“Evolution… what kind of evolution are you talking about? Like the ones giraffes suffered or-”

“I am talking about all kinds of evolutions.” The Patron interrupted Leonhardt. “Sorry, but when we got alone I went ahead of myself and saw your Dungeon. I know you don’t have [Monsters’ Loyalty] and that you will die tomorrow if you continue improving your Dungeon at this rate. Despite what I am saying, you are impressive though. I never saw a Dungeon with [Monster Cores] so quickly.”

Leonhardt thought as he took a step back in surprise by the Patron’s words, how she saw so much in such short time frame? If she is a weak Patron, how strong is a top-tier Patron?, “I still don’t get what kind of evolution we are talking about. Give me a conclusive example.” Leon ignored the threat of death she released at him, he already how easy is to someone kill him in his current state.

“With my power you can change the Monsters' species, giving them new Skills and even [Titles]. Or you can just straight up enhance their [Attributes]. You can, for example, make a weak and small spider into a three-headed poisoning Monster that has the height of Giant together with the speed of a falcon chasing after its prey.”

That power is perfect for me, as Leonhardt couldn’t create many Monsters the best situation for him would be to create only a handful of elite Monsters. However, with his normal Dungeon’s powers, there is no way to him do it thanks to his small Mana reserve. So his original plan after buying [Monster Cores] was to only create the most expensive animal consecutively and make a battle plan to survive tomorrow.

But with the Patron’s powers, he could transform his useless ants into formidable soldiers walking on two legs while using his ancestor’s techniques. Leonhardt has total faith in his ancestors’ teachings and would use his Mana to create ants to rival all the strong Monsters the Legendary Dungeons has access to.

Although...

“Should be a limitation or restriction, right? As stronger something is, it has more tendencies of being limited on its uses.” Leon said.

“Yes, there is. The first limitation is that you can only do one evolution for a day and there is a limit of how much species you can evolve before your faith in me or I become stronger. The second is that you have to either choose between [Blue Evolution] and [Pink Evolution], which I will explain later, to a base species follow forever. And the last limitation is that the range and power of the evolutions depend on your Rank to work.”

She stared intensely at Leonhardt as she took a step over a step to reach close to him. “For you to ask so much, must mean you are interested. I know the risk is high, but I will do whatever I can to survive not for me, but for you. Do you want to become my Champion?” She extended her hand to him.

Leonhardt had already risked his life by buying [Monster Cores] and bigger the risk is, the reward will be just as big. He hadn’t a reason to recuse with exception of fear and how imprudent this decision would be in the eyes of his parents. They can only risk their lives for close friends or family, never to a stranger. “Yes, I will become your Champion. My name is Leonhardt Udalth VI, I hope to have a long-standing relationship with you so that it doesn’t end with my life.” He shook her hand.

“My name is Aeglisa, I am the Patron that governs over Evolution and Growth. From now on until your death or mine, you will be my only Champion. Prae-” She continued to talk in a strange idiom and smiled as blue and pink lights began to engulf both of them. “You can call me Lisa.” She said with a grin before Leonhardt fell down on the ground.

[New Title!]

[Champion of a Patron]

[Receiving the graces of a superior being that became a Patron with her own power, you can now partially use her powers, Blue Evolution and Pink Evolution, to bring honor to your Patron. Evolution is a never-ending process, it must strive for perfection but never reach it to make the evolution immortal. Go make people perceive how great evolution is and bring to the weak ones a chance to shine amidst the universe’s unfairness. And never forgets of this day as the day you made a Link with a Superior Ex-Phantasma.]

Leonhardt felt his stomach revolving as if it had life on its own and had left its original position to only torment him. On the ground, feebleness struck him and made him want to give up everything as he opened his mouth to give passage to something that doesn’t exist.

If his stomach had something in there, Leon would be already puking it with his heavy breathing.

He saw his Core buzzing and slightly cracking, as he felt he was done for, power surged through him, refreshing and making him ready for anything that could come his way.

