Just because I was mad and the demon rabbits tried to attack me, I skewered them with my spear. I got one level 4 core from them, a rarity in a monster so weak. The thing could fit on an oatmeal flake. I remembered that I now had summoning magic, and it required a core. I don't know why I knew that, but after browsing some books from the mind-bender academy, I found a primer on summoning magic.

Focusing my Energy on the al-Mi'raj Core, I bound it to one of the slots in my {Summoner's Memory}. The core vanished but I now knew how to summon al-Mi'raj without spending one. I still had twenty such slots to fill with monsters. I tried to summon one. As I started to cast the spell, my affinity and the System helped me. The MP cost was ridiculously high. For a level 4 al-Mi'raj, the initial summoning cost me 50 Energy. Considering my reductions, the base cost for a stupid level 4 critter a baby centaur with a stick could crush (been there, done that) was astonishing 1,600 MP. Just like a Protoss decloaking (but without the electrical whooshing), the monster appeared.

The al-Mi'raj I summoned stared at me with its beady red murderous eyes. I felt it was asking me what it should kill. Worse, it was burning 5 Energy per minute. I stabbed it with the spear and it broke down into some particles that evaporated quickly into nothing.

The strongest al-Mi'raj I could summon was level 10. It cost 3,125 Energy, a preposterous amount. It was the buffiest al-Mi'raj I've ever seen. The thing was the size of a retriever. I summoned a bunch of level 4 critters and finally found why they cost so much. They were supposed to be summoned in batches. One level 4 al-Mi'raj cost 50 Energy. Sixteen of them didn't cost me 800 Energy. They cost 200.

Yeah. I had to try this out.

Flying for a few hours, I updated my mental map of the plains and searched for some worthy target. When I finally found it, I landed ahead of them. A goblin horde. Grinning, I spent 312,500 Energy (down from ten million) to summon ten thousand level 10 al-Mi'raj. My horde of fluffy little horned lagomorphs screeched and jumped over one another to kill the goblins. Their maintenance cost, a tenth of the summoning, was higher than my Energy regeneration but I could keep them for hours.

The cowardly goblins didn't stand a chance against my bloodthirsty and suicidal summons. Many of them were impaled through the back as they tried to run away from the white wave. White-ish. It was becoming dyed in the goblin's dark blood.

I unlocked a few abilities for [Spellcaster] but I didn't pick any of them.

* Mass Summoning: The cost multiplier for summoning large amounts of the same monster is reduced by (Proficiency/10)%

* Summoning Specialization: Pick (Proficiency/100) monsters from the ones you have memorized. They are (Proficiency/5)% cheaper to summon.

* Empower Summons: The maximum level of your summons increases by (Proficiency/25).

* Strengthen Summons: You can give up to (Proficiency/25) Attribute bonus to your summons by paying 10% of the base cost per point.

I tried to unbind the al-Mi'raj from the memory slot but found that it was impossible. One slot was burned with that critter forever.

I left my horde to hunt down the goblins to exhaustion. I also saw no goblin body left behind. They all went to my item box. Reverse-engineering the cost formula, I found that if I ever got my hands on a level two hundred common-grade summon, it would cost me 1,250,000 Energy to make one, at a per-minute maintenance cost of a tenth of that. Something with a better rarity would incur a multiplier. Uncommon 1.5, rare 2, very rare 3, and ultra-rare 4. A level 200 dragon, If I ever found another core, would bump the summon cost to five million, and half a million per minute to keep it summoned. Expensive, but I thought of what a level two ultra-rare hundred monsters could do. The primer on summoning magic told me that if I ever wanted to summon such a creature, I would need to be level 200 with a Magic score of 200 as well. One couldn't summon a monster stronger than their own level or Magic score, whichever was lower. Bummer.

Okay, so summoning wasn't that expensive, after all. I needed something strong but not so strong. I dismissed the murderous horned monsters and shelved summoning magic to play with later.

That showed me one thing. My spell cost reduction abilities were ridiculously high. I paid only one in every thirty-two points of the base cost. That reminded me of how many potions and cores I'd used to destroy the city. Damn. The spell I used must've had a base cost in the ballpark of hundreds of millions of MP.

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The plains were too vast. I needed to decide where to put my capital. With Fulgen to the west, the mountains to the north, the peninsula to the east, the ocean to the south, and the Abode of War around the middle, where would I put my Kingdom? I had no way to control the whole plains, not in a normal person's lifetime. I didn't want to be close to Fulgen. The mountains had griffins, dragons, and all sorts of nasties. Also, rocks. Can't feed a Kingdom on rocks. Near the ocean was nice, but I didn't need to be that close. Centaurs were a fast bunch. I wanted to protect the peninsula. I wasn't too worried about caravans reaching me. Eastside it was.

