Chapter – 3

“Are you ready, Prototype No.13?”

The time had finally come for Hikaru to fulfill the promise he had made to his most loyal guardian.

And this time, Hikaru had come prepared.

After all, he had been quite busy over the past week.

After mastering the highly sophisticated art of creating a Caterpie, he had decided to pursue a significantly more difficult challenge.

…

A Weedle.

Yes, he was aware it was still technically just another basic bug Pokémon. However, if someone possessed even the slightest understanding of the complete nightmare that was designing a custom Monster Core, they would understand exactly what Hikaru had gone through.

First, he had to locate and isolate Poison mana, which had turned out to be an adventure by itself.

Apparently, Poison wasn’t a primary affinity and instead existed somewhere in the uncomfortable overlap between life and death mana. Which honestly sounded rather fitting in hindsight.

Then he had needed to design an entirely new Poison-affinity core that wouldn’t immediately liquefy its host.

After that came the annoying part.

He had to combine and modify the various abilities from creatures he already had at his disposal to create his own custom skills, before crystallizing those structures directly into the Monster Core itself.

The process had not been easy, nor had it been particularly clean.

Hikaru preferred not thinking too deeply about some of the intermediate results.

Still, the effort had paid off.

He now had a new worm wiggling around his cave that could shoot poisonous darts from its horn.

Moreover, he was now significantly more confident in his ability to create specialized Monster Cores.

Naturally, drunk on success, Hikaru had immediately decided to create one of the most common Pokémon from the original generation.

A Rattata.

And immediately ran face-first into a wall.

Because what in the world was Normal-type mana supposed to be?

Mana absolutely refused to remain in a non-affinity state. The moment it formed, it instantly wanted to align itself toward some aspect of reality.

Which meant Hikaru had no choice but to experiment and figure out how Beast mana could simulate the effects of Normal-type abilities.

So far, his only real success had been something vaguely resembling [Quick Attack].

Fortunately, things had become significantly easier afterward.

Using Air mana for Flying-types and Nature mana for Grass-types, Hikaru had successfully managed to create both Pidgey and Oddish.

Somewhere deeper inside the cave system, there was also a lone Geodude slowly wandering around.

Hikaru had mainly created it to answer one very important question.

Could he create a living creature without adding the unnecessary squishy bits? The answer had apparently been yes.

Bullshit magic for the win.

The creature wasn’t exactly intelligent, but it could move around independently, possessed simple instincts, and followed commands well enough.

He had even managed to incorporate a small amount of Gravity mana into its design so that it could float around naturally instead of dragging its rocky body across the floor.

With all of those additions, the cave system had now completely transformed.

It was no longer a dark and empty place filled with bats and random cave critters.

Instead, sounds now echoed throughout the tunnels.

Chirping. Rustling. Small cries and distant movements.

Fictional creatures from Hikaru’s old world now wandered freely through the cave system, immediately recognisable to anyone from earth as iconic first-generation Pokémon.

Looking back on everything he had done, Hikaru felt a small sense of satisfaction.

Then his attention shifted toward Prototype No.13.

With all of those accomplishments behind him…

He finally felt ready to give his first companion its long-awaited upgrade.

Prototype No.13 slowly blinked its eyes and twitched its mandibles.

Hikaru took that as confirmation and immediately started the process.

Being a prototype, Prototype No.13 had never possessed a Monster Core in the first place, so once Hikaru dissolved its physical body, all that remained was its soul.

As Hikaru looked upon one of his earliest successes, he felt both pride and a slight sense of embarrassment.

It felt strangely similar to a professional artist opening an old high-school sketchbook and rediscovering their embarrassing fanart phase.

There was a certain charm to it.

Simple. Efficient. Functional.

But now that he knew what he was looking at, he couldn’t help noticing the horrific atrocities he had committed during its creation.

He had practically gathered every bit of aether available and shoved it together without any proper structure, relying more on luck than actual skill and somehow hoping everything would work out.

All that wasted potential, simply because he hadn’t known any better.

Without hesitation, Hikaru immediately began fixing it.

Using everything he had learned since then, he carefully reworked Prototype No.13’s soul structure and optimized every part he could.

It still wasn’t enough for true sapience, but it should be close.

Creating the Monster Core itself took surprisingly little time.

He had become more than proficient at it by now, and Earth affinity happened to be one of his favorites to work with.

As he assembled the body and connected all the components together, Hikaru’s primary consciousness had already wandered elsewhere.

Specifically toward a very important question.

How exactly does one obtain Dragon-type mana?

He was still mentally debating whether dragons naturally produced Dragon mana or if Dragons even existed in this world when the process finally finished.

