Leon spent nearly a month holed up in his room doing little more than eating and meditating while he processed his grief over the loss of his family. It wasn’t easy, the pain of loss was something that no skill he had could help him with. He wished he could forget. He wished that he wasn’t so deeply wounded by their deaths. But at the same time, he couldn’t let go of them, he felt like if he forgot he would be dishonoring their memory. The love they had shown him even though he was not their same race. The fierce pride in their eyes every time he did something that they thought was beyond his years. Leon had come to a realization, and then a resolution. He would become someone that his could be proud of. He would stand up and take on the mantle that the Dungeoneers Guild was dangling in front of him. Clearing Dungeons and maintaining overall piece throughout the lands. And he would need to become powerful to do it.

After Leon’s month-long mourning period, he had dove right into the Mind Lore book with a vengeance. And had begun classes with the different weapons instructors. Every day of the week was a different weapon training. Daggers, Swords, Spears, Bows, Crossbows, Hammers, and whips. For over a year, twelve hours a day. The other twelve hours a day Leon spent reading the new Lore books that Malorie kept brining him. Magical skills were still being put off and Leon was fine with that. Every Lore he finished would simply add to his versatility when he finally started magical training. After some discussions with Malorie they decided to put off magical training until he reached the age of fifteen. And before that he would spend all of his time focusing training his body and the skills he’d gained to the utmost. Then he would focus exclusively for the next five years on training his magical skills while still adding to his repertoire of Lore Titles.

Right now, Leon was focusing on his weapons mastery skills. In order to make a new trait Leon would need at least five skills at the pinnacle of the second Tier and the weapon mastery skills seemed like the perfect ones to incorporate into a new trait. Along with developing his stealth skills Leon was fairly certain that he would be able to, if not kill any threat he ever came across, at least escape it. This is why he had finally used a few of his vouchers for skills.

Quantum Perception had immediately been eaten by Mind And Body Of The Traveler. It was a skill that allowed an individual to ‘see’ in a sphere around themselves. This sight could not be blocked by any known means and was one of the most sought-after skills in existence. It had taken Leon several days to get used to seeing everything within a thirty-foot radius of himself. But now that he was used to it… He wasn’t sure he could ever go back to not being this aware of his surroundings. The range of the skill kept increasing but Leon had learned how to kind of focus and dim it when he felt overwhelmed.

The next skill he’d purchased was called Quantum Blink, and it was a short-range teleportation skill. Well not really short range, but line of sight teleportation. Coupled with his perception skills Leon could instantly be anywhere within a thirty-foot radius of himself at the cost of about one eighth of his mana. It was a truly fantastic skill.

The third and fourth Skills he’d purchased were Telepathy and Telekinesis respectively. Telepathy and Telekinesis had a similar range to his Quantum Perception. They were exceedingly useful skills. Though Telepathy had been immediately consumed by his Trait, Leon could use it to speak directly to peoples minds and read their surface thoughts. He could also dig into their minds more deeply if he wanted to. But that was a no-no. Telekinesis immediately became Leon’s favorite skill. It was like having a million hands that could do anything he wanted with just a small expenditure of mana.

Leon had stopped his skill purchases at those four skills because he wanted to keep his options open should he ever need any specific skills. For now, he was focusing on leveling up his skills as quickly as he possibly could. Which happened to be very fast by most people’s standards. Not fast enough in his opinion but he was trying his hardest. He would become a one-man Dungeon clearing machine soon, if he had anything to say about it.

Gerald Crumbl

The trip to Cracked Stone Keep had been a pleasant affair. It had taken almost a year to arrive at their destination, and they’d stopped off at many a small town on their way here. Gerald and Ameillia, along with little Lilly had gotten to experience so many new and exciting things on the journey that they were a little disappointed that they had never gone on a big trip like this with Leon. He would have loved it. Now that they were in Cracked Stone Keep, they could see if there were any decent mailing services so that they could get in contact with him.