Only to the feebleness strike him again and the cycle began once again.

With the end of the twelfth cycle, his Core full of cracks broke with Mana surging from it and in a flash of light a new bigger and rougher Core appeared in a new form, a jet black onyx gem that was a glimmering unnatural dodecahedron.

[Rank Up!]

[You are now a Common Rank Dungeon Core.]

[Potential sextupled. Mana and Essence’s limits sextupled. You can now make another floor when you finish your first floor.]

[New Dungeon Upgrades.]

[New Dungeon Traits locked until evolution of the Class, Dungeon Master.]

[You and your Monsters can now cultivate Qi together with Mana.]

[You can now create two Named Monsters.]

[You can now transform one Named Monster into a Boss Monster.]

“My head is hurting, too much information being flooded into it.” Leonhardt held his head in pain and before he knew it he was already back to his Dungeon with the horned fox looking at him for the first time in fear.

“You can be the first to buy [Monster Cores] but your Dungeon is really lacking in the appearance aspect. You need to decorate and put some plants on it.” Lisa said in a transparent form at Leon’s front.

“I will do it later.” Leon stood up while picking his new Dungeon Core. “Why didn’t you tell me the process would be so nauseating?”

“You didn’t ask.”

“Fair enough.” Leonhardt sighed and gave his new Core to the fox protect it where it was before he was summoned by the Ex-Phantasma. “Why are your form-”

“Transparent?” Lisa completed Leon’s words. “It is because I am not physically here. I can be a weak Patron among my peers but for this world, I am kind of too powerful to descend here without consequences. The more powerful Invaders can take the chance to attack the planet.”

She clapped her illusory hands. “Anyways, I am here to explain to you how my powers work. In the [Blue Evolution] you can enhance an entire species’ [Attributes] by making minor alterations and also reduce the pregnancy time to new species born quicker. But you won’t get a say in what they evolve to. They will evolve to what matches their necessity at the moment. And in the [Pink Evolution] you will change the species and even Race of only one individual to whatever you want by tampering with its members and genetic code. Making you have a total control over the evolution but the chance to its offsprings mutate or even inherit all its characteristics will be almost null.”

Leonhardt thought, so in the former, I can make impenetrable big ants and in the latter, I can make four-legged ants with ten arms that breathes fire and poison while crushing their enemies with spear techniques. “Anything else I need to know?”

“No. However, you should for now concentrate on the [Pink Evolution] as it will give immediate results to help you survive tomorrow.” As Lisa’s form dissipated she said. “I have work to do now that I have a Champion, goodbye and good luck in your evolutions. I will check you later.”

Leonhardt was alone, no... he had that fox now, so he isn’t alone anymore.

He checked what has changed thanks to his new Rank as he saw the cost to create everything got halved.

Mana: 10/60 (+0.26/hour)

Essence: 7/12 (+5/min)

Qi: 0/36 (+0/year)

For what Leon remembers, Qi serves more to reinforce the body of Martial Artists that don’t have too much Mana and that you need to cultivate it by following a certain manual. When he was young, his parents made him memorize one of those manuals in hope to him stop being so physically weak, but he was never capable of doing what the manual told him to do.

Later he will test how Qi really works since he and his creations automatically received it with his Rank Up.

[Named Monster and Boss Monster]

[They are Monsters with own names given by the Dungeon Master that permits them to receives Titles and Classes. Should any of them met their demise, their soul will go the Dungeon’s storage where the Dungeon Core can decide to give them a new body, revive or extinguish their souls to it choose another Monster to be named. The differences between them are only of power and rarity as a Dungeon can only have a Boss Monster for every ten floors.]

“Fox, come here.” The fox could hate Leonhardt but there is no denying it is currently his strongest asset. What name should I give to it? Names are important things and are imbued of power. For example, no nobody perceives when he tells his name have ‘VI’ and his parents also don’t perceive their names have an ‘F.’, meaning false when they tell to someone their name.

This is the power of the name Udalth.

