Yesterday was boring. I didn’t spend a single point in enhancements on any of my creatures, nor did anything interesting enter my region, nor did I come up with a new test to do. The leaves that I had enhanced are showing minuscule differences to their non-enhanced brethren, so I don’t think that this is the way to go.

I am in a rut. No matter how good equilibrium is from an objective survivalist perspective, it is incredibly dull. Non-threatening changes are what I need

To distract my self and do something which seems productive I am using the mana in the air and drawing blue versions of my spiders and having them chase insects that are seemingly ready to leave my zone back to the center.

I have found that by manipulating the water in the atmosphere, I can make it seem like any shape I want it to show, and I can use that to scare non-sentient beings. I have tried to use it to scare my rabbits into eating specific blades of grass for future tests, but scared rabbits end up running towards their den. Dull, fearful little creatures they are.

My spiders are even more tedious. When they feel threatened, they make themselves small and hope that they aren’t seen, except for my stalker and assassin who both tried to counter-attack when my illusionary blue monster got close. As I don’t lose the mana used and it just dissipates back into me when I finish my work, I am increasingly making larger constructs. Soon I will be making the monsters that were around when I first became aware. Or at least blue versions of them, that can’t touch anything.

…

In the last two days, the rabbits have been expanding their den. They fear the blue constructs that I am passing the time with so much that they have taken to staying in their shelter much more than they used to. I should probably stop, but on the upside, one of them does seem pregnant now.

As I had promised myself to do when I got the opportunity, I try to see how mana reacts to new life being created. The most exciting thing about it is that there is no reaction whatsoever.

Moving a little mana towards the young unborn, all that happens is that the mana sticks to the womb. It seems like the unborn can’t take mana even if I were to help it along. The womb, however, appears to be upgradeable, so I send half a point there and hope that this will help either provide more nourishment towards the new rabbits or better nourishment. Or at least keep them safer.

I have also had to create a fake, blue, bird at the edge of my zone to keep my stalker from slowly moving away. I hope that it was just attracted to the higher mana levels in the mana wall which is keeping my mana here, but if it were to enter that wall, it might see the higher mana levels in the neighboring region and leave. I did not make it one of my dominant inhabitants so that it could stop being a resident here.

Initially, I may have wanted them to hunt outside of my zone, but the behavior of the squirrels has proven that there is a high likelihood of beasts not wishing to stay in a mana weak zone unless they have no other choice. In the squirrels' case, it was that they were fast enough to escape from danger, and my spider could probably kill most things as long as it gets the jump on them.

My main objective left is to conclude my latest test with the grasses and see if I can figure out what determines the path that each individual blade takes.

I don’t see a relationship between the parent blade, which means that it isn’t locked into any sort of genetic relation. I also see individual blades in larger groups following the other upgrade path, so it also doesn’t appear to be related to its surroundings per se. And I haven’t seen any weird mixes or completely different job routes pop up.

If I had to guess, I would say that if a new blade has trouble competing at the start of its life, when its roots haven’t grown deep yet, mana will flow to the roots and the latest path of growth is locked in. When the blade has enough access to water from the start, the upgrade that is followed is the path of expanding its kind.

That means that there is a mix between survival necessity and group thinking, and definitely requires some more guiding than pure randomness. I am still not sure if it is internal instinct or external factors that are pushing it towards an optimal path, but something certainly is.

…

The next week, my days and nights are filled with scaring my creatures to stay in my zone when they seem to want to leave. I keep an eye out on the tree, grasses, and spiders that have been enhanced but don’t have the mana to spare to upgrade them more or improve more creatures. The making of the constructs has replaced my mana movement practice, so no more random raindrops in my zone to scare my beasts. I also look at the new, yet still unborn, rabbits a few times every day and night cycle. They as of yet have not absorbed any mana, and have not taken any of the mana from the womb.

I have kept the mana constructs to the borders of the region as I don’t want to stress out the rabbits right now, and that means that they are eating and residing outside of their den most of the time again. The mother to, however, spend all her time not eating digging further into the ground.

I usually would have passively absorbed the information that this was occurring and not pay any attention to it. However, this time while I am looking at the mother at work and trying to see if the work the mother does affect the babies in any way, I notice that the rock that was hit has strange markings on it.

I first checked this rock out as the face which was uncovered by the pregnant rabbit was very flat. Anything being this flat is out of the norm and being as bored as I was, anything none standard would be very welcome. As such, I immediately noticed that there seemed to be markings in it that followed a consistent pattern.

The rock itself does not contain mana, so I doubt that it is some sort of living organism pretending to be a rock and confusing my senses. It is possible that the connection to mana has caused such an effect, but then I would have expected to have seen this kind of markings more frequently in the world around me, and this is only the first time I have seen something like this. Or at least the first time I have noticed it.

Much more likely is that some kind of organism has made these marking though for what purpose I don’t know.

Of course, my first modus operandi is always to see if sending mana that way to see if there is an effect. In my experience, mana almost always does something, so if nothing else I can learn something new. And if these markings were made for mana, perhaps they lead to a clue on mana control that I am currently still lacking?

So I send some mana towards the markings. Unfortunately, the markings on the rock, as well as the stone itself don’t respond to my mana probing. Or at least, similar to the way any other rock would. When I surround it with enough mana, the water in the atmosphere condenses and the rock gets wet, and that is the only effect I seem to be able to cause.

Of course, the main question now is, why has whoever created these markings done so? If I could figure out who or what made them, perhaps I can figure out a purpose?

Of course, I can recreate these markings in the air through mana, but that too doesn’t have any effect. If only to be sure I show these markings to the other rabbits, the spiders, the insects, and all the stationary beings individually. This takes me almost a full day as I have to wait with each of them to see if they respond in any way. But unfortunately, none of them do.

At least something happened though, so now I am less bored.