No Need for a Core?

Kazue drifted back to full consciousness slowly. She knew she hadn't actually been asleep, but it had been nice to just relax and let her mind drift for a while. Still, she felt an itch to work on building; a near-compulsive need to grow whenever she had enough mana. Which was a shame, she was enjoying cuddling with Moriko.

Carefully she disentangled herself to not disturb the sleeping woman, then dismissed her avatar, and recreated herself wearing a green dress, directly into Mordecai’s lap. “Hello husband mine.” She murmured, snuggling close. She liked that, and she didn’t feel so nervous about it anymore.

Mordecai kissed her on the forehead and snuggled with her in silence, letting Kazue gather her thoughts and set the pace. But she didn’t take too much longer to be ready. “Alright, I can feel you have plans, whatcha want to build?” But he shook his head.

“Let’s hold off on building just yet. Well, building anything complex; I guess you could start by building one big cavern. I intend to section it later. However, I want some feedback from Moriko for some of the challenges. What I am hoping you can do for me right now is make some creatures. Which come to think of it, is a good reason to have the cavern started. Anyway, first challenge: Rabbit bees, since there were a few bees in Moriko’s collection yesterday. Just, work on creating a creature that combines them; a simple animal. I’m not looking for a monster, I just want to see what you can make.”

Huh. Well, that she could do, or at least so she hoped. The image in her head was easy enough, rabbits and bumble bees both had the cute roundish shape. So, sized like a rabbit, black and yellow.. four legs or six? She decided on four. Bumble bee wings, rabbit ears, and two cute little antennae like a bee, but the face has to be a rabbit. Erm. Let’s adjust the blend of bee and rabbit head there. So, yeah, that looks like the right shape, but how does it fit into things? She’d become more aware of creating creatures that fit into an ecosystem, but she was having trouble fitting this into anything. If she gave it a bee-like tongue, it’d still need big flowers. And what would it need those front teeth for?

Oh, wait. There’s an idea. What if she made living crystal flowers? Yeah, she could do that. They could be big too. Whoa, the things it would do if she let it! She’d have to be careful about those roots. Let’s tame that back a little. There. And now, let’s see... yeah, to get at the liquid crystal nectar, the bunny bee would have to use its, err, her teeth to chip open a hole in the center of the flower, which would get ‘pollen’ on her, and then she could still have a super long tongue to slurp the nectar up. And she should probably give it a stinger too, since bumbles didn’t die when they stung. She could make the poison more potent though, she didn’t want people messing with them! Oh yeah, make sure they have a gentle temperament too, just like bumble bees.

Mm, but she liked honey, maybe she should make sure they made honey hives. Exactly how did the honey-making stuff work? Oh. Eww. Um, how could she make something better? Well, it was a hybrid, so what if she made it so that they produced honey instead of milk? But still have them lay eggs, so that they make babies sort of like bees do, and the worker bunny bees can produce honey to fill in the honeycomb, some of which then feeds the baby bunny bees. That works! And a few more little tweaks to make everything neater and cleaner, and not shed rabbit fuzz into all the honey, and it was done. Hmm, and maybe she could make things a bit more equal. The females would still be the nectar collectors and honey producers. She was locked into that if she didn't want to go back to the way bees actually make honey, but the boys could be smarter, make wax, help construct and repair the hive, and act as guards.

Okay, she had the design now. She could just create one by picking an inhabitant, but instead, she felt out amongst all the guests in her warrens, offering up the idea to them. It didn’t take long before a few curious ones who wanted to fly were willing to evolve into bee-rabbits. Hmm, but what should she actually name them? “Okay, I got the design down, had to make crystal flowers too, but not sure what to actually name them. Any ideas?”

Mordecai’s answer was rather quick. “Bunbees.” Kazue cracked her eyes open to look up at him suspiciously. “Fits a naming theme I already have in my head,” he continued, unapologetically grinning at her. Fine.

So she officially named her creations ‘Bunbees’, and blossomed forth the first several flowers as she transformed the bees. The warrens adapted swiftly, creating a separate but not completely isolated site for the bees to begin occupying. The initial framework for them was simply made out of stone, but they would be able to build onto it. She found the whole arrangement to be rather nice.

“Alright, what other weirdness did you have in mind?” she asked of him while toying with his shirt. She liked walking through her dungeon when creating stuff, but she kind of liked this too, and it’s not like it made a difference if she was actually there or not.

“Easy. Still making animals, how about rabbats?” He said with a quirked eyebrow, waiting to see her reaction.