His uncle’s birthday party would not begin for another six months, so in the meantime Gerald and Ameillia were planning on selling their services to the locals. The artificed carriage that they’d purchased was a godsend for this. It had practically their entire workshop inside its spatially enlarged interior. They could run their business while living very cheaply. Though food was certainly more expensive, and the lack of plumbing meant that they needed to do their business outside. It was still pleasant enough.

Malorie FleshShaper

Leon continued to surprise Malorie again and again. He’d graduated from resistance skill training to weapon skill training and was improving drastically. He hadn’t managed to get any of his skills to Tier 2 yet, but he had so many skills right at the cusp that she would definitely classify him as a Tier 2 combatant. Especially after he got that teleportation skill of his. She had no idea how he’d gotten that skill, but it put him in an entirely different bracket of combat effectiveness.

Combine that with his increasing mastery of every weapon available and Telekinesis… She would actually be afraid of what he could become if she didn’t know him. Or didn’t know about the fact that there were already individuals out there on the fifth and even sixth Tiers of power who could honestly destroy entire cities with a wave of their hands. There were even rumors that there were some people who had reached Tier 9 on the 14th layer of the Heavenly Spheres. Individuals who could practically bend reality just by flexing too hard.

Malorie was even more impressed by Leon’s quick pickup of the different lore titles she’d been able to secretly acquire for him. She’d gotten him Mind, Holy, Celestial, Demonic, Life, and Soul. But he had somehow gotten ahold of Curse as well.

The kid didn’t really look like a kid anymore though. When he’d turned twelve it was like his already large for his age body had decided to go into overdrive. Over the past three years he’d been growing so fast that Malorie would swear that she could hear his bones creaking as they grew. He was now a little taller than she was! Malorie was six foot nine inches tall, and Leon now stood nearly at Seven foot Two. He had none of the lankiness that you’d expect out of a tall teenage human boy though. Everything about him was proportional to his size. And with all of the training he did his body was covered in hard corded muscle. Malorie had to clamp down on her own mind as she started thinking about that, a small bit of heat building inside her before she reigned it in. It made her feel like a cradle robber in the extreme, not only did she have over a century on the boy, but thinking such thoughts was unprofessional for a Mentor Mentee relationship.

Focusing on the task at hand Malorie shook her head. Today would be the start of Magic instructions. Which Malorie didn’t think would actually take all that long, Leon already knew the basics, it was now only a matter of him actually practicing in a controlled environment.

Leon Crumbl

The past five years were a blur to Leon. A blur of constant physical training that had put him into the very best shape he’d ever been in and feeling amazing. He’d grown very quickly and was now taller than most humans. Though that didn’t really set him far apart from a lot of other species in this world. He'd only turned fifteen a few days ago. But by this worlds standard he was now an adult. Though this new body of his seemed to refuse to grow hair that wasn’t on top of his head or eyebrows. He really wished he could grow a beard though, that would have been super manly in his opinion. But sadly, he was completely bare from the chin down. Though he’d not complain about the lack of pubs, he’d liked any of that to begin with. He just lamented the lack of facial hair.

Now was the time that he had been waiting for. Now after having read every magical skill book available and having picked up not only Flesh, Blood, and Bone Lore. But also Mind, Holy, Celestial, Demonic, Life, Soul, Curse, and one that his Mentor didn’t know about Horror Lore Leon was more than ready to start practicing magic and creating magical skills.

Leon’s current skills, besides those that were in the fourth Tier, had all been capped at level 99 for a while now, even his Cooking skill. Malorie had said that in order to level them to the next Tier he had to push them in a way that would let them Tier up. They would need something more than just being practiced, they would need to be strained beyond their Tier and forced to evolve slightly. He wasn’t sure how that was supposed to occur as he’d pushed each and every one of the skills to their max and kept going until he’d run out of mana again and again. But they never seemed to cross that threshold. Leon suspected that it really had something to do with mana density, because everyone that he met who was considered to be Tier 2 had much more dense mana in their bodies than Tier 1’s did. Leon had a huge mana capacity, but its density was no where near that of a Tier 2’s. Malorie herself was a Tier 3 individual and the mana density of her core was ridiculous compared to his wispy mist. Hers was like mercury. Though Leon had definitely seen a few people around who made Malorie’s mana look like air in comparison and those people exuded an aura of extreme power. Pulling up his list of Skills he contemplated how he would go about increasing his mana density.

