Dominic pondered his disciples' words.

  How would he be able to transfer them, then? Should I teach him to make a storage space? No, that has the restriction on being able to transport only non-living things.

  An idea sparked in Dominic’s mind. Right, there was that!

  “I shall teach you the ability to create a subspace, then,” he declared, “A subspace is incredibly similar to a storage space—the rift I used to store the composite parts of the monster was a storage space—but it can be used to transport living things.”

  They didn’t have to contract the mana to the size of 1/(1 millionth the size of a quark)—that is, achieve beginner proficiency—but rather just make an extremely rudimentary, absolutely amateurish display of contracting the mana to the size of a finger. And then, with some help from him, Calvin would easily be able to create a nice little subspace.

  “You could even personalize it and make it very liveable for your minions. Yes, that does sound good. I'm not too proficient at it, not being a Tamer and hence not having much use for it, but I have learned it from a Tamer God who has far too many pets for his own good. An unnecessary and concerning amount, actually.”

  Calvin nodded fervently. Honestly, the kid would have nodded passionately even if Dominic had spoke in a different language, sung an operatic piece, or even repeated ‘meh’ over and over again.

  Dominic, seeing his disciple’s enthusiasm, continued, “It will be really painful to learn, but well, if you want to, there's no reason not to. You’re a tough kid, you’ll manage.”

  Calvin’s eyes widened slightly, but then they sparkled, like Dominic had said he’d treat him to a five star meal. Dominic would have praised him for it, if he hadn’t fallen into thought about the subspace process.

  “The first problem is your lack of mana,” he mused. “Or, rather, that you can’t actively access it. All living creatures—with a few very odd exceptions—have mana within them, even if just a shred. However, in this world, it needs to be unlocked before you can develop it.”

  Calvin looked up at him, questioning.

  Sure, Dominic could directly permanently morph his body, allow him to use his innate mana after morphing and strengthening it, but Dominic was already pushing his influence to its reasonable limits. He had to maintain temporary or ‘almost’ natural methods of increasing his disciple’s power, those theoretically possible within this world’s own limitations.

  If Dominic pushed too far, Calvin’s fate with his homeworld would be abruptly severed. The world itself would constantly attack him in an attempt to flush out this clearly intrusive and unnatural entity, and without the strength of a demigod, he would find it extremely difficult to live in a hostile world.

  At that point, Dominic would have no choice but to directly level him up, but the previous problem of ‘no decision making on his part involved and hence no self-confidence’ still existed.

  That was perhaps 10% of the cumulative reason Dominic was going through this entire wretchedly tedious process. Self confidence was important. He couldn’t let his disciple suffer personality wounds—those kinds of wounds left a scar on the heart, and were very difficult to deal with.

  Urgh, he couldn’t help but groan internally. Being a master truly takes so much effort. I should probably have made a better card for my master during Teacher’s Day. It’s fine, I could do it when I meet him again too.

  Dominic tapped a finger against his chin and nodded wisely. “Not to worry, there are plenty of options.”

  True, there were probably local ways to help his disciple cheat his way through this process, if both he and Gabrielle really spent their time thinking about it.

  He was sure that Gabrielle could give him the locations of some powerful artifacts or items or potions or elixirs or countless other such things, and he could overdose Calvin with them, thus making only the training for stabilization necessary.

  But, well, Calvin seemed to quite like doing things this way, the more tedious way. Clearly Calvin wanted to go through a mind numbing but satisfying journey of self-improvement—who wouldn’t?

  This one time, however, it would probably be fine to use some sort of item to unlock his mana. It wouldn’t even be ‘cheating’ according to the Universal System, since he’d have to grow his level of mana himself, and the item used to unlock his mana already existed in this world.

  Any items like that, Gabrielle?

  Yes indeed! Mana stones are very common things used by mages, and specific high quality mana stones should allow anyone to safely awaken their mana!

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  ????(? ?? ? - ? ) ?

  Dominic grinned, “Then, Gabrielle, please show me this mana stone, its signatures and the way that it influences a person's body. Any and all details that you think would be important for me to know.”

  Only a second passed before Gabrielle threw images of a blue ruby style mana stone in front of him, a short video illustrating the influence of the mana stone on a human’s body accompanying it. As soon as he finished skimming through them, she threw new images of its signatures—in the form of all kinds of squiggly lines—and various large chunks of text, code, and how the system related to it.

  With the insane processing speed of a god, he finished processing all that data within just a split second, too. Then, using all that data and calculations, he was able to create a perfect mana stone completely natural to this world with just a snap of his fingers.

