The first dinosaur to set foot on the planet in sixty-five million years looked around, scratched at the ground, scratched at the door … and then one of the screens went dark.

“Did that thing just eat a camera?” Raul swore.

“Smart little blighters, velociraptors.” Bailey commented, then turned Isaac “I think we shouldn’t let that thing run around in there too long.”

Isaac nodded and phased through the wall, his knife warping straight into his hand a fraction of a second before it pierced clean through the velociraptor’s heart.

Now that it wasn’t rocketing around the room like a demented pinball, it was surprising how small it looked. A body that weighed about as much as the average dog, but more lithe, a feather covered tail trailing limply behind him as he stepped into the storage room and placed it on the necropsy table.

It really was just a big, toothy chicken, wasn’t it? A light and limber body, covered in feathers, albeit ones very different from what a modern bird had. After all, these had not been developed with the goal of flight. Instead, they would function as a very basic form of thermal insulation, allowing a predatory dinosaur to keep moving for a bit after the ambient temperature had dropped past the point that other reptiles would be too cold to continue walking around.

“I’m guessing that settles the whole ‘feathers or not’ debate?” Raul asked.

“Not necessarily.” Patrick shrugged “At a minimum, we know that the [System’s] classifications as to what monsters are meant to be don’t necessarily line up with biological definitions. Frogs don’t have teeth, but all the summoned ones I’ve personally dissected do. Anyone who disagrees with the feather thesis can easily just say that these aren’t the prehistoric dinos and have this evidence thrown out, metaphorically speaking.”

“I’m still having trouble imagining a Brontosaurus or Diplodocus with feathers, though.” Amy chimed in.

“Brontosaurus isn’t a real thing. It’s a fake species created when two fossils got mixed up and turned into one. The resulting skeleton was so heavy, they named it ‘thunder lizard’ for how heavy and loud its footsteps would have had to have been. The mix-up was cleared up, but the name stuck around.” Karl corrected, clearly glad to have something to put in on the technical side of the discussion.

“And they probably didn’t. Big animals tend to have issues with venting heat, not retaining it. The largest Sauropods were actually right at the edge of cooking their organs with their own body heat. Modern elephants have the same issue, they pump blood through their ears to cool it.” Patrick corrected.

“Aren’t Sauropods something like 10 times as massive as an elephant?” Raul asked.

“Those are also endothermic.” Patrick pointed out.

“I’m aware that this might be a stupid question, but … endothermic?” Isaac asked.

“Warm blooded.” Amy answered “Doesn’t really make much of a difference, except ninety percent of professors will have a conniption if you use the …” she dropped her voice to a low, conspiratorial, whisper “wb word.”

“Oh, I know about people being so in love with one way of doing something that even the idea of doing it another way borders on sacrilege. Usually, they’re in charge.” Isaac sighed.

“Benefits of having a dynamic boss and working in a brand new field, right?” Bailey cut in, raising his voice slightly to be heard over their discussion, mirth clearly evident in his teasing tone.

“Duh.” was Isaac’s immediate reply, using his best stoner voice, drawing a chuckle.

“I think the real question is, how the hell did that thing know to go right for the camera. I know they’re meant to be smart, but that smart? Even a human wouldn’t instantly know what’s breakable if put into a situation they lack all context for.” Raul threw in.

“I think it might be because it isn’t as smart as a human.” Bailey suggested “It just acted on instinct. Scratched at the concrete floor, scratched at the metal door, then went after one of the two objects in the room made out of neither, the other one being the crate with the Slime. By the way, we’ll need to move that out of there or put a bunch more precautions around it before something breaks it.”

Isaac froze for a brief second after hearing that, but then relaxed. He’d be here when the Slime started summoning more of its kind and even if he wasn’t, these were most basic of basic monsters that posed an equally minimal threat. Quite literally, the safest way to accidentally discover that particular problem with summoning.

“I’ll take care of that after we’ve gotten a good look at the velociraptor.” Isaac nodded, eyes fixed on the table. For that matter, as were everyone else’s. This was a goddamn dinosaur, for fucks sake. There was something seriously wrong anyone who wasn’t entranced by a sight such as this one.

“That’s fair.” Bailey replied “But make sure to get it done before we summon the next one.”

