them in his head. All the while he continued reaping the denizens and gathering their cores. The more he sat and thought the more he felt a buzz grow along his skin.
Even with all the trees he’d planted the haven was still filling with energy. Though he realized if they’d finished growing and their fruits were full of energy they were likely not draining as much as they previously had. Pausing from his constant rat-imp-icide he planted trees on all the unadorned grass tiles he’d just added recently. He also began draining the energy from every fruit and using it to increase the size of his domain. While he didn’t want to alter his domain too much, all the examination he’d done suggested he couldn’t. The particles couldn’t get any denser, at least not simply by adding energy. There was some trick to the next step that he didn’t yet understand. Since he was already filling the twelfth imp haven with domain it wasn’t like he would be altering his results when testing with it. The cores he left as they were, as they weren’t interfering with anything.
Working to drain the fruits mindlessly he left off any contemplation of the myriad methods of testing he could use with the imp. Instead he just enjoyed the haven he had now. The place was starting to feel more like a little forest than the empty nowhere he’d initially found. There was a gentle rustle of leaves as a breeze brushed through the trees. The constant flutter of leathery wings could be heard from the imp havens. An occasional stirring of the rats could be heard in their grassy tiles to the right. Ozzy closed his eyes as he continued to collect the energy and just enjoyed the little symphony his home made for him. There wasn’t a pattern per say but more of an ebb and flow to the different noises which flowed into one another. Which is what helped him recognize when something new joined the panoply. Something discordant with the rest. A sickening crunch could be heard to the right. Then another, and a third following quickly after. Finally Ozzy opened his eyes and turned to see Cederick making his way down the line of rats.