Rats

The familiar contract with Mystique had been made with a velociraptor that was Mystique and the wolf that was Pandora.

Pandora was estimated to be a power level around eight but the velociraptor would be much higher once it had completely matured.

The best time to build a bond with one was when it was still young so when it was emerging from its egg was the best time.

If the magic power of Blush was required to be level with or slightly above each of her familiar contracts then around eight of her magic power level had been taken up by Pandora while Mystique could have taken up around thirty magic power.

Rather than using that much to gain a fully grown one, Blush had decided to raise one from a young age so that the thirty magic power would be reduced to somewhere below five.

Blush could feel within her that there was still some room for another contract or two depending on how she had chosen to pick her next familiar, if there was an issue then it would be that she had not been able to determine a more accurate reading of her magic power.

She estimated it to be at least somewhere near forty magic power level but it could have been much higher.

There was a big difference between herself and other witches in terms of magic manipulation accuracy and precision, magic purity and how efficiently she could use her power compared to others so it would seem like she was more powerful than most other mages, witches or wizards that may have had more power than her.

Some of those that were defeated by her that possessed greater power had been overcome by different tactics that made her enemy vulnerable to attack or being unable to put up a fight.

Even her own father had been defeated by her by using the combined powers of her siblings and herself.

If the estimated magic power level was around forty then out of that forty had been taken away by at most fifteen magic power leaving behind around twenty five which could allow a contract with several other weaker animals.

If Blush had chosen differently then she could have made a contract with a bear, a pterodactyl or something else with a similar level of power.

It would have saved her some effort in trying to raise the power of her familiars since they were already quite strong but then she would not be able to explore the familiar magic further to understand its rules.

It was a slight loophole that could be exploited that she had used to reduce the cost and increased the amount of familiars that could be kept but it meant gaining weaker or not fully matured familiars.

Not everyone would be as willing to take the time to raise a familiar from a young age unless it was a rare creature that had high potential and having weaker animals protecting them only made them weaker than they could have been.

Blush continued with her research and quickly came to a conclusion in her testing of the serums that would help to increase the rate of success and more efficiently make better possible results that could be used later.

Each category was separated into different sections of research which was human based physiques being combined together, animals being combined then humans and animals.

The human and animal route helped to better identify how to make a stable hybrid and incorporate different advantages of animals into humans or in reverse.

That research created animal humans or humans with animal traits and abilities or had allowed animals to gain a more human-like physique.

The human based physiques were further exploring other races and their advantages to build a better version of what had been collected so far which was from demon, ogre, devil and humans.

The four races were tested using humans so it had resulted in further research into her own race that was a hybrid of demon and human but there were other races like the ogre human and the devil human.

The final area of testing would be introducing animal genes to another animal to combine the advantages of two animals together.

An example would be combining a wolf and fox together to see if it created a better creature that possessed the advantages of both creatures or if there was a need to alter some parts to allow for the body type of one animal to keep the advantages it had over the other while inheriting the traits it needed from the weaker form so it could gain better survival abilities.

Each of the areas of research had helped to better understand how to make a more stable version of the hybrids of each of them and how to add certain genes to her subjects without causing any major problems.

Those collected results from those hybrids could be introduced into another subject to create a tribrid or to further make alterations to base design.

Blush was sitting in a room with the results that she had gained then stepped into a room where she had begun her ritual once again. "I need to test my theory if I am going to even go down this route further."

There was a cage full of rats that were gathered together and the ritual had come to an end very quickly.

Blush took out one of the rate that sat obediently on her palm then she injected it with a serum. "Now we will begin."

The magic power taken to gain a small rat as a familiar could only be considered as a very tiny amount that did not amount to one or two magic power.

Rats were weak creatures but they had excellent environmental adaption, agility, balance, senses, instincts and contaminant immunity which allowed better survival than many others.

Once the serum had been injected, it started to change shape and grew much larger into a mutant rat human that was about the size of a twenty year old female.

Blush had a preference towards having female familiars over males so she had only made contract with female animals and had not altered any changes to be made to the gender.

She closely resembled a female mutant rat human or a wererodent better known as a ratkin or a rodentman.

Her eyes looked around the room curiously and at her own body that was very unfamiliar to her. "Uh.."

The noise that came from her mouth left her surprised so she widened her eyes and covered her mouth.

Blush took note of what had happened and showed a slight smile. 'The familiar contract has not been broken and she now possesses human intelligence. Her current abilities should be limited but she can be raised well in the future to be a good assistant. Dr Gero has played a big part in her genetics so her learning ability should be better than others.'

There was a problem with beasts being transformed into more human states when they had been given human intelligence and that was that they still had the previous mind and mindset of a beast.

Each animal had a varying intellect so some would be able to adapt much faster but they would start out having to learn everything that humans did from scratch.

It was like they were just newborns in terms of how smart they started out as but the genes of Dr Gero that had been collected had been studied by Blush which were tested on several different subjects to allow the best results.

