Over the two hundred and nine days, multiple creatures reached full development, and with his split mind Ian made sure to evolve them.

The rest of the G- rank clear web spiders evolved into G rank. The first spider along with the others eventually reached G+ rank as well. No drastic changes occurred in the spiders over the two evolutions as they were all still called Clear Web Spiders. However, each individual did have variances in skills, overall size, and body type. A few even managed to evolve into F- rank monsters by the end of the period. Three types of evolutions emerged from the spiders at this point, the Clear Construction Spider, the Clear Stealth Spider, and the usual Clear Web Spider.

The clear construction spider had focused its efforts exclusively on building bigger and better webs. It developed a construction skill and leveled it up along with the silk creation skill. The venom creation and stealth skills were left to stagnate however. Along with that its abdomen was much larger, which Ian assumed was to hold a larger silk gland.

That spider was currently attempting to make three dimensional web designs. Most of the spiders didn’t pay any attention to the eccentric spider, but a few would occasionally ask it to make webs for them. It happily obliged. Ian wondered if he would eventually get lazy spiders from either the clear web spiders or the normal web spiders.

The clear stealth spider was one of the spiders that asked the construction spider to make it a web. This spider had even foregone making its own webs to specialize in moving around stealthily. It could still make webs but had deemed it a waste of time. To enhance its stealth its body had become even clearer than the original clear web spider.

Of course, the stealth spider didn’t go killing anybody, but it really liked to sneak up on other spiders and scare the crap out of them. Its stealth and venom creations skills increased as it evolved. Even without ever actually using its venom, the development seemed to know the usefulness of venom for a stealth spider.

With varied skill increases the clear web spiders were all arounders. They didn’t exclusively focus on one thing or another, so while there was minor differences between individuals, they were simply more dangerous clear web spiders. Of course, their skills weren’t the only thing that increased. As Ian had noticed with most monster evolutions, the spiders got bigger. However, they were nowhere near as big as the medium clear web spider that could have been a boss for his first floor. Ian wondered why that was, but he wasn’t able to bring up the boss info, so he’d have to check later.

Moving Moss, Constriction Ferns, and Ankle Biters all reached G+ rank without major deviances. They all simply became bigger, faster, and stronger. That simply meant some individuals hadn’t met the necessary requirements for divergent evolution yet. There were definitely differences in the skill composition between individuals. In fact the original moving moss had received the camouflage skill. Others focused on specific skills like producing more spores, producing more poison, increasing the speed at which they moved, increasing constriction length and strength, and producing a more powerful bite. Ian was looking forward to the future evolutions as plant and fungi monsters always intrigued him.

The slimes and jellies were going about their business with quite a few having reached F+ rank by the end of the two hundred and nine days. The loss of the inferior prefix and the addition of the greater suffix pleased him. Although he had expected it, there were still no evolutionary variances, which made Ian a bit sad. However, like the runners previously, the nanny group had developed the childcare skill. It was a broad skill that encompassed all aspects of childcare, so it would take longer to level up. Ian wasn’t surprised by its appearance, since the slimes and jellies didn’t have any knowledge about proper childcare techniques to narrow their focus.

The runners were still doing their thing, but would periodically stop circling and start doing suicides. They’d sprint in ever increasing lengths back and forth across his core room. Ian wondered if it was knowledge implanted into them by the skill or if he was influencing them again.

The remaining group of slimes and jellies were focusing on being the best slimes and jellies they could be with one big problem: due to Ian’s orders they couldn’t absorb anything. Ian thankfully noticed this early and created mats of moss and mold that they were allowed to eat. He also rescinded part of his order, so they could keep his core room and the first floor clear of dirt and fecal matter. It seemed even though his creatures were surviving through mana, they still had to do normal bodily functions. To his dismay he hadn’t noticed the build up during his first month as he was too distracted and had no sense of smell. Even with crap filling his dungeon, he was somewhat pleased because it meant he could probably get cleaner and sewage variants. At the end of the two hundred and nine days, even though no skill had surfaced, Ian could see certain slimes and jellies had a tendency to eat moss, mold, or feces.

Ian had almost forgotten them as there were only five of them, but the water elementals were evolved to F+ rank at the end of his mana gathering period. Ian felt it was a bit odd that there was no differences whatsoever between the five elementals, but they were one of his least studied monster trees. He supposed with a sample size of only five seeing any large variances wasn’t going to happen unless he was lucky. Well, at least they lost the inferior prefix at F+ rank.

