Leon was now in his bedroom at Malorie’s home. Malorie herself was asleep in her own room. Leon was deep in meditation, examining his source and planning out exactly how this was going to go. His knowledge of biology was sufficient to create what he wanted, but at the same time he was worried that it may not be a good idea to essentially create a physically alive and living thing inside his own soul. The thing wouldn’t have the capacity to move or do anything on its own other than drawn mana into itself, store the mana, and then expel it once it got too full. Its body would feed off of a tiny bit of that mana and Leon would always be in complete control of it. But it seemed a little weird, nonetheless.

Sighing deeply to himself, Leon realized that he was just stalling. He already had the schematics in his head, he knew exactly what he was going to do. And there were really no risks in doing it.

Focusing as hard as he could, Leon pulled the mana within his core into a massive pattern around his Source. Pouring his full intent, Knowledge, and desire of the final outcome into his mana using the affinities of Flesh, Blood, Bone, Life, Soul, and Mind to shape a creature into being. A creature that would be connected to his mind and soul. Only able to exist there, only able to perform its designated functions, only able to grow in ways that Leon allowed or desired.

It would start of as a triple helix around his Source, with a ring at the midpoint and connected into points at the top and bottom. He would focus on growing the tendrils to draw mana in after he made its main body. Its overall size would be about ten feet from tip to tip with the basketball sized Source directly at its center. Making it the largest thing that he had ever manifested from mana.

Leon’s mana poured into the creation. And kept on flooding into the design without showing signs stopping. Leon was actually starting to get a little nervous at the sheer amount of mana that it was taking. By his calculations based on how much it had cost to create things before, this thing should have only taken about a tenth of his total mana reserves to create, but he was already down by a third.

When the pattern finally clicked into place and manifested into reality Leon had spent nearly 98% of his total mana before taking his regeneration into account. But he had succeeded. He felt his connection to the creature that he had just created within his own soul. It was both a part of himself and somehow separate. He could feel it drawing mana from around itself. It had come into existence empty and hungry. And it was pulling as hard as it could on the mana around it. Leon could see mana being pulled directly out of his Source and into the creature he’d made. When it started to consume the mana and Leon felt its hunger being sated the entire universe seemed to freeze. It was a startling sensation from his body that pulled him out of meditation and suddenly a notification appeared in his vision.

Congratulations!

You have created a Gestalt Being. For this action you have been awarded the Title [Creator], Effects: Gain perfect affinities for Life, Mind, Soul, and Body magics. All skills related to the affinities of Life, Mind, Soul, and Body are 10X easier to learn and level. Your mind, body, and soul are fortified by 10% more after skills and any other modifiers are applied.

Congratulations!

You have been awarded the Skill: Create Monster [lvl N/A]

The pair of notifications disappeared as soon as he’d read them, and Leon could physically feel how much the Creator title had affected him. His body felt vastly stronger, even though he logically knew that it was only a 20% increase because of his Hero Title’s effects. Still, 20% fortification of someone who was already into the superhuman realm of strength, toughness, and intellect was quite a large leap.

Shaking off the heady feeling of suddenly becoming stronger, Leon dove back into his Core using meditation to see what was going on there. Everything was exactly as he had left it except for the presence of a new stalactite that matched his Tier 4 skills in height but looked very different from them. In fact, he would actually call it a pillar instead of a stalactite. It was like looking at something out of Greek architecture, refined and towering. Its top had upon it a blooming flower. Aside from that everything within his Core seemed to somehow give off a feeling that they were somehow sturdier than before. The creature that he had created was doing exactly what it had been doing before. Drawing mana in from his source and keeping it within itself.

Leon nodded and telepathically took control of the thing. Directing it to use the mana it was absorbing to grow twelve tentacle like protrusions out of the ring that started extending towards the walls of his Core. There was a lot of distance to cover, and it would take time. But in a few weeks, he should have the tentacles siphoning off the cloud of mana that gathered at the edges of Core and the real drive to enhance his Tier would begin.

Leon couldn’t wait to try out the new skill. But he would wait on that until he was inside the magic practice hall again tomorrow. It was time to fully create a skill set and start looking out for a Body Lore book.

Malorie FleshShaper

‘Finally,’ she thought to herself. Leon had been putting off actually making skills for several months now. She didn’t know why he’d been putting it off. But now he was focused and ready to start creating his tool kit for Dungeon Diving. The basic kit would be a damage skill, a protection skill, and either a movement skill or a healing skill. Seeing as Leon had a movement skill already, he would work on a healing skill or emergency lifesaving skill.

