Kazue was feeling nearly giddy with excitement. Even with the help of her book, she'd felt a little nervous about making too many decisions. It had been sorta good about telling her what her options were, but it had not been good about telling her what the consequences were. And while she wasn't going to officially forgive Mordecai yet, mostly because it had been hers and he hadn't really asked properly in his haste, she was looking forward to having a better tutor. "So, where do we start?"

Mordecai looked thoughtful for a moment before he responded. "Let's go over mana pools for a moment, to set your expectations. You are already well aware of the main mana pool we have to work with - the energy that was threatening to overflow earlier. We have two other pools of energy, and they work very differently. You might have noticed how there's a maximum number of dire rabbits you can make from normal rabbits?"

Kazue nodded, and Mordecai continued. "That's not a numerical limit, that's an energy limit. More powerful, complicated creatures require more energy to manifest. The energy you have available for spawning your inhabitants is a resource that refills daily, minus any energy already tied up in manifested creatures. So if you are at your capacity, you can't make any more until your capacity grows. You also can't recruit beyond this capacity, even if some of our inhabitants are not currently manifested. However, that only applies to inhabitants, and that specific qualification requires a certain minimum threshold of spiritual power or life energy. This means that most plants and smaller animals can be incorporated without counting against that limit. These can be the base for a proper ecology, instead of only relying on our mana to support everything."

Kazue chewed on the tip of her tail a moment before she realized Mordecai was watching her with a smile. She hastily dropped it and cleared her throat. "Alright, I think I see that. Or feel? Kind of both? I guess sense." She frowned, "It's vague, but there doesn't seem to be a precise word for it."

Mordecai shrugged. "That's been true in every language I've found. Maybe if we nexus cores made up our own language, it would be different, but there doesn't seem to be much point in it. Though even with regular language, there's disagreement. 'Zone' is not a universal term; nexuses that grow in a tower formation almost always prefer the word 'floors', which is also somewhat common for those of us who grow down in the dungeon pattern. Environmental nexuses end up using a lot of different terms, based on their environments. I met an archipelago nexus once; it had managed to shape its environment to the extent that is was effectively impossible to approach most of the islands. You had to start at the first island and travel through them sequentially, which was how it divided and named its zones."

Kazue rather loved the idea of that; she could have been a tropical archipelago. Then she'd have warm sunny beaches, exotic flowers, colorful birds, and all sorts of exotic things. It'd be farther from home though. Of course, there could be native islanders there, and she could learn their customs and try their food. Or maybe she'd have to worry about pirates, especially if she was all alone when a ship of pirates landed and found just this one girl on the island, and it had been a long time since they'd been in port... Kazue blushed and snapped her mind back to the present as she realized how far she'd let her mind drift.

Mordecai was watching her with a bit of amusement, which she could feel across their bond too. Which meant he'd been able to read her emotions when her mind drifted and her concentration slipped. She was thankful when he chose to ignore her wandering thoughts and continued on with teaching her.

"Anyway," he said, "the other pool to point out is our reward capacity. It works almost the same way, except the mana is more 'earmarked' than consumed until it is 'claimed' by an outsider, usually called a delver, explorer, or adventurer. The term doesn't really matter, the concept is the same. Except for 'invader', that means someone who is out to hurt the nexus in some way. Also, while I can calculate the energy for manifesting creatures in a straightforward manner, the rewards calculation gets complicated. That doesn't matter much right now, so we can look at that later if you want to move on to practical lessons."

Kazue perked up at that. "Yes please!" While she knew she wasn't dumb, math and such had never been her favorites. History, art, music, and reading; those were the sorts of things she loved. And tea. Plus meat, and just about anything sweet. She'd never really tried complicated cooking, maybe she should try that? Ack, her thoughts were wandering. With a slight shake of her head, she refocused on what Mordecai was saying.

"Well then, why don't we set up a bed chamber for Moriko, and create more of a living space around our core? It'll make hiding it easier too. Let's see, wording can help shape intent, and intent is always important." Mordecai's phrasing made her think of her mistake earlier, binding them all to a marriage contract because her mind wandered and her intent became unfocused. Kazue was determined to not let that happen again; she knew enough about how magic worked to know that stray thoughts could be bad, and as a nexus she was going to have a lot of magic when they got big enough. Mistakes could be much more dangerous than that one had been.