The water elementals that used to be a dim blue light were now fist sized bright blue lights. All their previous skills had leveled up and a new skill called water manipulation had appeared. Admittedly even before he had evolved them, the water elementals were starting to look a little depressed with only a liter of water to hang around. Feeling bad for them, Ian created a connected room like he had when testing to see if rooms could be physically connected to the core room. He filled the room with small waterfalls, streams, numerous small ponds, and one large pond in the center. Seeing the water elementals speed into the room and positively shake with pleasure erased Ian’s lament that he shouldn’t be using the mana.

The biota developed a little but primarily only the eggs, larval, child, and adolescent forms. The adults received at most one or two points of development. Why was that? Ian supposed if development only meant how much longer until they could evolve into monsters, then it would make sense that the increase was so small. But, previously biota he filled the development of didn’t become monsters, so that shouldn’t be the only purpose of development. Biota could simply be affected less by whatever contributes to development.

It seemed to Ian that mana, time, and effort were the biggest contributors. If he based development criteria on those conditions, then lack of biotic development made more sense. One, none of the creatures even his monsters were absorbing any ambient mana besides the mana needed to survive. Two, time seemed to be focused on growing up, and adults didn’t change as much over longer periods of time. This meant that monsters, which had a natural tendency to evolve, would increase their development over time, while adult biota wouldn’t. Three, Ian supposed if following their natural instincts wasn’t considered effort then it would make sense. However, monsters that followed their natural instincts were evolving. Ian might be wrong about that last part then. He needed time and mana to figure out this conundrum, so now wasn’t the time.

Thankfully the newborn wyverns evolved into infants, but had received very little development beyond that. The same could be said of the infant oni. While evolving newborns into infants was fast, most of their development after that wasn’t very far at all. Ian was peeved but not surprised. Usually oni took the same amount of time to reach adulthood as the sapient races, while wyverns took even longer. Goblins on the other hand reached adulthood in three months. Considering that, Ian had probably neglected full development newborn goblins for quite a while as he messed with his first floor. However, the first problem arose as Ian evolved the first goblin infant into a child.

Ian had received a window telling him that if he wished to actively evolve the child goblin anymore, then he needed to do it now before it formed its consciousness. He let it go without actively evolving it to see what would happen. After he did so, the child goblin opened its eyes, looked around, saw the infant goblins, ran over, and started to poke them. Well, it was definitely acting like a child. Contrary to what the window had said, Ian tried to infuse mana into the child goblin. He was summarily blocked by an unseen force. Ian continued to prod and examine the seemingly invisible wall that blocked him, but nothing came of it. He couldn’t figure it out at all.

With a sigh, Ian evolved another infant into a child but this time actively evolved them into a juvenile goblin. Afterwards, he let the juvenile go as he had the child. Similar to the child, the juvenile opened its eyes, looked around, saw the child goblin, ran over, and started to boss him around. Ian tried mana infusion once again, but the invisible wall interfered again. He was displeased, but didn’t want to waste any more mana.

Even though he didn’t waste mana on the project, he split his mind again to think on it. If the window was to be believed, and he really had no reason not to believe it, then he couldn’t mess with certain evolved creatures if they had a full conscious. However, the spiders he experimented on in the beginning definitely had consciousness. It seemed more related to a certain level of sapience than if a creature simply had consciousness. Ian thought back on the wording of the window. Maybe every time he actively evolved a creature, it reformed its consciousness, and the system didn’t care about low sapience creatures. As the goblins had seemed to ‘wake up’ after he stopped evolving them, their conscious must only reform after he stopped evolving them.

That brought up the point of why sapience was a deciding factor in active evolution. Evolution by itself was an act that shaped an individual and could change an individual’s personality, so Ian felt that the system was just being a selfish prick in the end. Questions still remained such as would he still have a choice of the evolutions for the child and juvenile goblins? If he could choose their evolutionary path, would he get the option to actively evolve them again or was that forever off the table? How much could he influence the sapience of individuals if he focused development around the brain? While Ian was thinking about the whys, ifs, hows, and buts, he did admit to himself that losing the ability to actively evolve monsters after a certain point might simply be a rule made for shits and giggles. In the end, the rule seemed to be that active evolution was only allowed before consciousness was formed for creatures with a certain level of sapience. At least it still gave him a chance to infuse them with mana prior to developing their consciousness.

