Something strange happened to the rat. At first the fur got whiter and now is purely white. Then she woke up and showed her eyes, which are now red. She is likely now an albino.

Although she is awake, movement seems to be rather bad. Maybe she got brain damage from the operation, or needs to understand her new body. By the way she is not a hulking rat, as I first thought she would become, but still looks like a normal rat albeit an albino one.

For now I feed her and give her water by the nest with food being ground to a paste for better intake. More tests should be made after she has recuperated more.

The tests I can make are rather interesting in their results. I do not own her. She is her own Monster and does seem to do what she wants, albeit right now it is nothing. The next is, the aura is not deflecting my essence anymore, but the body is. I can not see anything inside, but it is enough to feel the heartbeat, so I can frequently check her pulse. For now this is the only things I can do, but maybe later I can see how the fusion has changed her.

…

This rat is so interesting. It seems to feel my presence, when I am near her, as she always perks up, when my attention is near her. A few clumsy steps are already possible, but I still have to clean the nest of her droppings myself, as she can not go out on her own. Sadly one annoying part is, my retry with other Monster is still failure after failure. Either the spirit breaks or the fusion goes horribly wrong. One snake has another snake head growing out of the deadly wound on its stomach while a mouse just ripped itself apart when trying to heal the wound.

There must be something I am missing. What it is, I do not know.

To have a level head I just start on more enhancements. Snakes combining makes them thick but not longer. Right now I try to make them longer by modifying the muscles and bones directly. It is extremely complex to add more flesh and bone, so it will take its time. The enhanced snake grew horns and has rather shiny scales. Also the lost genes are starting to get activated, because some kind of bony nubs grow on the front of the snake. Some kind of lizard trait might get reactivated with time. Or it becomes a dragon, as there are many fairytales that say snakes are extremely distant related to them.

Would be nice to have Monster under my control without wearing their skin, but it is still not possible. There are still possibilities, but right now I have more pressing problems.

…

The wolves who had thrown out Alpha and his troupe often come looking inside the tunnels. The more often they come here the bolder they get. Although they do not go trough the gate right now, it is annoying for them to stalk around the tunnel entrance, as nothing will immigrate in, when they guard it. High Mana is a relief for many creatures, they know that too and think about making this their new hunting ground.

Unless they get into my gate, I can not capture more wolves, and they just annoy me to no end. For this I am taking Twin to make a stand. Let us see who is the big bad wolf in this forest and who is the stray.

Moving out of the tunnels with Twin I already see four wolves in the vicinity. Growling and showing their teeth mean nothing to me, but shows how they do not like me. Well if they do not want to be friends, I won’t be either. Doing the same they do, I show them Twins teeth and growl in a extremely deep rumble.

Moving towards them shows them how I am not even close to be intimidated by their attempts. Although I do not quite understand how wolves work, normally there should be some sort of duel with the strongest, but they disregard any decorum and attack at once.

What do they think will happen, if they attack something close to double their mass in pure muscle? The first one trying to get my leg was swatted by my wind miasma infused paw. A heavy gash was seen on its snout, but seems to just yelp and retreat for now. The other one who tries to get my throat got a reminder, that my teeth are way stronger by just breaking the skull and killing him immediately. One got my back left leg and one bit right into my scruff to break my neck, but was unsuccessful.

A heavy shake took care about the one on my leg although he took a rather heavy chunk of flesh. The next be thrown over was the one on my back, directly on top of his dead friend. While he struggled to get up I bit down but just got his front paw. At first he wanted to bite back, but after feeling the leg separate he took hobbling of. The other two just ran with him and were gone.

Although Twin won, he was not unscathed and needed reassembly with more wolf parts. Luckily I just got fresh parts to make those even multiple times If needed.

Dragging the body and the leg into my Domain I take Twin and everything back to my realm. While disassembling Twin I take over the rest of the wolf carcass and start turning him into biomass. With the new biomass I just reassemble Twin and he is back in action.

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…

The wolves did not come back and I can now hunt again without problems. I sometimes see a group hunting, but they did not get near Boost or Twin. They rather run away and evade any conflict for the time.

Luckily It gives me time to get more plants and prey. The more I have the better. Variety is necessary for the plant tests and food for my bodies is also nice. I could hunt inside my Domain, but the Monsters are better alive than dead, when they are already in capture range.

By the way, more testing failures are present. Fusing more than two bodies together makes the spirit body too unstable and it ruptures. Even with quick assembly of a body it does not do much, as the Body is so dense the heart can not pump properly and just gives up. This happens with mice, rats and snakes, so I will not try it on my wolves.

