The custom race editor wasn’t what Shepherd had expected, instead of a tab akin to a custom character creation tab he’d blacked out and was brought to a vast expanse of nothingness. He’d stayed in the expanse for what felt like an eternity until structures finally began forming around him.

A woman’s voice echoed through the expanse, it was different to Benevolent’s stiff androgynous voice and left a calming and mysterious impression in Shepherd’s mind. Could it be a Goddess’ voice? Shoving his thoughts aside he led his consciousness into the innumerable structures around him and a virtually infinite amount of information assaulted his mind!

Custom Race Editor

Imput:

none

“So that experience of nothingness was me lacking any racial characteristics essentially… Let’s see how to interface with this.”

Peering his mind into one of the clusters of information he metaphorically gasped. This was all the genetic and species specific information of a creature! In particular, this creature was one he’d become somewhat familiar with in the past day or so, it was a member of the rat kin.

As he viewed the information a highly detailed model of the rat kin species came into view!

In the moment he lacked eyes, instead he could observe the specimen down to the cellular level, even the internal organs and vascular system couldn’t escape his ‘gaze’.

Rat Kin Race

Life cycle

Base stat progression

Perk progression

Juvenile

Str: 8

Con: 10

Dex: 7

Agi: 11

+Night vision

+Class progression

Adult

Str: 12

Con: 13

Dex: 10

Agi: 15

+Acute Smell Sense

+Class progression

Elder

Str: 11

Con: 12

Dex: 11

Agi: 14

EnF: 15

EnC: 15

+Rat sense

+Class progression

+EnC

+EnF

Seeing the tab which appeared beside the rat kin model Shepherd gave an ethereal squint and observed the three life cycles of the race. When he peered into the juvenile category the model remained the same, but when he passed his consciousness to the adult tag the model changed. The rat kin in front of him was now larger by a foot and had darker brown fur, its nose also seemed to be larger in proportion to its body and now had a black tint to it as opposed to the pink colour of the juvenile.

After inspecting the bodies of the different stages of the rat kin life cycle Shepherds understanding of the stats finally clicked.

Strength only determined the muscular development of the body, it didn’t affect anything else not even the muscles’ tendon strength. That along with the general endurance of the body were determined by the second stat Constitution. The higher the Constitution stat was the less one was subject to most types of damage, not only would you take less damage your health would also raise by a certain amount based on your species slash race (for instance the rat kin juveniles only gained plus eight Hp per Con point above 10 as opposed to the humans gaining ten, at the same time the base health of a rat kin was 80 whereas humans had a base 100 Hp). This meant that too high of a Str stat without an adequate Con stat one could damage themselves of over exertion.

Another peculiarity was that unlike humans a member of the rat kin race wouldn’t have access to Energy Flow and Energy Capacity until they reached the stage of elder. What EnF and EnC were was essentially magical aptitude, the more EnF one had the more easily and powerfully they could execute spells, as for EnC it determined the amount of mana one had and high levels of the stat would allow one to learn mana retention and mana regeneration skills more easily. A key hint that the race description gave Shepherd though, was that not all races were made equal! Not in the racist kind of sense but you know…

Shepherd quickly scanned a different cluster of information and he found another race of the rat kin!

Arcane Rat Kin Race

Life cycle

Base stat progression

Perk progression

Juvenile

Str: 7

Con:9

Dex: 10

Agi: 10

EnF/EnC: 11

+Mana vision

+Class progression

Adult

Str: 8

Con: 10

Dex: 10

Agi: 11

EnF: 13

EnC: 13

Cha: 10

+Spell progression

+Class progression

+Cha

Elder

Str: 10

Con: 12

Dex: 12

Agi: 12

EnF: 17

EnC: 16

Cha: 12

+Spell progression

+Class progression

Indeed, even in the same species different races would gain different perks and stats in their different life stages. There was naturally a trade-off though, the regular rat kin race was definitely inferior to their arcane brethren but at the same time their rate of reproduction was higher by about a third. Which is to say, an average rat kin female gave birth to 4-6 offspring per pregnancy while the arcane rat kin female would only give birth to 3-4. This meant that although a village of arcane rat kin could easily wipe out a village of regular ones that was of the same size such a situation would rarely occur naturally.

Gathering the insights of the rat kin Shepherd pondered, quantity or quality?