Afterwards, Ian went back to his normal study of the goblins while periodically evolving monsters. Eventually all five goblins reached maturity. Some of his previous questions were quickly answered. When the child and juvenile goblins reached full development, they only evolved after Ian chose their evolution. However, the evolution proceeded with the goblins fully conscious, and Ian was unable to actively evolve them anymore. Ian could still influence their evolutions but not development. At least not how he had previously.

The female juvenile goblin became the leader of the group, while the male child goblin became the meekest of the group even though he evolved into an adult goblin before the other three. The other three were composed of two females and a male who didn’t have anything exceptional about them.

The main female goblin was a great leader. She led the other four goblins in mock battles against the slimes, jellies, spiders, moss, ferns, and ankle biters. Their battles were always on the borderline of following his orders to not hurt each other, but Ian was quite pleased as it made their development grow at a faster than normal. She hadn’t studied battle tactics, so their formations weren’t very good. Even so, with each new engagement, she shored up defenses and increased attack patterns that had been weaknesses previously. He fully expected them to obtain battle evolutions relatively soon.

The leader was green with pointed ears and a pointed nose. Sharp teeth filled her jaw, while yellow irises filled her eyes. She was taller than the average three foot goblin at three feet and six inches or one hundred and seven centimeters or 1.07 meters. Her muscles were more defined compared to the other goblins as she spent a lot of her free time training. The strong image she put out fit a goblin leader perfectly.

The meek goblin on the other hand looked like the quintessential weak goblin at three feet tall, skinny everywhere, and skittish at loud noises. While he was meek and disliked fighting, he liked to help the slimes and jellies take care of the infant oni and wyverns. When he wasn’t doing that, he would watch the water elementals fascinated by their ability to control water.

Originally Ian felt kind of bad for the first male goblin, since he had been hounded by the female goblin as a child, juvenile, and adolescent. However, a while after they became adults, the female goblin apologized profusely to the other goblin for her behavior and then confessed. Ian almost slapped his pages together, but didn’t want to interrupt them. He knew he wasn’t usually very good at social interaction, but how could he miss the quintessential tease your crush that a lot of children do. It seemed the male had accepted and the two of them were hugging and kissing it out. Goblins really got to it fast. In fact, a couple of days later they asked Ian for a private room away from the other goblins, monsters, and biota. Ian happily granted their request, he didn’t want the children seeing that, and created a separate room with a transfer formation tied to their mana signatures. He could identify and keep track of mana signatures for one or two people but anything beyond that was impossible for him.

While all this was going on, Ian wondered at how human, elven, dwarven, dragonian, etcetera, it all was. They didn’t act like goblins at all. The female goblin was charismatic, sincere, and kind. The normal leaders of goblins were strong, ruthless, and some would even consider them evil. There were no battle practices, kind words, or asking, there was only fight or die, punches, and taking what you want. From a human standpoint, it was pleasing. From a dungeon standpoint, not so much.

Goblins that fought to protect their homes or save the brethren beside them weren’t the kind of enemies adventurers and dungeon divers wanted to face in a dungeon. It brought up moral quandaries they didn’t want to think about. As much as it pleased Ian he was getting possible conversation partners much faster than he anticipated, he hoped if he created a separate group of goblins that they would act like normal goblins.

Ian hadn't wanted to divert too much of his focus away from analysis, but after they had asked him for a private room, he decided he needed to talk to someone.

“So, um, how are you five liking the dungeon?”

The five perked up during their rest between battle practices, and the leader spoke up first, “Great Lord! We are exceptionally pleased you have chosen to speak with us! As the dungeon is our home, it is fantastic!”

Well then, she seemed to be going down the knight route. Also, thank the gods he could instinctively know what his creatures were trying to convey because he was never able to learn the goblin’s language, and admittedly he hadn’t really wanted to. Besides trying to form those words with a human mouth had been nearly impossible.

“Of course, of course. But, it is kind of bland right? Sorry about that. I’m building up mana right now to make an exceptionally powerful goblin mage to protect the dungeon. Eventually, I’ll at least try to make a bed for the two of you.”

The meek male goblin turned beet red, while the leader goblin blushed a little. The other three didn’t seem to know what was going on. It looked they hadn’t been told yet.

