[+1 Qi]

Qi: 10/108 (+1/year)

“Finally,” Leonhardt said, feeling the energy going to inside of himself at a slow pace. It took him one week of constant meditations to him get the trick of making his body unconsciously absorb Qi.

It turned out the process was similar to breathing, if Leon ‘breathes’ for a long time without being remembered he is ‘breathing’ he will end up ‘breathing’ without perceiving.

A shame the trick ends when he thinks about it.

Qi: 10/108 (+0/year)

“Well, at least this is a progress.” Leon was happy for that since on the rest of his activities he isn’t having any kind of progression after he taught the basic of weapons to his ever-growing Antkin’s nest. He had to restrain himself from creating more of them and also impede Kleber of fertilizing the Antkin’s queen, if not, the Dungeon won’t have space for all of them.

First things first, the plan to receive a new Sub-Class was fruitless as he received the chance to become something like a [Summoner], someone that can connect itself to otherworldly planes to contract Familiars like Demons to fight at his side. He probably received this chance because of his [Taming] Skill that was supposed to be just a Skill with the ability to make friends with living non-people. Despite Leon using it as a mind controller Skill.

Leonhardt didn’t see the necessity of summoning Familiars if he can just create them one day with his Dungeon's powers, so he forsook the chance to become a [Summoner] and is waiting now for another Sub-Class to appear.

[Named Monster Kleber died.]

[Please use Mana and Essence to revive him or destroy his soul to create another Named Monster.]

“God fucking dammit! Kleber, I told you to not fertilize the Antkin’s queen!” Leonhardt screamed at Kleber’s soul at his front in the Dungeon’s storage. “Her abdomen is too heavy to your ‘equipment’ survive long enough to the Time Revival work.” Leon knew his fertile Antkins would die because all the normal ants die when having sex with the queens, but Kleber is abusing his right to infinite revival.

Leon had the stupid idea to create more than one queen and many others Antkins’ workers since he discovered the Pharaoh Antkins had no problem with having more queens, crowding the Dungeon with eggs even with the pregnancy period caused by the [Pink Evolution] being bigger than normal.

By his calculus, the first batch of eggs will only be born in two months.

*My Lord, put your mind at ease. I didn’t fertilize my queen, I cut out my sperm producer and had normal sex with her.* Kleber after being revived brought out his arms to his front and did a ‘thumbs up’ with them to Leon’s Dungeon Core body whilst smiling with a satisfied expression.

“... I seriously don’t know to react to you. Are you stupid? Where did I go wrong while creating you?”

Leonhardt passed telepathically a message to all his monsters. “Kleber is from now on forbidden to have sex or fertilize anyone until the first batch of eggs is born. Anyone that helps him ‘de-stress’ will be punished.”

*NO! My Lord! Have mercy!* Kleber groveled at Leonhardt’s front and bowed his head hard and quick enough to shatter the Dungeon’s ground.

Leonhardt had a soft spot in his heart to his first tamed monster that obeyed him with real respect. “If you want to continue on your lecherous ways, then show to me the results that you deserve it. Defeat that Rank C adventurer in a one-to-one fight without dying or using any tricks. If you do so, I will create a special queen for you that won’t be fertilized by you or kill you with her abdomen. The time limit is two months.”

Aeglisa had given him a spy to watch the nearby city’s growth after she had seen what he did to the normal ants. She was entranced, mesmerized and had fallen in love with the Pharaoh’s Inconel Antkins so much she decided to always have a holographic clone of her seeing their growth.

And with this spy Leonhardt had learned what his father and the Ex-Phantasmas had done in his country, they created the Adventurer’s Guild and set his unnamed Dungeon as a ‘hard’ Dungeon despite him being only a Common Dungeon Core.

She was disappointed with what he did with Acacia though, in her standards transforming a Dungeon Core in a normal monster isn’t enough to impress her.

