I Shall Pervert the Heavens

"Today is one of those days, yes?" She asked nonchalantly as she finally slipped her body into the cold water, soaking in the clear water before grabbing a rose scented grass and scrubbing her body.

"Correct. I will be having you do external work after you level up again, so I need to raise a basic monster force to defend the dungeon while you are gone."

"Which monsters do you wish to breed today?"

"Another tree monsters."

"Eh, those are… quite the burden," Amy mumbled with a sigh as she remembered the last tree monsters she gave birth to.

Tree monsters were currently the strongest monster Zach could safely use her womb to create. They weren't trees, like one would imagine a treant, they were skinny bipedal monsters with bark like greenish-brown skin. They were incredibly agile, could climb on any wall they could get a grip on, and naturally skilled with bows.

They also had a base level of <Lv. 10> after reaching adulthood, which was about two hours after giving birth.

Zach's monsters currently consisted of:

[• 16x Miners

• 12x Shroom Gnomes

• 6x Stonerats

• 8x Forest Goblins

• 4x Tree monsters]

Amy had been constantly practicing her skills and hunting in the forest for experience as well as luring monsters back to kill in the dungeon. She had grown much stronger than the weak elf who was helpless as her village was raided. She was now <Lv. 7>, only 15 exp from reaching <Lv. 8>.

"Come lie down, I want to examine your mana network again, and also as you level up," Zach said excitably while she was washing her hair with a natural degreasing shampoo made from plant matter, ash and scents of the forest.

"Yeah, yeah. Do you really think you are going to be able to understand the level up procedure and the way potential is stored and used?"

"Of course! You continue to underestimate my intelligence time and again."

"You basically cut me open trying to look for my physical mana network!"

"I also healed you again. Not to mention found out some very valuable information."

"What about me? That was incredibly painful, you know."

"Some brief pain, all for the benefit of knowledge. One cannot conquer their body without knowing it first."

Amy shook her head in defeat, washed her sweaty training clothes in a separate bucket of water and hung them up on a rope washing line in the next room over before heading to the nursery, where she aided the dungeon in breeding monsters.

She had a towel wrapped around her as she walked through the dungeon, the only sounds being the tap of her feet on the giant stone bridge walkway and distant echoes of miners digging and shroom gnomes hammering at ores being refined.

She reached the nursery and left her towel to the side as she mounted the breeder inside.

Many tentacles curled up and wrapped around her as Zach said, "Let's have a look at your mana network after that training."

Amy watched his mana tendrils which extended out from the walls and ceiling toward her like the roots of a tree, eventually reaching her and entering her body at countless spots, even her eyes.

"No matter how many times I see it, I feel nervous." She said as she closed her eyes, which made no difference as to whether the mana tendrils could enter or not.

"But at least you can see, which is already a vast improvement."

"Something which you figured out by complete luck. What if something had gone wrong? I could have died!"

"It was not that much of complete luck. You already have a piece of me inside of you, which allows us to communicate. Some small adjustments to connect to where your eyes are in your mana network before fusing that part of me with you and voila! You can use that part of me as a springboard to view mana directly. It's genius, is it not?"

"Even if you understand it, it was still luck," Amy moaned in comfort as she felt like her entire body was in Zach's warm embrace, a feeling she enjoyed far more than she cared to admit.

The mana tendrils filled up her mana network as he inspected everything that was going on inside of her. The channels of her mana network were fractured due to having too much mana inside of them. At least, this is what it appeared like.

This was highly impressive considering that he had artificially nursed and managed these mana passages to be extremely large and sturdy.

Zach stipulated that this energy which shifted and refracted into different things wasn't just mana, but the essence of a person. It was their mana, their lifeforce, ki, and also which bred the potential they built up.

The mana network itself was metaphysical yet tied to the body in a way he couldn't understand. What he did know, was that this mana network directly affected the body, and the body in turn affect it.

When she trained and practiced her skills, Amy's mana network would nurture and develop potential within itself, which should be released upon levelling up as he suspected. If practicing the skill only built up potential within the body though, it tugged at another question he has had for some time now.

"Amy. Tell me, do you believe your status affects you and gives you skills, or your status is a reflection on what you are capable of?"

"You know I don't know those kinds of details. But classes give skills, don't they?"

"Yes, they give skills upon acquiring them. But these are skills I believe are ingrained into the classes, which teach your body via your mana network how to perform them, like a biological blueprint. The skills given by classes also contain blueprints for sub-skills, whilst you were taught sub-skills for archery. Do you notice that you never earned any sub-skills for the other skills you learned?"

"It is common knowledge that one can only be proficient in the skill provided by their class."

"That is why I tell you to work harder. You can learn these sub-skills from being trained by others with them, so why can't you learn them on your own, or even make your own. Any new technique you develop will be updated on your stats. What I'm more confused about is why you can't feel what's going on inside of you."

"Why? What is currently happening in there?"

"It's all cracked and leaking out."

"Eh, what!? But I can't feel anything, isn't this really bad??"

Amy began to panic. She had learned to feel her mana network, even if she couldn't see it herself, and control it to heal her wounds at the expense of mana, which caused her to learn the skill Mana-Health Conversion, which was the initial reason for Zach to believe that a person status were a reflection on their capability, rather than their status giving them that capability.

"It's fine, this appears to be a natural course of events for your potential being full. This means that doing more training before leveling up will not bring you any greater benefits than current. Once the pressure in your mana network is lowered to below its threshold, it will naturally recover the damage."

"Don't tell me you've made me hit Max Level at <Lv. 7>… Please tell me I can still level up," Amy spoke with a stormy expression and tightly gripped onto the tentacles hugging her.

"Of course you can. Experience is just a type of potential, of which you are at your threshold. Technically, you are already at full experience. No, you are beyond it. Before I confirm any theories though, let's have you level up."

Three forest goblins and a forest tree monster dragged in a nearly dead direwolf into the room along with Amy's sword.

They seemed to have difficulty locating her as she constantly had Concealment active, so Zach had to manually control them to place the direwolf next to the breeder and pass her sword to her.