Chapter 8 Some discoveries, new To-*ahem* arrivals~
Mikhail was slightly amused at how the group of five people managed to escape.
Even with him trying to be careful, at first he had one of his lasher tanks test the waters while making sure they attract the attention of their enemies to the complete opposite direction of his base.
He toyed with them purposely brutalizing them, before letting them escape with some suspense with two of his 3 striped tanks destroying the brittle defenses before letting them barely escape while taking a few pieces of the largest one.
Again it was a pity that his cloning vats wasn't done or that leg could help with a bunch of upgrades~.
Right now, Mikhail was sitting back on his comfortable chair as Krux massaged his legs and Gamma the four-eyed initiate was tending to his temples.
Yes, he was enjoying himself as much as possible, even if he was still in an eleven-year-old body!
His other set of eyes through his recent pet which happened to be a bat allowed him to see everything, a fun experience which was definitely better than the other ones as he never got a chance to use such methods to spy around in his other dreams.
His pet snake was coiled on his lap as he caressed its body making the reptile claim that spot for itself eversince he sat down, he also noticed that this snake didn't really eat anything other than draining his psychic energy by small portions each time, which made him curious as to whether if it was some kind of psychic monster or whether if his energy was similar to Aura of this world.
This was something worth studying, and the reason why he was leaving it be, for now, was due to its actions served to strengthen his abilities a little each time it 'ate' some of his reserves, as from what he understood from the little reptile with its limited mental capacities, he didn't really control it, the snake chose to stay with him giving them a give and take relationship.
what was the word he was looking for again...?
Ah yes symbiosis he would feed it and it would make him stronger while it protected him in exchange, its poison was almost as scary as one of his 'virus' snipers, right now it was a mere fledgling, how much scarier and more powerful will it be once it grows.
As for why Mikhail was so sure that he didn't manage to mind control it was due to it being a 2nd tier monster!
While the bat was an ordinary one, that was slowly gaining sentience from him constantly sharing memories with it as an experiment, to see if he could fill its mind with his thoughts and make it completely loyal to him even if it ranked up a few tiers.
Aura for monsters served to nourish their bodies, slowly making them grow according to their deepest wish, as regardless of what they were, upon reaching the fifth tier they gain a humanoid body.
Which strangely enough was common sense for them, This made Mikhail curious why would a monster want to become human, even those that never came across one in their whole life.
But by thoroughly digging into his bat's mind there was something akin to an inheritance that all monsters have from their ancestors, which can only be accessed more easily by consuming other monsters, the effects were greater if they consumed those of their own race!
Which would explain why they were extremely vicious to other monsters.
But kobolds were an exception to that as they relied on one another, heavily so, as they hold their fellow tribesmen in high regard making them ignore a monster's common instinct to consume their own race to learn more about the inheritance of their ancestors left them.
Another 'dog eat dog' kind of world for most by these kobolds continued to intrigue Mikhail.
He had his pet return to continue his experiments with it now that its intelligence rivaled that of an 8-year-old, he wanted it to learn as he kept it within his control, using gratitude and his shelter to make it feel at home near him with subtle amounts of imprinting via brainwashing to ensure that it will serve him loyally when it gets stronger in the near future.
Especially when the changes he made caused the bat to develop in echolocation to an even higher level as it was something worth looking forward to later~.
Mikhail was also looking forward to the results of other hidden experiments while waiting patiently for his next building to complete, with an interesting surprise that one of the young kobolds brought to his attention, one of the children had brought a raw ruby as a tribute while begging to become stronger.
so he allowed the child to join his barracks to which within 2 days after the prior initiate that he had trained joined his ranks, what emerged was the kobold who now had the ability to control flames just like an initiate but there was one problem.
while the child now had the power to handle a first-tier monster its Aura Pool was disintegrated!
Meaning that it could no longer ascend through the ranks like the others of its race through normal means but that didn't mean that they would stay in the same tier through the rest of their lives, the battle lab had an interesting way to make his units stronger.
By letting him create upgrade crates or specific unit enhancements, however, it was expensive as hell, for the current situation at least, once he has a grinder things will be easier, and when he finds a suitable location he can erect a few oil drills~
But again time is what he needs to grow as his tanks aggroed everything towards them.
The change that the Kobold experienced made the others try becoming initiates too, however, Mikhail wanting to exploit the situation told them this to lessen the strain on his meager funds.
"Bring me a raw material, ore or some kind of gem then i will allow that to be the price to change you, but know this."
Mikhail didn't just want 'initiates', he wanted some brutes too and some psychic soldiers which seemed to take the icon for yuri clones making him wonder.
what else had changed about his possible units and other things?
As he added some bullshit to egg them on to chose other things.
"some of you are more suitable for different roles, and abilities!"
which was a huge success as they readily made other choices giving him a grand total profit of 5772 later that day by depositing the rare gems and treasures into the mcv and sadly it converted only half of the wealth with the rest being wasted!
While that bummed him out quite a bit his spirits got reignited from learning an interesting trick to which sped the process of the training for the kobolds from weeks to months to a mere 6 days!
If he tried to create a unit in the barracks the regular way, turns out the most time-consuming thing was the regular units needed to be cloned, then processed as they are aged at an accelerated rate till their teens while received crammed information before being trained in the barracks!
But if he already had the 'trainable' units prepared beforehand they can be trained in the barracks at the same time at half the required time!
so now the regular kobolds will soon become, 11 initiates, 8 brutes, 3 psychic soldiers, and one engineer, yes, an engineer!
Which brought joy to Mikhail due to one reason, unlike in the game they can speed up his building speed by 1/4.
so imagine if he had more? while it wouldn't be instant building speed but it would still make things easier on him but this also came at an extra cost obviously, it would increase the price of the building by 1/4 per engineer.
Another downside to being an engineer they can no longer be allowed to fight, meaning even if they are about to die at the hands of the enemy, they can't even defend themselves but they can still grow stronger through the same method with crates~
hopefully, the cloning vats can change that!
Thus as six days went by silently and peacefully, this allowed Mikhail to receive the excited kobolds that were completely changed, as his power doubled in strength and his bat was nearly a first-tier monster as it nestled on his shoulder as he looked at the screen in front of him, another bunch similar to the people he played with before had arrived and this large group was keen on capturing his tanks!