He also discovered the name of the elf adventurer that went to his Dungeon and why it was also so easy to kill him at that time. Tuan was burdened with the new adventurers’ safety and that made him weak and easily surprised.

The elf man after that encounter had come back to the Dungeon and was able to kill alone Kleber and others Antkins, he only stopped his killing spree when Dhasharan appeared to scare him off.

*My holy Lord, thank you for your mercy. I will swear to you I will answer your high expectations on me.* Kleber said this without ‘thou’ to please Leonhardt since he knows his Lord don’t like him using it.

“Just go train already.” Leon dismissed Kleber.

The second thing that didn’t progress as Leonhardt expected was the [Blue Evolution], he had chosen rabbits as a test because of how quick they can impregnate each other before using his Patron’s powers on pure monsters like Goblins, but it was a complete failure. He is only waiting for Lisa finish of doing her daily check on the Antkins to receive bits of advice from her.

*Master, can you change to your Dungeon Master’s body? I have something to give you in that body.* Acacia called Leonhardt.

“Give me one moment.” Leonhardt had now the habit of putting his flesh body beneath the Dungeon’s ground for safety when he doesn’t need of it to tame something or meet Aeglisa.

Leonhard went meet Acacia that had the impertinent squirrel sleeping above her head in an artificially made bed of flowers. The little thing took a like to sleep on Dhasharan’s fur or together with Acacia after eating his nuts despite not needing to eat anything now that it is a Dungeon Monster.

Leon had thought of using [Pink Evolution] on it, but that for now would put its life at risk. The adventures flee from it because its previous role as a distraction or don’t attack it because it is just a normal squirrel, if he makes it strong the people would one day kill it, judging it as a threat. Of course, Leonhardt won’t let a parasite live in his Dungeon, he is only waiting for another Named Monster slot to appear to use [Pink Evolution] on it. He has the determination to sacrifice his tamed monsters if necessary to the Dungeon’s survival, but he won’t ever send them on suicidal missions or put them at risk for no apparent reason.

He has that feeling he sometimes forgets about that is called empathy or love for his tamed monsters, after all.

Leonhardt doesn’t remember anymore as a Core-Master the correct name for that feeling.

"Master, you are here. Please accept this negligible present of mine." Acacia smiled at him while holding out her hands with a bracelet made of oddly black acacias flowers to Leon.

Acacias flowers aren’t only yellow?, Leonhardt thought while gladly receiving a present from his monster, this is the kind of treatment I like, not being cursed or hit like a certain fox does. “Thank you, Acacia. You didn’t need to give me something.” Leon put the bracelet on his right wrist and felt a strange energy flowing through his body. “Acacia, what this bracelet does of special? I felt something strange when I put it.”

"This is a Rank Rare bracelet I made using all my Mana in this week together with my Class' [Poison-Earth Druid] special Skill. While using it, Master won’t ever poisoned by something that isn’t at least Rank A and will receive a passive effect of reduced damage against Earth Magic and monsters made of only Earth, like golems for example. This is an item granted by a special Skill of my Class that I won’t ever be able to replicate, maybe improve when I Rank Up though.”

“Amazing, Acacia. This item is invaluable and you are incredible by making an item one Rank above yours, not everyone can do that. No even the best blacksmiths or artificers.” Leon said caressing his new bracelet with widened eyes by its worth. “I can’t receive this without giving you something in exchange, what do you desire for in this Dungeon?”

"Master, I only spent time doing it to show my gratitude for you saving me. I don’t desire for anything beyond our survival.* Acacia hurriedly shook her head.

“What are you saying? You already showed that when you ‘fixed’ this mountain. Think carefully, is there really nothing that you desire for?”

"Hmm…" She paused to think while only slightly tilting her head because of the squirrel above her. "If it is not asking for too much, I want to be the next Boss Monster to receive the Rank Up, I want to be more useful and have a way to help my comrades despite being stuck here in this room."