Meditation+++ lvl 1

Utility Pocket+++ lvl 1

Mana Manipulation lvl 99

Mana Control lvl 99

Mathematics lvl 99

Identify lvl 99

Perception Filter lvl 99

Alchemical Stability lvl 99

Hammer Play lvl 99

Spear Mastery lvl 99

Blunt Weapons Mastery lvl 99

Small Blades Mastery lvl 99

Large Blades Mastery lvl 99

Ranged Weapons Mastery lvl 99

Whip Mastery lvl 99

Shield Mastery lvl 99

Unarmed Combat Mastery lvl 99

Cooking lvl 99

Speed Reading lvl 99

Reading And Writing lvl 99

Stealth lvl 99

Muffle lvl 99

Invasive Strike lvl 99

Double Strike lvl 99

Power Strike lvl 99

Reinforce lvl 99

Telekinesis lvl 99

Quantum Blink lvl 99

From what Leon had been able to piece together each skill inside his Core caused the density of his mana to rise ever so slightly. The most mana he could have at any given time inside his Core didn’t seem to increase naturally. His skills just got to the point where they used less and less mana as they leveled up and were easier to use as a result. The only reason that the amount of mana inside his core had ever increased was when he was trying to create his own Cultivation style thing inside his core. Once his mana returned to normal after he practiced it was always with slightly more mana, and that new amount seemed to become his new cap for natural regeneration. Leon’s current theory was that people’s skills and the limited amount of space inside their cores forced the density of the mana within their bodies to increase as time went on eventually pushing them through the Tier thresholds naturally.

Leon’s abnormally large Core was preventing that natural progression because he would need to have thousands of skills to push his mana density up to those levels. Meaning that his practice for Making his own Cultivation thingy a reality was a real necessity if he wanted to progress into the next Tier. It was something that he was contemplating now because his teachers and Mentor thought it would be strange if he couldn’t Tier up his skills within the next couple years since they were already at the limit of their Tiers. But at Leon’s current rate he figured it would probably take him fifteen or so years to get to the density required to Tier them up. Leon was also pretty sure that his mana density was also the reason why his Tier 4 skills weren’t leveling up. He was feeding them mana that didn’t let them be fully utilized. Which was a scary thought because both of the skills seemed OP already, he had no clue how they would behave if fed the proper fuel. Leon was also unsure of how Traits played a role in all of this. According to Malorie, one could only become a Tier 3 if they had a trait. But he had no clue why that was or how it could be a requirement.

What Leon really needed was another skill that let him achieve his dream of having a rotating ring of mana within his core that pulled in more mana from both his Source and the environment around him. But looking through the skills that he could buy with his vouchers Leon knew that none of them fit the bill. Which meant that he was treading new water for the system even. That was not very comforting, but he figured that he could find a way to make it happen. Bringing things into his core from outside was a viable option but he had found an issue with it. Leaving an active enchantment going inside his core while he was not present caused him a form of discomfort that he could not rationalize nor explain, but that in and of itself made the idea a no go.

The best that he could do right now was to actively concentrate on using his mana to increase the amount of mana he had inside his Core until it started becoming denser and denser. Which basically put him into the freaking category of those guys that would sit in caves for months at a time cultivating in order to increase their power level which he thought was ridiculous. His only hope was to create something inside of his own core that didn’t make him feel like he was getting soul raped when he wasn’t present inside his core that could continually rotate his mana away from the edges of his Core.

Shaking his head Leon decided to focus on something else. In just a few hours he would be going to the magic practice hall with Malorie to work on his initial usages of mana directly to create skill effects and generate his own magical skills.