“Maybe now’s a good time to call facilites, have them replace the camera while we work in here?” Amy suggested.

“Do we have a spare? If we do, I can do that in a second flat.” Karl suggested “I won’t even have to crack open part of the wall to get at the wires inside, I can just magically peel it back and reseal it afterwards. That’ll also save us a lot of time because getting everything sealed back up properly will take the rest of the day. That putty takes forever to solidify.”

“Good idea. Do you want to do that now or stay for the necropsy?” Bailey asked.

“Stay, of course.”

“Are you actually qualified to be doing electronic installation work? I don’t doubt you can do it, but without qualifications, that could easily become a sticking point in the future.” Wechsler threw in.

When everyone turned around to look at him, he shrugged “You think anyone could pass this up, no matter if I’m technically supposed to be a part of the actual experiments?”

“Nope.” came a unanimous verdict.

“Alright, let’s see what it actually looks like …” Bailey said as he set his scalpel for the first cut.

In the end, its insides were an unusual amalgamation of avian and reptilian features, such as feathers and hollow bones being in the same body as a toothy maw and a lack of a wishbone. Or as Bailey put it, after consulting a paleontology tome that had to weigh several kilograms, a picture perfect velociraptor skeleton, just like the fossils, just fresh.

“So, what happens if we try to summon another one with a tooth?” Isaac asked, genuinely curious as to what would happen if they did. This was one of those things he’d never tried or read about being tried in the other timeline.

“We’ll see. Once the summoning room is back in a useable condition. Oh, and I think it would be best for you to be in the room when it appears, we can’t be constantly replacing cameras.” Bailey said, then threw a look at Wechsler “For legal reasons, I have to offer you the option of opting out of that as I can’t order you to be in a locked and isolated room with a dangerous predator.”

“I, Isaac Thoma, first of his name, have heard your offer and politely decline.” Isaac replied in a deliberately stilted way.

“You know that’s something he has to say for legal reasons, right? And that I have to point that out to him?” Wechsler said defensively.

“Oh, I know.” Isaac replied chipperly “But that doesn’t mean I won’t poke fun at it. ‘sides, I wasn’t making fun of you, I was making fun of German bureaucracy.”

He walked into the summoning room to grab and remove the slime box, but then he paused and turned “Look, I know you probably don’t hear this a lot, but here it is. I appreciate you, and your job. You’re being really helpful and I don’t think we could keep up half this pace if you weren’t here to help steer us through the bureaucratical maze.”

“Thanks.” Wechsler threw him a grin. As much as people liked to make fun of lawyers and stereotype them, they were people too.

A few minutes later, the summoning room was clear and fully repaired, the circle was ready for him to pour mana into it.

“Alright, walking with dinosaurs, take two.” Isaac announced with a grin and activated it. Or at least he tried to. Mana sparked and fizzled, shooting at the feathers and devouring them, then wreathing the tooth and absorbing the blood on its base before zipping all over the place.

Uh-oh. Apparently, this particular combination of ingredients didn’t match any particular summon and now the magic wasn’t properly being directed. Something like that had happened before, but to a far lesser severity. With the Acid Slimes, they’d accidentally summoned small glass golems as the containers for the liquids used had been used as materials. Then there had been barely acidic water creatures that had been summoned instead and the like, not what had been intended, but nothing problematic.

But now … a ghostly thing erupted upwards, a tangle of feathers and countless wings that shifted around and through each other, a blood red core that seemed to call out to the crimson liquid flowing through Isaac’s veins.

He threw himself backwards a split second before a spectral pair of vampiric jaws snapped shut where his head had just been.

An array of six black bars of power extended from the tip of his knife and hammered into the abomination , tearing it into infinitesimal pieces that floated through the air before fizzling out and vanishing, leaving nothing behind.

Vampiric Avian Mana Abomination (Lv.5) has been slain. 20 XP gained

Even after all that, it was still limited by the Tier 2 circle it had come out of. [Manifold Strike] using [Power Strike], [Sundering Strike], [Piercing Strike] and [Sweeping Strike] for the win. It had cost him over 150 mana, but it was an absurdly powerful hit, the very definition of overkill for something like this. But this thing had been an unknown threat, not something he could have made a plan for before he faced it in battle. He could have used [Hunter’s Gaze] to check its stats, but the split second that would have taken could have been decisively fatal.