Mordecai continued, saying "How you think of the space shapes what you can do with it. Hmm.. living quarters is a bit too military, I think something based on suite or chambers would be better. Suite feels like it wants something along the lines of specific names though. How about Private Chambers? Sounds somewhat noble and impressive, and is definitely where someone lives."

Ohh, she liked that. "Okay, how do I name it.. oh!" Mordecai had sent the instructions to her via impression, it was pretty simple really. She just had to think of this room, and focus on it being their Private Chambers, putting will and just a trickle of mana into it, and her core took care of the rest like it had always known how to do that. Visualizing it a bit like a labeled map could help, but wasn't necessary... how did she know that? Oh, the link again. If it was so fast and easy, why weren't they using it all the time?

"Because it can be a bit too fast, if you want to discuss ideas and possibilities. We don't want to have you doing things before you have had a chance to consider all the options. So I figure it's best to talk through options first, then give you instructions. Once you have some more practice, we can probably commune directly more, but for now," Mordecai shrugged, "this seems best."

Well, she couldn't fault him there. "Alright, what's next?" The room did feel a bit cozier now, though she couldn't see any direct changes.

"How about we do a little future proofing? Why don't we consider this the antechamber of your private chambers, and then we can create offshoots that will all benefit from being part of the private chambers, starting off with Moriko's room."

It took her a moment to properly visualize it; he wasn't giving her the instructions this time since he'd given her the basic process when they named the room, but it didn't take too long to get it. Mordecai gave her a few nudges as she reshaped the room, but only some basic concepts for her to tweak to her liking. She tiered the floor into three stages, then put a series of alcoves along the back wall, curtained to hide which were actually corridors and which held secrets, or even nothing at all. Which was most of them for now.

One of the alcoves hid the short corridor to Moriko's room, furnished to the specifications she'd asked for before, and shaped with magic to provide water and lighting and comfort controls. Kazue started to consider what personal items she might be able to help with when a nudge from Mordecai made her pause. "Contractors can't claim rewards from our mana, barring special circumstances. Anything easily taken in and out of the nexus, Moriko will need to source on her own. We can help store a lot if she brings a big shipment or something, but you don't want to give her anything she might depend on, because it'll disintegrate when she leaves."

Whoops, that could be bad. "Oh, alright." The stupid book probably wouldn't have warned her about that unless she thought to ask. "Well, I think it's ready. Moriko!" While the half-elf had been eating, she'd also been eyeing the chamber shifting around her as Kazue had worked, looking a touch nervous. Kazue's shout made her jump a little, nearly dropping an apple, and the kitsune had to repress a giggle at having accidentally made the normally calm and collected older woman start like that. "Um, I think your room is ready. Want to check it out?" She pointed to the proper curtain hiding the entrance.

"Yeah, I'll do that." It was obvious that she was trying to not stare at everything in case it started moving again as she swiftly moved to check out her new room. "Oh, this is nice. Hmm, how specific can you get? I think I see where it could be a touch better." It took a few minutes to clarify the details, but before long Moriko's room was about as perfect as they were going to get it for now. "Excellent. Alright, thank you both; I'll get going and be back in a few." The monk hesitated, then gave each of them a quick parting kiss, which left Kazue briefly dazed as she wasn't expecting it.

Mordecai smiled at the retreating figure, then looked back to Kazue. "She really is kind and sweet, but tries not to show it too much. She might be a touch awkward about minor displays of affection for a while, though maybe that will work to help make you more comfortable." Kazue shifted a bit, trying to not think about it too much, and before she could ask, her sorta-accidental husband continued. "So, now that we have things a bit cozier, let's try hiding our core. I don't want to reuse my old tricks, so let's try something new. How about, up? The direction's not new, but the method is."

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Kazue felt some information sliding into her portion of their core, and began processing it despite her initial confusion. How was knowing about different types of rocks and crystals going to help here? Okay, so a lot of them were pretty, but like this one he was pointing out was kind of weird. It was sort of whitish but clear in one pair of directions, but opaque in any other direction, and could make slightly distorted light and images travel in that line. Then he showed her a concept of a lot of veins of this material creating channels from the ceiling to a single chamber up above.