The magic practice hall was a huge structure on the school’s campus that was vaguely reminiscent of The Pentagon. The only difference was that it had a massive pentagonal tower shooting up out of the center where the courtyard would have been on his old worlds structure. And it was made exclusively out of some kind of dark black marble or granite. Leon wasn’t sure which. Like a cross between the Pentagon and the tower of Baradur. It definitely gave off some serious magical vibes. Not to mention the thing was traced throughout with millions of lines and geometric patterns that pulsed with power to Leon’s Mana Senses. The whole place was enchanted to hell and back.

Malorie guided Leon to a private area meant for Mentors and Mentees to practice in. The private area was basically a shooting range attached to a dojo. There were dummies meant as targets for practice and dozens of replacements for them in the corners of the room. It was honestly really creepy.

“Now, you already read the skill books. You already know what you are supposed to do but you have never done it before.” Malorie spoke, “It is not very difficult to directly use your mana to achieve the effects that you desire. You already know what you want to achieve. You know how to achieve it. Here inside this facility, it is relatively safe to experiment your actions here will not affect the world outside unless you somehow manage to do something that could overwhelm every enchantment in the structure all at once. Still use caution because you could easily kill yourself. First thing I want you to do is cast basic magic missiles at any target using only one of your affinities at a time. Get a feel for moving your mana into the patterns for the skill, but do not accept any skills yet or attempt to make any modifications until you’ve become comfortable with casting the skill manually.”

Like always, Malorie was getting straight to business. Leon considered asking a few questions but realized that he already knew the theory behind what was in his mind ‘spell casting’ he’d just never actually done it. he needed to try it out himself before he started asking questions.

Walking over to the area that looked like a shooting range Leon stood there and focused on the nearest target. Using both Mana Manipulation and Mana Control he took hold of his mana and concentrated on the idea of using his Bone affinity. Raising his right hand Leon began expelling mana while shaping it into a fairly simple series of patterns. The skill book had explained the patterns, they were all connected and were assigned a specific role in what was achieved in the final outcome. It was the same structure no matter what affinity was used, but the projectiles material and properties changed drastically depending on the affinity used.

Leon did not succeed the first time he tried. As he pumped mana out, he failed to keep the structure stable, and his mana dissipated harmlessly into the air without having any effect. After trying for nearly an hour Leon finally managed to activate the spell and a ball of solid bone materialized out of pure mana while being launched at the target. The ball of bone was about the size of a baseball and flew like a professional pitcher had thrown a fast ball. It struck his target dead center with a crack and the ball broke into several pieces.

Leon heard clapping behind him as he smiled at his success and denied the skill acquisition prompt telling him that he could pick up the Bone Projectile skill, noting that the bone he’d just made out of pure mana didn’t disappear or anything. It was a real chunk of bone fully manifested in real life.

“Congratulations on casting your very first spell! As you can see, the unaltered spell manifests as a ball of something, always that same size, and is launched at about 100 mph. once you’ve got the hang of using it as is we can start working on altering its structure into a few custom-made ones that you should turn into skills.” Malorie said as she walked over and picked up the fragments of bone. “You’ll note that this bone is very light, and very porous. That is because the natural structure of the patterns used for the spell are not really dense enough to produce a truly effective projectile right at the start. If you made this into a skill it would level quickly because you would have an idea of how it should be improved and as you used it your intent would mold the skill as you progressed with it. One other thing. You were using bone affinity to make this, so you could have made it out of anything covered in Bone Lore you went with basic bone. It could be bone, tooth material or exoskeletal material. Before you move on to different affinities, I want you to practice making the different materials that you know are bone.”

Leon nearly face palmed as he thought about it. He’d been so focused on using bone affinity that he hadn’t really considered the thought of using another material. He went back to focusing on producing projectiles with structured mana. It took him a while for each type, and every time he successfully made the projectiles, he was prompted to create a skill out of the application that he’d just used. He cycled through bone, enamel, and keratin, then moved on to calcified bone, and different materials that his Bone Lore books had told him about. After practicing for nearly six hours Malorie decided it was time to stop for lunch.

“Tell me what you have learned today.” Malorie said as she pulled a meal out of her spatially expanded pouch.

