There was something slightly surreal about realising just how much one's actions managed to influence the local creatures. It was one thing to notice they reacted to the tower and the Oculus to a lesser degree, but it was an entirely different beast to realise how their population shifted and moved because of our test-subject acquisition. We had managed to capture so many of the local critters, especially the cats, that the Undead and Shattered deeper in the city moved into the freshly vacated area, now that no beasts were willing to give them some trouble.

The ecological balance, if one could still call it that, now that it wasn't just about finding food and avoiding being turned into food, was an incredibly curious thing. A part of me wanted to put some time into studying the effect, especially the part where it seemed as if creatures deliberately congregated in areas with others of similar levels, rarely venturing far out of them. It didn't make all that much sense to me. Why wouldn't a stronger creature move into the area of somewhat weaker creatures and slaughter them to gather EXP? Instead, the creatures generally fought others at roughly the same level, or even a higher level, despite the increased risk of injury and death, completely contrary to anything I knew about animal behaviour.

No lion, at least pre-change, would have decided to go after an uninjured elephant or buffalo unless the lion was forced to by desperation. Instead, they would go after the easy calories, taking what food put up the least resistance, to the point that they would rather give up their kill to other predators instead of risking death or injury leading to death later by fighting back.

Now, after the change, a fairly wide variety of creatures was very willing to risk injury in order to fight an opponent at roughly the same level, at times fighting with an almost suicidal fervour, making me wonder just how much of that came from the system and, once again, how deeply the system influenced the decisions beings made. It was obvious that it could influence anyone at every conceivable level, so there was nothing stopping the system from doing anything it wanted to anyone under its influence. But how much influence it exerted? That was a question I couldn't answer yet, maybe one that couldn't be answered at all.

However, while these changes to the local ecosystem were somewhat detrimental, the benefits of testing the Blood Runes and the permanent enchantments we could place on creatures with them worked quite well. We had yet to perfect the technique but, by now, we believed that it was as good as it would get without willing and intelligent test subjects. By now, we were able to reliably carve the runes into flesh without losing the test subject and when properly motivated, the various test subjects all managed to perform beyond their previous capacity. I even added a moderate regeneration factor to the enchantment, allowing them to heal from the strain the runes put their body under and also from perfectly ordinary wounds. Whether the system recognised these runes and would assign special abilities or traits for them, we couldn't yet tell but we had a bit of hope that it would work.

Another thing we added, though that was primarily to the Crimson Ink, was a bit of blood from Luna, myself and Lia, all of it treated by Luna in an attempt to make the subject who later received the enchantment more vulnerable to Mind Magic from any of us three. Whether it would be needed, we didn't know but if things got problematic, it would be a nice fail-safe. It also helped with the tests, allowing me to push and prod our test subjects into specific actions in order to better test the enchantment, though the problem of getting feedback from them remained. There was only so much you could tell without some serious in-depth dissection, which we could only perform within the limit of our tools, specifically my Blood Magic.

Thus, the next step in our procedure was to work with Silva and get a few of the local canines to buy in and get their bodies enhanced. There was a bit of irony there, we happily discussed the details of the procedure, as well as the fact that it was experimental and somewhat risky, with the canines but when it came to later human testing, we didn't have plans to disclose the procedure, just to tell them it would give them additional power.

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As for our canine test subjects, the biggest ask, so to speak, was actually the requirement to shave their fur. They didn't like that in the least, though a big part of that was most likely due to it being winter and bitterly cold outside. With a bit of negotiation performed by Silva, we managed to get their agreement in return for shelter and some magical assistance while their fur grew back. A part of me wondered if Silva had tried to negotiate these terms all that hard, I had a feeling our canine companion was angling to have the local dogs make the shrine their den, adding to the magical protection already in place with some physical protection. It helped that dogs were considered sacred animals of Hecate, to the point that I noticed they received a faint empowering effect coming from the shrine, almost like my own blessing.

Due to that, I decided to send a prayer Lady Hecate's way, just to make sure we didn't step on any toes by experimenting on Her sacred animals within the confines of Her shrine, especially when not completely certain the procedure would work. Getting struck by a divine curse would suck, especially for Luna, though I had a feeling that the loss of Her blessing wouldn't be a walk in the park for me either. To say nothing of the question of whether I would continue to receive EXP for teaching magic if Lady Hecate cursed me, leaving me without one of my primary sources of EXP and the best long-term source I had discovered so far. So, consent was required, not only from the dogs but also from their boss-lady.

Luckily, Lady Hecate was quite alright with the procedure, one might call Her demeanour even eager. It made me wonder if this was another first, though I doubted it. Enhancing the guardians of a shrine made sense, enhancing people in general did, and Blood Magic was a fairly obvious way to do so. It was one of the major disciplines governing the physical body, after all, and was capable of influencing essentially every part of the body that had blood flowing through it. Even bones could be influenced, though the efficiency was lowered, simply because bone marrow generated blood, providing the necessary conceptual link. Still, I had a feeling that the Lady would be watching, hopefully, things would work out as planned.

With the dogs, we largely followed the same procedure we had used for the cats, just with a lot more caution involved. We only had three volunteers, unsurprisingly the weakest of the pack, the dogs who hadn't managed to develop their strange, primal pack magic or had the physiques to act as powerful physical fighters. To them, this procedure was a way to give the pack something back, which was a powerful motivation for these creatures, especially as they realised regardless of success or failure, the pack would be better off, thanks to the negotiations with Silva.

After we finished with the first dog, the results were just as expected, maybe even a little better. According to Silva, who acted as interpreter, the dog had gained a new special ability similar to my Overload, allowing it to greatly increase its physical attributes by burning up Astral Power and two new traits. One increased its health regeneration, though at the cost of some of its Astral Power regeneration, while the other was somewhat curious. It greatly decreased all of its Astral Power costs by eighty per cent, effectively quintupling the amount of Astral Power the dog could use but the downside was that the dog couldn't manifest Astral Power outward of itself.

Urged on by Luna and Silva, the dog tested if that included prayer or if that didn't count and after a quick test, it turned out that the dog could pray, at least if the prayer was directed to Lady Hecate and performed in Her shrine. Given Luna's wide grin at that, I had a feeling it wasn't a coincidence but a deliberate feature, making me chuckle in amusement, proud that my daughter had managed to put that part into this project. Now, we just had to repeat the experiment with the other two dogs, maybe see if we could push things a little further, and then, it would be off to see if we could find a few useful idiots. Or test subjects, not that there was all that much of a difference.

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