While still blushing the leader responded, “Great Lord! If I had known you were saving resources to protect the dungeon, I would have never requested a private room. I deeply apologize! I will take any punishment that you deem appropriate, my lord.”

“*sigh*, Leader, you don’t deserve any punishment. You asked me for something, and I granted it. I knew I was saving up mana and still chose to provide you with a room. Your devotion is commendable, but remember to not go to overboard with it.”

“Of course, Great Lord. Your benevolence is astounding.”

Ian was starting to question if he had accidentally picked the Monster Loyalty perk during the tutorial.

“Now, back to my original question. Is there anything that would help you guys? Like weapons? Something recreational? Would you like to start practicing in the first floor?”

“Great Lord! Weapons and a better place to practice our skills would be an exceptional reward. However, as we are servants to the Great Lord we have no need for recreation.”

Ian was starting to get annoyed with leader. He didn’t like the Great Lord nonsense, even though he did expect them to follow his orders. However, as a dungeon, he felt that he had absolute control over his creatures, so he didn’t need to be called Great Lord all the damn time. Also, the other four seemed down about not getting any recreation, leader. Well, the meek goblin seemed to have difficulty deciding if taking care of creatures was considered recreation. However, the sudden dismay on his face seemed to indicate he remembered his daily viewing of the water elementals.

Before Ian could speak up, the meek goblin whispered to the leader, “Mina, I think the dungeon core is getting annoyed at you.”

The leader goblin jolted a bit and whispered back, “But why?! I’m being a supremely devout follower to the Great Lord! Also, how the depths can you tell that? Even if the core was next to us, a book can’t show emotions right?”

“I think that’s why. The dungeon core doesn’t seem to like exaggerated pomp. In fact, if you had been paying more attention to what the dungeon core was saying rather than how you would respond, you would have noticed it had already implied that. And that combined with the fact that the surrounding mana distorted a little bit is how I knew.”

It didn’t seem that they knew Ian could hear them even though they whispered. He wasn’t going to tell them, and figured they’d figure it out eventually. The fact that the meek goblin could tell his mood through the help of the surrounding mana meant he had great potential to be a mage, or Ian really needed to prevent his emotions from escaping to the surrounding mana. Also, he should probably tell them his name.

The leader quickly ran over to his core and knelt next to it, “My lord, I apologize for the excessive pomp. Izu had to remind me even though yourself had said words to that effect. In regards to your question, in addition to weapons and exploring the first floor, some recreation would be duly appreciated.”

Ian responded, “That’s okay. Don’t worry about it too much. Formalities are extremely stuffy, which is why I tried to avoid the spotlight as much as possible. However, if you do feel the need to call me ‘my lord’, kneel, or treat me with reverence, you are welcome to. I will say for the rest of you that my name is Ian.”

Also, Ian really wanted a goblin knight, so having her continue her antics was quite important.

“Now, I want each of you to tell me something you want to do recreationally.”

“My lord, will you please teach me swordsmanship!”

Izu followed Mina, “If….If you could t-teach me about t-taking care of monsters, I-I’d greatly appreciate it.”

The other three asked to eat food, drink water, and for Ian to teach them a game or two to pass the time.

After a minute of thought, Ian responded to the five, “All of those things are doable, but the swordsmanship and taming lessons will have to be after I finish gathering mana and analyzing your bodies.”

Izu’s voice squeaked out, “A-analyzing our b-bodies? Ian sir?”

“Oh, uh, well, I mean. You see, I’m just, um….trying to make sure I have enough um….information about goblin physiology, so I can um….make the best goblin mage when I um….get around to it….yeah.”

“Oh, okay….”

Izu seemed to have accepted Ian’s explanation a little, but Ian’s stammering certainly didn’t help.

Ian created wood weapons now made out of detar for the five goblins. An arming sword for Mina, a wood staff for Izu, wood knuckles for the other male goblin, a javelin for one of the females, and a composite bow for the other. He created salamanders for the goblins to eat along with moss and ferns. Arm wrestling, fighting, and rock, paper, scissors were taught to them as long as they didn’t hurt each other too much. Ian hadn’t originally meant rock, paper, scissors to be a part of that warning, but after seeing them play it he was glad it was included. After all that, Mina led them toward the first floor for more practice.

The group of five goblins didn’t evolve any more during the two hundred and nine day period. So, as Ian continued to analyze the goblin’s bodies, his set time came to an end, and he had enough mana to make a B- rank goblin mage.