Mole tastes bland, earthy and the whole thing is chewy to nearly rock level. The only uptake is after eating with Boost it was way easier to eat that with Twin. He just chews through everything, Skin, flesh, sinew, bone… How he even can crush bone with his jaws is perplexing.

While I was away I had some intruders, but of the welcome kind. Rodents came slowly to look for shelter. Mice started to search the place for shelter and a new kind of visitor is here. Some kind of rat. They are gray normally, but in shadows they get obscured. I bet it is some kind of shadow miasma. Whatever it is, they are already a bit annoying, eating my plants in the garden. Oh well, at least they do not eat all of them and the plants roots are still there for growing back.

The different kind of gardens are already seeded and now growing on their own. Hopefully it will show me some good results, as I really want to create some drugs and enhancers for Red and the others. Not that I want them becoming addicts or something, but I need to boost their growth to make sure they do not get killed. I have only a limited count on bodies, and if I do not want to walk around as a mouse again, no offense dear mice, I need to make sure they stay healthy.

Until I have a way to capture new bodies with more strength I should be careful with what I have, even if I have to be overprotective.

…

Time flies, when you have a garden. The greens are growing fine except in the miasmic fields.

One field is flooded with Miasma I thought is plant growth, but I am not so sure anymore. The Plants are growing in strange ways and look all different. Similarities between even the same plants before this are non existent. They only grow and they do not care in what way. Even the monsters are avoiding them and I think this is more of a dud. If I want a garden to scare someone to death, I could always create a new one.

The next is filled with darkness. Do not judge me, there are plants loving the dark, and some of my experiments even survived. Their growth is extremely slow and seem to take their time, but they are promising. I keep them for the time.

The fire Miasma was a no go. Magical plants grow inside Volcanoes, I have seen them in my earlier life, but it seems they need a bit more adaption time than what I gave them. At least their ashes are good fertilizer?

Light Miasma should have better results, but they are dead too. Some kind of radiation poisoning maybe.

Water drowned them. That’s it.

Earth is sad too. All plants are now calcified. Not a whole disaster, as I now have chalk. I think it was useful with metals and masonry… wait, aren’t bones out of chalk? Scratch that, a dud too.

Wind ripped their leafs to shred, so nothing there.

Maybe it had to do with the quantity and not the affinity. I should try it again with less oompf on the next batch, excluding darkness, as there is still hope.

Now to the Mana field. It grows fast and lush. Most of my rodent residents take their meal from that part of the fields. As for the few who do not, they just take their meal in form of another rodent resident. Those field rats are rather omnivores and quite good in hunting mice by hiding in the shadows.

Everyone evades my Portal with a wide berth by the way. Not that I am complaining, as I caught some mice and rats still with just locking them in a house and cornering them with my portal.

Mice and Rats work the same as the wolves. Fusing them makes them bigger, albeit slower and giving them Miasma starts changes. But as I have my wolves right now as the prime example, the new subjects will be used later in different experiments like cross fusion and flooding their bodies with Mana to see what happens.

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…

More time flies and I have to sadly say Boost is not evolving anymore. He seems to have reached some kind of limit or maybe there is something what needs to happen for him to further go. As of now I will not push more into him. He now looks like a true combination of a furry wolf and greyhound. His Front paws have changed rather strangely as he has dexterous claws, but I do not see the reasoning for now.

The next thing is my plants have rather poor miasmic properties. So slow as they grow it shows how bad miasma is for them. As for the Mana garden it is now in phase two. The main garden where I use the plants to reseed all other gardens are now also made with Mana induction. The original Mana garden got a wall and I now press Mana with more pressure in. As my walls are Mana proof, it should overcharge those fresh seedlings. Hopefully I find some kind of nice effect on overcharged plants I can use.

The mine under the well now reaches into the middle of the village, so I created another well there for more authenticity. Into the walls I even made ladder steps. If someone is so crazy and goes down there I could catch him rather easily. With so many tunnels down there, I have the feeling something should have caved in until now, but It seems I do a good job in reinforcing the walls.

Acid spitting snakes are now in my growing soul storage too, as some had found their way into the village. For now I am tolerating them, but I do not like them very much, as their acid already has melted some parts of my wooden doors. It is easier for Twin to find a snack though, as he just needs to go where I last saw one and take it down.

By the way Twin has finished readjusting. I thought about it and took him apart once and the spirit now fully resembles his fleshly body. I will not add another body to Twin, as I do believe it would cripple him more than benefit him. His Muscles are already taut and his body lumbering. If any more gets added he might not be even able to move anymore.

…

A new opportunity has risen for new experiments. As I am looking through my village I found a snake in the sewers hunting a rat. The rat already is hit by acid and some of its flesh already dissolving. I can even see the ribs slowly getting thinner. While the snake seems to be extremely sure about its victory it slowly moves to the rat.

The rat itself is nearing its last moments and the snake looks to enjoy the struggle of its prey, but as strangely many of the snakes, they never look up. While looking only at the rat and the surrounding side tunnels I dislodged a rather big piece of brickwork over it and smash it into paste. Right after my portal slowly drags itself through the wall near the rat.

To start the experiment I need helpers so I take the fused mouse named Brute and the mutated mouse Shocker out of my Portal for possible mishaps.

The next thing was taking rat biomass and a spirit body I own of a rat out. As the rat seems female I take an appropriate rat for my experiments. The next thing is taking my spirit body and shoving it in the dying rat.

The aura of the dying rat is nearly completely gone, so it was possible to push the spirit in albeit with extreme effort. At the same time I keep track of the rat itself. Before I thought the process would fail it just plopped right into the rat and now they are merging.

As I look at the rat I notice no heartbeat and slow degradation of my own spirit body in it, so I take surge over to quickly give a shock to the ribs and see the rat convulse.

Next taking over brute I start massaging the place where the heart is with its strong claws. Ever so often I hold open the maw with brute and push a small gust of wind inside it, while noticing the working as the right lung, that is out in the open moves.

Between those aspects I assemble what I can from the merging spirit body and close the wounds carefully. Until now It seems like futile attempts but I do not worry, as the probability to work was never that high.

Time moves on and the rat repeatedly has a heartbeat and then it stops again for for me to restart it. It took hours of careful fusing flesh and letting the spirits settle until it was finally finished and the rat was whole again. The whole place was drenched in blood and the rat is just shallow breathing, but alive. The operation was successful.

With this experiment I now know I can heal, more or less, and able to fuse my spirit bodies into not overtaken physical bodies. What this entails, I will now see, as the aura of the rat is so low, it shows how close she is still to death. A watchful eye on this specimen is utmost priority.

…

While repairing the sewer was easy, watching the rat was a bit tedious. The heart stopped twice again already and is still comatose after two weeks. I am force feeding it with a salvaged blood vessel from a snake to push food and water into the stomach. I hope she wakes up soon, as I have put too much time in it right now to just let the rat die. By the way the rat is living in the mansion in a nest I created with straw from the plants I have lying around.

The village is getting bigger with time. It has now twelve houses, my doghouse and the mansion. Maybe I should build a church, but what kind of design do they use in this world for churches? The gothic type with towers, the rounded domes, pyramid shaped and even the black cube come to mind, when I think about it. Sadly the Roots are too isolationist to know and therefore Red did not know too, but there should be some places of worship.

The most positive aspect was the modification of the gate. A wooden interior with plated stone makes it lightweight and robust enough to be lifted by the pulley with counterweight. If the ropes I crafted through lianas get cut the gate stays closed. At the same time the Gate is not that obvious anymore, as it blends more into the ceiling stones. Now I hope I will be able to close it, when other Roots are visiting.