I had eaten my fill. The three corpses, consumed fresh, were enough raw material to springboard me towards evolution. As my mana-sparks ate away their flesh into nothingness, I felt a world opening to me.

It was a mental space like a galaxy. Spheres of light drifted on a background of utter blackness. Some of those spheres were brighter than others, the images inside clearer. Others were dull and opaque and offered me no glimpse of anything within.

Each sphere was a potential future, and a memory of the past.

They were the lifecycles of past cores, contained within the massive store of memory that each core could dive into. It was a library that grew with each Schema any of us absorbed. When I devoured a creature I did not so much ‘discover’ as ‘remember’ how to create that specimen, awakening a dormant part of this endless archive.

And just as I could shape living creatures by taking from divergent paths of evolution, I could shape myself using these memories of previous cores.

The brightest ones were the ones closest to me, who I could most easily copy.

As I moved towards them they revealed their inner natures. Naturally, I sought out the spheres that loomed largest, taking up a great part of the sky. These were the rarest and most powerful paths of evolution I could access. There were still many larger spheres in the sky, higher up, but as I moved towards them a pressure shoved me down– their natural power was beyond my ability to achieve without self-destruction.

The first one I came to showed an image of a potential future, drifting on the golden surface.

It was an image of a tree, growing across the entire world. Roots wrapping around cities. Branches lifting islands. Around the tree drifted clouds and rivers of magic, the mana of nature raining from the leaves in a tide of green sparks.

- Phenotype -

Yggdrasil Core (Rare)

A singular tree that can hold worlds in its branches. The core will ‘sprout’ into a massive, ever-growing tree, gathering energy from earth sky and sun to spread its branches across the world.

Leveling Condition: Grow for a certain number of days.

Base Schema:

Hamadryad

Benefits:

Nature mana generation.

Your domain extends alongside your physical roots, with a greater maximum range than normal cores.

Creatures that live within your physical body will gain enhanced physical and spiritual traits.

I considered it. Truthfully, the serene tree appealed to my quiet and sleeping nature. I sensed such incredible peace in that titan of root and bark, and the worlds contained within its branches.

But I was on an island. Put simply, my roots could only spread so far. Limiting my domain to their extent would be a limitation not a blessing.

I moved on.

- Phenotype -

Puppet Core (Rare)

A core that creates and animates numerous golems known as puppets. The puppets serve as the core’s hands, allowing for direct manipulation of the world.

Leveling Condition: Craft a puppet of a higher level.

Base Schema:

Basic Puppet

Benefits:

Puppet creation.

Direct control over constructed humanoid creatures within your domain.

Rune magics.

Another sphere presented a wildly different image. Meticulously carved sculptures of wood with articulated ball joints worked with axe, carving knife, quill, and polishing stone. With their fingers of wood they shaped a new body for their core to inhabit– a body ever-so-slightly better than any of their own. And it would work to create another.

Continuous improvement. The shaping of the self. I could see the appeal.

And it would give me bodies of my own, the ability not to rely on anything or anyone beyond my true control. It would let me change the world by my own will, without messenger or servant.

A core is a proud creature– but pride wouldn’t goad me into choosing this.

One limitation was the word ‘humanoid’.

Fundamentally, the puppet core was limited in form to imitating humanity…

I found that dissatisfying.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

The whole idea reeked of human priorities, in fact. I wouldn’t necessarily rule it out on that alone but– this core had made itself far too close to human for my taste.

- Phenotype -

Verdant Core (Uncommon)

A core that blossoms forth with life unbound, bringing richness and plenty to the world it inhabits.

Leveling Condition: Grow a certain number of plants to maturity.

(+2 levels immediately)

Base Schema:

Root Gheist

Benefits:

Receive nature mana when a plant reaches maturity.

Flora and fauna within your domain receive a blessing of fertility.

Flora in your domain can grow to massive size.

I had drifted away from the highest reaches, towards the more common phenotypes. ‘Common’ didn’t mean weaker, in this case. This variant would give me steady growth in a similar way to the world tree but with the benefit of greater mana gain, the ability to expand into the seas with kelps and planktons, and most temptingly, a unique creature: the gheist was a small headless spirit that inhabited a gourd or tuber to use as a skull. They naturally gained the size of the vegetable they possessed, had hands, and were excellent gardeners by nature.