“Are you alright?”

“What the actual fuck was that?”

“The hell?!”

“… scheiße.”

It was hard to make out the individual voices as they overlapped to create a cacophony of noise over the speakers. But it was possible with his high mental and Perception stats.

“I’m fine. The Kill Notification calls it a Vampiric Avian Mana Abomination, Level 5, aka the max Level for anything that can come out of a Tier 2 circle, at least in my experience.” Isaac explained, breathing heavily. Complete and utter summoning fuckups happened occasionally and they were usually not excessively dangerous, save for the surprise factor that tended to completely fuck over any and all preparations.

He was fine, and had reacted about as well as he could have, given the circumstances, but damn, that had scared the hell out of him.

“Did anyone else see how the mana devoured the blood?” Patrick asked.

“Sounds like there was no real summon for the combination of dinosaur teeth and feathers, so the circle locked on to the blood, which we didn’t intend to be used as an ingredient.” Amy suggested.

“Honestly, I think that’s exactly what happened. Shall we try again, but with a Tier 1 circle this time?” Isaac asked, stepping directly into the meeting room through the wall.

“Are you sure that isn’t, well, super dangerous? I’ve never seen you resort to something that powerful.” Amy cautioned him “I mean, just look at the room.”

Glancing back at the monitors, the six massive slashes running from the roof of the summoning room, flowing down its side, where they grew slightly fainter since the Mana Abomination had been between the wall and his blade, and finishing in deep gouges in the floor.

“I had no idea what that thing was until I got the Kill Notification, so I hit it with everything I had. That was a [Skill] called [Manifold Strike] and is a combination of every other [Strike] type [Skill] I have. It’s expensive as hell, but it has increased striking and penetration power, tears apart enemy armor on a fundamental level and makes me hit six times at the same time.” Isaac said, then gave Karl an apologetic look “I hope the mess is fixable.”

“Should be.” Karl shrugged, thoughtfully rubbing his chin as he observed the mess.

“You didn’t answer my question about the danger.” Amy said, giving him a pointed look.

“It wasn’t and it’s not going to be. These creatures can’t exceed the Level of the circle, they aren’t going to be exceedingly dangerous, unless you count the surprise factor.” Isaac told her confidently.

“Based on what, the grand total of one example?” Patrick challenged.

“A hypothesis needs to start somewhere, doesn’t it?” Raul threw in “I think it might be safer to check that while we’re expecting something unexpected to happen, rather than getting bitten in the ass the next time a summoning goes off the rails.”

“I agree.” Bailey nodded “Isaac, if you could write up a list of Levels and circle Tiers of anything you’ve fought, as well as what level you’re comfortable fighting if you don’t know what to expect. Everyone else, we’re going to keep going with the dinosaurs.”

So that was what happened. Isaac wrote down everything he could remember and put a hard cap on a Tier 2 circle. Unexpected monsters that could have literally any kind of power … those weren’t creatures to be overconfident with.

In the background, more dinosaurs were summoned, this time far more carefully. Patrick had picked up some kind of cleaning and sterilizing Spell and was scouring every bone completely clean before it was used. A precaution that was a bit over the top, given that such secondary summoning materials tended to be disregarded, barring an incomplete recipe, but not one Isaac could blame him for.

Suddenly, there was a far brighter flash than ever before and Isaac jumped, leaping straight into the summoning room to help with any potential problem. But there wasn’t one. Just a cute looking ball of feathers and fluff sitting on Raul’s shoulder, licking his face in a decidedly unreptilian manner.

“Your familiar?” Isaac asked.

“Yep.” Raul said, chuckling as it continued to act like the world’s friendliest dog “A microraptor. Cute, right?”

“Obviously.” Isaac said, grinning “Can I touch him? Or her?”

“Her. She’s called Brisa, that means ‘breeze’ in Spanish. Go ahead.” Raul offered and Isaac stuck his hand out, slowly running it down the dinosaur’s back. The microraptor had a general four-legged build, massive feathers attached to the two at the front to allow it to glide and a long tail with a diamond shaped wedge of feathers at its end to stabilize its flight. And it was tiny, and small creatures were objectively cute. Unless they were insects, of course.

