43

When my familiars returned it was with several wild dogs and felines, almost a dozen giant rodents, and a small school of fish. Most of the game was carried by the wisps who could use their extra cores for carrying capacity but Sili the basilisk still manages to carry several rodents wrapped in their tail. This showed that the basilisk had developed problem solving skills that exceeded the rest of its species.

However, this much food was only enough to feed maybe a hundred serpents overall if I stretched it out.

I was forced to take extreme measures which involved going into my voided purse to bring out an entire drawstring purse filled with small crystals. These crystals were quartz-based variants used to represent the elements and were magically synthesized- they had no value as jewelry. Picking out some smoky quartz prisms roughly the size of my thumb, I toss them out onto the granite steppe and watch.

The granite around where the crystals landed began breaking down into a fine cloud of rock dust that formed so quickly that it hid the small craters in the steppe as they formed. After a few seconds of gathering material, the growing cloud of rock dust began condensing into three different points while I decided on what shape for them to take.

Finally, after a total of ten seconds, three four-foot tall arachnids made up of compacted sediment stood like inactive robots while drooping pincer forelimbs.

Golems were a cheap and useful alchemical creation that basically ran on magic batteries. These synthetic crystals could keep a humanoid golem running circles at a full sprint for three days before they ran out of juice. For hunting purposes, these three would make more than suitable pack mules.

Allowing the recently named Sili to stay and eat, I sent the wisps back out with orders to hunt large numbers of large game birds and small game predators down the opposite side of the river and mountain from earlier. Between the two wisps who had accumulated thousands in experience points for me over the years, I completely believed they would bring back enough food to feed most of these serpents tomorrow morning.

Despite the fact that I would be associating myself with food in their view, I continued my public relations by coaxing and coercing the biggest of both breeds to the forefront. While keeping the oldest and the youngest together, I would pick out the few cave fish that spill forth from the mountain to feed them each one at a time and one after the other.

Of course, all of the serpents I was feeding were the ones who did not get to eat from what my familiars brought back.

While tending to the displaced serpents that could become invasive species outside the mountains, I also took care of my pet project Sili by turning the pits from the golems into one large shallow pool for her to bask in tomorrow. The water that filled it was, of course, the remaining holy water I made from the river where I found her. As well as some of the pure mountain mineral water.

Around their basking pool I arranged some of the fossilized organics from the river in another mana concentrating array hoping that they would represent 'age' and 'ancestry'. My goal in feeding them both kinds of cave terrors was to help awaken the basilisk's heavily diluted dragon ancestry with the magically awakened ancestry of the serpents.

The concentrating array was just a hope of ensuring the prosperity of the dragon genes.

Outside of these personal affairs I spent every other minute meditating in front of the altar I created by simply reciting all of the prayers that I remembered in my head. For dramatic affect, I instigated my aura to produce the holy and light elements to leave their residual mana in the area and water. The magic act was more useful than the prayers, honestly.

Little by little after just that first evening and night, the altar began to dimly glow with a colorless light from within so that it was clearly visible even in the darker morning hours. The was a sign that my altar was becoming visible not only to the mortal world but also to the god I was idolizing. If I maintained this practice of enriching the altar until the idol was satisfied, the god in question would anoint it so that 'its surrounding lands will prosper'.

In this case, the lands within and without the mountains as well as the creatures that inhabit it. This included the serpents and other species. Because everything was all holy and light and righteous, the evidently dark-oriented creature deeper in the mountains would be pushed back.

From what I saw, the creature had a large slimy body with tentacles at the front and insect-like legs underneath. The tentacles seemed to be what cast lightning through the caverns while retaliations were negated by its electrified slime. It was an apex magical predator big enough to eat fifty-foot serpents and deadly enough to do it in bulk.

All information actually pointed at awakened ancestry of some sort because the creature itself did not match anything I had ever seen or read about. For all I knew, this could be the insect version of a primordial dragon's ancestry. Whatever it was, though, its was obviously elementally blessed with lightning with lesser dark element involved.

Water creatures quite commonly developed lightning affinities with their second or more awakenings, so the darkness was probably its ancestry.

A basilisk that evolved as a species to be amphibians from ancient water dragons or dinosaurs, for instance, could evolve as an individual to be either slimy or scaly. However, my use of the rock terrors was to help ensure that Sili grew scales while the water terror's water aligned ancestry would have greater effect on the water aligned basilisk. Sadly, everything was entirely hypothetical.

After a night of meditative prayer, my wisps and golems returned from their hunting bearing dozens of bodies between the lot of them, The wisps even have to use themselves as mana webbing between the golems to accommodate their haul. Now, though, they could return to their amorphous forms and rest in my body.

Doling out the food was honestly somewhat terrifying because not all of the serpents wanted to wait for a turn. Several of them tried outright attacking me in the face of so much food but they were quickly put down by the largest serpents I had tended to last night. Making friends obviously had benefits.

After two hours of feeding serpents and then sending the golems out to hunt again, I went back to meditating at the alter by working out my physical and magic muscles. After I raised my stats with a complete set of max weight repetitions, I let the wisps use their own mana to slowly restore my body. Then, I spent the hour or so between sets praying.

The next day, all of the snakes ate only fish and I allowed my body to rest by simply meditating at the altar all day. During that time, Sili became curious of the world around them with no 'prime directive' being telepathically installed. This led to Sili spending most of the day studying the serpents and the area around the cave.

The fact that the basilisk was capable of feeling curiosity at all meant that they were almost 'fully recovered'.

The previous animal had no presence of mind beyond the instinctive urges to eat, sleep, and procreate. After I removed everything that used to exist and flash-reset the body, what I hoped to grow was a magically enriched and enlarged consciousness. One capable of supporting an actual 'ego' if not a complete personality.

By the end of the first full day of prayer the altar was gleaming as if it was wet even though the quartz and various minerals were bone dry under the setting sun. Once the sun was set, the altar and idol were both glowing bright enough to be seen from down the hillside despite the fact that no light was cast on the surrounding bridge or waterway. It was honestly more eerie than it was holy.

Sili still did not show any greater signs of a developing mind that sensations and impulses that were upwardly inflected like a question. This was a habit I created when introducing it to new foods and places and object.

Upon noticing something, I would phrase and feel a quick 'what' question and then an investigative phrase when it sniffs, tastes, and otherwise examines, and then give it the name to recognize it by after accumulating such information.

When the golems returned from damming the waterway further down the mountainside, between two smaller falls, I spent an hour making sure all of the serpents were given a few fish. Because they were reptiles I did not plan on feeding them again. Unlike Sili who I had been keeping active at all times, these serpents slept all day and thus spent their food slowly like common snakes.

I knew, however, that this was only putting a band-aid on a bullet wound in the grand scheme of things. Eventually these serpents would be forced to hunt further and further out until they ran into or just plain overran people. Blessing the waterfall would only secure the upper areas against the monster below, the original hunting grounds were still occupied.

Eventually, I would have to head down there and run off the big guy in order to bring order back to the ecosystem.

*