His first choice of a Damage skill Malorie found a little confusing. Instead of going for a larger variant of Magic Missile, Leon went the opposite direction with the skill. He made a small conical projectile which he created using Flesh, Blood, Bone, Mind, Soul, Curse, and Horror affinities. She hadn’t even realized that he’d gained Horror Lore and she had no clue how he got a hold of the books. The projectile was only about an inch long and about as wide as the end of her pinky finger. It had a hollow point with weak points running along its sides. Leon said that it was so that once it hit a target it would break apart inside it and distribute the damage internally. Calling it his Horrifying .50 Cal.

Malorie had been skeptical of the little projectile he described to her until he tested it. She had to admit that it was actually a clever use of the Magic Missile spell form. He’d shrunk the size of the thing but had vastly increased his projectiles speed. To the point that even the tiny thing produced a crack in the air as the traveled faster than sound towards its target. The skill would serve him well and should probably scale well into the third Tier easily.

The second skill Leon came up with was more traditional but also extremely well thought out in her opinion. The term Mage Armor had been taken quite literally. Leon controlled and created a pattern that manifested into a full suit of armor that covered his entire body in what looked like plates of polished smooth black chitin. There were not even eye holes, the whole head seemed like a carved skeletal skull. Leon didn’t appear to have any trouble seeing with it on though. All in all, the armor looked intimidating as all hells.

Before Leon finalized his armor skill, Malorie had him run around doing acrobatics, and then sparred with him for a long while to ensure that he could be effective. Malorie had sparred with Leon many times before and could tell that he wasn’t really slowed down in the slightest. In fact, he actually seemed quite a bit stronger and faster than she remembered. But he was still only a Tier 1 being. She outclassed him by two Tiers and had decades of combat experience over him. He was extremely strong and fast for a Tier 1. She actually doubted anyone other than mid-level Tier 2’s could actually stand against him if they were fighting to the death. But she was well into Tier 3, and she could easily dodge even his new damage skill at point blank range despite how quickly the new projectile moved. After Malorie had tested the endurance of Leon’s Mage Armor by beating him around the practice hall for nearly an hour she finally approved the skill and allowed him to take it.

The Lay On Hands healing skill that Leon created was a damn fine application of his affinities and understanding of biology. He’d created it out of the Heal skill book and it required direct physical contact with the target. It used his Flesh, Blood, Bone, Soul, Mind, Holy and Celestial affinities and could heal a person from damn near anything so long as he had the mana for it.

Leon Crumbl

Leon had created his initial three skill, Kit, as Malorie called it. Something that Leon hadn’t realized about the Mage Armor skill when he’d first read the skill book was that it somehow created a temporary material that would evaporate and disappear if he didn’t continually feed it a tiny trickle of mana. That made it a super convenient skill to have, because lugging around armor all the time or making a new solid set of armor every single time you used the skill seemed silly. He could also actively repair his mage armor by feeding it more mana if and when it got damaged. He’d actually used every single affinity he had to make the armor and it should serve to protect him from nearly anything. The skill he’d gained for it was called Knull Armor lvl 1 along with Horrific Missile lvl 1 and Lay On Hands lvl 1 Leon was supposedly ready to take the introductory course for becoming a Dungeon Diver.

But before he and Malorie left the magic practice hall Leon wanted to try out his Create Monster skill and possibly have a minion to do his bidding with. He was basically just excited about the prospect of possibly creating his own Pokémon. He would even keep it in his Utility Pocket so it would definitely be a pocket monster.

Activating the skill Leon was suddenly confronted with a screen in his vision. It was populated with a bunch of options that he could select from and even customize. It was almost like a character creation menu from a video game, but it was all about making monsters. He could select species, genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom, domain, and life. He could even delve into the superfamily, family, subfamily, tribe, subtribe, genus, subgenus, species, and subspecies selections. It even went into the secondary ranks. The complexity of the skill was incredible. The craziest thing about it was that the selections that he had available were all from Earth. He could literally recreate all of the fauna from Earth as monsters with this skill… Even prehistoric creatures were listed.

Scrolling through the options he found the custom tab, and inside of it he found every monster that he’d ever done a video about their possible biology on. Leon deactivated the skill and flopped onto his back, trying to process what he’d just been given. Leon would need to dig deeper into this skills functions before he committed to anything. He resolved to do that tonight before he focused on growing his Core circulation creature.