On other subjects, it had already been determined that Dr Gero was a better model to use than her own body if she wanted the best results for learning ability and intellect.

Blush's current intelligence was the result of her reincarnation and possessing the knowledge from her previous life while she had gained psychic and magic powers to enhance that but her own body was not as good as she thought without them when introduced to another test subject.

The test subjects that were introduced to that part of her genetics only gained a better than average learning ability while the genes of Dr Gero were clearly superior.

Blush was not completely satisfied with the results and continued testing her theory further as contracts were made one after another with the female rats in the cage. "Now I can test this further."

Each of the rats started to change shape and grew larger in different shapes and sizes.

Some took the form of birds, demonic looking animals and other animals which had some characteristics of a rat left behind.

They were the result of her combining of testing some combinations of animals which had been added to the rats to create a hybrid or to completely transform a weaker animal into an overall more powerful one almost completely while retaining the advantages it previously had.

One of them looked like a mix of a cat from the demon realm that had ears similar to a rat which was the results from her experimentation testing the samples gained from the Dark Demon Realm.

Rats were very common where she was and could be much easier to locate in an age that had less means to contain or capture them to reduce their speed of reproduction.

The capital and other places were not that advanced so there would always be risks of hygiene and other issues that would cause the rats to gather around those areas.

It was a lot like Blush was doing everyone a public service by targeting the rodents and causes of disease before targeting the general population of the wildlife.

Blush wanted to experiment and make improvements to the genetics of each creature or race but she would not risk bringing down the overall population to the point of being near extinct.

It was enough to occasionally catch an animal that was growing too big in population to become a problem to the balance of the forest or to be a menace to the surroundings so that the balance could be maintained and the animals did not stray from their territories into human lands.

In another part of the room were some rats that had transformed into different shapes and sizes with varying fur colours or characteristics.

Some had changed similar to the first experiment but had some subtle differences like having sharp teeth, demon shaped ears, red eyes, coloured fur, ogre horns or devil horns.

Others were more extreme as they looked very similar to the models that had been produced by her race hybrid plan which were humans mixed with either ogre, devil or demon genes while some were like the original and only had human genes within them.

Each of them were either a human, devil human, demon human or ogre human with rat characteristics like having a tail, claws and rat ears on top of their heads which may have changed shape a little depending on the races introduced to them.

There were some among them that had closer to a human appearance with less characteristics of the race they were mixed with while others were more obvious.

Some had better intellectual talents while others had far better physiques that were more suitable for combat and training than the others.

The current state of each of them was the result of using the previous research from the animal hybrid and human races hybrid experiments then put them to use by testing them further on the rats which resulted in a hybrid or tribrid creature depending on what was introduced to its body.

Blush checked her contracts to see if there was any changes each time and she was left pleasantly surprised. "This is such a cheat.. but it still requires some training for them to be of real use to me in the future.

I have not exactly hit my limit though with twenty five rat familiars being gained like this so perhaps I can make some room for others or I can save up for a rare creature. Maybe I should go for some amphibians? A bug? Reptile? A bird?"

Depending on their racial advantages there would be some among them that could have gained a much larger power level boost when they had gained traits of other animals or races within them.

Their previous one power level could have jumped up to anywhere between three to twenty five depending on what genes had been more dominant and how mature their bodies had become.

Some looked old while some were very young and small while there were a couple of teenage or adults among them.

Each of them were making noises as they were surprised by their changes and were adjusting to their new states so Blush sent her directions to them through the contract that they would have a better understanding. 'I will find you all a place to stay for now so you should rest, eat and prepare for tomorrow when your training and studies will begin at the very basic level.'

The next day, a preschool level class had begun to start them off on the basics that they should learn so that they could be observed further to gather more data and to see which among them would show better talents in different areas.

Those smart enough or talented enough to surpass that grade would have junior school or higher depending on how many were able to graduate from their grade of learning within certain subjects.

They would be started off on basic learning behaviours, speaking, following rules, how to use different tools to doing basic exercises then they would go on to learn numbers, letters until they could calculate numbers and write words.

The lessons would be very simple at first but they would help those with human bodies to learn and understand the human world better while understanding more about what they were capable of.

The other beasts that were created were all put together with Mystique and Pandora to train further so Blush became even more busy but it was worth it after the successful blood samples had been taken from each of them to test and compare with the others to prepare for future experiments.

Blush had gained many familiars that had already allowed her to build a small army or a large amount of potential helpers which would help to further research how each of them developed in the future to determine which had the most potential among them.

They may have seemed like they were not that great in their present state when the rest of the universe was concerned but it was already an excellent start for Blush who was living on Earth.

There were very few threats to her life if she was surrounded by her small army unless she suddenly decided to provoke the current guardian of Earth or some more disciplines martial artists or power users.

Blush made one more statement that those with exceptional performances in either fighting or learning would gain a name instead of having a number or code name. 'The two names available for those at the top of each category is Flake and Shard.'