Leonhardt looked at the fox’s black fur and noted the hatred growing inside of it mixed with a primal fear it feels from him after he Ranked Up thanks to their Link granted by the [Taming] Skill. Leon had the perfect name for it, but he wanted to address the matter of fear first.

He couldn’t care less about it hating him, but as just as fear is sometimes a useful tool in a fight, it is not useful when your ally feels it from you. “Fox, what do you feel so much fear? Tell me, it is an order.”

It growled. *I have fear of your progress, stupid Dungeon. In only some minutes the power I feel from you thanks to my horn has more than doubled. At this rate, it won’t be long before I am not necessary anymore and then discarded. You will forsake me just like the one that created me did to set me as a spawn on a random planet that receives the Gift. Just as I hate you for binding me against my wishes, I am thankful to you for not killing me and giving the chance to slaughter any enemies at my sight when this Dungeon will get discovered. The only pleasure I have in this paltry life is killing the others and should I even lose it, living would lose the meaning. Those are my fears.*

Because of Leonhardt’s bad phrasing in his question, he ended up hearing more than he needed.

He discovered the fox was more intelligent he thought it was and had a good grasp of its own position. The fox to Leon is just like a pawn he can sacrifice in a chess game. But the pawn in certain circumstances can be promoted to an invaluable knight, his favorite piece that he prefers to lose the game than to lose it to his adversary. “There might be a day when I won’t need you anymore to fight against my principal enemies, but I can promise you this. I won’t abandon you, you almost took my leg and arm off. I will be certain to make you work until your death in this Dungeon.”

*... Is to me feel happy about this? You are just making me hate you even more, I know you are planning to make me do the dirty work and gather resources like you were doing before I attacked you.*

“Good that you know, it is make easy to me when my creations can think for themselves while not in any situation attacking me. This mind control- I mean, this [Taming] Skill is really useful, although not perfect as [Monsters Loyalty].”

*... I really hate you.*

Leonhardt ignored the fox words and said. “Do you want a name? I will make you a Boss Monster, but I need to give you a name first.”

*Whatever, just go with it.* The fox said disinterestedly while yawning, already forgetting its fears with Leon’s promise.

“Your name from now on will be Dhasharan. I expect great things from you.” Leon said, confirming a window asking if he was sure about naming the fox.

Dhasharan’s fur grew and it got bigger with its teeth and claws looking sharper and menacing, its height almost reaching of a bear.

Leon looked at the new status of Dhasha.

[Name]: Dhasharan [Race]: Horned Black Fox

[Age]: 0 [Sex]: N/A

[Welfare]: Healthy [Rank]: D

[Title]: None

[Master]: Leonhardt Udalth VI

[Class]: None

[Qi]: 0/10 (+0/year)

[Mana]: 45/45 (+5/hour)

“Your Rank got up,” Leon said, impressed by seeing Dhasha’s previous Rank of E going to D because of him giving it a name. How much powerful would it get if he made it a Boss Monster without even evolving it?

As soon he thought about it, a warning appeared at his front.

[Obs: The creation of a Boss Monster makes the Monster unavailable for some hours as it adapts to its new existence as a Boss. Do you still wish to continue?]

“No, I need to it to go outside gather resources for me.”

Dhasharan sighed. *Can I at least eat some animals on the way? Being a Dungeon Creature makes me like you, not needing to sleep or eat. But-*

“Permission denied. I want everything for me.”

*... Fine. You have luck I can’t attack you.* Dhasharan went outside of the Dungeon without a problem thanks to the small Monster Core inside of it and gathered resources for Leon even before he properly asked Dhasha to do it.

Before going to test the [Pink Evolution] on one his creations that wasn’t Dhasha since he didn’t want to focus too much power in only one point, Leonhardt needed to take care of a problem in his Dungeon.

And that wasn’t the poor decoration made of earthy yellow walls and haphazardly placed rocks, stalactites and stalagmites. It was the size of his Dungeon.