Leon was soon scheduled to start his Dungeoneering 101 class in three months’ time. He would be in a class full of other kids in his age bracket that also had the Hero Title. It was apparently a common enough Title that nearly ever year had about twenty of them entering the Dungeoneers Guild School. His age bracket had fifteen, and he would be expected to form a party with some of them for the purposes of diving the Dungeons that the Guild controlled.

Leon wasn’t particularly against the idea; he’d been doing nothing but training all day every day and being cooped up in his room reading all night every night for the past fivish years. He’d only interacted with instructors or Malorie that entire time. So, making some friends would actually be a nice change of pace for him and he was looking forward to it.

In the meantime, while Leon was waiting for classes to start, he was entirely free to do whatever he wanted for the first time in… Ever. So, naturally his first order of business was to start diving into the intricacies of his monster creation skill.

The first few things that Leon discovered about his new skill were that he couldn’t create anything a Tier above him. Only the same or below. He could add one of his affinities to whatever monster he chose to create, and it would alter them in some way that would only be knowable once he’d finished the creation process. Another thing he learned was that it took a tremendous amount of mana, and it informed him if he had enough to actually create the thing. He could also create the monsters in two different variants, minion, or free. Minions were entirely bound to his will, and the free ones were completely wild. For some reason creating minions was far cheaper mana wise than creating free versions. Also, if he removed their ability to produce offspring, they were even cheaper. Size and age were also variables that caused them to be more expensive to produce. Leon had discovered that his current mana pool could only create something up to about fifty pounds worth of mass before it became too expensive for him to make.

So far that was just the basics. Leon could also free form create creatures with the skill if he wanted. And apparently every creature that he’d ever used Identify on was also in the list of monsters he could make. Leon wasn’t sure how he felt about the fact that he could create things from Earth. It felt like a gift, but also like he’d been given a responsibility. He wanted no part in trying to just willy nilly bring an extinct species into existence here in this new world. They’d be invasive and he had no idea how it could affect the world. Maybe someday he’d buy up a huge amount of land and create a preserve of earths biosphere. But that was something for far into the future.

For now, Leon decided, he would stick to creating his fantasy monsters and not giving them the ability to breed. Creating singular specimens that would be his minions. The only problem was that most of them were quite large, even as infants. Or in a lot of cases, eggs. He also didn’t know what to expect of the creature’s development when he made them with his affinities. Would adding Mind make them smarter? Would adding Horror give them illusion magics? Leon had no clue, but he would find out someday. For now, he would make one creature using the Demonic affinity. Seeing as he wanted to make an Imp, it seemed like a reasonable idea.

Creating the Imp with his skill was like a videogame but he had so much more control than in any videogame he’d ever played. The Imp had digitigrade legs with three clawed feet, spindly arms crooked horns, membrane wings, a spaded tail, and it was obviously red all over. Leon didn’t really like the way it looked so he got to modifying it. He gave it dark black hair and reduced the horns to where they barely peaked out of the now nice hair. He spent an inordinate amount of time adjusting the facial features until it was actually pleasing to look at. Its mouth was still creepily wide with shark like teeth, but he was turning out to be a handsome little devil. Leon laughed at his own stupid joke before he adjusted the size of the wings, and the muscles that moved them until they were much more satisfactory. They would have worked before; they just would have been slow, and the imp would have tired easily.

Looking over his work Leon nodded to himself. The Imp looked more like a hunched over human with extremely large wings now. If that human was only about fifteen inches tall. The last step was to name it and decide whether it was a minion or not. Obviously, Minion. The name was also easy, Lucifer. Then he clicked the Create option and his mana rushed out of him.

Leon watched as his new creation snapped into existence with a slight pop of displaced air and it took its first breath. He felt the mental connection with his new creation and was surprised that it seemed fairly intelligent. Leon knew that it could follow orders and that it had somehow gained a few skills of its own in the creation process.

Once the creature was there in front of him Leon started seeing what the limits were Lucifers ability to take orders. It was great actually. It was able to complete complex tasks in series, remembering the order in which it had been given tasks to do and completing them all. It had surprisingly good memory and the capacity to use a pen and paper. He had it copy a page out of a book from memory and was pleasantly surprised that it managed to copy the entire thing after only observing it for a few seconds. It was definitely better at remembering things than a human that was for sure. Though Leon wondered if it had to do with being a Minion or if they would be like that wild and free. After running Lucifer, the Imp, through a series of tests, then feeding him, Leon stored the creature inside his Utility pocket. It would be ready to do his bidding at any time like this.

