Chapter 47 - Human

Day 59

Neo's POV:

"Ok, Luna. I've got the blueprint. I must say it's not very impressive. Why are you so happy about this? I can't use humans to fight divers and this blueprint says it's only a mindless copy anyway."

  "Yes, but you need an avatar and you were a human before, so it should fit you!"

"Yes, that's right, but I wouldn't choose a fighter body for that. You said I can only control boss monsters and I can only have one boss for every five levels. I won't create a fighter for that task and this body's affinities are pretty bad, too."

  "Don't write off our first victim prematurely. You've got the research for the trait manipulation and you can make the body weaker. How about you bring the body back to the F rank and then have a look what you are able to do about the affinities."

Neo paused for a moment, the fairy was right. Even if this body was pretty bad and went a wrong way in his cultivation that would sooner or later lead to a dead end, he was a dungeon now and he could create weaker versions of his blueprints.

First, he started to bring it back to the F12 rank. Even if Hans probably didn't cultivate to that rank, it proved to be easy to change the blueprint to that rank. When he looked back at the traits, the fire warrior one had disappeared, too.

Good, he thought. The next step was to get rid of the negative affinities. He started with the worst one, water. With a lot of effort, he was able to remove it, but he was barely able to hold onto the blueprint. He would not be able to remove the other negative affinities this way. When he thought about the problem for a moment, he paused again. Then he started to remove the positive fire affinities and it got a lot easier to visualize the blueprint. He went on and removed all the other affinities, too. When he was finished, the blueprint felt no more difficult to create than before he started.

In Neo's experience, for most people, the higher affinities were unbalanced, too. So, he started to have a feel for the intermediate ones. It took a little bit of time, but then he was able to feel them and saw that he was right. With this, he balanced them out, too. When he was finished, he went on to the higher affinities and repeated the process. He wasn't able to get rid of the negative space affinity in one go. But, by switching forth and back between space and time, he was able to bring them both to zero.

"You were right. I was able to create a very good starting body, but I can't really use it to defend the dungeon. If it gets known, I would be killed pretty quickly."

  "Yes, yes, the big bad guild, I know. But, first of all, having a human body will improve your mood and secondly, you can use it to leave the dungeon and do stuff on the outside."

"What?"

  "I didn't tell you before, because it's pretty dangerous. If you are inside a boss when you leave the dungeon, you lose control over your core until you give up the boss or you get back. So, if you are outside and our dungeon is under attack, you wouldn't notice."

"That's great. I can probably create triggers that pull me back to the dungeon under certain circumstances. It would be pretty bad to lose a boss and to start over again, but it's still better than to die."

Neo thought about this fortunate turn of events for a moment. Then he saw a problem.

"What happens if I'm inside the boss and it dies?"

  "Oh, that's pretty bad. If you're inside the dungeon, you just get pushed out and feel a headache. If this happens outside, it can take more than a week before your conscience forms back at the dungeon core. But, if that happens, I will try to bring the body back home. Then it's no big issue."

"Sounds pretty dangerous. But, on the other hand, when I was a human, death was the end. I didn't ask before, but what happens to you if your creature dies?"

  "Hehe, fairies are awesome. As long as you keep the connection to me intact, I'm immortal. You'll notice if that happens and you can just teleport me back to you."

"Sounds good. It would be pretty bad, if somebody manages to abduct you, while you're outside the dungeon."

  "Don't worry about me, get back to the blueprint and have a look what traits you can give it. Oh, and change that ugly face, it looks really stupid."

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Luna was right, Hans really had a stupid and arrogant looking face. He changed the body for a bit until he was satisfied with his new bosses look. It was relatively close to his old body, but not quite the same. The body in the blueprint was now 1,9 meters tall, had black hair, brown eyes and a slim build. He didn't need a lot of muscles as a caster, but being fast and having good reflexes would come in handy , so he focused the body in that direction.

Then it was time to add traits. The main problem for fast progression in his cultivation, would be the amount of mana the body was able to handle. Normally, a E rank adventurer could at most use a C rank cultivation technique, otherwise his body would get hurt and he was in danger of burning out. The wanted to speed up this progress and thought about his mutated rabbit. It had been able to survive a much greater mana concentration than its kin. The reason for that should've been its trait, so he added the traits mana altered and mana mutated rank one to his blueprint.

