Ozzy froze as he saw Cederick disappear from the third rat’s haven. A few moments later he appeared in the fourth. A blur was all he could see and afterward Cederick was holding a core with a mess of a rat left in the middle of the square. The core dissipated into Cederick and then he took another step. Ozzy nearly called out but held himself back. He watched as Cederick continued to dispatch with one rat after another. So quickly and efficiently that he couldn’t even see the act take place, nor was there any evidence of it occurring other than the corpse sitting on the tile. Cedericks hands didn’t even appear bloody. As if he was moving too fast for it to cling to his skin.
It was only after the eighth rat that Ozzy remembered it didn’t really matter if he called out or stayed as still and quiet as possible. The veil was only open on his side of the connection. From the rat haven his own haven wasn’t visible nor could one hear anything from it. That allowed him to relax enough to process what he was seeing. He had assumed Cederick was stronger than him. Significantly so even, yet seeing him, or rather not being able to see him dispatch of the rats was a little more extreme of a difference than he’d been expecting. Ozzy reached out to the haven Cederick had just left and felt for connections almost instinctively. Not entirely sure what he’d do when he found them.
What he found confused him at first. There were three links to this haven. One to either rat haven before or behind it in the chain and another to a third haven. Though he quickly realized this was his own. Which again confused him but he did have a connection to this haven. Which meant Cederick wasn’t jumping back to his own or another haven first. He was stepping directly to the next link in the chain. Looking at the previous havens confirmed this as each one, except the first, had a second square inside now, which he’d somehow missed as he was too focused on Cederick. Not wanting to lose the opportunity Ozzy moved an extension as quickly as he could back to the first rat haven and felt for connections. There were again three and he almost threw his hands up in frustration when he remembered this was because there was only one chain link connected to this one. The other two connections were of course his own haven, and whichever one Cederick came from.
Looking back to Cederick, now in the twelfth Rat haven he considered his options. With how strong Cederick was it was likely he’d be busy for at least a while. At that strength it did concern him how the boy would react if he somehow found Ozzy had connected to Cedericks Haven. Though again with how strong he was it was likely he’d be busy at least for a few more minutes. Spreading his domain out into the new connection he could feel he again touched what felt like a larger and well defined membrane. A normal one thankfully. No smooth surface to suggest it’d been modified. Though something felt weird about it. He kept brushing along its surface until he could feel the surface was almost entirely flat. No curvature to speak of. While that was odd, it wasn’t what his mission was, and he didn’t have much time. Entering through the nearest pore he was immediately informed of why the surface felt flat.
Cedericks haven edge was flat because it was crammed to the gills with squares. Not hundreds of squares like Benjamins. There were definitely hundreds, but it was hundreds of different TYPES of squares. Not only that but there were easily something like thirty to fifty of each type of square. The scale of this haven was beyond anything he’d expected. He wondered for a bit if Cederick had discovered the same trick that he had. He could feel that their connections were not to the same parent locations. Each and every single square was seemingly connected to a different haven out there.
He didn’t have time to check the entirety before Cederick was likely to return but he had checked a few patches of similar looking squares and confirmed that while they were connecting to havens in the same general direction they were clearly not the same havens. With his eyes on the rat havens connected to his confirming Cederick was still busy he checked one out of each little patch of different squares. It was just that though. Random patches of differing types of land strewn about the place. Cederick had suggested Ozzy organize his place a bit. Even going so far to say the layout was strange, but his own place was a mess. Though if Cederick stayed with Benjamin This might make sense. There was no real reason to organize, build anything, or grow anything if he never stayed here except to hunt.
Ozzy had gotten so engrossed in gathering nodes to visit that he’d lost track of Cederick. Freezing he eyed the fifteenth rat haven, but Cederick didn’t show up there. He’d apparently already moved on to the sixteenth and beyond. He should have as much time left as he’d had so far so continued to check square after square for the connection to its parent haven. He wasn’t even a third the way through what he felt was the total when Cederick suddenly stepped back into his home leaving one single tile from the rat lineage below his feet. Again Ozzy found himself frozen, both physically and metaphysically. Though Cederick didn’t seem to notice or care that his domain was there only a few dozen squares from him. Instead he turned and stepped again into nothingness.
Ozzy nearly released his hold on his bowels as he relaxed. Thankfully even if he had there was nothing there to cause trouble. The slow buzz of energy was still helping keep him in pristine condition. Though he began to wonder where Cederick went. he worried he might show up in his own domain and pushed his haven to close the veil again between his haven and the connected chained lines. As much as before the desire to hide his capabilities had been a mild instinct now it felt imperative. With Cederick seeming more like a predator than a cordial house guest. Though Cederick didn’t show up in his haven. He showed back up in his own. Towing along with him another tile, likely from the first rat haven, although Ozzy couldn’t know for sure. What with having blocked off his sight from the havens.
