Leon breathed in a deep sigh as he looked over all the progress, he, his team, and the rest of the founders had made over the past two years. The island that they’d arrived on was no longer the same. It now resembled more of a ghost city than a desert isle. Gone was the small collection of houses and a few dedicated structures. Upon coming up with an agreement with the rest of the founders Leon had expanded Cynarina to encompass everything up to the dungeon entrance, he didn’t have any claim to anything where the others had already claimed things, but he was now the sole architect of the entire city. Every structure was now made of Cynarina. And the entirety of the island was now a mottled grey color with thousands of towering structures all centered around the Dungeon. Each building had running water, and lighting in the form of bioluminescent sections of walls and ceilings. The roadways were large enough for four carriages to travel abreast, there were plazas with water fountains. Leon had even insisted on leaving areas for parks where there were currently trees growing in dirt that had been carted out of the Dungeon. Specifically, trees and plants from Earth. Because yes, his skill Create Flora allowed him to recreate all of the plant life from Earth. His gardens/parks were currently growing every variation of fruit tree that earth had to offer. He’d even placed cherry trees atop most every building in the city in their own massive planters. Twenty years from now the city would have beautiful showers of Sakura blossoms and hopefully be well known for the beautiful gardens that would offset the uniformity and highly modern look of all the buildings.

Leon was more proud of his city building than his progress with his skills at Tier 2. Tier 1 skills were a breeze to level up for Leon because of the massive amount of mana that his core contained. He had been able to just spam the skills and level them that way. Tier 2 was different. Tier 2 skills were leveled through practical application and understanding of the skills. The Mastery skills were hard to level up because of this. In Tier 1 Leon had just swung the weapons around and practiced with them until they’d leveled up to 99. Tier 2 of mastery was more along the lines of actually trying to master a craft and become both skilled and knowledgeable about the Masteries themselves. The magical skills like Knull Armor, Lay on Hands, and Horrific Missile were actually the easiest to level. But still after nearly a year and a half of practice since he’d crossed the threshold into Tier 2 Leon’s highest skill level in that bracket was only 25. Malorie said that the real reason was that nothing was actually pushing Leon to need to advance more quickly. Skills apparently leveled faster when people were under pressure to perform or fight for their lives.

The biggest change in Leon’s skills was actually in the skill that he had acquired for its convenience, Instant harvest, the way that the skill worked was still an absolute mystery to him. If he had a way to harvest things on his person or the harvest was within his capacity to do himself; Leon could use the skill and instantly have everything that he used it on in his Utility Pocket. He’d experimented with it and the better tools he had available to him the cheaper the skill was mana-wise and the better the outcome of the harvest was. He had also confirmed that if he had a smeltery in his Utility Pocket that was capable of processing ores he could Instant Harvest ores and have ingots ready to be used. It was overpowered as all hell, even if that was all the skill could do. But Leon had discovered a hidden function accidentally. He’d used the skill on a chest in the Dungeon and everything within the chest had been instantly deposited into his inventory. The ungodly overpowered aspect of the skill was revealed when at the same time as he used Instant Harvest on the chest an ungodly amount of information blasted through Leon’s brain. He gone from not knowing a thing about fishing to gaining the Fisherman’s Lore Title in barely a second. Leon’s brain was a storage device for information, and he was quite adept at learning, so the skill Instant Harvest yanked the information right out of the pages and shoved it into his brain. This had the unfortunate side effect of destroying the Lore books. But it was worth it, and it worked on any form of book.

Obviously, the discovery that the Skill Instant Harvest was able to just shove information into Leon’s brain and almost instantly gain another Lore Title sent him into a frenzy of book destroying knowledge gain. In one day, Leon gained nearly sixty Lore titles and another two on top of those.

Lore Keeper: This title is gained by few; it is awarded to those who have gained 101 Lore type Titles. Effects: Your Mind is filled with the knowledge of many things, making connections and unraveling patters and codes is 50%. All Skills of the Mind are 10X Easier to Learn and Level. Your Mind is 10% more resistant to Illusions, Mental Magics, and Obfuscation skills. All Lore Titles are condensed into Lore Keeper. All Lore Titles gained will be absorbed by Lore Keeper, enhancing its effects by .01% per Lore Title gained.

Scholar: This Title is gained by reaching into the upper 10% of education levels in world where you live. Effects: All things are easier to learn by small amount. The effects of all control type skills are enhanced by 15% in effectiveness and strength. Your mind is 5% more resistant to Illusions, Mental Magics, and Obfuscation Skills.