Successful skill experimentation Leon slipped into his Core and began actively making the creature he’d made there grow its tentacles out towards the mists that clung to walls. The process was slow going but the payoff would be huge. Looking at the creature he’d made Leon decided to name it Corey because he was bad at naming things, and he was satisfied with that. Corey’s tentacles were really getting long now. They would definitely reach the mists in just a few weeks, maybe less time. It seemed like his Source was already starting to give up its mana more rapidly to the draw that Corey put off on it. the extra mana was going into growth right now but soon it would start just piling up inside Leon’s Core. With Corey there just making it all move around and away from the edges the Core.

The next morning Leon ate breakfast with Malorie before heading to the library. The library would be a perfect place to do a little more research into what he was getting himself into with the Dungeoneering classes. You’d think having spent so much time in Dungeon Cities would have left Leon rather informed on the subject of Dungeon Diving. But surprisingly it was not something that actually came up all that often unless you worked directly with active Divers. Everybody knew about dungeon divers and their roles in these cities. But unless you actually were a Diver you didn’t really understand what went into Diving into their arcane depths for food, resources, and treasures.

Who would have thunk that the Dungeoneers Guild School library would have all of the information about Dungeons and more? Leon, with the assistance of the Librarian, had gathered nearly fifty books on the subjects within only a few minutes. Sitting down to read Leon started with a book called “The Various Rooms of a Dungeon”. The book turned out to be a very generic overview of the different types of rooms and floors a Dungeon might have and how to identify them. There were Trap Rooms, Puzzle Rooms, Field Rooms, Combat Rooms, and Hidden Rooms just to name a few. Then there were Biome type Floors, Labyrinth Floors, Maze Floors, Arena Floors, Field Floors, and Hidden Floors.

As much it was useful the book about the rooms and floors of dungeons was dreadfully dull. The next book he picked up was about Affinities. Dungeons seemed to have no specific limitations when it came to Affinities. They had everything within them. But this book gave evidence and case studies of specific Dungeons that seemed to favor specific Affinities over others. And from it Leon was able to glean that Dungeon Rooms were far more likely to be themed individually than the whole dungeon taking on one specific Affinity.

The third book Leon went through was about Dungeon resources, and loot. It was actually very interesting. Teams that delved deep into dungeons oftentimes would find chests and items hidden directly after a challenge. Whether it be a monster that needs to be killed or a puzzle solved usually in a very obvious place after the challenge was some sort of reward. And oftentimes that reward was tailored towards the individuals in the team that overcame a challenge. Lore Books were insanely common drops in these chests. Skill Books were more rare, but still considered common. Affinity Gems were uncommon drops and were rather valuable, as they were used by enchanters to make almost every enchantment imaginable. Equipment, and various forms of coinage ranged from common to rare depending on the individual dungeon. And some of the rarest items were Dungeon Elixirs. Dungeon Elixirs were the real reason that many ventured deep into the dungeons. Some of the Dungeon Elixirs were known to reverse aging, permanently increase strength by large amounts, enhance existing skills or grant or even take away skills. The list of known Dungeon Elixirs was long and very varied. Elixirs were very rare. Then there were the items that were so rare that people didn’t really delve the dungeons specifically for them, they simply hoped that one day they might get one. Relics. Relics ranged the entire spectrum of items, they could be a fork or a spoon, they could be a cock ring or snail shell, there was no rhyme or reason to what they might be. Some Relics were Elixirs that permanently increased one’s strength by ten or more times, or even permanently halted the process of aging. Or even gave you a Transcendent Affinity. Just the act of finding a Relic gave a person a Title. Though the book didn’t list what the Title was or what it did.

The next book that Leon picked up was about the various well-known Titles that one could acquire through Dungeon Diving. Which ranged from incredibly easy to get, to downright insane to try and get. Leon knew he’d be collecting quite a few of them as time went on. Hopefully alongside a decent team that could mitigate the risks somewhat for the more difficult ones. He didn’t want to be one of those singularly strong individuals who did everything alone and carried the weight of the world on their shoulders. He wanted to help keep this world safe so that others wouldn’t have to suffer losing their families to avoidable things like dungeon overflows.

Speaking of Dungeon overflows the next book Leon picked up was about exactly that topic, the reasons, and common causes. As well as the rare causes that usually were because of someone purposefully causing them.

The there came a book about Dungeon Tiers. There were 9. Tiers 1 through 9 were confirmed to exist throughout the Heavenly Spheres. The average Tier levels increasing as one went to the deeper layers. Here on the first layer the highest tier dungeon ever discovered was a Tier 4. What the Tiers meant for a dungeon was that every monster and challenge within them was meant for teams of individuals at that Tier of power to tackle. The thought of someone at Tier 4 having to be in a team to challenge a dungeon seemed almost ridiculous to Leon. They were insanely powerful people. The fact that Tier 9 people existed on the deeper layers of the Heavenly Spheres was insane. Let alone whole teams of them.