It took almost another minute for Ozzy to realize he was staring off into space just thinking about the consequences of what he was seeing. After which he decided he may as well continue his search. It appeared that as much as Cederick was obscenely strong and fast he couldn’t see or interact with energy in the same ways that Ozzy could. He’d claimed as much when talking about trying to grow the trees. Though Ozzy wasn’t sure he believed him until now. Cederick had already left and reappeared in his own haven several times. Looking at several portions of Ozzy’s domain as it stretched further and further into his lands to gain the connections they harbored. Yet at no point did his gaze linger or lock onto anything there. He would simply turn back and jump away once more. That is until he’d repeated the process easily forty times. Then he jumped away and didn’t reappear in his home. Ozzy was interrupted in his thoughts as he heard another sound in his haven. That of someone saying “What the fuck?”
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Cederick had just finished milking the rat’s havens for squares as far as he could easily push them. He couldn’t believe he’d completely forgotten to add them to his home, and had nearly lost them in the mix of all the other connections he could feel. He’d been trying so hard to find someone willing to meet with Ozzy that he was sure wasn’t simply interested in someone to take advantage of. Which was far too common in this place for his liking.
Benjamin was a rare gem of a person who really didn’t care who someone was, what they looked like, or where they were from. He also didn’t seem to have any real demands of those he helped out. His only criteria was supposedly that they were not “a dick”. Cederick hadn’t seen him deny a single person that hadn’t failed that metric up until Ozzy. At least nobody that Cederick had bothered to bring by. Cederick was a great judge of character and while he sometimes wouldn’t bring a person to Benjamin for other reasons, he’d never brought someone to him that he thought was “a dick” as Benjamin would say. So, he’d felt obligated to find someone else to introduce to Ozzy. Spending more than a day meeting with one person after another. Or rather meeting every third person as most of them were either unavailable, refused to speak to him, or declined the offer at the outset. In the end he’d finally found what he felt was a good fit.
Only when he had stopped at his haven was he reminded he’d never actually killed any of the rats. The connections to them he’d felt out upon arriving at Ozzy’s haven. He always did that first thing. The more places he had a connection to the easier it was to find other people and the less time he needed to spend on his own in his haven. With the derailing of his plans at Benjamin's place he’d lost the time he usually had to add squares to his haven without the possibility of being boserved. Having them in his haven ensured a permanent and physical representation of the new line he’d gained access to. There was still a vague feeling of them though and he could tell there was no one inside, well other than the bonded occupant.
The havens were rather easy to understand if you’d spent as long as Cederick had feeling for their intent and visiting to confirm the meaning. This haven had an occupant and hadn’t been visited by anyone in several hours. Not that hours was the measure the havens used. But the translation was long enough that he suspected Ozzy was either sleeping or off doing something else. Possibly still messing with the sprouts or other plants he’d provided. He could also be exploring the imp line Cederick had connected to his haven. Which was another tactic Cederick would dangle in front of them as a distraction to allow him some time to make some connections of his own in peace. It wasn’t like he expected any issue, but he’d had enough troubles in the past in running into others unexpectedly that he’d prefer to do this in private. He could outright ask, but he’d also learned the hard way that asking for something was a quick trip to being told no. Better to ask forgiveness than permission
As he’d felt there was only a rat in the first haven. Killing it and moving on he’d quickly gone through the first forty rats without so much as breaking a sweat. None of them indicated they’d been visited more recently than the first rat haven had. After the initial run through directly from one rat haven to the next he had confirmed Ozzy wasn’t currently interacting with any of these havens and he could run through once more to gain his tiles. The process was longer than the quick run through he’d initially done so he didn’t want to do it at first. Though with that complete he was ready again to meet with Ozzy once more to introduce him to Vonder.
He jumped to the haven where he’d initially met Ozzy first. There was never a reason to make it easy for someone to find your haven. The lesson had been taught to him in a myriad of masochistic ways and despite how highly he held his people reading skills now he never fully trusted anyone. In the middle of the haven still sat the corpse of the rat he’d watched Ozzy struggle to cut open. The fact he’d killed it had a surprise to him. Ozzy was by far the weakest person he’d ever met here. Usually if you could kill something the strength this rat had been you could easily cut through it. Though the things Benjamin had told him clarified the situation.
Putting that behind him he took another step. This one to Ozzy’s haven. Though when he arrived he found himself walking straight into a tree and bonking his head. He was ages past being hurt by such things but he hadn’t expected there to already be a full grown tree here. Stepping over to the nearby reddish stone tile he could see he found a completely different view than he was expecting. Before him was nothing short of a grove of trees lining a pathway reminiscent of Benjamin's layout. Turning to see the other side of the path it continued another few tiles past where he was standing, and the grass tiles on either side continued even a few tiles past that.
The trees were a little much he thought, but what really threw him was the number of tiles. Turning in a full circle to confirm, he could easily see enough grassy squares to suggest Ozzy had gotten to the thirtieth tile. Yet at the same time Cederick knew for a fact that haven claimed nobody had been to that tile in something like a month. All of that might have left him more than a bit confused but past that he could feel the energy starting to flow into him was well beyond what he could have gained in the amount of time he’d been gone. “What the fuck” he said beginning to wonder if Benjamin wasn’t completely right.