“Nope! Nothing happened.”

“You sure?” a spirit said. “Don’t they look bigger to you now?”

“No, they don’t!” the spirit replied. “Are you guys sure you didn’t think of anything when you changed the horses?”

Various spirits replied together. “No, we didn’t.”

“That’s not possible!” the spirit cried. “You guys must have done…something! You don’t just grow horns on horses by luck!”

“We don’t know what to tell you,” a spirit said. “It just happened.”

“But that’s just not possible!” another spirit argued. “Tell us what you guys did again!”

“Look, it’s just as we said before. We were thinking of changing the horses to distract ourselves from the yucky. We gathered the energy but then discovered we had no idea what to do because we had never absorbed a horse before. So we just released the energy over the horses. You guys know the rest.”

“That doesn’t make sense!” a spirit said. “We’re doing the same thing now with the bats and nothing is happening. Okay, what were you guys thinking of changing the horses to before releasing the energy?”

“Never got that far,” the spirit said. “We gathered the energy to do the change. While thinking of what to do, we then realized the problem we had.”

“This is confusing.”

“Yeah,” another spirit agreed. “How could just releasing energy change horses to white and grow a horn on their head? Also if that’s all there is, how come we’ve been releasing energy on the bats but not getting the same results?”

“Yeah! We should be able to duplicate the change.”

“Uh…aren’t the bats a little bigger now?”

“No, they are not!” Several of the spirits within the hive almost shouted. It had been a very frustrating morning for them.

“How about we release the energy on just some of the bats instead of all of them?”

“What do you mean?”

“There’re 24 bats now right?” The spirt who suggested the idea explained. “There’re only 5 horses. Maybe trying to spread the energy over so many bats…diluted the effect? Let’s pick…3 of the bats and focused the energy on them.”

It’s been a night since the hive had created the unicorns and the creatures had been a total success. The rest of the hive was impressed by how the creatures could be created with so little energy, and the wolfmen seem to enjoy the company of the creatures. The moment daybreak came, the wolfmen and the unicorns ran out of the tunnels. Since then, the hive had been trying to figure out how 1) they created the unicorns, and 2) how to duplicate the process.

With no other creatures in the tunnels but the bats, they became the experimental subjects of the hive. The hive gathered a small amount of energy and following the same way the unicorns were created, released it over the bats haphazardly. Unfortunately for the hive, they hadn’t met with any success at all.

Following the suggestion of one of the spirits, the hive now selected 3 bats out of the colony living on the second floor. One of them was the first bat that came into the tunnels while the other two were the two biggest bats in the colony. The hive gathered a small amount of energy and then targeted the energy over the 3 bats. The effects were non-existent.

“Well, that didn’t work!”

“Okay, now we change the energy to…say Rage and then pour it into the 3 bats.”

“What?” one of the spirits said. “That’s not what we did.”

“Nothing is working. What do we have to lose?” the suggesting spirit asked.

Knowing the spirit had a point, the hive gathered energy once again. By now, changing energy to one of the form of magics had become second nature to the hive and the Rage was immediately released in the 3 bats. Shockingly, this time it worked!

All 3 of the bats’ teeth grew longer and their eyes became red in color. The hive also sensed an aura about the 3 bats similar to the intimidation the bear had, although this aura seems more deadly and bloodthirstily.

“That…worked?” a shocked spirit asked.

“You sounds surprised!” The spirit which suggested the change of energy cheerfully asked.

“Oh, and you’re not?” the spirit countered. “But why?”

“Been thinking about this, but then you already know that because we are a hive, and I/we think we have been too…simple-minded about this creation of creatures power we has.”

“What you mean?” a spirit asked.

“Till now, we just pour power into creatures to remake them, but what if that method doesn’t work for all creatures?”

“All creatures?”

“Yeah!” the spirit continued in a rush. “Remember how easy it was to turn the wolf pups to wolfmen? Now remember how difficult it was with the wolfgirl. We have been assuming changing creatures works the same way every time but what if the creature we are attempting to change affects how we can do it?”

“…do not understand.” Several of the spirits said.

“What is the way we change the horses cannot be done with the bats because bats and horse are fundamentally different creatures? Think about it; they are different creatures so doesn’t it make sense the method to change them would be different from each other?”

“Oh! So you’re saying the way we change each type of creatures would and should be different from each other!” a spirit said. “You know, that does make sense!”

“Correct,” the spirit said. “Just look at a horse and bat! They are totally different creatures. The bat fly, the horse runs. The bat is small, the horse is big. Why should we assume the way magic and energy affects one would be the same for the other?”

“Wait…doesn’t that mean we need to try different types of magic on each creature to see how each type of energy affect them? That’ll take forever!” a spirit complained.

“Do we age?” the spirit asked. “What do we care how long it takes to map out each…transformation? We have all the time in the world!”

The spirits in the hive laughed in agreement. The spirit was correct. Time means nothing to the hive. It might even be a good thing things are so complicated. It made things interesting and gave the hive something to do.

“Okay,” one of the spirits of the hive said. “What should we do now?”

“Mana?” another spirit suggested. “Give mana to the bats and see how it would change them?”

“Good idea! Let’s try that! After that, let’s…”

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