Leon continued reading book after book until the library was closing for the night. Thanking the Librarian Leon put all of his books back where he’d gotten them and returned to Malorie’s home. He cooked dinner for them both and discussed what he had read about today. Malorie elaborating on a few of the topics that Leon mentioned and illuminating some more about this worlds power structure.

Leon was learning a lot more about his new world and how it worked than ever before. He had a lot to think about, but he also had to get to work growing Corey. His Core mana Density wasn’t going to fix itself any time soon without his direct intervention. And luckily, he’d invented the tools to do that himself.

So, the days went by, Leon spending the daylight hours reading everything he possibly could in the library while spending the nighttime hours focused on growing Corey. True to his own predictions it a week for the first of the tentacles to reach all of the way to the mist-like veil of mana that covered the walls of his Core. And only a few hours after they encountered the mana the twelve tentacles had reached all the way to walls of his Core and were actively draining mana into the center of his Core.

The Twelve tentacles were unable to beat out his regeneration rate in draining the mana away from the edges, but it was working exactly as he had planned. Making adjustments to Corey would take time. But eventually Leon wanted to increase its overall size and possibly extend more of the tentacles out to his Core walls. But for right now it was not a priority. Corey seemed to be getting more efficient and faster at drawing in mana as time went on, so its current design and size seemed like it should work just fine.

Sitting back and watching his own Core as mana flowed along the tentacles all the way to Corey Leon felt it when Corey reached its maximum mana capacity. He zoomed in on its main body and saw that mana mist was being excreted into the area surrounding his Source but kept cycling around there instead of rushing back to the edges of his Core. Which was exactly what he wanted. Obviously, Corey wouldn’t be able to hold onto everything. Especially not at its current size. But Leon was planning to expand Corey to the point that its main body filled most of the area where the Skill Stalagmites and Stalactites didn’t reach. That would take a great deal of growth. But Leon figured that if he focused on it every night it would only take him a few months to expand Corey to at least a framework that filled the area, which would vastly increase the amount of mana that it could both store and hold in its area.

Satisfied that everything was going as it should inside of his own Soul Leon went back to messing with his monster creation skill. He had found Corey in his custom section. And the idea of making more than one of the things inside his Core seemed wrong. Corey would grow until it was no longer necessary to grow and then just stay that way until Leon decided to make alterations. That’s how it would go. What Leon was really wanting to try was making a baby version of one of his larger monsters that would eventually grow. But he had no idea how he would feed it or how he would explain its presence to anyone. Storing them in the Utility Pocket stopped time for them so they wouldn’t be able to grow up in there.

Leon couldn’t make big powerful monsters yet, but his options were not completely limited. One of his options was to create essentially a swarm of little monsters that could serve very well. Creating a variety of stinging insects from Earth could definitely be a dangerous thing. But his custom creatures actually had a better one than those. One of his custom creations that he was both proud of and a bit squeamish about making. The things were terrifying. Scolopendrium Fuckofficus was what he’d called the creature. And it was a centipede monster. A centipede monster that could essentially grow to the size of a cargo train if allowed to grow unchecked.

Scolopendrium Fuckofficus was his version of a doomsday apocalypse inducing monster. It would start off tiny at only about six inches long. They had a powerfully potent venom based off of the venom used by the Earth snake called a Taipan. Once they reached adult size, which was about twelve feet long and about two hundred fifty pounds they would asexually reproduce by laying thousands of eggs. Their bodies were designed to be incredibly tough and resistant to most poisons and diseases. They could reproduce sexually as well and were both a hive species and incredibly aggressive. Anything that was not them was food or a threat that needed to be eliminated. Leon could make dozens of babies of these things and use them in swarm tactics until they started getting big enough to do real damage on their own.

And so, Leon spent the remainder of his free three months reading in the library and making an evil baby centipede army during the night. He experimented with giving each one he made a different Affinity and found that their affinities influenced their colors, their general build, and their temperament. Though they were all Minions and couldn’t behave in any way that contradicted what Leon wanted them to do they still had their own individual minds. It was weird.

In between making an evil army and reading, Leon had started making Corey larger and thicker. There was now constant motion mana inside his Core, a cloud at the center surrounding Corey’s main body that would gently mist back towards the walls even as Corey continually drew mana from the walls. Leon was happy with how it was going.