Viktor recalled both his flies and his consciousness to the garden before setting about on his next creation and plan. To get the information that he needed he would need to force one of the more important of his brothers to talk. Part of his mind squirmed at the thought of extortion, it was the human part, it was over-ruled.

For his plan to work Viktor would need two things, creations more intimidating than a fly and a way to get these said creations out of the basement. For he was certain that the tavern was never completely empty.

He set to work on the problems in order. Viktor would need his creations to be autonomous, to be able to survive on their own outside and within his dungeon without him needing to feed them mana. His want for this was both his mind wanting to re-use his creations, the fact that it was ergonomic him not having to waste mana to keep them alive and his inbuilt pride as a dungeon. As such he set about creating a basic ecosystem.

He already had the moss and the flowers which made up the bottom layer and then above those he had his eldritch flies, For his plan to work he would need a physically powerful and large creature, as such it would need to feed on something more substantial than flies. It would seem that he would need to create two more tiers to this eco-system. Viktor delved into the foreign memory for ideas and emerged with success. Frogs. Frogs would eat the flies and his monster would eat the frogs it was genius! He was a little bit stir crazy.

Viktor used his mana to generate a pond at the centre of his garden which he then filled with mana-rich water and several smaller water-plants. Then he began to make the Adam and Eve of the frog world.

He made them the size of the cane toad from his memories and gave them powerful hind legs for hopping with and the trademark prehensile tongue. They were finished in less than two hours. After this Viktor began to create both frogs and flies en masse, populating the garden until it was overflowing with life. It was then that he found another peculiarity from his creations, when they died not all of the mana went back to him. And all though majority of it did a small portion went into the creature that made the kill. It made them slightly stronger, slightly faster. It was something to remember.

Viktor had more important things on his mind however, it was time to create his soldier.

Viktor would need this being to be perfect, he wanted to minimize guesswork as much as possible, as such he created the one being of which he had an instinctual knowledge. Human.

Viktor started by creating a semi-stasis pod for his being, to both disguise it from prying eyes and to stop any air-born debris from altering the final project. What he came up with was a large magenta flower in the back left corner of the room with roots that spanned the entire length or the basement floor, the flower was approximately 5 feet tall and 3 feet wide with pulsating veins on its outer skin. Good, It was time to begin.

He started by creating the skeletal structure of his creature, much like he had for the flies however this time it was not made of cartilage but instead out of hardened, reinforced bone. He gave it two hearts and two sets of lungs, with a large barrel chest to house them. He then added legs, giving the creature powerful apelike appendages with splayed toes for climbing. Its arms were longer than persons with long clawed fingers at the ends of callused hands. He finished his creation by giving it a bald head with a strong jawline, a working voice-box and large brown eyes. Once more he differed from his template, by not fusing together the jaws of his creation and giving it elastic ligaments between them it could now overextend its jaw much like a python, the was topped off with two rows of sinister, pointed teeth.

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Finally, he pumped mana into the creatures adrenal glands, unlike what he had done with the flies. This gave it the option that when in periods of stress it would be given a large and substantial boost in its physical capacity.

He was done, the flower began to bloom, oozing a type of viscous teal liquid onto the packed dirt floor, staining it and turning it slightly muddy. It opened into 6 parts and left his monster lying in the fetal position at its base. It was covered in the same leathery skin the flies were but instead of being pale it had a red hue, making its hairless, genitalless form all the more terrifying.

It stood on shaky legs before finding its footing and taking several tentative steps before flexing its powerful musculature. It was perfect. It opened its mouth to the apex before letting out a raspy sounding sigh. It cut a horrifying yet beautiful figure. It was a horrific being in all sense of the word, but the environment it stood in was so juxtaposed from its form, giving both a kind of captivating beauty that was hard to explain. It began to run around the room, testing out the limitations of its body, Viktor was mesmerised by it. It was his greatest creation, his magnum opus.

He snapped himself out of his stupor quickly however, there was still work to be done. He was drained from the task of creating his newest monster so instead of tunnelling an exit to the outside of town. He instead forced his consciousness into the mind of his new monster that he was naming Homunculus. Homunculus was a very powerful being, this was the first thing Viktor noticed as he flexed the muscles in his new arms and legs. His other realisation was how much he loved being in control of an actual body, maybe it was the semi-human memories that he held but something just felt right. Of course, he wasn't just going to abandon his crystalline form but it was still nice to appreciate these things every once in a while.

And so, as he waited for his mana to regenerate and then as he waited for it to tunnel into the rock Viktor went hunting with Homunculus, using his powerful legs and long arms to pounce on the frogs before eating them whole with his large mouth. He was consumed by the thrill of the hunt and all to soon the tunnel was complete. It bore roughly into the rock at about 4 foot in both height and length. As such the 6-foot Homunculus would have to stoop quite severely to fit, but fit he did.

And finally, after a half hour of crawling through the earth, Viktor, in the body of his new creature emerged into the light of the full moon. He let out another pained sigh to show his content, it was going to be a good night. And the hunt was just beginning.