Since he was powerless to influence anything, he decided not to waste time moping around. He should concentrate on acclimating himself to his new nature. He knew it brought along endless potential, but he needed time to uncover it, and even more to find the best way to use it.

  But while that might have been the most efficient use of his time, he knew he would not be able to ignore the prospect of meeting other creatures. After decades of loneliness, companionship was more precious to him than he had realised.

  He might not be able to directly grant greater intelligence to some species, but he could let natural evolution proceed in an accelerated manner. He zoomed out to a galactic scale, and time sped up accordingly. He did not want to spend centuries waiting for sentient rocks to develop a culture, so he just pressed fast forward, stopping every few minutes to check nothing had changed.

  For a long time, nothing happened. These monsters were exceptionally intelligent animals, but they had not quite reached human standards, especially in regards to creativity. Coupled with their static and patient nature, they had very little incentives to change or improve.

  Their current lifestyle was already enough for them to live comfortably, and there was no reason to change anything. During the last five hundred years, the only novelty or invention they had come up with was to dig underground irrigation tunnels, to combat their one major weakness - the lack of water while traveling.

  It turned out they were a migratory race, a lifestyle necessitated by their insufficiently developed camouflage. Each time these huge boulders dragged themselves across the dirt, they would leave behind deep tracks, and despite their best efforts to hide them, to the attentive eye, they were easily noticeable.

  While predators would not pay any special attention to the state of the grass, and would therefore gladly run over the poorly concealed tracks, herbivores were different. They were experts on all plant-related stuff, and had to be constantly on guard against any potential danger, so they would easily notice something wrong with the covered up tracks and make sure to stay clear of the area.

  That was generally not a problem, as the rock monsters could survive just from catching a predator from time to time. The issue with scaring off herbivores was that there was no one to graze the grass anymore. The vegetation would be free to grow without restraint, and after only a few weeks, it would become visibly different from the surrounding flora.

  It would become a circle of tall herbs in an otherwise well kept clearing, and the tracks would become even more obvious, as ground coloring could maybe pass as short grass, but not if it was surrounded by tall grass. That was a red flag to even the most inattentive beast to stay clear of the area.

  The field would become a forbidden area, and to avoid succumbing to starvation, the rock monsters would be forced to migrate to another hunting ground. Each of these “migrations” would be less than a kilometer, just enough to be outside of the suspicious region, yet that journey often took weeks. It would also be extremely dangerous, and it would be one of the only times these creatures would ever face mortal danger.

  In half a millennium of observation, Avery had counted less than a hundred attacks towards any of them, all of them by accident, and none of those had dealt any damage. No one was interested in fighting a rock, and said rock was strong enough to handle any half-hearted strikes.

  He had also seen a few of them die after a small tsunami had flooded the plains, killing a huge portion of the animal population and starving the rest, but those were exceptional circumstances. With their strong defenses and convincing camouflage, they had no natural enemies, and Avery had yet to see one of them die of old age, so the only remaining dangers were thirst and starvation.

  The creatures obviously had a very slow metabolism, probably hibernating most of the time, so even food wasn’t a huge issue under normal circumstances.

  The only weakness of this monstrosity was water. It had a huge grey body that stayed immobile in the sun all day. It needed a constant supply of water to keep the inside of its shell cool and avoid being baked in the sun, and to humidify his delicate tentacles.

  It could not survive for more than a few hours without a supply of fresh water. Usually, they dug deep in the ground until they found the water table and used their tentacles as straws to drink. But their tentacles were only three meters long, and sometimes they would be unlucky and would dig where the water was buried deeper, so that they could not reach it. With how slow they traveled, they almost never had time to try again at another location, and would be doomed to die of thirst.

  And since it was impossible to determine which land had easily accessible water from afar, whether they survived or died was entirely up to lady luck.

  To avoid putting all of their eggs in the same basket, when it was time to migrate, they would split off in six groups, and would head off in different directions. On average, at least one of those groups would be unlucky, with every one of its members dying of thirst.

  The only reason that the death rate was not higher was that this area was exceptionally humid, and that they always chose to travel on rainy days, reducing their dependence on groundwater.

  This was also the reason none of them had ever left these plains. The land they lived on was a bassin under the sea level, with a much lower elevation than everything surrounding it. This was great as it meant a lot of water pooled down here, and became an easy attainable drinking source.

  If you dug out a well on the top of a mountain, you would need to dig much farther than if you placed it in the bottom of a valley. Right now they were in the valley, but if they ever tried to climb out of this bowl-shaped land, their tentacles would no longer reach down into the subterranean waters, and they would be sure to quickly die out.

  Even the nearby sea was of a higher elevation, and was hidden behind soft hills, those imperceptible slopes an impassable barrier to these creatures.

  This dependence on groundwater was their only weakness, and it was the main challenge that these monsters would ever face in their life. But a challenge was meant to be overcome, and after decades of useless death, even these passive creatures had enough.

  Finally, a particular experienced member of this species had an idea. He would resolve the issue the same way he hunted prey, using their intellect and digging capabilities. Avery wasn’t sure how they had communicated, but they evidently had, because that day marked the beginning of a great project of an entire race working together.

  The idea had come when one of them realized that water flowed to occupy whatever space he dug for it. From that, it had concluded that they would be able to control the flow of water and bring it with them by digging irrigation tunnels.

  Everyone had agreed this was a great idea, and the project had immediately begun. They all participated in the operation, digging endless tunnels, dreaming of the day they could drink from everywhere in the plains. And now, more than four hundred years later, it was still under construction, and it progressed at a snail’s pace.

  To be honest, it wasn’t that great of an idea to begin with. It would have been much easier to find a way to mark and communicate habitable spots, or build some kind of straw to drink water that was farther down. But what made this project so valuable was actually its flaws rather than its success.

  Irrigation was a complex subject, and tunneling was even more complicated, so their enterprise was soon met with many problems. What would they do with all the dirt they dug up? Digging led to a lot more physical exertion, which in turn led to more energy consumption, which meant they needed to eat more. How could they improve their hunting techniques to cope with the growing demand for food?

  Having a difficult goal forced them to use and develop their intelligence, instead of mindlessly rebuilding the same traps with no originality.

  One of the problems they overcame were cave-ins. At first, their goal was basically to hollow the entire plains, and they never thought about what would then support the ground. This led to a lot of unfortunate cave-ins.

  Cave-ins by themselves were not very dangerous for these powerful creatures, but it would force them to migrate early to flee the ruined landscape, indirectly endangering them. So they had to learn how to dig safely, and change their plans from just hollowing the earth to building a more sophisticated tunnel system.

  It also took a long time for them to figure out that water did not simply “fill in whatever hole you dug”, but followed the rules of gravity, always flowing downstream. In the end they recorded and passed down that knowledge. They even started carving maps on their shells. It was not quite writing, but was already very close.

  This project was of a huge cultural and historical significance, and showed a level of cooperation that humans might never achieve, but it also wasn’t very thrilling to watch.

  Avery did not want to denigrate this project, as it was a game-changer, potentially kickstarting the development of the entire world. But after five hundred years, he had to admit he was expecting something more impressive.