A huge crystalline object that resembled a cluster of clear gemstones, several cut diamonds fused together, popped into existence. This was the creator god Rajesh Singh.
In spite of everything Rajesh envisioned himself as a male of Punjabi descent and a former practitioner of the Sikh religion who had somehow attained divinity. In his opinion the Punjab should have become its own country when Pakistan was carved off from India by the British instead of being split between the two. That wasn't really relevant right now, this was a separate multiverse and so Earth did not exist within it, though he did have a way to contact the original if required. It was likely this was a subsidiary simulation but Rajesh would treat it as if it was his own private playground.
Rajesh got to define several things, including faith and physics. He modelled several major religious principles on those of Sikhism but planned to change some things, including creating an active and accessible pantheon. One of the core tenets of the new faith was that addictive substances, such as tobacco, alcohol and caffeine were taboo. So were addictive actions, gambling and loot boxes being prime examples. Wealth was also not acceptable though inevitable so he decided there should be fixed prices for everything enforced by the pantheon. His first decree that he would publicly issue was to ban acts that would create Wealth from nothing, again gambling was an example but the way it was worded so was the distribution of dividends to shareholders, in fact shares as they had been implemented in New York would be worthless.
Next he began defining the system the new realities would operate on. He took inspiration from a number of works of fiction he was somehow aware of but nothing was quite right, the best method he could find was a system that gave a dice pool which slowly upgraded both in number of dice and in minimum roll to succeed. He was interested in a wider range of numbers than the three that method used, maybe starting at a one in twelve chance and getting better, rainbow symbology seemed equally useful but perhaps it should be based on the expanded version going from infrared to ultraviolet.
He set things up so that there was a status display similar to the famous blue boxes, in fact it ended up being literally that. He gained a system administrator skill reading Infrared, this seemed inefficient given it needed multiple dice of different rank. Maybe he could work out a way to abbreviate it to the first letter or perhaps have the nine colours at the top of the system screen with the dice numbers at the intersection of attribute or skill and colour.
Next Rajesh needed to define what the attributes were for various species he planned to include. He considered his options and thought that something fairly simple might work, dividing things into Mind, Body and Soul to represent inherent properties that could be improved and adding Assets and Respect for external factors that could be influenced. Mind represented things such as accumulation of knowledge, reasoning ability, numeracy and literacy. Body was things like strength, agility and comliness. Soul was less defined and included the ability to work miracles, cast magic and use psionic powers. Assets incorporated wealth, not just money but also possessions both tangible and intangible things such as whether you owned your home and if so it's value were contributing factors. Finally Respect was based on social standing, personal actions and favours owed though those last also contributed to Assets. Rajesh decided this would be a good universal scale and each species would have these but be judged relevant only to their own kind.
Rajesh was familiar with the concept of a caste system but chose to implement a divine command that all would be equal, belonging to his own Lion Caste from which military leaders were drawn by his understanding as opposed to the royal caste that the other common Sikh surname represented.
After all that his status was as follows:
Body Infrared 1 Red 1 Orange 1 Mind Indigo 1 Violet 1 Soul Violet 5 Ultraviolet 1 Assets Infrared 1 Respect Ultraviolet 6 System Architecture
Infrared 3
That didn't look right so he tried changing it to meet the format he wanted.
Personal Details
Name Rajesh Singh Species Dungeon Core (Multiverse) Class Locked
Attributes
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
Core Skills
Read Trade Script Infrared 2
Programming Skills
System Architecture Infrared 4 User Interface Design Infrared 2
Much better, though Rajesh noticed new entries that represented actions taken between calling it up the first and second times.
This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
Rajesh also wanted to add achievements and was hoping that would do something to unlock his class. If he had set that up right it would reflect skill combinations with a total of three at Yellow or better - so it would ignore Attributes. That reminded him that he needed to actually program that part of the system. Maybe he should use classic fantasy classes for basis. No, that didn't seem right. Simple classes for each weapon category as was seen in other stories with blue boxes like the ones he was creating seemed better.
He went back to the topic of Core Skills, really he should set them for speaking, reading, writing and arithmetic, maybe another to represent social norms. There was something there already but for some reason he had called a combined speaking and listening skill Vocabulary, he felt he should separate that out into its constitution parts - he ended up with a list of eight items as he also split off spelling and grammar into separate skills instead of just having a general writing one.
There was just him and the system at the moment, he planned to change that with five sapient species or rather categories of species - demons such as imps and succubi, slimes, a category covering humans, elves and dwarfs, goblinoids such as hobgoblin, bugbears and orcs, and finally undead such as liches, ghouls and wights.
Rajesh realised a flaw in his plan with his lack of experience summoning things, how was he going to create the intended solar system he wanted them to inhabit. He should practice with something simpler like a hydrogen atom. That would eventually lead to air. He began several weeks of dull but necessary practice over which he defined the concepts of air magic. By the end he had also designed a system update box which now read as follows:
Programming Skill: Skill Coding added and advanced to Red 2 Orange 1
New Skill Category Unlocked: Air Magic
Air Magic Skill: Summon Hydrogen added and advanced to Yellow 3
Class unlocked: Hydrogen Summoner, as no other classes unlocked class changed to Hydrogen Summoner
Air Magic Skill: Summon Helium added at Infrared 1
User Interface Design advanced to Red 3
Whilst this activity wasn't getting the universe created, it was working towards it, over the next few months Rajesh continued to begin skills to summon raw elements as defined by the periodic table before switching to trying to create fundamental forces. He picked up chemistry and physics as skills before realising he was specialising and gaining spefic skills belonging to those categories. He made sure that the source code reflected his new understanding. Alchemy had historically been impossible but he realised he could turn lead into gold by adding electrons and it wouldn't be as cost prohibitive as he remembered. Though he was beginning to question if these were his own memories or if the Rajesh he thought he had been prior to being a core had ever existed - he just couldn't reconcile their personalities.
By the time he had reached summoning oxygen, Rajesh had started to work towards molecules in preparation for making water. He also realised that there were currently no spatial dimensions and was trying to create them at least temporarily.
Years later, he'd been trying to summon more exotic elements that went past what occurred naturally but was starting to get a way to make the most basic ones permanent. His class had upgraded to Element Summoner reflecting the wider diversity of substances he could conjure with a Skill of at least Yellow 3, including mercury the liquid metal. Long term he was hoping to upgrade to at least Inorganic Material Summoner representing the power to create a wide range of molecules.