When Ozzy awoke he nearly toppled himself out of his recliner again. He’d been dreaming of being back home again. Though not being at college or at his parents house. He’d been out camping in the dream. Probably influenced by where he was now. Though it had been spiders infesting the grass, not rats. God he was glad he didn’t end up somewhere with tons of spiders everywhere.

Getting up he stretched and tried to work the kinks out of his back. While it was the greatest place to take a nap for a little bit, sleeping a full night in a recliner was exactly the opposite. For a moment after he was confused as to why the rat worldlets were gone and what happened to the energy but then remembered the last few changes he’d made to his growing home before going to sleep. He wasn’t sure why but he’d become incredibly tired and almost woozy at the end there. Might have been the large influx of energy. Possibly the constant usage of his domain for several hours on end wore him out more than he thought. Either way he was up and feeling simply amazing now that he’d stretched the kinks out.

He was about to reach out to his prison cell and request the lights again but thought about it first. Just because it was ‘morning’ didn’t mean he needed to blind himself before he’d even had his coffee. If he ever would have coffee or caffeine again. He gave the universally accepted and loved drug a moment of silence as he mourned its passing from his life. Returning to relaxing in his chair he contemplated what to do with this next day. He could easily just continue the previous day’s activities. Grinding away at killing rats to improve his capabilities until he was eventually able to kill the next one down the line. Granted he would likely still do that, but in all the different kinds of games, whether digital or otherwise, and even in real life grinding away at things was almost never the best or fastest way forward. What he needed was a new approach.

Last night the interesting effects he’d seen when gathering the energy up had already shown some promising results. The energy stored at high density in his domain had shown that it would add a difficulty in stopping its movement even from the inside. This of course would require gathering up more cores and the energies from the air from the rats and tiles, but it would likely give him a boost to being able to face the next little worldlets resident faster. There was also the membrane he’d formed at the edge of his domain. Which might actually be a more functional improvement. Not just because he could test it now without needing a new energy influx. Also because it showed several different possibilities. He’d already seen that it provided a much more robust and resilient surface to work with than just working with the nebulous edge of his domain as is. He suspected there was much more he could do with it.

With that thought he extended a portion of his domain outside the existing membrane he’d formed at its current edge. Lifting this protrusion closer to his face he compared it to the rest of his domain. The protrusion was essentially a wispy collection of energy not too dissimilar to the energy he’d been consuming this entire time. The difference seemed to be in its relationship to him. The energy he’d been absorbing so far was little more than chained chaos with some intent bound into it by whatever these rats had done to it. Which allowed each little bit to change something it interacted with but the intent of improvement or repair would restrict them from just giving him cancer instead of helping him.

Contrasted to that his domain seemed to be completely altered from just chained chaos. It was like each little bit of it had its chain removed and instead, like his worldlet and that of the rats, convinced to work together with him. Each little particle of it was connected to every other particle as well as himself. That connection could be influenced at a macroscopic scale to produce the results he’d already seen. However, this appeared to take some energy to influence and each little flick or movement he made with his domain was draining him. That wasn’t much when taking into account the ridiculous amounts of energy he’d been ingesting. That wasn’t exactly the problem though.

When attacking with his domain he did more than just influence the movement of his domain. He was forcing them closer and closer together to form something more like a surface, not just a wispy cloud of intent. Which took a significantly larger chunk of energy to do. Not only that but the density he was able to squeeze it down into was a factor of how much total energy he had. Yet the membrane approach was completely different. Like with his domain forming a connection with him, he could cause each little particle to form a much deeper connection to its neighbor. Forming a surface on it’s own that would remain indefinitely and cost significantly less energy even to form let alone the repeated costs he’d been paying. The connection could also be formed into a shape and structure that was well beyond the strength he’d been able to accomplish just by forcing it.

Since it made no sense to just do one thing with his domain, as he was capable of creating multiple protrusions he sent out a set of them, one for each of the rat worldlets he’d connected to his. As he started farming them for energy he realized something. With the little rat worldlets connected to his he now expended significantly less energy to connect to them. Not only that but there was no longer an increased delay from each further worldlet when pulling the cores back to him. While nice he wasn’t sure how much that was going to affect his work other than making it less distracting. He also decided to just wait until the fourth rat tile had a rat before harvesting them all at once. That way he spent less concentration on them and could get back to improving his first domain extension.

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Ozzy spent the next several hours slowly testing out different configurations of membrane around his extension. At one point he made an inspired discovery. He’d been testing possibilities surrounding forming a membrane all along the edge of the connection back to his primary membrane. Mainly because he noticed that without it energy was leaking out the sides at a rate comparable to several times the amount needed to move the extension around. At first he was thinking this would be useless as although a membrane is flexible it’s main feature was its sturdiness. Overall it was more difficult to move than the wispy form of the domain before. However, that reminded him of the pores on the different worldlets.

