When he returned from his vision, Rajesh reviewed what he had been trying to accomplish. His goal had been to start time and space as subjects under his divine command. The visions of battling minstrels in no way furthered this. Did he have a way of introducing time temporarily now?

He looked over where he was planning to implement space, something was coalescing there into another gemstone in the style of his core. It seemed the prophetic images were causing something to happen. It looked like it was going to be a sapphire - certainly a translucent blue gem, uncut but suspend on six metallic - possibly silver legs like an insect with silken wings. He expected it was the thing that would bring forth the giant insects. This seemed slightly off from his reading on the topic but those were all works of fiction and this was his reality despite his doubts about whether it was truly real. In the way Rajesh represented order, the thing in front of him represented air.

This wasn't why Rajesh should regret looking into the future, it was instead the second such being turning into a ruby carved in the shape of a phoenix that was fire. It gave off the scent of burning plastic but unfortunately Rajesh didn't realise that this could have any significance.

There was a third such gem, that screamed water the way the phoenix did fire. It was also blue but unlike the silver and sapphire insect, it was closer to the solid turquoise of an angry sea, almost shifting into green. It was the shape Rajesh associated with cut emeralds and may even have technically been one, he wasn't too sure on the definition - he'd have to check and therefore raise his relevant skills. There were delicate ebony fins attached, trying to make it look like a flying fish but failing due to the nature of the black wood. Scales were appearing on its surface, each facet of the emerald covered in carvings of them. It was beginning to take on a scent that was best described as the flavour of salt water, even though normally that would only apply to people with Synesthesia.

Finally there was a brown rock for earth, it seemed plain but if one looked closely they'd be barely able to make out golden claws on what was currently the bottom. It was made of what was most likely sandstone and had an odour of mouldering leaves.

Rajesh disregarded his four new subordinates, leaving them to their own devices as he resumed his grinds. They in turn ignored both him and each other as they explored their new powers.

The next time he was updating the system, Rajesh found himself sneaking in obscure references to various media he'd consumed, for example there was a party to hit buff called "the man at the back" in reference to the lyrics of a song that had been at least thirty years old when he started.

Each of the four elemental cores began grinding powers, the sapphire found itself learning ways to manipulate electrical current, moving towards the iconic chained lightning bolt spell. The ruby was mastering pyromancy, the divination technique which gave its name to fire magic where it was starting into a flame to see possible pasts and futures but found that thermal manipulation techniques, making things hotter or colder, were also things she had a natural talent for - the female gender coming with the divination powers. The emerald was naturally tuning itself to liquids of all sorts, not just the implied water whilst the sandstone found itself mastering various ground movement such as walking, running and burrowing.

Whilst all this was happening, three further gemstone cores were forming. An onyx that looked like it was carved in the shape of a foetus, ironically representing death, with powers also relating to undeath but primarily focusing on making sure that the animating magics were dispelled. An opal to represent life, with wings of a white, possibly birch wood, that looked like a sort of angel due to the knots in the wood which resembled eyes that found itself learning healing spells. A glass orb, swirling with colour, similar to the orb often used by fortune tellers, representing chaos, complete with iron stand, the power it started with was the ability to shape others, sometimes referred to as polymorphing.

The ruby found a list of names in the back end of the system and chose to call herself Thalia. She was also exploring what other permissions she had. It looked like she could submit feature requests to Rajesh. There was nothing she particularly wanted at the moment.

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The onyx was finding itself growing more morally aligned with what outside forces would call good, it was against mind control, reanimation of corpses and other non-consensual acts. It found itself starting to draft a list of laws it would like everything to obey and tried to commit those to paper but was not getting that done due to actually having a way to create a writing surface itself. It would now start looking into a way to correct that, possibly a clay tablet would be a good next goal.

Rajesh found himself looking over the status of the eight gemstones, himself included, and wondering about it when taken as a group. They were collectively referred to as the Eight Lords of the Core Elements by his system, each had slots for names as well as titles based on their form, such as the Glass Lord of Chaos or the Ruby Lady of Fire. Some of the genders were still blank, though the one was now showing as the Sandstone Noble of Earth having actively rejected both the male and female genders. The onyx was now showing with the name Drath, that was three of them so far with more than just their titles.

Each of the eight found themselves planning their own realities, connected through a central hub of some sort. They got back to the grind, hoping it would assist their individual plans. Rajesh found himself also planning out the central hub connection. He was wondering if each should be a separate plane but from what stray thoughts he was catching it felt like it would be better to make each itself universe with its own set of planes but a standard system overlaid on them all.

Rajesh returned to reviewing his own status, which now looked like this:

Name Rajesh Singh Species Dungeon Core (Multiverse) Class

Air Mage

Earth Mage

Programmer

Body Infrared 1 Red 1 Orange 1 Mind Infrared 1 Indigo 1 Violet 1 Soul Violet 5 Ultraviolet 1 Assets Infrared 1 Respect Ultraviolet 6 Read Trade Script Infrared 4 Red 2 System Architecture Infrared 4 Red 4 Orange 1 User Interface Design Infrared 3 Red 3 Skill Coding Red 2 Orange 2 Summon Hydrogen Green 4 Summon Helium Orange 3 Summon Lithium Yellow 3 Orange 1 Summon Beryllium Red 2 Yellow 3 Summon Boron Red 1 Yellow 3

Summon Carbon

Red 4 Summon Nitrogen Red 2 Summon Oxygen Red 3 Orange 1 Summon Florine Infrared 1 Summon Neon Infrared 1 Red 2 Summon Sodium Red 2 Summon Magnesium Infrared 1 Summon Aluminium Infrared 1 Summon Silicon Orange 1 Summon Phosphorus Infrared 1 Summon Sulphur Infrared 1 Summon Chlorine Infrared 1 Summon Argon Infrared 1

He was now noticing that his skills were no longer broken down by category, he felt that was right - several skills belonged to multiple categories but he supposed individuals could separate them out themselves. The List actually continued all the way to Oganesson with the remainder of the full list of one hundred and eighteen named elements he'd seen on the chemistry website when he'd looked them up.