“I’m guessing you guys figured that one was a good choice?” Isaac asked.

“Yes, actually. You said that [Skills] and Aspects have an impact on [Class] Evolutions, and that got me wondering. What kind of [Class] will having a dinosaur as a pet earn you?” Raul explained.

“A good one, probably. I look forward to seeing that.” Isaac nodded, then headed into the storage room, the list he’d written up still in his hand.

“So, based on everything I know, a Tier 2 monster isn’t going to end up being any stronger than Level 5 and that’s where I’d like to cap any experiments, at least for now. The sheer breadth of possible abilities or resistances is too great for me to willingly go up against one at my Level if I can avoid it.” Isaac announced “I suppose that now all that’s left to do is check a million different entries to make sure we actually use a ‘wrong’ recipe.”

“Someone else will do that. There’s always a few students willing to make some extra money doing grunt work. Meanwhile, I’d like to check what happens if you create a complete summoning recipe, but then add something extra.” Bailey replied.

“I suppose we either get a hybrid, or only one thing gets summoned. I checked, there is no Tier 2 summon for blood, feathers, teeth, or any combination of those three. Abominations probably only happen when the number of viable summons using any combination of available ingredients is zero. Otherwise something as simple as the glass beakers we use for liquids would have caused problems.” Isaac shrugged.

“Good point. So, shall we?”

“Are we ever going to finish any experiment before haring off, chasing the next shiny thing?” Patrick asked.

“Well, like Isaac said, we have six people with a constant stream of mana coming in. All we need to do is properly schedule this and we can do both concurrently. And since we know Mana Abominations still conform to the regular Tier to Level relations, we can do that as well.” Bailey said “Give me sec to make a schedule, then we can do all of this.”

“Um, it’s getting a little late.” Karl chimed in, gesturing to the clock on the wall.

“Oh, right. I’ll make sure you all get overtime payments, if you feel up to staying a while longer. ‘But dinosaurs’ is an argument that will melt the heart of even the most hardass of bean counters.” Bailey replied, a mischievous grin on his face.

Isaac took this as a good opportunity to look around the room, noting the countless boxes with their meticulous labeling, each clearly filled with specific dinosaur bones, all ready to be sent to some kind of collection, or maybe shown to any paleontologist who cared to take a look.

“You guys have been busy.” Isaac commented.

“Yes. Was a lot of work, but damn satisfying.” Amy said, using some kind of telekinetic Spell to stack ones that had just been filled on top of everything else.

“I just hope we’re not going to be the ones carrying all of that.” Isaac commented. “’cause that’s going to take forever.”

“We’ll probably get some help when we need it. Besides …” Amy began, making another box float right past Isaac’s nose “Superpowers, remember?”

“Superpowers indeed.”

And just like that, it was on. Any dinosaur that would fit in the room was summoned and fell before it could break anything, something that was important given that they tended to have the sheer mass and strength necessary to do quite the number on even the reinforced room.

But even as that was done, the first ‘unworkable combinations’ came in, spawning monsters straight out of the collective nightmares of humanity. Well, except for the one time a banana from the trash ended up dumping a sewage elemental into the summoning room. The fight was a breeze. The cleanup … not so much.

Karl ended up doing a 10 pm coffee run, but Isaac declined the offer and just kept working. After all, he was nowhere near the point where he’d get tired.

“Hey, aren’t you tired?” Patrick asked, the question immediately followed by a clearly inadvertent yawn. At this point, it was nearing midnight and people were getting so tired that working with dangerous monsters was becoming actively dangerous.

“Eventually, sure. But at this point, I only need like two hours of sleep each night, I’ll be fine for a while yet.” Isaac shrugged as he placed a few more random knick-knacks into the circle. It had gotten to the point where the number of summoned Abominations well exceeded the number of known ‘wrong’ resource combinations. So, they’d ended up sticking random crap into a circle and checked what came out of it.

Either they got an actual, listed, summon and they could put the used stuff down as whatever category was needed to summon said thing, or they had a new and interesting Abomination type monster to look over.

And while the Abominations were interesting, they weren’t all that useful. In the other timeline, the general consensus had been that they were born of the random mana that filled unviable circles, taking whatever direction they could using any material available within the circle.