Leon hadn’t stopped buying and learning every Lore he could get his hands on since that day. He was honestly running out of Lore books at this point. But that seemed like a good problem to have. Suffice it to say, Instant Harvest was the greatest skill in Leon’s repertoire, and he’d gotten it mainly out of laziness. But aside from the successes with all of the Lore Titles he wasn’t really satisfied with his skill leveling progress. The thing that was progressing the most around here was the Dungeon itself… though in an odd and unheard-of way.

The Legacy of Earth Dungeon was technically a Tier 2 dungeon and had been for quite some time. But it was still refusing to create any Tier 2 floors. Instead, all of the original ten floors had gained another makeover. Well… Multiple makeovers, over the past year and a half all culminating in what it was right now. It was, quite simply put, massive. Each floor had grown unfathomably large and now had dozens of ways down to the next floors. As well as what Leon was terming ‘Temples’ which served as challenge locations where there could be puzzles or just particularly strong animals guarding chests. Leon was fairly certain that the first floor of the dungeon was now nearly continental in scale. Each floor after that only seemed to be larger than the last. And each floor now seemed to have every Earth Biome in it in different ratios. Tropical Rainforest, Temperate Forest, Desert, Tundra, Taiga (Boreal Forest), Grassland, Savanna. The Cave floor and the Ocean floor being ‘sort of’ exceptions to that. Only ‘sort of’ because both of them seemed to have areas that were where a cave or ocean would intersect with each of the seven main Biomes of Earth. The cave area made Leon feel like he was in D&D’s underdark. While the Ocean floor now had thousands of islands and beaches. The tenth floor had remained relatively the same though it now had traps all throughout it and thousands upon thousands of animals that were apparently set to be rabid as fuck. The tenth floor was really like a dungeon crawl game where you had to slaughter your way through to the boss, bosses in this case as there were now at least twenty of the crazy gorilla bear moose things at the end of it.

The Dungeons massive size was both a relief and a concern to the Mentors. A relief because there was very little possibility of an overflow occurring due to its shear size. But also alarming because if it did overflow there would be potentially millions of monsters rushing out of it. although it would be fairly well contained due to the size of the exit. Leon was under the impression that they didn’t actually know if this particular dungeon even could have an overflow at all. With just the Ocean floor being a major damper to any potential overflow.

Leon had been wondering when the next floors of the Dungeon would be made. He’d run out of both fauna and flora to feed to the Dungeon already. It had taken nearly a year of dedicated creation of animal after animal, and plant after plant. But now he hadn’t had anything new to feed to the Dungeon in nearly three months. He’d resorted to buying random trinkets and stuff through the Telepad network to feed the dungeon things to use as loot. Now he was just waiting for the Dungeon to actually have anything challenging in it again. Even the Ocean floor had been tamed by Leon and the other students in the past two years. Most everyone had begun delving solo after the first year, the Teams would get together to delve again once there was an actually dangerous unexplored new floor.

The craziest thing to happen, in Leon’s opinion, though had nothing to do with the Dungeon or magical powers or skills or any of that. It was his relationships that were crazy to him. Cynthia, Lamia, Daisy, and Farthallahn were basically married to Leon at this point. They were fully moved into his place and lived with him. That in and of itself was not the crazy part to Leon after months of being with them and them not seeming to get bored of him that seemed pretty normal. The Crazy part was that it wasn’t just those four now.

Now there were nine women living with him and all of them were intensely invested in being with him. The new ones were Helena, Kathy, Lucy, Lomara, and Nadia. Human, Nymph, Elf and Dwarf respectively. And Nadia was Lucy’s Mentor! All of this had come about over the last six months. It had started with Farthallahn brining Helena over on a regular basis, then Kathy and Lomara had started tagging along. Those three were understandable at least with how it had happened. Especially Kathy the Nymph. They weren’t called Nymphs for nothing. Lucy and Nadia though… that was the newest development and only a few months old at this point.