But ultimately, I had already seen the perils of such a passive strategy. You could build yourself into an endless fortress, but you only had power so long as you could force the enemy to step foot into your defenses. And you were helpless against any surprise that slipped through.

It was not to my taste.

- Phenotype -

Mutagenic Core (Common)

A blood-colored core that accesses the natural magic of mutation and evolution, creating strange and fantastic hybrids of scale, fur, and feather.

Leveling Condition: Collect Rare or rarer Schemas. To advance past each Blessing, you must collect a Legendary Schema.

(+1 level immediately)

Base Schema:

Salamandral

Benefits:

Blood mana generation.

Gain no Blessings for your first 10 levels. At level 10, gain a secondary phenotype.

You can grant each Schema an additional trait chosen from all known traits.

This one, however, had promise.

It offered a boon of control, letting me sculpt my creatures more precisely. Beyond that it had almost no merits to speak of– but eventually it would allow me to choose another phenotype to augment it. In effect I was trading 10 levels of progress for the power to grant specific abilities.

- Phenotype -

Sun & Moon Core (Rare)

A core of two colors, shifting from day to night. Gathers the energy of the sun and moon.

Leveling Condition: Complete quests.

(+1 level immediately)

Base Schemas:

Nightcloaked Owl &

Soldier of Heaven Hawk

Benefits:

Light & shadow mana generation.

Gain additional rewards from completing quests in the form of diurnal & nocturnal blessings.

Godly attention & protection.

This one was interesting. Not appealing, but interesting in that it seemed to give up a level of agency to instead follow the whims of the gods.

I wondered what kind of core would take such a deal– had it been desperate, or had it been pious?

I was neither. The two powerful Schemas were interesting, as was the ability to manifest multiple kinds of mana, but this one was not for me. I only paused at all because it seemed to be closer to synchronicity with my soul than I would have guessed; perhaps there was some similarity I did not yet understand.

- Phenotype -

Hive Core (Common)

The beating heart of an endless hive, servants crawling through cells and apartments of wax, workers collecting nectar from the world beyond to please your appetites.

Leveling Condition: Grow the hive to a certain size.

(+1 level immediately)

Base Schema:

Worker Drone

Benefits:

Members of your hive grow in intelligence as it grows in size.

Create subspecies that have a small chance of spawning in place of a worker drone.

‘Monarch’ monster that grows in power with the hive’s size.

This was more like it.

While highly focused, the Hive Core was perfect for what it did. So long as you continued to create swarms of smaller insects, all of them would grow smarter, and your queen would grow more powerful. It rewarded doing exactly one thing by shoring up that strategy’s weaknesses.

Naturally I felt some kinship to the core who’d developed this strategy. I’d already discovered how clever and useful insects could be, their small size allowing experimentation to breed in necessary traits. They weren’t particularly forceful or strong– more a scalpel than a sledgehammer– but their adaptability was the approach I preferred.

I drifted for a while longer, looking through the less translucent of the spheres.

It was less in hopes that I’d discover some hidden strategy, and more for the sense of being surrounded by family. In each phenotype I saw the legacy of a core that– somewhere in the cosmos– had lived and built and finally died, exploring the world of its birth with a unique outlook. Their strategy reflected their living mind, and that gave me comfort.

A dungeon core was largely solitary, after all. It was possible I’d never meet another being like me in my whole existence– and perhaps it would be better not to. Many of the outlooks I saw were single-mindedly vicious. Others were mad, beyond any communication.

We saw ourselves as little gods, yes. Not all of us felt the obligation to be a wise and generous deity.

I considered the paths of my brothers and forebearers for a long time, floating in that liminal space where time passed at its own measure. I enjoyed the lack of obligation– the knowledge that time in realspace was only barely inching past. This place was in many ways my home. It called out to me with the voice of ancestry…

But in time I came to my decision, and there was nothing else but to move forward.