  He walked over to Calvin and handed him this stone.

  “Here, Calvin. This should be able to unlock your mana. After unlocking it, we'll let you progress through this dungeon naturally. That should allow your body to get used to the mana circulating through it, and maybe your experience gain will even let the mana—it will undoubtedly manifest as a Specialization—progress at a steady rate.”

  Calvin nodded like a chicken pecking on rice, in haphazardly quick, repeated motions.

  “Once we're done with this dungeon, I'll begin training you on how to create a subspace so that you can store your monsters without sticking out like a sore thumb with thousands of Relfows drooling over you every second whenever you tried to move through a city. Abandoning them isn’t an option, after all.”

  “Thank you, Master!”

  I do wonder how long it’ll take him to learn, Dominic wondered, not really too curious about the answer. He’d find it out in a bit, once they conquered the dungeon.

  Gabrielle pitched in, putting forth her theory.

  In my calculations, with the level of complexity of subspace that you were thinking about having Mister Disciple create, Mister Dominic, it should be possible for him to learn how to create a subspace within a few days of extremely intense training if he could raise his Pure Mana Specialization—the ruby will allow him to unlock Pure Mana—to at least level 50. The higher the level he raises it too, however, the more shorter the timeframe shall become.

  Then again, time never has been a problem for you, has it, Mister Dominic?

  ?(??> ????)

  Dominic barely held in a chuckle. Right, that was fair.

  He looked back at his disciple, excited at the thought of teaching him such advanced stuff—even if they would be grazing only a tiny spot of the vast expanse of subspaces as a concept. He’d like to get this dungeon over with quickly, now he had something specific to look forward to.

  “Since that's finalized, get grinding, Calvin.”

  Grinding was exactly what Calvin did.

  Every few seconds a Relfow minion appeared. Wolfey attacked it. Calvin attacked it. They teamed up and defended against it and slowly but steadily they chipped away at it. Before they knew it, the Relfow minion was dead.

  A few more seconds would pass. Another Relfow minion would appear. They attacked it, defended against it, teamed up against it, slowly but steadily chipped away at it and once more the Relfow minion would die.

  He kept doing this, quickly rising through the levels for each Relfow minion he had killed, rising one or two levels even after he crossed level 75. It was when he hit level 90 did he begin needing multiple Relfow minions to level up for a single level. For each consecutive levels, he began needing more and more Relfow minions.

  But compared to before, compared to repeating the same fight tens of thousand of times to see barely any progress, he felt like he was practically on potions now. With every few kills, he leveled up, after all. It was so, so, satisfying. Was practically giving him an orgasm of relief every single time.

  The first time that he truly got bored of the monotony was when he hit level 130. By this point, he needed to kill dozens of Relfow minions before he could see a single increase in level. Compared to before, when the level increases were much more frequent, now, it had become the slightest bit slower. Of course, nothing slow enough to truly deter him, but he did feel the temptation—the temptation of trying to tame a few Relfows before he began grinding again.

  It’ll be fun, adopting a few more children, right?

  And so began the adoption procedure.

  Instead of him attacking the approaching Relfow directly, he stood far, far away from them when he wanted to make them his pet. He would let Wolfey with them first, and Wolfey, being the good boy he was, would read his intentions and politely greet the Relfow minion, lick at it, show that it was friendly and then gently coax it over towards Calvin.

  Of course, as soon as the Relfow minion sniffed Calvin's scent, nine out of ten times the Relfow minion would attack him immediately, trying to kill him. The one time it did not, however, was the time that he gained a new pet, a new child.

  It was such a fun process that he completely abandoned the strategy of killing the Relfow. Of course, he inevitably had to kill them when they attacked him, but that was no longer the primary goal. His goal was to get more and more lovely children, lovely pets that he could reply and depend on, that would engulf him with cuddles and lick him all over.

  He kept repeating the process again and again and again, mindlessly, without thinking about anything, and before he knew it, he had an armada of wolves supporting him.

  Before he knew it, he had automated the process of grinding. He had an army of hundreds of pets who would intimidate the minions into joining—no, of course not, they were precious little innocent floofs who could never cause any harm to any being ever, Calvin would protest—and the minions that were still bloodthirsty enough to try and attack him were killed, swiftly.

  The pack engulfed these enemies, devouring their bodies and leaving nothing for him to even harvest. Though that was something he didn’t really mind. If he asked his children, they would probably stop and let him harvest the bodies, but he didn’t really need pocket money enough to deny his teeny tiny floofy fluffy lovely kids their enjoyment!

  It was the least he could do for these babies who were doing so much for him.