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Examining them allowed him to find something akin to muscle and a more flexible form of membrane. Effectively the two were formed very similar to one another. More energy was added to each little packet like when hardening, but the energy wasn’t condensed down to form a harder surface. Instead the energy was used to puff up the little ball of packet of energy almost like a marshmallow. When it was about twice the size as normal then it was connected to its neighbors. Which allowed it to flex around while still being tougher and keeping energy from escaping.

The main difference between the two was that the skin form received more energy at the edge of the little energy packet, effectively giving it a membrane of its own. While the musculature form was consistent throughout. It wasn’t as tough as just hardening into the other type of membrane. but it definitely gave him another pathway forward. Reconfiguring the membrane he’d made surrounding the extension he slowly started adding the musculature along the inner edge of the skin. He may have gone a little overboard adding about ten layers of the muscle under a single layer of skin. Initially he’d had a few layers of skin but found a few alterations that allowed one to do the same job.

Returning his attention to the business end of the extension he also started recalibrating what he’d done there using what he’d learned so far. Applying the adjustments to size, shape, and density of each little packet that made it up. Forming a dense, incredibly hard, and sharp weapon. Eager to test it out he willed it to move to the fourth rat worldlet. What happened next was surprising, painful, and informative. The muscles were absolutely much more powerful than just applying his will directly to some misty appendage. They whipped the head of his new weapon toward the fourth rat. The motion started a wave traveling down the other end of the extension. That wave when it hit the membrane of his domain tore it straight off and, wispy domain poured out to form a new connection point. It was almost as if he’d torn off an appendage and blood was spraying everywhere.

This ‘blood’ was his domain though and he was able to halt the wild flapping. Over the next few hours he hardened his primary membrane as well. Even extending it toward his skin and then continuing inside and through. Technically speaking the domain wasn't physical, but he’d forgotten that while using it as a weapon. He wasn’t entirely sure how it worked but when willing it to pick something up or attack it crossed from whatever dimension it resided in and could affect things physically. He formed a spider web of structural connections throughout his domain forming a solid connection point for the mark two extension.

He’d initially been connecting it near his abdomen even though his new senses seemed to emanate from his forehead. As it didn’t seem to matter where he connected it to his domain. And maybe he was being influenced by what he did know of eastern stories with the cores and all. He played around with connecting it to his spine as a tail after that, and maybe he would add one there eventually but for now he connected it nearest to his right shoulder. It gave him an easier time controlling it as he was right handed, so the feeling was one he was familiar with.

Trying again he sent out his new metaphysical tentacle to attack… “ugh” he said out loud. Now he was missing calling it a tendril. Shaking his head he continued his test. He had no way to measure it but he tried to keep his effort to the same level as he had for the entire time he’d been farming the rats. When trying to pass through the membrane he found resistance, and pushing against it caused damage to the rat worldlets membrane. Instead he utilized one of the pores to pass through. Pulling the spearhead back he shoved it into the head of the unsuspecting rat. For a moment he’d thought there was a mistake as it passed right through as if there was nothing there. Although it passed right through it was because it’d eviscerated the rat's head as if it were a bubble. The spear tip continued down through the dirt square and out the other side for several feet. In the process it yanked him forward painfully.

Returning his new limb back through the dirt and grass, this time in ephemeral form he realized he didn’t add a way for the spearhead to grab the core. That was easily corrected though. For now he extended a small portion of the domain from the end and used that to grab the core after stabbing the rats abdomen. Pulling the core back to himself he again went to work. Just below the end where the musculature met the spearhead he thickened it and added a pore. Testing it out on another rat he confirmed the functionality. The pore really worked like a mouth and the tentacle, for lack of a better word as a throat. Sending the core flowing back to him smoothly. As gross as it was, it served its purpose well. He could tell he was using effectively zero energy compared to previously, and of course the actual important part. This was miles beyond what he’d been doing before.

He tossed the new cores to the pile he’d been collecting and reached out to the fifth connection he could feel. The sensation was even weirder than using an unaltered extension of his domain. It almost felt like the upgraded version was being severed as it passed through, but it did show up in the new rats domain after a minor delay and the only real surprise he found was that this rat was approximately the same size as the last. Striking the rat felt different though. He wasn’t flicking a bubble now, but it was still like a knife through butter.

Smiling to himself he pulled back the death machine he’d created. He saw another square appear in his domain, and could feel another connection become larger. He was going to travel down this strange rat square road and hope that eventually he was going to find someone or something along it that was worth it. If he didn’t well at the very least he was going to grow his own little worldlet into something resembling a place to live. Maybe along the way he’d find something he could make clothes or tools out of. However this turned out he wasn’t going to stop just because the road ahead wasn’t so clear or obvious as other possible worlds he might have found himself in.