Leon sat onto one of the chairs and pulled out his own meal while thinking about her question. He thought about it for a few long moments before he finally began to speak.

“Magic Missile as a spell is has three separate patterns that all work together to create, accelerate, and aim a projectile. The most complex part of the spell is the aiming portion of it. The aiming portion connects both of the other two patterns… It also requires a lot more mana than I’d thought it would require. And now I realize that I have no clue what mana even is. The fact that my projectiles are actually fully real… I’m creating matter out of mana. This has created so many questions in my mind. Thinking about how someone with a Gold affinity could just destroy the economy by learning even a single spell. It seems like Mages could entirely eliminate resource scarcity.” Honestly there were even more implications of what was going on than he really wanted to speculate on. But Leon stopped there.

“Yes, anyone who has any kind of precious metal affinity high enough to use magical skills with it is immediately taken under the wing of the guild and educated thoroughly on the implications of what they could do to the world using their powers.” Malorie spoke, “People with powers like that are incredibly rare though.

“As to what mana really is… I am not sure that I can explain this fully. You already understand that mana is everywhere and is constantly being absorbed by living things and stored inside their Core. Their Souls. Whatever you want to call it. But if I were to cut you open, even though that Core is definitely there I would never actually find it. It is… Metaphysical? Mana and the Soul are both real and not real at the same time. The Soul is far more real than mana but also less capable of interaction with the real world. Mana is sort of like an energy that has no purpose, but it desperately wants to have a purpose. The Soul can give it a purpose by using it to fuel skills or create magical effects. Many mages have theorized and pretty much confirmed that matter and energy seem to be just different forms of the same thing. Mana being a Metaphysical energy until it is manipulated into a pattern can become any form of energy. Whether that is matter, heat, lightning, or other more esoteric forms of energy… That’s the best I can explain the concept to you Leon. Others who have dedicated their lives to studying all of this could do much better.” She finished and went to eating her meal.

They ate in companionable silence after that, Leon contemplating the existential crisis that making matter out of energy brought on to him.

The rest of the day was spent practicing with every affinity in his repertoire. In doing this Leon discovered that some of his affinities were far better suited for combat than others. His curse, demonic, soul, holy, celestial, horror and mind affinities were especially effective. Soul, horror, and mind passed straight through the targets as if they weren’t even there. But expelled a lot of their energy into the target as they passed through. Malorie said that those affinity types are always feared because they pass through most physical defenses and have more internal effects. Especially soul.

By the time that they stopped for the day Leon had gotten his cast time for the spell down to only thirty seconds. And Malorie said that tomorrow they would start on making combinations of affinities. After he got the hang of combining the affinities, she would guide him in refining his spell to behave how he wanted it to behave. Changing its shape, speed, size, and effects.

Ameillia Crumbl

Five years. Five years the Crumbl family had ended up staying in Cracked Stone Keep. A few weeks after her uncle-in-laws birthday party had ended they’d received word that Dungeon City #1-39928 had experienced an extreme overflow that wiped out the city. Since that time they had been trying to get a message out to Leon that they had not been in the city when it all went down. That they were okay and actually doing very well for themselves in Cracked Stone Keep. They’d purchased a very nice parcel of land and had a big, beautiful home built

Their business was flourishing, and Little Lilly was not so little anymore. The biggest change by far however, was that they had added a new member to their family. Little Jerry Crumbl was now three years old. Ameillia was so proud of her children she felt that she could burst. The only thorn in her side, metaphorically speaking, was that Leon was probably under the impression that they been killed in the Dungeon overflow.

Gerald had apparently found someone who could get a message to the Dungeoneers Guild School. Which was a relief, but it would take the message over a year to get there. It was better than nothing, but Ameillia couldn’t help but feel slightly upset by the whole thing.

Leon Crumbl

In the year since Leon had started training his spell casting, he had gotten much better at it. He had even picked up another Lore since then. Mana Lore, pure mana projectiles and other spells using just mana affinity were practically useless. But it had taught him more about mana itself and how direct it in controlled manners. And it was the reason why he finally thought he’d figured out how to make a cultivation setup inside his core.