Leon had returned after his nightly delving into the Dungeon when Nadia approached him with Lucy in tow. They’d asked if they could come over to his house to discuss a few business matters. They hadn’t been lying about business. They had a contact that was very interested in acquiring large amounts of whale oil and Leon and Team Terra had a reputation for pulling giant hauls because of Leon’s Utility Pocket Skill. But as they sat at his kitchen table Farthallahn had come out of the bedroom, stark naked, as she was wont to do, and sauntered over to give Leon a good morning hug and kiss. She ignored the company grabbed a bit to eat and returned to the bedroom. Nadia and Lucy were both elves, and they’d barely even lifted an eyebrow at the scene. Then Cynthia, Lamia, Helena, Kathy, Daisy and Lomara all repeated the scene. After that they both gave Leon a strange look, but they still finished off their negotiations and left without pause. The day after that Leon was again returning from his nightly delve but upon entering his house, he found Nadia and Lucy seated at his kitchen table speaking with Farthallahn and Cynthia.

The discussion that followed had felt incredibly awkward to Leon. Nadia and Lucy wanted to probationally be a part of what was referred to as Cynthia’s Pod. Unbeknownst to Leon, Cynthia was the de facto leader of the women in the house. It was a strange conversation to be a part of for Leon, but in the end, he agreed to try what they wanted. Both Nadia and Lucy wanted individual one on one attention from Leon right away. They’d stated that it would do no good if they waited only to find the male of the Pod not to their liking in bed. There were further complications to deal with as well because of Nadia’s status as a Tier 3 individual; elven females tended to be very hierarchical in nature. Being Tier 3 meant that Nadia was naturally the strongest. Which was why Leon had ended up with her in his bed every day after that point. There seemed to be some sort of rotating schedule going on so that there were never more than four of them with him at any given time. Leon was… weirded out by the strangeness of the arrangement. He just tried to take it all in stride and roll with whatever the women wanted. Having a ton of sex with multiple different partners was fun, but he found himself wishing he could actually date and get to know them a bit more. There was barely any emotional connection with any of them and he didn’t really enjoy that. This kind of relationship would have suited him more in his past life, but he was more well-adjusted in this life and actually wanted a bit of an emotional connection.

Leon had no clue where everything was going with him and the women who shared his house and bed. It all seemed more or less a carnal thing for all parties involved and though Leon wanted to have more than just that, especially with Cynthia, Lamia, Daisy and Farthallahn, he was trying to keep himself even keeled and not get too attached to any of them.

Shaking his head Leon got up from where he was currently seated on one of the many piers, he’d grown Cynarina into. The coral reef structures under the piers were finally starting to see life coming around that wasn’t just Cynarina. The wildlife in the area had been very skittish about the presence of Cynarina. The monstrous organism that Cynarina was had put an instinctive fear into the local fish and marine life for quite some time. But now they were growing accustomed to its presence and finding the massive reef structures to their liking.

Leon had been out here on the piers just to check on how life was making its way into what he’d designed. He only really had a few minutes to spare though. His days were busy with the mandated eight-hour dives, then his own extracurricular dives after the girls fell asleep. But between those times Leon was either training by himself or with Malorie. Surprisingly, after the Dungeoneering had reached a certain point, the Mentors had all started actually teaching their students. Malorie had started an actual schooling regime along with skill practice and physical training. She taught Leon about the power structures in the Guild. How one advanced, how one could get to be moved permanently to the next Layer of the Heavenly Spheres.

It was actually pretty easy to get to the second layer. But going down to the Third Layer was much more difficult. Only those who were extremely powerful or were shepherded there could reach the third Layer. Essentially to get to the next layer one needed to have access to a Dungeon that was at least at the third Tier. Usually at Tier 3 a Dungeon would develop an archway at its very end point. This archway would lead into another Dungeon on the second layer of the Heavenly Spheres. Returning to the first Layer was as simple as entering any dungeon on the Second Layer and in the first room of the first floor there would be an archway that connected to a random dungeon of at least Tier 3 on the first layer. To get to the Third Layer of the Heavenly spheres the Dungeon on the Second Layer had to be at least Tier 5 to form an archway to the next layer. It was a pattern that continued. From the third layer the Dungeon only had to be Tier 5 to have an archway to the Fourth Layer, but on the fourth layer the Dungeon had to be Tier 7 to have an archway to the fifth layer. At that point most people never managed to get any farther through the use of Dungeons. They used ships and teleportation magics to create artificial bridges between the layers at that point and it is incredibly expensive.