She frowned and glanced at him, but her husband just shook his head and pointed up, leaving it up to her to figure out exactly how to do it. It took more than an hour to get it right, parts of the roof starting to collapse if she made too many channels or made them too big, and if she made the stuff curve too much it cut the light off instead of channeling it properly. "Mm, alright, I think I have that part done, now what?"

"Good job. Now, we need to add a little bit of a light source in that chamber, and then raise our core into it. Oh, hmm, wait a sec... let's also add a few small tunnels that connect to that chamber, heading out towards each potential room. For now, have one of them end in a trap door in Moriko's ceiling, but make it disguised and hard to get into. Just not impossible, and not quite airtight."

Kazue eyed Mordecai for a moment, but it looked like he wasn't going to send her any further instructions. Well, the lights were easy, she just borrowed that bit of magic craft from Moriko's room. The little crawl-ways weren't too hard either, though it took her a few tries to get them arching in the right way to avoid her light-conducting rocks. Moving her - no, their - core the way he wanted though, that was weird. There was a sort of pressure making it not want to be hidden in too confined a space.

In the end she had to create a few small rooms so that she would be able to connect more crawl-ways to the space, making those rooms hidden by secret doors for now, before that pressure would abate enough to let her tuck the core up in the ceiling like that. The end result was kind of nice though. The core's own soft glow combined with the other lights diffusing through it gave a slightly unusual hue to the final lighting results down here, but overall it was a warm, diffuse glow from the ceiling.

"Very good Kazue. And that's the trick; there are rules, but you don't have to make it straightforward. The core is accessible, but one has to be clever to find it. The color of the light is a clue, but the entrance is slightly removed. So access may be difficult, just not impossible."

"That makes sense I guess. But, um, how do we move it when we make new floors? It was hard enough to move when I made more rooms before." The memory still made her feel slightly nauseous, even if the concept shouldn't really apply to her anymore.

"Ah, that's one of the advantages of having made this your chambers," Mordecai said. "The core naturally belongs here, which makes it easier to have the room move, rather than trying to move just the core to a new location. As a matter of fact, let me show you how to do that. With the five sections you already created in your first zone, we have enough rooms and you have enough dire rabbits to create five challenges. We simply need a zone boss and a final room for his personal arena to complete the zone, and I think this not-so-little fellow will do." He pointed at the black furred rabbit that had been slowly continuing to grow, though she hadn't been feeding him any more energy.

"I'm going to show you a trick," Mordecai said. "Uniqueness can be as important as power, and it's not always easy to design your own uniqueness. This guy ate a lot of energy that was influenced by the presence of both Danista and Ozuran, and he was already kind of big, so that's set him up for something I think could be fun. Rather than try to create a floor boss from an unaltered animal, we can feed our friend here some mana-backed concepts that could be associated with him, designate him as the zone boss, and see what happens."

She thought about it for a moment, and, well, it's not like she had any other ideas for a boss. When Kazue's core examined the black rabbit in question, she could even make out the influence Mordecai had been talking about. Danista's power leaned strongly toward celestial energy with lesser aspects of void and shadow. Ozuran's power was more strongly associated with shadow and void, but it also echoed with concepts like dreams, mirrors, and reflections. Also, somehow 'void' was also 'space'? How was the absence of stuff tied to having space for stuff to be? Kazue put that tangent aside to explore later.

"Sure," she said, "we can do that. Um, what concepts were you thinking of?" Oh, that made her dizzy. Most of them were familiar, but 'gravity' as a space-shaping force hurt her head, well, core really. Was this related to that void and space thing? There was also something being hinted at in there, but it seemed to be out of reach for now. She ignored it and focused on the plan, pushing the concepts of density, mass, weight, gravity, stickiness, adhesion, absorption, darkness, hunger, devouring, and consuming at her bunny, using a trickle of mana to attach properties to those concepts. It was clear to her that she couldn't have attached so many concepts if they didn't have so many areas of overlap and were connected to influences that affected the rabbit. She watched as her bunny grew bigger and rounder, and slowly he turned so completely black that he seemed to draw light in toward him. There was a slight snapping sensation as he finished drawing in as much mana as he could, and she topped him off with the title 'zone boss'. The change was startling.

"Oh, I like him." Mordecai whispered into her ear. "Good job. Looks like the room itself counts as a hazard or trap, and he'd be way too powerful for this level if he had any offensive abilities beyond a simple headbutt. I think the real challenge is to get around him without losing too much stuff. Mmm, I vote for a species name we can call him a void rabbit. But a boss should have a proper name, what do you think?"