Using enchantments made by others was introducing foreign mana into his own soul. Using materials from outside his soul was the same because everything was mana. Technically. His solution was to create a ring of bone around his Source using his own mana and enchanting it to pull mana into itself and hold it like a battery whilst also spinning. Leon had already confirmed that stuff that he made with his own mana didn’t feel weird inside his Core. All he needed to do now was create the system that would draw his mana away from the edges of his Core and into a ring around his Source while spinning it.

This would only be possible because he had figured out how to isolate the patterns for manifestation of his affinities and could directly make the materials now in almost any form he wished to achieve. The creation would need to be made up of multiple affinities to work properly. It would require Soul to create a kind of pseudo-Core inside the construct to contain his mana. It would require Mind to implant instructions into what the thing did with the mana. Leon was thinking that it would also require Life, Flesh, and Blood. He would essentially need to create a living organism inside his own soul that did all of this for him. Basically, a physical organ within his own soul.

Obviously, Leon was not stupid enough to test out his creation inside his own core. Currently he was inside the Magic Practice Hall creating a small model of what he wanted to achieve. It basically looked like a gyroscope made of living materials. He’d made nearly a dozen iterations of the thing already and they worked well at drawing mana from inside of whatever they encompassed, but barely did anything to mana outside of their rings. Leon could definitely use this to increase the amount of mana inside his Core by directly pulling on his source. Which granted was probably a better idea altogether. But Leon didn’t want to limit the draw to only his source when there was so much mana to gather all around him. It seemed like a waste to only have one Source when he technically had two.

So, Leon tried new design after new design while trying to figure it all out. Malorie was always present when he was practicing magic. She was watching him make the rings one after the other with her eyebrows raised. He’d been trying this for over a month now and she had never asked him exactly what he was doing. But he could tell that she was very curious.

After iteration one hundred and fifty-five of the day Malorie finally gave into her curiosity and asked him what exactly he was doing.

“I’m trying to create a mana gathering and cycling ring that can actively draw in and store mana but release excess once its full.” He said, avoiding the why of it.

“Well, you are succeeding at that, but you seem frustrated by the results.” She observed.

Leon nodded, “It’s just that it lacks the range I want it to have. Everything inside the ring gets pulled on the hardest and everything outside the ring has a drastic drop off in effectiveness.”

Malorie chuckled at that,

“Is that all? Why don’t you just put extensions on the outside that are dedicated to drawing mana in? it wouldn’t be a ring anymore, but it would have much grater range.” She said as she manifested something that looked like a starfish with a hole in the middle of it.

Leon felt his own eyes widen as he realized how stupid he’d been. He’d been thinking more and more complexity would get him what he wanted, but the answer had been so simple. All he needed to do was make a ring around his Source and extend branches out towards the walls of his Core. It would take a long time. But with the way the everything behaved inside his Core he wouldn’t need to worry about anything breaking, if he left something somewhere it would stay exactly in that position without regard to any form of gravity or outside forces. He could make pencil thin limbs that reached to the misty layers of mana and directly drew the mana towards his source. He could continually add to it until he was pushing his mana capacity to fill his Core to the point that it had to start increasing in density and allow him to move up a Tier.

His other option for accelerating his Tier up process was to dive the Dungeons. Dungeons had naturally more dense mana within them, so using skills and recharging in the denser mana environment naturally increased the density of one’s mana. But that was only when delving to floors that were a Tier above your own, and as of right now Leon was not allowed to delve into Dungeons. He had to be deemed ready by his mentor first and allowed to actually participate in Dungeon School classes that dealt with Dungeons and how to navigate them.

But Leon’s options right now were a little more limited. So he was going to have to create a thing inside himself to artificially increase his mana draw to the point that he could progress at what everyone thought was a reasonable pace.

After spending the rest of the day fiddling with different potential designs and biological makeups for what would essentially be a symbiotic lifeform that would grow with him for the foreseeable future. Leon finally had a firm image and understanding in his minds eye everything that needed to be done to make this thing.