The day passed very rapidly with Mitch enforcing the prayer into the minds of the rats.
He also tried checking if mutating the rats further was possible. But he got a pop-up that said any more mutations might lead to their children being born with birth defects.
Deciding to try it again after they became stronger, Mitch once again refilled their water bowls and left them for the night.
Checking on Hailey's egg, he found a few cracks spreading in the fur-turned-shell. He assumed that Madeline's egg would start cracking eventually too. But that was still a few weeks away.
He quickly wolfed down the last few berries he had gathered and started climbing his tree.
"Any news on our brave warrior yet, Katherine?" After blessing the male rat twice, thereby using a lot of Mynt, Mitch had become much more sensitive to how it flowed.
To explain his situation, his body was leaking Mynt. Meanwhile, he felt four small rivers of energy trickle into his reserves.
And then there was the anomaly.
A stream at least ten times larger than the others was gushing into his body. In the grand scheme of things, it was trivial. But any positive change in his regeneration was welcomed.
"... What did you do? Go on, Einstein. Explain your graaand plan for me." Katherine figured she understood how Mitch ticked by now.
She thought he was bursting with excitement, hoping she would ask about his plan. Even though she was curious, she couldn't concede to him that easily. Of course, she had to exaggerate her request by emphasizing him having a "grand plan."
But she didn't know Mitch's pettiness nearly enough.
"Nope. Don't feel like it."
She had missed a very important detail.
Mitch had spent twenty years of his life doing nothing but researching, eating, and playing games. Even sleeping had been a luxury. Everything he did required immense patience.
If Mitch claimed to be the king of patience in his age group, anyone trying to dispute it might as well get stoned.
Of course, Mitch didn't mind her teasing. It was also not the reason he wasn't telling her about his plan. He just didn't want to worry her.
After all, his plan was so far-fetched and so unbelievable that even he himself would never think it would work.
Unless he had been shown an example of something similar in the simulation.
"Hey, Katherine. What determines which simulation one goes through?"
Although she was sulking from Mitch not telling her about his plans, she did not shy away from helping him in any way she could.
With a catch, of course.
"I tell you everything I know, and you tell me about your plans. Deal?"
Mitch simply chuckled. If she wanted to be unable to sleep, who was he to stop her?
"Alright. I guess I'll go first. How much did you understand?"
"Until the part where you turned that rat into a maniacal sexaholic pervert. What is the reason for spreading the genes of an advanced brain if they don't pray to you?"
She might seem to be an idiot at times, but Katherine was, in fact, pretty clever. She just hadn't had the opportunity to show off in areas in which she excelled.
The only thing preventing her from reverse-engineering Mitch's plan by herself was her lack of knowledge about anatomy and genetics.
"I see. Well... I could explain in detail, but to make a long story short, I made them only able to dream about me."
He purposefully excluded the part where he instinctively used manipulation and blessing in tandem to achieve this result. He wanted to surprise her with something special, but that would have to wait until he became more powerful.
"Ah, I see. So that is why the male that you released is giving so much more Mynt than the others. Although, it feels cheap and dirty somehow."
That was another thing Mitch and Katherine discovered through this experiment. It seems that, even though brainwashing was a way to convert organisms into believers, the quality of that faith would have a lower prayer-to-Mynt conversion rate.
Nevertheless, it still worked.
"Yes. By blessing its genes through my skill, instead of blessing the rat itself, I was able to change them in a way that would result in this phenomenon. Even better, the mutation should get carried over to his children, too."
Now understanding the key parts of Mitch's plan, Katherine could figure out the rest for herself.
After mapping everything out by herself, Katherine started fulfilling her part of the deal.
"You asked about which Khad gets to experience what simulation? To be honest, I don't really have a lot of information on it. All I know is that the reality in which Khads live has something similar to a will. This will is what controls everything in this reality."
Now it was Mitch's time to get confused. What "this reality"? Mitch really wanted to ask. But even if Katherine knew something—which he very much doubted she did—he himself didn't want to get sidetracked.
His goals, for now, should consist of getting a stable supply of Mynt and conquering his world. Only after securing both of these objectives could he afford to let himself get carried away.
Finding it hard to sleep with his head full of thoughts and doubts, Mitch decided to meditate for a while. He hadn't had the time to ponder it yet, but he still did not know what made him so special.
He was smarter than most humans back on Tellus, but that could be attributed to him being a Khad.
He cured cancer, but without Theodor's help, he would never have taken the initiative.
So why? Why is it that his simulation was different? Not only did he get an adoptive father who was aware of the simulation being fake, but the simulation itself was held in an environment that helped him prepare for after it was finished.
No wiser than before he started meditating, Mitch eventually got lulled to sleep by the light rustling of the leaves.