“Consider it done, do you need me to something else? I need to wait for Lisa at the rabbit’s room.”

"No, Master. Please go meet Miss Aeglisa."

Leonhardt had locked an area with metal doors and fortified glass walls that go through two rooms of the Dungeon, on this area he put a monster spawner of rabbits that constantly drain six of his Essence to work.

On the [Blue Evolution] of the rabbits, he had the pregnancy time set to only one day and had only slightly increased their legs and fangs to force them to evolve to something that has attack power or at least know how to run.

The problem was that he underestimated how brutal and eager to have sex the rabbits were, they killed each other non-stopping and didn’t even let the young ones that were mutated to survive long enough to become strong and breed with others rabbits.

The experiment was a complete failure with none of the mutated rabbits surviving and still maintaining their trash Rank F.

“Leon! You won’t believe what your Named Antkin did! It was amazing.” Lisa came running to him in her holographic form. “He cut-”

“I already know what happened and I don’t want to remember.” Leonhardt interrupted Aeglisa.

“Well…” Lisa fidgeted without knowing what to say, she was too excited by Leon’s interesting Antkins as a Patron that governs over Evolution and Growth. “Let’s take a look to those rabbits to me teach you what you have done wrong.” She decided to go with the professional Patron’s attitude.

“Yeah, you completely failed in this one. Just kill all of them or release them on the wilds.” Lisa said after one glance to the rabbits. “This isn’t how you use [Blue Evolution]. You don’t keep them closed on only one space or create this amount of them, in the early stages when the targeted monster isn’t too sentient you need to work with smaller numbers. I will give you a point for the idea and also by using a monster spawner though. In the next time set the monster spawner to a small rate.”

Leonhardt wrote Lisa’s bits of advice on a corner in the Dungeon and thanked her before sending the rabbits to the forest as they would only get killed in the Dungeon if any adventurer reaches them. “I will try once again with the rabbits before using [Blue Evolution] on others monsters.”

“I will help you this time in the early stages, so don’t worry about horribly failing this time.” She puffed up her chest. “But… can’t you fix the looks of this Dungeon already? I’m feeling dejected only seeing cave walls all the time, at least put some plants here.”

“Do I really need to? It’s not like the Dungeon’s appearance will change anything in our chances of survival. And this Dungeon’s rooms are too small to me make something grandiose anyways.”

“What are you talking about? Rooms? Could be you still haven’t finished the starter quest?” Lisa looked bewildered at Leon. “Don’t you know that if you let the quest analyze your Dungeon, the limit of space that is forced in all the Dungeon will disappear?”

“Are you serious?!”

“Of course, if you finish the quest you can expand the Dungeon’s influence to everywhere that your Mana can handle. But there is also a limit to that, making creating another floor more profitable than just expanding horizontally the Dungeon.”

“Isn’t it better to wait for more time to the quest give me a better reward?”

“Not necessarily, there is a reward cap on that quest to the Legendary Dungeons not take too long to complete it. I think your Dungeon is quite good with all these Antkins and Named Monsters.” Lisa brought out a blue-pink scroll. “How about this? If you finish the quest now and make a decoration to your Dungeon in a way that can impress me, I will make possible to you remotely control the spy I gave you and also permit you to see in real time everything that it sees.”

“Oh… that is an interesting challenge and worthwhile reward. Let’s see what I can do with all my Dungeon’s powers.” Leonhardt’s eyes gleamed at the challenge's prospect, he will never be a vanity enthusiast but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know how to decorate things in the way that can even suck out someone’s soul from just staring at it. He learned a lot from Lord Second’s paintings and will be sure honor his famous nicknames, Painting Monster and his least favorite, Soul Eater.

It wasn’t his fault Lord Second’s Essence was imbued so deeply into the paintings that the people couldn’t sense the time to pass and became addicted to them in a way it seemed the paintings had devoured their souls, after all.