To top it all off, they were subject to the same limitations with regards to XP gains as every other creature was. There were literally no upsides to them, especially as they didn’t leave behind any kind of resources, only dangers. Given how hard it was to plan for a monster whose characteristics you couldn’t predict, there were really only negatives to summoning abominations instead of proper, defined, summons.

“Ok, this has been a great day, but at this point, it’s getting too late and I don’t want anyone to get hurt because they were too tired to do things properly.” Bailey finally cut in, barely managing to delay a yawn so he could finish saying that sentence.

“I’m fine, Adam. I can keep going for a bit more.” Isaac reminded him.

“Thank you. But it’s not going to do much good to have you here, working, with no one here to process any actual summons you trigger. Go home, do something fun, and I’ll see you tomorrow, ok? And when we have a good space for it, we’ll finally get a good look at a T-Rex.” Bailey replied immediately.

“Oh, sure thing.” Isaac replied, already plotting what to do now. After all, there were quite a few other things on his to-do list.

“But I don’t suppose you’d be willing to help carry all this?” Bailey asked.

“Obviously.” Isaac replied with a smile.

What followed was precisely what he’d expected, half an hour of slinging around boxes to make sure they’d end up where they were needed, be that some dusty storage locker where someone could go to get a reference specimen or the desk of some paleontologist who wanted a fresh bone, rather than a fossil.

But then, he was free. Free to do stupid things on his own, free to do whatever he wanted, free to go … fishing.

Almost an hour later, Isaac stood on the shore of a small lake, a Tier 3 ritual circle made from pool noodles floating on the water in front of him.

This place was meant to be an artistically created lake for people to bathe in, but it had been the victim of a rather annoying algae bloom. It wasn’t that bad, but anyone who accidentally drank too much of this stuff would end up on the toilet for the entirety of the next day.

Of course, the easy solution to that would have been to tell people to try not to drink water, but clearly, the owners of this place didn’t trust their clients to think quite that far.

Isaac wanted to disagree with that, but having seen the mess humanity had made of the other timeline, he honestly couldn’t.

He was here to address one of his bigger weaknesses, namely, his inability to fight underwater. He also wasn’t exactly prepared for flying enemies either, but he had a plan to upgrade his Aspect of the Specter to let him deal with those.

Isaac had infused the circle with enough mana after putting in a bone, tooth, chunk of fish and obsidian shard, the ingredients needed to summon a Dunkleosteus.

These things were nasty, nasty fuckers from the Prehistoric section of the summoning tab. A nine meter long fish from the Devon period of history, a time defined by heavily armored aquatic creatures and the beginning of life on the land, as well as the emergence of sharks as a species group.

In a world where everything wore biological armor, one species had evolved to breach it. The Dunkleosteus didn’t actually have teeth, rather its jawbones protruded out from its gums, sharpened to an obscene degree, to the point where scientists had hypothesized these things would be able to bite clean through chainmail. In other words, one nasty customer.

Of course, there were plenty of fish-like species to get a water breathing [Skill] from, but Isaac had chosen this one for a reason.

First of all, a Dunkleosteus was Tier 3, meaning it had a higher Aspect drop rate than its weaker brethren.

But then, there was Isaac’s new [Class] and the [Skills] it offered. Namely, [Tools of Terror] and [Form of Horror]. Both of them would draw on the natural weapons of the creatures whose Aspects he’d slotted and right now, those were looking rather bleak. All the Lesser Hydra really had to offer in that department was fangs, and Isaac really wasn’t into biting his opponents.

But this fish, it both had heavy defensive plates of bone and the razor sharp bones that served as its teeth. Of course, the latter were unlikely to be used too much, but it was possible he could apply the idea behind them to the ones he used for armor?

At the very least, these creatures would give decent experience.

A brief pulse of [Spectral Shift] caused all of his clothes to fall through his body. Then, he picked an anchor up off the floor and waded into the deep, dark, lake.

Actually, it wasn’t all that deep, having barely enough depth to fully cover an adult Dunkleosteus. The rules as to what was considered an ‘environmental hazard’ or an unfair battlefield were a little different compared to terrestrial summons.