The thought that he was creating a race that would probably outlive him was quite interesting but also a terrifying thought. Did he have the right to play God? Would this be considered blasphemy by his parents who were religious? Shepherd could only snort coldly at the thought, he himself wasn’t religious in the slightest and saw his parents as people who lacked the self-honesty to look at their defects and complexes objectively, and instead they chose believing in a higher power to mend their insecurities and fears.

Why would he take their likely thoughts into account if they didn’t amount to anything in reality? Throwing any bitterness on the subject out of his heart he continued absorbing the information around him, one thing was clear, he wanted quality over all else! Maybe it would take longer for his race to establish itself, but so what? Power was power, and with no real great powers likely forming around him for the time being, there was nothing to lose.

Before he’d get to the juice of it though, he’d have to probe this endless expanse of knowledge for information, he needed to see how far in power a race could go in the first place. A thought passed in his mind and he smirked.

“System, give me the list of the fourteen most common species slash races of the world I inhabit in a hundred mile radius!”

List of Races

Human

Demon Kin

Elf

Troll

Goblin

Orc

-Ant-

Wasp

Squirrel

Domestic Cat

Dire Dog

Domestic Dog

-Lizard-

Rat kin

Amusing himself with the thought of what a dire dog was he inspected it for a description.

Dire Dog

Life cycle

Base stat progression

Perk progression

Juvenile

Str: 14

Con:12

Agi: 13

+ Pack mentality

+ -Gruesome bite-

+ -blood vision-

+ -blood smell-

Adult

Str: 18

Con:14

Agi: 16

Cha: 10

+ -Gruesome charge-

+ Leader mentality

+ -Dire Howl-

“So even dogs have changed huh, all the pet lovers out there getting the Summoner class hah!”

As he analysed the various species his interest was finally piqued when he got to the Ant category, there were plenty of species but he decided to look into the Formica variety for various reasons. After he saw the variations between ants of different function, mainly the difference between the queen and worker ants Shepherd had a spark of inspiration. What if instead of a life cycle, his race had specializations instead? This would lead to a more rigid hierarchy if there ever came to be one but it also meant that the purpose and function of each individual would be more easily determined, leading to a more stable societal structure.

With such thoughts in mind he scanned the various races, and ended up bringing up another list of 14 species.

“This should take a while… So be it! System, for now set the base template of the race I’m creating to human, we’ll go from there”

He scanned and made sure to remember all the perks and stats of the races in his vicinity and beyond, not only would this allow him to make the best choice for the custom race he was making but it would also give him invaluable information for the world outside.

“The demon kin have a natural charisma stat… No need for that, System, give me a list of all the hidden stats available!”

The female voice echoed once more

Charisma

Intelligence

Wisdom

Health regeneration

Mana regeneration

Energy Quality

Pleasantness

Social Harmonics

Pragmatism

Problem Solving

Creativity

Ideation

Reaction speed

Passive perception

Familiarity coefficient

Memory

Wisdom

Understanding

IQ

Deduction

EQ

Empathy

Introversion

Extroversion

Agreeableness

Disagreeableness

Openness

Consistency

Neuroticism

Calmness

Industriousness

Laziness

Shepherd couldn’t help but frown seeing all the different tabs which had opened, he’d heard of some of the concepts in the tabs, but, he was here to make a race not get an education in psychology! Shaking his ethereal head he still decided to give the tabs a look.

“System, with my qualifications how many hidden stats can I unlock as innate for my race?”

“What do the stats in the personality table do?”

“Which would entail..?”

Still not quite understanding what the System meant he decided to give the table a go.

“What’s my personality type then?”

Finally somewhat understanding what the table entailed he passed it over, there wasn’t much of a need to unlock the table when he could invest in the stats of his race, although he did get something of an insight for what he was about to do.

“Editor”

Available base stat points 30

/

Life cycle

Base stat progression

Perk progression

/

Str: 10

Con:10

Dex: 10

Agi: 10

EnF: 10

EnC: 10

/

“30 sounds like a pretty insane number… Expand the tab!

Available base stat points 30

/

Life cycle

Base stat progression

Perk progression

/

Str: 10

Con:10

Dex: 10

Agi: 10

EnF: 10

EnC: 10

/

Birth cycle:

1/(9+1)months

”30 points sounds a bit extreme… let’s see how this goes”

As he placed his consciousness into the human model of himself that appeared when looking at the tab, he began slowly applying the base stat points to the body as he subtly altered it according to the knowledge he’d gained in the editor.