“You’re an awful man,” she said, making a face at his naming sense. And sense of humor. Still… she already had ideas. Probably use some black bunnies for this one, yeah, she had more volunteers interested now. Since she already had crystal flowers, they could just mature into crystal fruit that the rabbats could eat, and that would be good; but that didn’t seem good enough. Well, the normal insects she’d helped get started for the ecosystem didn’t seem to really be guests or inhabitants. They kind of just were. Kazue was beginning to realize that while she could duplicate or absorb them, maintaining their levels was going to tax her mana and attention. Instead, she should probably make the rabbats insectivores too. She had normal bats, but the more she worked with dungeon magic the more she realized it also affected normal creatures who lived there, so she wouldn’t be surprised if she wound up with crystal bugs or something later. Better make sure the rabbats could crunch those nicely. And done. They were way easier than the bunbees.

“Now that was hardly a challenge. Aren’t you going to give me something a little harder?” She asked, glancing up at him through her eyelashes, then trying to not blush too hard at her own flirtation. She’d never really been able to make herself flirt before, but it seemed easier now that there weren’t any real consequences, if she flubbed it. She already knew Mordecai liked her.

Mordecai smirked a bit. “Behave, or I’ll teach Moriko about something that will leave you quite surprised.” Why did that leave her both concerned and curious? “Now, I am not going to give you the result directly, I want to give you the ingredients. Mix rabbat, mosquito, and venomous snake. But only a small change to the rabbat really. Oh, and this one is a monster, but a small one. They will work best in groups.”

That took a bit of thinking, but she then focused on the fact that both mosquitoes and snakes bite, and venomous snakes have hollow fangs. “Vampire rabbats‽” She said with surprise, then grinned at the idea. “Oh, I can make them cute with overly dramatic evil eyes too!” Well, these were going to be proper monsters, so it was going to take some real energy to create them since they had to be stronger and hardier to make them a danger. Still, it wasn’t as big of a change; the concept of vampire bats existed in the world, hers were just more aggressive. If they had a chance, they’d grab onto something and suck on blood, but if they couldn’t, just a normal bite would leave a sort of poison that would make blood flow easier. An anticoagulant. And she was pretty certain she’d just learned that word from learning how mosquito bites worked. Being a dungeon was weird.

“Easy as eating a pie,” she said when she was done and had spawned a small swarm.

“Excellent. Now, how about some hybrids of the rabbats and your elemental bunnies? Oh, and maybe make some that spit acid and poison too. And of course the horned rabbits.” Mm, well, she could see how the biting ones might be a touch redundant with the vampire rabbats.

She frowned as she felt out how much capacity they had left for monsters. “That’s not going to be a lot of room left over. We can only make a few of each I think, unless you want swarms of tiny ones.”

“No, that’s fine. I plan on combining them with environmental issues to make things more challenging.” Well, making them wasn’t too hard, just a bit time-consuming. Mm, and the rabbats could have a bit more power in their magic than the dire rabbits. Soon enough she had a few of each flying around the big empty cavern. Didn’t seem like much of a home yet though.

“Anything else?” She was pretty certain the answer was yes, she could feel the general sense of his emotions after all.

“One last thing. The concept is called a Carbuncle, and they look sort of like rabbits with big gems in their foreheads, and a touch of cat or fox thrown in. Usually some shade of bluish to greenish, but they come in all sorts of hues. Heavy on the magic, especially protection and healing, plus some light-based attacks.” And she could feel that his mood was now anticipation. He was watching her. Great.

Well, it was a different sort of challenge at least. She knew she wanted to take a rabbit, and make it into this Carbuncle, but she didn’t have all the parts or an exact plan, so she was going to have to – “Oh, this is for a boss, isn’t it?” She took his smile for a ‘yes’.

Right then, lets get to it. She poked about the colored rabbits she’d created early on, and found an aqua one who seemed to like the idea of getting a big shiny gem on her head; so Kazue scooped out the back wall of the second floor, to create a separate area, and then guided the aqua rabbit there. Then she started feeding the rabbit mana while concentrating on concepts, and tried to find the patterns that harmonized right.

The rabbit grew bigger of course, and began to glow slightly as her tail grew out and she even gained a little mane. Kazue needed to find the right sort of crystal; oh, she could make a topaz with the right shade of blue in it. She put it on the rabbit’s head, and simply held it there as she continued to add mana to rabbit and gem alike, pouring in concepts of magic, protection, healing, light, and.. divinity? Yes, a touch of something holy seemed right. A sacred guardian and protector.

There it was, a subtle feeling of things clicking into place. She just needed a little more energy… and there. The gem sank into the carbuncle, fusing with her and becoming part of her as more, smaller changes raced through the former rabbit, completing the transformation. Now what to name her? Well, she was supposed to be a protector. “How about Hildegard?” Kazue asked, sending the thought to the carbuncle as well.

Mordecai nodded in approval as Hildegard sent back her own sense of satisfaction. “That was perfect. You did a great job. Now we can rest a bit and wait for Moriko to wake up; it shouldn’t be too long.”

Oh, you mean she just had to bide her time all curled up in his lap? Such a shame she had to languish so. The thought made her want to giggle a little.