Hikaru placed his ethereal hands on his nonexistent hips and proudly admired his work as his first successful creation slowly familiarized itself with its new body.

Yes, Trapinch was male now.

And no, Hikaru was not being sexist.

He simply felt like it fit his personality. That was all.

“So, Prototype No.13… or I suppose Trapinch now.” Hikaru paused.

“Do you like your new body?”

Trapinch slowly opened and closed his jaws, his star-shaped eyes scanning around the room with visible curiosity before eventually turning back toward Hikaru and giving a small hesitant nod.

Hikaru immediately felt a great amount of satisfaction.

“How about this?” he said excitedly.

“Why don’t we take your brand-new ride for a test drive outside? I’m sure you’d like to visit your old hunting grounds again and see how much better this body performs.”

Trapinch narrowed his eyes.

He experimentally moved his new legs one by one before taking several cautious steps.

And then, without another moment of hesitation, he started trotting toward the cave entrance.

To pass the time while traversing the few kilometers between his core room and the entrance of the cave system, Hikaru began enthusiastically explaining the details of Trapinch’s new body like an overexcited car salesman laying out their latest sales pitch.

“So, you should have already noticed it by now, but I upgraded your soul to the latest model, V.7.”

Hikaru sounded proud of his success.

“That means you now have significantly more processing power. Even with a few less eyes, your current senses should be much better overall. I even added a nifty little feature called Seismic Sense, which should let you feel vibrations traveling through the ground.”

Trapinch gave an approving nod.

Hikaru immediately continued before his audience of one could escape.

“As for the body itself, I built it using a completely new material that’s strong, heat-resistant, and somewhat resistant to blunt damage. It should protect your soft little insides quite nicely.”

As a demonstration, Hikaru casually picked up a nearby stone and launched it toward Trapinch.

Ding.

The rock bounced harmlessly off Trapinch’s orange shell.

Trapinch slowly turned toward him.

Hikaru could practically feel the creature attempting to use the move [Glare] despite not actually possessing it.

Unfortunately for Trapinch—

It was not very effective against Hikaru.

“What?” Hikaru asked innocently, “I’m sure you didn’t even feel that.”

Trapinch let out an annoyed huff before continuing forward.

“Anyway,” Hikaru continued as if absolutely nothing had happened, “since Trapinch is a Ground-type Pokémon, I built your core primarily using Earth mana. As for Skills, you only have four at the moment, because that’s the maximum I can reliably create right now.”

Hikaru started counting on imaginary fingers.

“First, [Sandstorm]. That’s your signature move.”

“Second, [Dig].”

“Third, [Iron Defense], which basically reinforces your shell using mana.”

“And lastly, [Rock Tomb] for ranged attacks.”

He nodded in satisfaction.

“Honestly, it’s a pretty solid move set. Much better than what the others have.”

Then Hikaru added in a whisper,

“And once you get a proper grasp of Earth mana, you should eventually be able to create your own moves.”

As they continued moving through the tunnels, Hikaru explained exactly how the skill structures embedded inside Trapinch’s core functioned and how to use them while occasionally watching his creation test some of them along the way.

Eventually, a warm orange glow appeared in the distance.

A few minutes later, creator and creation finally emerged at the cave entrance.

For a brief moment, neither of them moved.

Trapinch stood beside Hikaru and silently looked out across the forest below with eyes seeing it for the first time.

Then, without warning, he suddenly burst forward.

Sand and loose dirt scattered beneath his feet as he shot into the forest with surprising speed, his orange carapace weaving through trees before disappearing into the foliage within moments.

Hikaru stared at the spot where his first companion had vanished.

“…Huh.”

---

Hikaru watched over Trapinch through their link for a little while before arriving at a rather surprising conclusion.

The only real danger Trapinch currently faced was the danger of accidentally destroying the local ecosystem.

So, satisfied that his newly upgraded creation wasn’t about to die any time soon, Hikaru pushed the feed into the background and turned his attention toward more important matters.

Namely—

His dungeon.

Or more accurately, his complete lack of one.

Ever since gaining access to the forest and its inhabitants, Hikaru had largely stopped expanding his Authority and instead focused his meager resources on experimentation and improving his understanding of his abilities.

But all that effort had always been for one purpose.

To be the very best, like no one ever was.

…

Okay, jokes aside.

Now that Hikaru finally possessed the creatures to populate his future dungeon with, he needed to actually create one first.

And therein lay the problem.

Hikaru had read enough dungeon stories to understand their general structure.

They almost always started the same way.

One rectangular stone room with a monster. Then a hallway. Then another rectangular stone room with two monsters. Another hallway. Another room.