Available base stat points 0

/

Life cycle

Base stat progression

Perk progression

/

Str: 17

Con:13

Dex: 16

Agi: 14

EnF: 18

EnC: 12

/

Birth cycle:

1/(10+15)months

“Ten plus ten months? Looking at the model here it indicates that after giving birth, the mother would give birth to the child after ten months, and wouldn’t be able to get pregnant for a whole 15 months afterward.”

“This is interesting but it just looks like a human on steroids, feels a bit, unimaginative”

As he said so he peered even deeper into the human body’s structure, only to find a number of flaws in its structure.

“Perhaps if I…”

Slowly, he began altering the body, alteration after alteration, change after change, yet he was never satisfied. Soon the model of the human became an absolute mess, with organs and skin and everything all over the place. But he didn’t give up, because he did make an interesting find.

He could change the very way this body was structured from the smallest metric, the cell! As he made certain alterations to the human cells, namely changing the mitochondria to produce magical energy alongside ATP (it’s the main source of energy our bodies use, the short of it is oxygen + glucose = ATP and I’ll say no more). With further alterations he got a notification saying something about base points being awarded for biological ingenuity, after a large number of such notifications which he Also ignored Shepherd was finally proud of himself.

He’d done it!

And although the model from an external stand point looked exactly like a human, only, without any veins or arteries Shepherd knew there was more to his creation… And the System seemed to agree, since at the end of the editing he had a whopping 115 points to spend instead of the initial 30!

With his jaw dropping down to the abyss he stared at this number for a long time.

Finally when he had calmed down he decided to finally give the race a name, after pondering for a while he finally decided on a combination of two words which held a certain meaning to him, the first was cavernam which was Latin for cave, while the second was libertas or freedom. The two words combined came to the rather shaky word Cavliby but Shepherd didn’t mind much. From this day forward he wasn’t human, but he was a Cavliby! Yes! A free caveman!

After giving his race a twist with the extra points he accumulated the race tab looked like this.

Cavliby

Variants

Base stat progression

Perks

Matured High Cavliby

Str: 30

Con:20

Dex: 20

Agi: 20

EnF: 30

EnC: 20

EnQ: 25

Cha: 20

+Cha

+ -Body Shifter- mid mastery

+ -Temperature resistance-

+ -Physical resistance-

Matured Cavliby

Str: 42

Con:18

Dex: 30

Agi: 18

EnF: 25

EnC: 20

+ -Body shifter- beginner mastery

+ -Temperature resistance-

+ -Physical resistance-

Birth cycle(High Cavliby):

1/(12+20) months

Birth cycle(Cavliby):

1/(9+10)

“Confirm race selection, return me to the game”

Soon Shepherd woke up to a terrified Michael squirming in smelly stuff… might as well use him for something. So after 15 minutes of conversing, aka intimidation tactics and blackmailing, Michael stood up and left.

Leaving the cavern with a new task in mind Michael was quite pleased, Shepherd hadn’t killed him and he was happy about it, naturally though he would have to make it up to the guy. In the conversation Shepherd mentioned something about a dungeon core and mana condensation, he’d either need to gather a number of mages with the ability to condensate mana crystals or find certain kinds of mana dense ores. Naturally he would only be able to gather information on the latter, as for mages… He’d been chased by a group that could probably produce the crystals, but if it would be courting death if he approached them, he had other ideas in mind.

A few minutes had passed after Michael leaving and Shepherd stood in the cave stretching and getting used to his new body, feeling rather pleased with him surviving Benevolent’s bullshit he called out his status to see his gains!

“Status”

Hit points: 199/270

Mana: 100/100

Free stat points: 10

Name

Shepherd Highlander

Strength

Str

43

(+5)

Level

3

Constitution

Con

27

(+5)

Class

Boss

Dexterity

Dex

32

(+5)

Race

High Cavliby

Agility

Agi

29

(+5)

Titles

King

Energy Flow

EnF

35

(+5)

Status

/

Energy Capacity

EnC

25

(+5)

Territory

/

Charisma

Cha

35

(+15)

Energy Quality

EnQ

30

(+5)

“Hehehe”