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1096 Words
He jerked up, despite the pain, and started concentrating as much as he could on the sensation of the house becoming a growth item.
As his Genesis Energy flowed out of his spirit, he was able to follow it as it spread like an infection through the house. It wasn’t a perfect description, but it was the best way he could describe the change.
The Genesis Energy from his spirit spread through the house’s physical material and the accompanying spirit, but where it passed through, the material was changed. The spirit and materials of the items were strengthened and reinforced, while also binding to him like his other growth items. From their relatively ordinary house, things shifted and twisted as the Genesis Energy worked its magic.
Matt felt the unique energy as it completed its first pass and encompassed the physical house before it started making leaps.
First, it jumped to his kitchen and started flowing through his range, and then to his fridge, and then to his spatially expanded cabinets. Even as he watched, the enchantments he had personally laid out morphed and changed. The changes weren’t large, and as far as he could tell, the function of the runes didn’t change. Just like he observed with Susanne’s armor binding, it was like print letters being changed to cursive.
After his kitchen was absorbed into the collective whole that was the house, both his and Liz’s workstations started to be absorbed at the same time.
He tried to concentrate on both but focused most of his attention on his own room. What he found interesting was that he could feel his workstation itself bind to the room, and then to the house as a whole. It was like a nested binding that made absolutely no sense when he considered what he knew about linking enchantments, but the Genesis Energy seemed to easily accomplish the task anyway.
At the same time, as they were bound, he noticed that his workstation did what he could only call ‘settling in’. It was like they became unified and singular, despite remaining distinct items. With a thought, Matt knew that he could merge the two tables that made up an ‘L’ shaped desk into a seamless whole, and then break them apart once again, but he wasn’t so limited as to just return them into the original shapes. No, he was able to break off just a foot of the greater whole to create a smaller table that he could move around.
His tools also seemed to melt away into the workshop, and he knew that he could summon a carving pen at a whim, as long as he was inside the room.
As far as he could tell, Liz’s workshop had the same things happen to it, but he wasn’t nearly as familiar with it as he was his own, and he wasn’t able to really investigate the changes there before both of the bedrooms started transforming.
The changes were smaller, but like the workshops, the furniture merged into one with the room as the Genesis Energy passed through.
As it hit the bathroom, he paused to inspect the changes a little more thoroughly but found nothing new there either.
Watching the living room, and finally, the mana storage room change, Matt tried to commit the changes and how they happened to his memory, so he could try and replicate them eventually.
He paid extra attention to the house as a whole as he felt the Genesis Energy finishing its job.
Like with every item Minkalla converted to a growth item, they all got something extra added, and he wanted to see how that happened.
From the runes and enchantments he knew so well, he felt something extra taking form, like a whale rising from the depths and pushing the water above it away. That was the best way he could describe the way runes seemed to appear out of the Genesis Energy that had infiltrated the house’s spirit.
Then as the new runes appeared, the Genesis Energy retreated into his spirit, signaling that the conversion was over, and weighed down on his spirit like a lead blanket.
As it ended, Matt started making notes on a pad of paper he pulled out of his spatial ring and jotted down everything he could while it was still fresh in his memory.
The instant his pen stopped, Aster yipped, and Liz asked, “What did the house get?”
Matt blinked at them before shrugging. “Don’t know. Haven’t checked yet. I was trying to note down what I felt first.”
Liz rolled her eyes so hard she fell back into the couch while Aster flopped into her.
Susanne tried to suppress her laughter at seeing their exasperation, as her barely healed abdomen would have made laughing quite painful, and he took the opportunity to inspect the house and the feeling it gave him.
He twitched slightly as he realized what the house actually did.
As he tried to speak, he ended up stammering, “What kind of growth item needs stuff like this? That’s stupid. How does that even count?”
Seeing the two other humans’ amused expressions and feeling his bond, Matt scooped up and blew a raspberry on her head. “The house eats other houses to upgrade itself and expand. I also sense that we can upgrade individual parts, like our workshops, by buying a new one and letting the house absorb it. Frankly, I’m disappointed to the extreme. We’ll need to buy new houses anyway, so why bind as a growth item? We could have just used the new house. It feels pointless.”
Liz rubbed his shoulder and stopped laughing long enough to ask, “Would you really want a new house anyway? You love this one so much.”
Matt tsked at her point as he couldn’t deny it. “I like it because it’s mine. Future houses would also be mine…but you aren’t wrong, I do like this one. I just wish it had a better ability.”
Aster, on the other hand, squirmed free of his grasp and into their storage area before returning with a ring in her mouth.
As Matt grabbed it, he realized she had brought the house they had found in the third-floor safe rooms area.
It was worth a test, and they all piled out of the house to drop the other house next to their original one.
The other house was smaller than their own, but even more opulent and well crafted.
- Writer