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Given the sheer scale of the plains, protecting the whole peninsula was impossible. Going north, I found just the perfect spot. A huge freshwater lake fed by the largest river in the plains. This river could give the Amazon or the Nile a run for their money. Near the lake and the river, but not so close a flood could destroy everything, I found the perfect spot. About five kilometers from the river margin, more than two hundred meters above it too. Ten kilometers to the lake gave me plenty of room to grow. This hill here would be the center of my realm, from which I would rule over southeastern Pekothas. The continent, not the destroyed city of the conquered kingdom.

I even had some virgin forest to put a fairy ring. In my mind, I already started to draw the kingdom map. A quick calculation told me I was 2,400 kilometers east-southeast from the Abode of War. 4,200km from Alloralla's trading village at Fulgen's border.

I put myself to work. It would be stupid to bring the elves before I had the basic amenities. I had mansions from Perenneth, fortresses, castles, and keeps from the humans, the auction house from Sadian, and some temples to the God of Entrails' Endpoints. I spent all the months of winter shaping the terrain and putting the buildings on the ground. I excavated sewers and connected them to a treatment station. I felt as if I was playing Minecraft.

But it was time to bring people in. The first group had to be Marlowe, Talysisus, Stephano, and the centaurs. I went to the forest north of my seat of power to put a fairy ring. Once I found the perfect spot, I sensed something else. A Heritage.

I focused on it to sense where it was coming from, but the signal was at the edge of my fifty-five-kilometer detection range. I made Marlowe travel for several months now, a day or two won't change anything. I went after the Heritage.

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Alas, it was moving. I conjectured it must be some artifact in the possession of a third party. Moving as fast as I could (which was 20 times as fast as a normal centaur would) I reached the spot and the direction started to point downwards. Braking hard, I felt it turn and move in another direction. It was in a straight line. I followed it for a few minutes on the surface and then it banked ninety degrees and went again in a straight line.

Underground, straight passageways, ninety degrees turns on a dime. If I was playing Minecraft on the surface, then I'd just found a stronghold. In layman's terms, a dungeon. Lowercase "D", the uppercase ones were for those that spawned monsters. That remained to be seen.

I dove into the ground. Rosewise bought {Rockwalker} which allowed me to move like an Earth elemental. I also had {Breathe Rocks} that allowed me to exchange breathable gases with the rocks, not pull them into my lungs as the literal interpretation of the title would suggest.

I reached five meters above my target but didn't break out of the rocks yet. No. I pinged my detection Perks first. One sentient matched the Heritage. No humans. Then I sensed monsters. What hit me was a literal map of the dungeon beneath me. The place was crawling with nasties. Then I sensed my favored enemies, stopping at Undead. The pings matched the monster detection. And the sentient carrying the heritage.

The dungeon beneath me was upgraded to catacombs. No, a veritable necropolis. And the raging Berserker in me felt it exciting. I drew my spear, made both horns shine, and dove into the tunnel before my newest friend.

"Gahhh!" A baritone screamed as I illuminated the tunnel.

The blight in the tunnel was so strong it was dealing fifteen thousand HP of damage per second. I didn't take any, I was healed by blight.

"Well met, sir..." I examined the figure in front of me. A cloak made of pure white feathers draped over the skeletal shoulders of a human skeleton with glowing red eye sockets. Holding a staff, wearing a robe, fancy rings on the finger bones. His level was 178. A lich? "... Archmagister."

I decided to use a title that would please any spellcaster even if it was wrong. These guys were basically underneath my city. I needed information.

"The light!" He covered his eye sockets with a hand. It did him as much good as waving a bunch of flimsy bones would.

I dimmed my light to a minimum. I could see ten meters into pitch-black darkness but I didn't need to reveal that to him.

"Sorry. We surface explorers usually need this much light. I'm Snowdrop. Pleased to meet you."

The undead caster stared at me with its lifeless orbits. I could see actual red flames dancing inside the skull, one for each eye socket.

"How did you intrude upon my domain, centaur? My wards didn't trigger."

"High level [Rogue] abilities," I shrugged as I shared. I tried not to cringe as I fished for a name, "With whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?"

He kept staring. Or not, it was hard to say without facial expressions. Maybe that's why they made Skeletor have such a shaky jaw. Without the clattering teeth, it would be hard to tell if he was even animated.

After a few minutes of silence, I figured out the trick. You needed to pay attention to the flickering of the flames in the eye sockets. I could see when he shifted his gaze to the spear, then to my horn, and back to my eyes. A perfect gentleman, he never stared at my chest.

I felt a tingle in my head and a notification that five minutes of my rage were used to resist mental domination. "Hey, that's not nice. I dimmed my light and kept my auras turned off. Are we devolving into violence?"

Damn, another mind-bender.

I heard a creepy tittering chuckle. The jaw slacked and moved and the lich (classification pending) threw his skull back. "A barbarian asking about violence? I expected you to try and skewer me with that fancy spear of yours. Before we do, are you a unicorn?"

"Before I answer, what is this cloak you're wearing?"

"Pegasus feathers."

"Would you be inclined to part with it?"

"No. It's kept my old bones warm for thousands of years. I'm quite attached to it."

"Emotionally or physically?"

"It doesn't matter. You're dying now."

I nodded. "Violence it is."