It took Kazue a moment to respond, recovering from the sudden shiver as the gentle breath from his voice created a tickle that ran down her spine. "Um, I ah... oh, how about Zushi? It's kind of got a round sound to it, but it's cute like him too. And yeah, void rabbit sounds cool."

Mordecai nodded and then said, "Now send Zushi to the last chamber before this one, and once he is there focus on it and and think of it as a 'Boss Arena', with Zushi as the boss who owns it."

She followed his instructions, and the moment that she had the concept firmly settled in her mind a portion of their mana flowed into the the room, causing it to change its shape into a smooth sphere, with the corridor coming in at the horizontal circumference, and the one leading out being a few meters higher. Sitting at the bottom of the room was her black bunny, now almost six feet tall. And long. And wide. It would be hard enough to avoid him if one just wanted to go around, given the shape of the room, but there was something else too. Kazue could feel the way everything in the room 'wanted' to go towards the rabbit, as if it was twisting everything in its direction. The black ball of fluff wiggled his nose, and hopped. He didn't go very far, but he landed with a loud thud, making the whole room vibrate briefly.

"Well done," he told her, and Kazue flicked an ear happily. "If you have the time to plan and know what you want, it can be better to design a room, but right now letting your instincts take control and interact with the nature of your boss was the easiest way forward, and we want to move on to the next stage. Are you ready?"

Kazue took a deep breath then nodded. "Yeah," she said. "I mean, I'm a little tired, but there's a lot still to do, right? I don't want to leave things half done."

Mordecai nodded with a smile and said, "Very well, first let's make a small round room in about the center of the path between here and Zushi's boss arena. Mmm, about twenty feet across should work. Perfect, now start pushing the concept of 'down' at the room, while imagining the concept of spiral stairs. Try to keep this part of the corridor attached to it, and you should feel a sensation of 'dragging'. Use that to guide you, and you should be able to lower our chambers with it. There should be sort of a snapping-into-place feeling when you've got the depth right. Practice will make it faster."

Kazue focused on what he told her, and tried to follow his directions. It was a bit strange at first, trying to hold it all in her head at once. But she didn't have just her own head, did she? Her core was her real center of being, and that had the capacity. Once she shifted her sense of self that way, it became a lot easier, and finally she had it done. He was right about that snapping sensation, and she suddenly felt sort of 'bigger', but that didn't seem to be about the actual physical space her nexus took up. "There!" she said, opening her eyes, which she didn't even remember closing. And for some reason she was sitting on the ground, with Mordecai holding her from behind.

"Good job, but looks like you need a bit of practice using both aspects of yourself at the same time. Your avatar collapsed when you pushed that much of your consciousness into your core. Why don't we pause in the zone crafting, and make, say, a cozy little couch back here. We can sit together and let you focus on the zones better."

Gah, she was starting to blush again wasn't she? Apparently having the title of 'wife' didn't make this any easier, she still felt so readily flustered. But she did want to cuddle, and a couch sounded good, so she ignored her own flushed face and looked around, settling on one of the back corners to round out into a nook where they could be cozy. Oh, maybe she could make this into a book nook later too! Though she'd need some books first. Right, focus! Fortunately, it didn't take too long to adjust her private chambers, and soon enough the two of them were settled in. She was tucked in next to him, but with her legs draped over his lap. Not quite sitting in his lap, but still close enough to make her feel a little over warm. Which was ridiculous, she knew this body was really just a mana construct, but still her head messed with her.

"Um, are we going to make our second floor bigger now?" She wasn't sure what she should make now really. A lot of the options the book had been showing her just seemed so mean. Which was probably foolish of her. If an actually mean person showed up, she'd need a way to keep them at bay, but she also didn't really want a bunch of scary monsters around.

"Actually, I had an idea for modifying our starting zone." Mordecai said while lightly petting her ear. "It'll be a bit trickier than what I originally did to create a split path, but I could brute force it a bit back then since I had a much bigger territory by the time I thought to set up something like this. Once we establish the pattern, we can just copy it again as we need to."

Kazue glanced up at him, trying to keep her ear from flicking too much under his teasing, though she was not telling him to stop either. "What did you have in mind?"

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