You get the idea.

This pattern usually continued until the dungeon suddenly figured out how to violate several laws of reality and began creating places that looked more like absurdly expensive travel destinations than actual death traps.

The author’s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Crystal forests. Ancient temples. Underwater cities. Floating islands.

Unfortunately, Hikaru was still firmly trapped in the beginner stages.

He was only just beginning to understand Space mana and had absolutely no idea how to create infinite spaces or pocket dimensions.

At the same time, simply carving out a few rooms in a cave and calling it a dungeon felt… disappointing.

Sure, he could make those rooms grand and majestic enough that even the First Emperor of China would have wanted to be buried inside them.

But at the end of the day, they were still just stone rooms.

More importantly, nearly all of Hikaru’s current creations—with one notable exception—were far better suited for roaming through forests than wandering around empty tunnels.

If only he could create a forest inside his caves—

…

A metaphorical lightbulb suddenly exploded inside Hikaru’s mind.

The next moment, he felt like an absolute idiot.

Hikaru would have slapped himself if he actually possessed hands.

Or a face.

He had been so focused on dungeon concepts from his old world that he had completely forgotten one very important detail.

He wasn’t in his old world anymore.

Who exactly said dungeons had to follow those rules?

Who said they even needed to stay underground?

Just to be safe, Hikaru quickly asked the System.

The answer arrived almost immediately.

It was very reassuring.

Anything contained within his Authority was considered part of his dungeon.

Hikaru stared at the forest stretching out before him.

Then slowly grinned.

With that little revelation, he abandoned all thoughts of creating a forest inside his cave and instead turned his attention toward the perfectly good forest already sitting in front of him.

Time to let [Dungeon Authority] do its thing.

---

It took Hikaru several days to fully subsume a large portion of the surrounding forest into his Authority, and during that time he continued pumping out one Pokémon after another.

Rather than filling his future dungeon with hundreds of copies of the same species, Hikaru had decided to diversify things a little.

Each species only received enough members to form a small family unit.

However, there were a lot of species.

More than enough to slowly fill his growing forest with life.

Of course, the aether fueling his little creature factory came from somewhere.

Namely, the numerous magical beasts inhabiting said forest, courtesy of his valiant orange knight.

With his impenetrable armor and steel-like jaws, very little could escape Trapinch’s grasp once captured.

Even those Air-affinity foxes that had once seemed like worthy foes had become little more than target practice before the might of his rock-slinging warrior.

Hikaru would occasionally watch through their link as Trapinch slowly hunted them to extinction.

Though surprisingly, some of his other creations had also begun contributing in unexpected ways.

Take the group of five Spearow, for example.

The moment Hikaru released them into the forest, they immediately descended upon its inhabitants like tiny feathered psychopaths and quickly demonstrated why a flock of crows was called a murder.

With magically enhanced claws and razor-sharp beaks, they would dive from above and strike with frightening coordination.

Hikaru once watched them attack a small mole-like creature.

The poor thing barely had enough time to realize something was wrong before it became lunch.

Nature was terrifying.

Then there was the pair of Shroomish.

Hikaru had initially created them simply because he found their perpetually grumpy mushroom faces amusing.

He had expected something harmless, more cute little herbivores like his Oddish and Budew.

What he had not expected was whatever those things were doing.

Instead of peacefully grazing on plants, they would release spores to paralyze prey before surrounding it and slowly draining nutrients from the remains while decomposition took care of the rest.

Hikaru had watched the process exactly once.

Only once.

“…Nature is horrifying.”

Anyway, setting aside that deeply disturbing revelation, Hikaru was finally nearing completion of his expansion. Almost all of the forest surrounding his cave entrance now lay within his [Dungeon Authority].

Which meant it was finally time for some remodeling.

Hikaru decided to start with establishing a proper perimeter for his dungeon.

Instead of constructing actual walls, he erected an impenetrable barrier of trees around his borders, similar to those world boundaries from the early Pokémon games.

The dense walls of vegetation blended naturally with the surrounding wilderness and didn’t clash with the rest of the forest outside his control, while only allowing entry through the entrances he intentionally created.

Next came the interior design.

Hikaru suddenly felt like he was playing one of those cosmic simulation games where players pretended to be gods shaping worlds according to their whims.

Only in his case…

He was one.

Or at least the closest thing a mortal could reasonably become.

With a simple wave of his ethereal hand—purely for dramatic effect, since he technically didn’t need one—entire clusters of trees disappeared.

The earth rose to form gentle hills.

Depressions formed and slowly filled with water, becoming streams and ponds.

Rocks shifted. Grass spread. Trees bent and repositioned themselves.