The main reason why everyone wanted to go to the deeper layers was that the tier of ambient mana increased to be the same as the layer number. So, layer 14 had an ambient mana that was in the 14th Tier. Though the majority of the population there was Tier 9 or 10 at max. there were rumors that the Guild had a few old monsters who were Tier 15 at the very top, but no one actually knew if that was true. People who were Tier 5 or higher couldn’t live normally on the first Layer of the Heavenly Spheres at all. Their mere presence would cause earthquakes from the sheer power that came from being made of Tier 5 materials. Tier 4 people were terrifyingly powerful in the First Layer, but they could still dampen themselves down enough to not make every breath they took be a hurricane. Tier 1 Steel was not as strong as Tier 4 skin. Here on the first layer Tier 4 people were the top dogs though they were few and far between. Those who were born with inherently higher Tiers, like those born on the fifth layer and onwards, were actually extremely uncomfortable in environments without naturally dense mana. Their cores and souls were unused to having to draw in and compress it like those who started off as Tier 1’s. Worse if they were very high Tier naturally and brought against their will rapidly to the first Layer it was not uncommon for them to suffer extreme Tier regression or even die from the shock to their systems.

How one was supposed to progress in Tier after reaching Tier 3 was a mystery to Malorie and most of the mentors. If any of them knew how they were keeping it close to their chests. Tier 3 was special in that it was the time when a person formed their own Traits. Traits were different from what Leon had originally thought. They were more than an ingrained set of skills. Traits altered how a person’s body and soul worked on a fundamental level. In a way that was irrevocable the only way to fix having made a bad Trait is to continually add skills to it until those skills fixed whatever the deficiency was in the Trait. One could create up to three Traits. One for Mind, One for Body, and One for Soul. The fact that three traits could be made and were geared towards three aspects kind of confused Leon. His Trait was both mind and body in one Trait.

The Soul Trait seemed like it was the most difficult to create. Skills that were of the Soul variety were few and far between and even fewer of those skills were suitable to creating a trait. Leon had managed to find and purchase several skill books that were for Soul skills. But none of the skills were actually suitable for Traits. And they were true skill books that granted system made skills immediately upon use, they weren’t like the magical skill books at all. The Soul Lore books had given Leon a great many clues as to how to create skills that were of the Soul variety magically, but most of the magics that Leon had learned so far were direct spells and were very simple compared to what he needed to make. He needed skills that were basically passives that somehow made his Soul better.

Leon had gotten the run down from Malorie as to how he could reach Tier 3 it was fairly simple. Get his mana density up to as close to Tier 3 as possible, have five or more skills at Tier 2 and level 99, then combine the skills within his core. The process of combining the skills was apparently enough to push the density of mana within the core up to the next Tier. Leon was trying to prepare for the time when it was right to make the transition. Skills and more Skills was where he would need to focus.

Meditation+++ lvl 1

Utility Pocket+++ lvl 1

Mana Manipulation+ lvl 25

Mana Control+ lvl 25

Mathematics+ lvl 12

Identify+ lvl 14

Perception Filter+ lvl 22

Alchemical Stability+ lvl 1

Hammer Play+ lvl 17

Spear Mastery+ lvl 13

Blunt Weapons Mastery+ lvl 1

Small Blades Mastery+ lvl 19

Large Blades Mastery+ lvl 14

Ranged Weapons Mastery+ lvl 15

Whip Mastery+ lvl 3

Shield Mastery+ lvl 15

Unarmed Combat Mastery+ lvl 12

Cooking+ lvl 3

Speed Reading+ lvl 25

Reading And Writing+ lvl 25

Stealth+ lvl 24

Muffle+ lvl 20

Invasive Strike+ lvl 16

Double Strike+ lvl 14

Power Strike+ lvl 17

Reinforce+ lvl 8

Telekinesis+ lvl 9

Quantum Blink lvl+ 22

Horrific Missile+ lvl 23

Knull Armor+ lvl 20

Lay on Hands+ lvl 7

Instant Harvest+ lvl 15

Pleasurable Touch+ lvl 5

Shared Pleasure+ lvl 8

On his Source front, when Leon had reached Tier 2 he’d been able to push more mana into his Source and cause it to undergo a transformation. It hadn’t changed in size, but the source was now outputting mana at Tier 2 density and was outputting more mana than Leon could actually pull in from the outside ambient mana by a quite significant margin. Corey had undergone an evolution of its own to Tier 2, the Soul dwelling mana circulation mana circulation monster was working full tilt 24/7 to increase the average density of the mana around Leon’s Core. Leon had manipulated its growth to the point that it now looked like a giant spikey dynamo made of bone with long fleshy tentacles reaching in every direction away from the center of the core almost looking like anchors holding it place now. Leon’s Core space was now a place that looked like an acid trip with constantly flowing rivers of multicolored mana flowing all around it constantly.