To his surprise, Neo noticed, he was still able to add more. This was probably because he decreased the blueprint's rank a lot and now was able to compensate for it with traits. He was a little ambivalent which other traits he should add. At first, he just wanted to increase the rank of mana altered and mana mutated, but then he changed his opinion. It would be much easier to increase an existing trait, than to add a new one. So, he went for resilient and mana affinity. This was the max he was able to do and he created the body.

Neo had a look at his creation with an inner smile in his mind. This was much better then Hans, so he choose to give it a name and make it a boss monster.

Neo Version 2 Mk1 (BOSS)

This is an altered blueprint. It came from a human absorbed by a dungeon. While being a boss monster, it is still mindless and only able to follow simple orders.

Rank: F12

Affinities: -

Traits: Mana altered (rank1); mana mutated (rank1); resilient (rank1); mana affinity(rank1)

Costs: 1300 mana ; 78 kg animal material

"Ok, let's give this new body a test ride."

Neo concentrated on the new body and took control over it. Then he started to laugh. He had only been a dungeon for two months, but damn it felt good to be human again.

  "And, do you like it? It's a lot better than a goblin and it doesn't smell. Luna likes it!"

"Yes, it's awesome. Ok, now it's time to cultivate and get to the E rank."

With this, Neo sat down inside of his mana gathering formation. He wanted to use the higher mana concentration to speed up his progress. He started with the C rank version of his cultivation technique. After getting a feel for it for a few minutes he switched to the B rank version. Normally, his body should be in great pain right then, but because of his traits, he was able to handle it.

Before he was able to get used to the technique, he already broke through to the E0 rank. He had to smile. When he'd been a human, he'd only had a very bad cultivation technique and it took him more than two month to go from the F rank to the E0, now it was less than ten minutes.

He checked his body, trying to get feel for faults and problems in his cultivation, but he found none and was able to keep on with increasing his rank. He sat back down in front of his dungeon core and went back to cultivating. After he kept using the B rank technique for a moment, he decided to take some risks. If he destroyed this body, it would re-spawn at his core anyway. So, why not, he thought. He switched to the A rank version of his technique and he started to feel the pain immediately. It was pretty bad, but with his larger experience, he was able to tolerate it and he kept going.

Five minutes later, he felt himself breaking through to the E1 rank. He checked his body again, but this time he found a lot of small defects and wounds inside his mana channels. It wasn't a big issue and he would be able to heal it without large effort, but it didn't really make sense to use the faster cultivation technique, only to make pauses to heal himself all the time.

"Luna, can you come here for a moment? I'll keep on cultivating, please try to heal me while I'm at it. Normally, you can't heal a person that is using mana, but I sensed that your technique is different, so maybe it'll work."

  "Cool yes, let's try."

Neo went back to cultivate with his A rank technique. When he felt the little fairy touching his back, he could sense the damages in his body being repaired as soon as they appeared."

  "Haha, Luna is the best."

Neo smiled and keep going. Fifteen minutes later, he was already reaching the E2 rank. But, at the same time, he was able to feel the mana concentration near his dungeon core decreasing. He stopped his cultivation after he broke through. Neo was a little bit annoyed that his experiment ended so soon after it started.

Then he had an idea and concentrated on his core. He used his control over it and started to use its mana regeneration to create gold. The mana concentration immediately started increasing again. In fact, his core was producing way more mana than he was able to use with his human body. With this he went back to cultivate.

His next breakthrough took him 30 minutes, but he was still not satisfied. With a smile on his face, he changed to the S rank version of his cultivation technique.

The pain was horrible. It felt like all his mana channels were on fire and he was only a small distance away from crippling the body, but he noticed that Luna was able to keep up with her healing of his damaged tissue.

Ten minutes later he broke through again and kept going. He put his whole focus on ignoring the pain while keeping up this insane cultivation speed.

  "Neo, Neo! Stop, I can't keep going."

He fell out of his trance. When he checked his cultivation, he noticed that he was already at the E9 rank. He started to laugh, this progress was insane. As far as he could tell, Luna had been able to prevent all the negative side effects of his reckless endeavor. He looked at his little friend and saw she was unconscious, the strain had probably been too much for her little body. Neo checked the little fairy for a moment and relaxed when he was able to determine that she was only exhausted but otherwise fine. He put her to sleep in her little bed next to Mr. Floppy, then he put his own body to rest and went back into his core.