As soon as those warning bells rang in their head, the child rushed towards the area in which they felt this intrusion. They scanned the area when they arrived and noticed a floating thing that seemed to have drifted into the edge of their territory.

Instinctively, the child knew that the floating green thing was not the only thing that crossed into their territory. Four things crossed into their territory at the exact same time, and they only saw one living thing, so the other three things must be hidden within the floating green thing.

Quickly, the child used their mana strings to grab the floating green thing and began to drag it into their territory. As they dragged the green thing farther into their territory, there was a feeling in the back of their mind that dragging something that was living and not theirs into their territory is a bad idea.

But the child knew that the green floating thing and the two other things were living, and whatever they may be, could help them.

This was new, though. They hadn’t encountered anything that was living and incorporated them into their territory. Their only experience was making the two ice mana strings theirs.

So the child started wrapping their hands with their mana strings and grabbed onto the floating green thing. As soon as they grabbed onto it, their mana started interacting with the green thing, flowing through the plant and back to their hands.

After a couple of minutes of their mana flowing through and around the green thing, the warning bells ringing in their head started to diminish. Slowly the warning feeling reduced to half, and as the warning feeling reduced, the child felt the green thing become a part of their territory, along with the two other living things that hitched a ride on the green thing.

When the child felt the four beings become a part of their territory, they were able to pinpoint the exact areas in which the two groups of living beings were residing on the green thing. On the very tips of the leafy green thing was a very small clear gel-type substance with little, less than two millimetres circular objects that were a light blue colour. At the very bottom of the leafy green thing were these long, light brown-grey, thick string-like objects that protruded from the bottom of the green thing. Within those brown-grey strings appeared to be groupings of transparent little round objects, each half a millimetre wide, that were tangled up in the thick strings of the leafy green thing. Along with the gel-like chain in the brown-grey strings were three very small objects with a grey oval-shaped shell around them.

As their mana circulated around and within the four types of beings, they felt more and more like theirs. These beings are now a part of their territory, and that with the addition of these beings quelled a desire within them.

Once the beings became theirs fully, information from their core flowed through their bond about what they are.

The floating green thing was a seaweed, a type of plant. While the gel-substance with light blue circular objects are eggs of a type of sea snail, the groupings of little round objects on the roots of the seaweed were krill eggs, and the little objects with grey shells were a type of oysters. So the four beings that crossed over ended up being a plant and three animals that they gained.

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In order to not destroy or ruin any of these new, delicate parts of their territory, they carefully took the plant and animals through the ice tunnel and into the room using their mana strings.

They carefully placed the plant and animals onto the pressurized ice pebbles. Then, they again grabbed the ice column and started pulling it back through the tunnel. Once they pulled the ice column through the tunnel to the surface, they took the threaded ice mana and started integrating the ice column back into the ice. The child integrated it enough, so it was stable, but if need be, they can reopen that tunnel easily. Quickly, the ice was completely sealed up, and the room was isolated from the outside waters.

Once the room was completely isolated from the outside world, the child started working on the plant and animals that they now had.

They took their mana strings and started to delicately separate the eggs and the oysters from the seaweed. As the child detangled the animals from the seaweed, they put each type of animal in one corner of the room. The snail eggs went to one corner, the krill eggs went to another, and the oysters went to the third corner.

Once everything was separated and sorted, the child turned their attention to hatching the eggs. They wanted to see what the animals would look like, so with everything they did, they employed the use of their mana strings.

Delicately, they threaded one of their mana string through each light blue snail egg. Once they were all connected, the child re-attached the mana string and started pushing the golden flecks through the mana string and into the eggs.

As they pushed more and more golden flecks, the child noticed a change in the eggs. The eggs were growing, expanding in size, and as soon as they realized that, they slowed the flow of gold specks. They continued watching the eggs as they grew to ten millimetres; after that, they stopped growing. After a minute of the eggs not growing, 25 little baby snails started to poke their way out of the eggs. The snails that emerged were around seven to ten millimetres in length and were a light blue clear colour, so clear that they blended into the ice walls of the room.

The child watched as around half of the eggs continue to hatch while the other half did not. They quickly inspected the eggs that did not hatch and felt that they were not viable or alive. As they were examining the eggs, the child noticed that a few of the snails that hatched were starting to eat the dead eggs.

They continued to watch as some of the snails started exploring the room while some were eating the gel substance that held the eggs together and the dead eggs. As they watched, they noticed that the snails continued to grow even after they hatched from their eggs. The child watched as they continued to grow until they couldn’t and ended up being one centimetre long and one and a half tall. After studying the snails’ growth and what they did after hatching, the child knew they had to call them something other than “snails.” And they knew exactly what to call them. The snail’s shell was a light grey with rings of a deeper colour blue than their bodies, so they knew what to call them.

In the child’s mind, the snails were subsequently named “blue-ringed snail.” After they finished growing and naming the blue-ringed snails, the child turned their attention towards the krill eggs and repeated the same action with a mana string. Unlike with the snail eggs, where only half of the snails survived, the child ended up with 100 little grey baby krill that were around one centimetre in length. Just like with the snails, they continued growing until they were three centimetres long, and the child gave the species of krill a name: crystal krill. They knew it was a basic name, but it did describe what the krill looks like, and as the krill were almost fully transparent, they were officially named “crystal krill” in the child’s mind.

With the two immediate hatchings out of the way, the core turned its attention to the seaweed. The seaweed is bright green and has long, thin leaf blades with a brown stem that reaches down into brownish-grey roots. The seaweed was floating around their room, not attached to something, so, using mana strings, the child started to manipulate the roots enough so that the plant was at least anchored down for now, but they knew that it did not mean that the plant would grow with the pressurized ice pebbles. So, just like with the others, the child named the plant “blade seaweed.”

They then turned to the baby oysters, unlike with the eggs where they needed to hatch them or with the plant and the need to anchor it down. The child just wanted to grow the oysters into their adult size. With a mana string at hand and the golden flecks, they increased the growth rate. They ended up with oysters up to ten centimetres long and five centimetres wide in an oval shape. The core looked at the grown oysters and named them “grey oysters.”

Once everything was grown and living within the room, the child took a step back and observed the room.