Basically, getting full XP from an aquatic summon required a body of water that was deep enough for it to be able to move freely and wide enough for it to get away from someone just standing on the shore and bombarding it from range. And this lake qualified for both.

The anchor wasn’t just any old anchor either. Sure, it had started out as your regular, cliché, steel bar with a shallow U of at the end, but that was a far cry from what it had been. Isaac had used [Piercing Strike] to cut through it to sharpen the points and the second they were sharp enough, he’d improved and strengthened them with his [Skills], leaving him with one hell of a fishhook.

As the dark and murky water reached his neck, Isaac activated the circle and began swimming. The titanic fish erupted into existence with an almighty splash and flung itself in his direction, tail whipping from side to side with incredible speed.

The gates of hell, ringed with razor sharp plates of bone, closed in on him … and Isaac just phased straight through them, excluding only the anchor from the [Skill].

Inevitably, it ended up impaling the damn fish somewhere and got stuck, while the monstrous creature just flashed off into the distance.

Isaac waited until the rope attached to the anchor had just about reached the corner of the fish’s mouth and then unphased everything. After all, if this fish could bite through chainmail, it could also bite through any kind of rope he might use. Lab-made, high tech, carbon nanotubes and the like might withstand that bite, having been evolved specifically to cut through armor and other tough structures, but that wasn’t a risk Isaac was willing to take. Besides, it wasn’t like he had access to any of those fancy materials.

The hook caught a moment after he unphased everything and the rope in his hand went taught, yanking him along. Even as he was dragged underwater, Isaac pulled himself closer, going hand over hand, until his Perception let him actually see the goddamn fish yanking him around.

With both hands holding on to a rope for dear life, not even a knife that could be teleported straight into his hand was useable. Then again, this was what the damn ring was for. The instant the fish was in sight, he triggered a [Power Strike] infused [Far Strike] and hammered the crimson bar of energy straight into the monster’s eye, which popped like a damn water balloon.

The scream of agony was inaudible, yet oh so obvious to a man of his experience. This was a beast that had been hurt and wanted everyone else to know that, and how pissed off it was, that anything that approached risked getting torn to shreds in the crossfire.

It was the kind of warning that might deter a normal predator after a quick meal, but a human specifically gunning for it? Hell no!

The Dunkleosteus whirled and charged directly at him, but Isaac just repeated his last maneuver, phasing and hooking once again. And just like that, the damn fish was dragging him along once again.

Dragging himself forward, going hand over hand, Isaac closed the distance. Another devastating strike from his ring left a deep cut right along its gills, but it sadly missed hitting them directly.

The Dunkleosteus whirled, but Isaac phased right through it again, leaving another deep gash along its side. A direct strike to the gills would be the equivalent of setting off a bomb inside a human’s lungs … if he could actually manage to land a hit.

It whirled past three more times until it floated in the lake, belly up, but die it did.

Isaac poked his head above the water, sucking in huge gulps of air. The damn thing was dead, at the very least, he’d gotten some XP and a chance at an Aspect.

Grabbing a hold of the line, Isaac dragged the body on to the shore and poured Corpsemelter Acid onto it. Unfortunately, the hoped for Aspect failed to materialize, but at least he’d tried.

Or as the German saying went ‘neues Spiel, neues Glück’. Roughly translated, that meant ‘new game, more luck’. Hopefully, it held true.

Unfortunately, it did not. Again and again. Until eventually, the damn thing finally left behind an orb so dark it seemed to swallow the light, a little slice of the deep ocean abyss.

Aspect of the Dunkleosteus:

This is the distilled essence of what makes a Dunkleosteus a Dunkleosteus. Breathe underwater without any issues, manifest plates of bone to protect yourself or bite through literally any kind of armor with your new anti-armor teeth.

Requirements for Activation:

1,000 XP

Open Aspect Slot

Grants:

+5 Fortitude

One of the following Skills:

Gills

Ossified Armor

Anti-Armor Bite

Eventually, he did go to sleep, far too late by most impartial measurements. Usually, that would have been a bad idea, but Isaac was trying to play around with his sleep schedule. If he could make it so his next two hour sleep fell into the final descent to Las Vegas, he’d be able to spend the longest possible amount of time working the various casinos without needing to pause his winning streak for something as banal as sleep.