Fusing different Monsters was a disaster, too. The spirits just rip and then vanish. As expected from such an Idea, but was worth a try.

The only interesting experiment was using high amount of Mana on spirit bodies. The miasma normally holds onto the framework, but with enough Mana those parts get removed with time. With this I created a non monster mouse. Tests with other Monsters will be concluded in the future.

Noticing Ghost in the background I could use him to create a regular wolf, but would be a waste. He is still stable and seems to be the same as usual. As long as there is no difference, he will be staying there for a while longer. After a time, I will maybe see if there is some problems with reassembling him, but right now it is not worth to do that.

…

While feeding my rat I try myself on the plants finally. The low kind of fragile spirit they have is concerning, but at the same time good to work with. I can even see the fusion better.

Sadly no real monster plant has risen, but I do not have high hope to that right now, as the forest is filled with Miasma and if that did not happen over how long this is going on, then it won’t happen with me experimenting on it.

Fusing plants creates hardier ones, but something is off. Maybe there is a way to create fusions with better results, but I do not see how right now. The fusion of plants with different miasmic properties ended like expected and they dissolve right at the start. Nothing there for me to learn unless new ways to ruin my crops is a thing I need.

By the way the Monsters are starting to adjust to the Portal and just ignore its presence. My avatars get ignored like they are scenery too, even snakes do not want to dabble with a mouse under my control, as they just stay out of their way and search something else to eat. Maybe they can notice my presence and rather not antagonize me, as I already took multiple brethren down in different ways.

…

Today Boost is again the one who will move through the woods. It is a nice feeling to use him once in a while, as he is rather agile and a great caster. With his power I should be able to take down most of the threats around my vicinity unless the Roots or a rocky bear happens to wander in. Hope I didn’t jinx it.

I feel kind of sad for Tailless, as he is now permanent resident with ghost in my Realm, but right now I need more useful bodies, as the density of creatures is growing steadily around my tunnel. What surprises me is the addition of more plant life around here. Although the Mana helps with growth I did not understand how more plants just happen to pop up without seeds. Maybe there were seeds and they waited years to bloom? Some deserts have such plants, so it could be hibernation. Well, this time no research for me, as I need fast results and not seeds, that survive centuries.

All in all my haul was rather nice this day, as I got a few snakes and another of those moles. Enough food for a few days.

…

Red is being modified right now. I slowly remove the bark on his shoulder blade, and try to connect the blood vessels anew.

The reason I am doing that now is the process I used on a mouse, assembling it with snake materials and kinda worked. It needed some parts but not all from mouse biomass, what means I could create skin from previous iterations of Red and just take that skin to overlay the wound of removing the bark. At the same time I could take some parts of him and enhance them. The enhancing will be a next try if I can finish this cosmetic surgery.

While thinking about tailless, I might add a tail to him or maybe give him something else, but fusing parts of different wolves is tricky and dangerous. It should be first tested on Rats to see the reaction of their bodies.

Peeling away the bark shows quite strange flesh. It fused with the bark in some way and looks a bit rotten. With my other bodies, he always had a sweet smell on him somehow, and I think that this flesh is the source of it. Taking away the most fused flesh and giving him new one out of his prior extremities I carefully put the skin flab on the part I removed.

Obviously I just do it on a small part near its shoulder for the first test, but if it works all the Bark goes away in bigger batches. It is his own flesh and skin, so I hope no reaction is shown. It is risky to start with Red, as he is my only sapient, but without cosmetic changes he will be recognized and that would mean a whole lot of explanations.

…

I name the white rat from now on Snow. It is nice to have something, that has no true fear against any of my presence. She is now able to move by itself but still is a bit slow. A few days recuperation are needed and while I am at it I keep her food and water bowl filled for now. She might later hunt on herself.

As she is the only one who survived the fusion of a spirit body I am reluctant to just look inside to see what makes her tick. Maybe I can do it later, but not right now, as she is even rarer than my wolves.

The rest of the time I am working on mixing ingredients of the plants I harvest. I see different changes inside the goop while mixing them, but nothing until now seems to have added effects.

By the way I need to hack the parts or grind them down, as disassembling them makes them somehow inert in magic. For this I can either use Essence or Red. To use Red is more favorable as my Essence seems to interact too much with the ingredients, when I touch them. I am not hygienic enough, damn.

For this I can only slowly work on the mixing, as Red needs to recuperate from his surgery. Luckily it seems to work and just feels strange but has no real problems. After homogenizing his body by taking out the plant parts I can start working on changing more direct structures. The first will be the bone structure of his face, as I already said, it would be bad if someone can identify Red.