Chapter 164: Repurpose
I faced my Fungal Gardens, and made the first of many painful decisions.
A land of death, yes, full of biting teeth and destruction; but wasn't that the problem? There wasn't enough mana up on my first floor to maintain those kinds of monsters, even with Nuvja's boon. There had been a singular second evolution here, the reaper's cap, and that had only come from Ghasavâlk actively feeding it a burrowing rat. It wasn't meant to be devastating.
Burrowing rats, luminous constrictors, stone-backed toads, shadowthief rats; they could all survive here, thrive here, but there were three sleeping in their dens that couldn't.
The lunar cave bears.
They were large, powerful, broad, and ultimately, wasted. Too strong for this floor, no opponents to test or train against beyond each other, and no reason to fight invaders when they weren't strong enough to take down Silvers. They stuck to hiding in their dens, prepared to serve as backup; something to stop invaders who tried to leave.
Shoth wouldn't have tried to leave. He would have just enslaved me.
Therefore, I needed to move them to where they would actually fight. Currently, the midnight bear was venturing through my Jungle Labyrinth, as he was wont to do in a realm perfectly suited to his abilities. And considering I doubted his offspring would get the two-headed bear evolution without a second soul to take into the mix, I planned for midnight, or perhaps bugbear; I needed to put them where they would be most efficient. And that wasn't the Fungal Gardens anymore.
Sorry, I didn't say, because this was for the better. Instead, I pushed mana to them in carefully woven miracles, memories of evolutions and the power of other floors. Go below. Become strong. Become free.
The eldest bear raised her head, ears perked; she cast a mournful glance back at her den, the rolling hills of whitecap mushrooms I constantly rebuilt to feed her, which I wouldn't be doing any longer. Hard to have a Fungal Gardens full of diverse and constantly-evolving fungi when my bears ate their weight over and over again. Gods if that wasn't the reason I hadn't had a plant evolve in forever.