Madman’s Retirement

What is a progenitor? Many monsters in this world aim to be the strongest through their own individual strengths. Dragons, leviathans, phoenixes, kaiju, so on and so forth.

But progenitors are the unique exception. Progenitors are the guardians of their race, as the first of their kind, they see to their race’s growth, and intervene when they see the need. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that progenitors are basically god’s where their power is dependent on their people, rather than believers.

A progenitor’s power is dependent on their race’s growth, the more of the race there is, the stronger the progenitor’s divinity is. In a sense, normal monsters focus on their own individual growth, while progenitor’s focused on the growth of the race.

A sub-progenitor is one that serves the progenitor and is an evolution of the main race. A perfect example is goblins and orcs, with the progenitor of orcs being a sub-progenitor of the progenitor of goblins. Of course, one is not exclusive of the other, as the progenitor of goblins has long since evolved into a higher monster race. He merely holds the title of both progenitor of goblins and the higher race he is currently, with the other positions being held by whatever monster evolved into said race first minus the goblin progenitor himself.

Why’s this important? Because Grant himself cannot compete with the gods solely on his own. Gods of faith are strong because their worshippers make them strong. Grant has never had any interest in becoming a god but must be prepared to fight one.

And as strong as the divine earth technique is, it has the crucial weakness of being in the end, not a good counter to true gods. Even with his understanding of laws being greater than most beings on earth, that still falls before mid-high rank gods.

So if he won’t become a god through faith or cultivation, what does he do to cover the gap? He may still hold the authority Flamel and other old gods lent him, but now that authority is being lent to him by their counterparts in this world. Gods can be fickle.

It’s simple really, super easy, barely an inconvenience.

He makes his own gods.

Yes, one of Grant’s greatest weapons was his ability to create, so he used it to create races. Drows and Dravens, wyvents and decaflys, and even the pitcher plants, Grant made a multitude of races, each with their own progenitors.

All of them loyal to him. All of them ready to serve him. Grant always had an army at standby, enough to ensure no one would pick a fight with him.

And that’s what Grant came to check out. His new progenitors.

The first shroom had already begun developing, changing into a horrifying being. The cute eyes remained, but it was far harder to call it cute when it now had multiple sets of eyes attached to multiple sets of heads.

What does one call a mushroom hecatoncheires? Grant was trying to think of a pun name, but frankly he couldn’t think of one. The first progenitor of his had a multitude of arms just like the beast in mythology, with about 20 arms, most of them being lithe and whip-like, with the exception of 4 arms, being huge, as large as the main body.

The main body was a rather weirdly shaped thing, with the body ending in a huge main mushroom head, with the miniature heads sprouting all over the body, with some even appearing on its legs. The main portion of the body was vaguely human shaped if that meant anything, while off in certain spots. At the abdomen though was a rip in the body, with vaguely defined fangs protruding at the stomach.

It had a stomach mouth. How had it decided that was a good idea? Grant wasn’t quite sure, but if it worked for it, whatever. What really mattered was the faint glow of divinity that was starting to radiate off it. Of course, it wasn’t that strong, as counting dinoshrooms, mushwolves, and the lizardshrooms, there were only a few hundreds, maybe one or two thousand of the general race, but that was fine. He’d already sensed one or two shrooms begin to exist outside of his divine realm and on Earth, meaning that number was likely to increase soon.

His mushwolf progenitor had also begun to change, bearing less of a resemblance to a wolf, and more of a jaguar. An eight-legged jaguar. He was if it had bean made out of real flesh, then it would have been jacked. It already looked the part.

It was also on fire.

When Grant asked, he received an image of burning mushrooms, causing suffocation as well as hallucinations, during which the wolf pack attacked, causing the attacks to be deadlier than before. That explained why many mushwolves had also begun evolving into fire-based forms.

Whatever allows them to kill good, Grant supposes.

The first dinoshroom he’d created, the anxious ankylosaurus, had also begun changing. Even though the omnisaurus blood ran through the dinoshrooms, that did not mean they had to stay within the mainstream dinosaur form, and it was obvious in their leader.

From the neck down, the dinoshroom progenitor still resembled the ankylosaurus, though it now seemed like a mix of triceratops with ankylosaurus, and while it retained the shell of the ankylosaurus, being hard and crunchy on top, the legs were more like the triceratops, meant for charging.

The neck up, was where things had changed. No longer was it a mushroom-like dinosaur head, but now it was a humanoid shape from the neck up. It’s arms were large, ending in long serrated claws that seemed like sharpened wood, modeled after the claws of a therizenosaurus. Out of it’s back a pair of monkeydactyl wings emerges, and a pair of opposable thumbs attached as well, and the sub-progenitor uses them well, for each arm bears a weapon, one a mace, the other a spear. Grant doubted that these wings could actually, fly, he suspected that the monster had chosen monkeydactyl wings merely because they were the only dinosaur that had opposable thumbs that it could find. There weren’t many of those after all.

The lizardshroom had taken a weird route, bearing a resemblance to a dragon. When Grant asked it where it had copied the design from, the creature brought him one of his… magazines that Grant had of dragons. He took that quickly, coughing, quite embarrassed, and assured the innocent progenitor that he had better, less vivid material for the monster to study. Grant also promptly locked away all of his promiscuous material. The last thing he wanted was more shrooms getting funny thoughts.

The lizardshroom could not fly. The wings it had created were just simply incompatible with flight, as was it’s whole body. The lizardshroom wasn’t using them for this purpose however, instead it was more like the creature had an extra pair of arms. It did however, breathe fire and acid, which it could also do through its tail. Afterall, technically shrooms didn’t have organs in fixed places. The lizardshroom had created 4 acid and flame sacs, with the other 2 of each respective placed in its wings.

Overall, Grant was satisfied with their work so far, and felt confident in leaving them to be, as his other species would require more hands on action. For now, he had to talk to the system.

He’d been neglecting it so far.