The cave was still very deep and not claimed yet. So as Leonhardt’s leftover Mana permitted, he began to expand the influence of his Dungeon to cover completely the ten-meter area around the entrance and then go in five by five meters claiming all the cave behind the place where he became a Core-Master.

Unfortunately, as he was absorbing some acorns he had for Mana, he reached the limit of what the Gift permitted him to expand. He ended after nine ‘claims’ just before the area where he would find the animals living inside of the cave, like bats or critters, with twelve rooms of five by five meters as his first floor of the Dungeon.

“Now, in what should I test [Pink Evolution]?” Leonhardt said in his Dungeon Core’s body with an imaginary grin comparable to a mad scientist's one.

Lisa’s excitement about evolution seemed to contaminate him like a plague or curse specially made by his new Patron.

Aleria swirled the clear wine worthing half of all the assets in a big metropolis and then drank it all in only one gulp in a way that any wine connoisseur would commit suicide by the waste of such fine wine in the hands of the most savage woman in the country named Jotand.

For luck, her husband could make her son’s money multiply by doing some weird and complicated stuff she didn’t understand or care about. So it wasn’t a real waste of money to give her an expensive wine to drown her sorrows.

“LEO!” She screamed her son’s name as she cried like a little baby. “How could you die virgin without giving me a cute grandson? This is so unfair, I want a grandson. I want. I want. I want one!” The drunk woman with tears flowing down her beautiful cheeks lost all the decorum and while screaming the same words over and over again she began to smash everything in her room colored with her son’s favorite color, silvery white.

Aleria Udalth F. could be the wife of the man that after the Invader’s attack became Jotand’s first Prime Minister as a condition to save the country’s economy since the Crown Prince is a little young and doesn’t have any real powers or influence with the majority of the nobles dead.

She also could be considered as one of the most beautiful people in the world with her silky long raven black hair and mesmerizing amber eyes that looked to be carved by a crafting god. And with a form so fit and perfect in her black vest.

But now without her son or future grandson, Aleria didn’t have any fragment of honor or pride coming from being in a high social position, and the beauty she normally exuded by just existing got lost as all her makeup got messed and she went on an eating spree.

Aleria was now only an ugly grieving drunk mother that have personality problems which will cause the death of many should they get on her nerve. Her nickname, Psycho Savage, wasn’t for nothing.

Making what was going to happen right now quite normal in her daily life.

“Madam Aleria, sorry for interrupting you. But I have an offer-” A fleeing nobleman entered her unlocked room without asking for permission and even dared to entice her with some offer coming from his ugly and fat mouth.

Aleria whispered her Class’ name, “[Antagonist]”, and the sound wave caused by a snap of her fingers made the pig-like man swell and then explode amidst a yell of pain and despair, painting her and her room in his filthy scarlet blood and organs. “He just like that went ‘boom’!” Aleria began to laugh in her drunk state and roll on the ground like a child that saw snow for the first time and made an angel on it by synchronously moving her arms and legs.

When she got tired of playing in the blood and organs, she heard a knock in the door and considered just outrightly killing the person behind it. But Aleria remembered her son’s precious slaves were also here in the mansion and should her kill one of them, she wouldn’t be capable of forgiving herself for the rest of her life.

Not one touches this mansion’s slaves that went back to being slaves by their own wishes after Leonhardt set them free, no even her.

“Come in, it is open,” Aleria said, not caring to wipe herself as she doubted any slave didn’t know of her habits or hobbies.

“Good night, Mistress Aleria.” The dark-skinned elf slave no even batted an eye to her display and formally bowed to her. “Master Charles sent me to ask if you have anything against using Master Leonhardt’s money to create cities near the useful Dungeons that will be localized tomorrow and also create an organization to administer the Dungeon Dives in each of the cities based on the Ranks of the Dungeons and of the people needed to reach their last rooms.”

“No, I don’t care. What is going to be the name of the organization?”

“The name suggested by the Ex-Phantasmas is Adventurer Guild.”