Leon’s newest experiment involving his mana was circulating it not only within his core but through the entirety of his mana channel system that normally just drew mana in from his surroundings. His experiments had been successful in that he’d managed to flow mana around his entire system, but it didn’t seem to actually do anything. It was incredibly good training for his mana control and manipulation skills, but he couldn’t really find any benefits to doing it. Though he did suspect that it would actually have benefits if he continued. Leon didn’t really like the idea of being so much more like a Cultivator in some Wuxia or XanXia novel. But he didn’t really see why he shouldn’t explore a bit.

You would think that having read Mana Lore and been awarded a Title for it would have made Leon an expert on mana and its applications. The weird thing about Lore books was that they were flawed. Very flawed. The more of them that Leon read, well… harvested now, the more he realized that the Lore books actually contained a whole lot of false or misleading information. The Lore Books were based entirely on the basic information that had been gathered on those subjects and in-depth explanations of everything that was contained within them. This translated incredibly well for things like Tinkering, Alchemy, Enchanting, Fishing, Hunting, Woodworking. Basically, anything that would be considered a trade skill had incredibly reliable information in it. For the Esoteric and Philosophical or in-depth scientific stuff… it was hit or miss whether or not the information was anything more than hearsay.

The Lore book on Mana had taught Leon that Mana behaved a lot like water or an especially heavy gas. But from Leon’s direct observations of mana, it was more like everything around the mana was causing it to behave in those ways. Its natural state seemed to be just a cloud that hung around doing absolutely nothing. If put in a vacuum without anything to interact with, mana would just float there completely inert. Also, Leon had had to come to terms with a few things that really didn’t make sense about mana itself as well. First, Mana didn’t have any mass of its own. Which didn’t make sense with the whole Tier density thing. Two units of Mana could easily occupy the exact same place at the same time, and one unit could occupy two places at the same time. Which also didn’t make sense with whole density thing. Finally, Manas effects on the environment seemed entirely dictated by what could be thought of as some kind of twisted logic. Metals with higher densities of mana became more ridged, harder, and more flexible at the same time. Their secondary properties would change as well. Copper would become more conductive, gold less reactive, and alkaline metals would become even more so. These effects applied to almost every naturally occurring substance. But as soon as it became a living thing everything changed. Mana densities in living things could cause all of the normally thought of stuff, higher toughness, longer life, yada-yada, but it could, would, and did cause massive mutations in all living things as they went up in Tier density. The Mutations were absolutely random in animals and non-sapient life, but the sapient life mutations were… directed? Purposeful? Leon couldn’t understand why there was a difference. Mana was a confusing topic that was really annoying to contemplate, but Leon couldn’t help thinking about its weirdness all the time.

In other news, Malorie had finally gotten her Library up and running. She was now curating a selection of books, Skill, Lore, and mundane as a resource for the Islands inhabitants. All 100 of the Islands inhabitants were rapidly building up their own niche markets, or schemes to set themselves up for life after the Foundation Period ended. Leon was finding himself Unsure about what the future held for him in this regard. His Instant Harvest skill immediately put him at a huge advantage monetarily speaking. And the fact that he owned the sky-ship docks as well as the piers already set him up to make more money than he knew what to do with. Not to mention the housing and industrial sectors that Cynarina had already grown into. He’d be able to rent it all out forever and make money without having to lift a finger. He was already one of the wealthiest people on the Island. To top it all off, because he was participating in founding a new Dungeon City, he would be exempt from the ten years of guild service when he turned 20 and graduated from the education program that they were providing for him. He would have a perpetual form of income over the foreseeable future. This left him with the conundrum of what he actually wanted to do with his life.

There were many options, the one that he was leaning towards was actually joining the Guild and keeping Dungeons cleared around the world. Despite the fact that his family was actually okay, Leon still remembered the pain of having lost them. He knew that if he could cycle through Dungeons around the world, he’d be able to do his part in preventing tragedies like that from happening again. He wouldn’t be able to prevent every Overflow from happening, but he would be able to stop a lot of them, and in doing that save many people from experiencing what he went through. But he wasn’t completely sure if that was what he wanted to do with his life at this point. He needed to wait and see. He could talk it through with his family in a years time. Maybe they could give him some clarity.