Three days had passed since I confirmed that Kaera was pregnant, and since I woke up in the body of one of my own descendants.
The environment hadn't changed much. The dungeon remained as silent and cold as ever, and the spawn rate of creatures stayed constant.
Every now and then, Kaera disappeared into the tunnels and came back with new prey. It wasn't always giant rats, sometimes she brought different kinds of bats, cave rabbits, and occasionally, a small snake would join the pile.
On the first day, she hunted nine prey, on the second eleven, and today twelve. The difference wasn't much… except that the pile of corpses was growing quickly.
After leaving the hunt in the main hall, we set one aside to eat and sacrificed the rest to obtain DE. Every night, after the usual routine, I rewarded Kaera by fucking her until she was completely exhausted, so she could rest peacefully. Then I stayed on guard in case a monster showed up.
For some reason, even though I still feel all human needs, sleeping isn't mandatory for me. I can do it to speed up my recovery, but if I don't, it doesn't affect me too much.
So, while Kaera hunted or slept, I trained. I went back to a basic routine from my first life. Push-ups, squats, and endurance exercises. Nothing special, but enough to slowly push my physical stats upward, taking advantage of their current low values.
In this world, training before leveling up makes a real difference. When leveling, the increases depend on your current base stats, individual talent, race, and class. A piece of information only the nobility and great families know for sure.
When muscle fatigue built up, I practiced magic. My mana amount doesn't increase easily, but my control does. My spells were basic, a sphere of light, enough water to drink or wash up, and fire to cook.
It wasn't much, but unlike in my second life, this time every hour of practice made me stronger.
Kaera hunted, I got stronger. There wasn't much else to do inside this room, and I had no intention of wasting too much time doing absolutely nothing because I would go insane from boredom. The level reset and reduced stats had left me weak, but it also gave me the perfect opportunity to rebuild myself from scratch.
And then came the most important change.
[User Status]
Name: Ziom
Race: Kobold (Linked to the Core)
Class: Dungeon Master
Subclass: Technomage
Age: 15 years
Level: 2
Mana: 50
Strength: 13
Agility: 12
Dexterity: 30
Endurance: 13
Constitution: 14
Authority: 0
Innate Skills:
Dungeon Master Mana Reserve Cross-Species Procreator Talented Offspring Techno Mage
Turning into a kobold changed everything. It wasn't just an illusion or a superficial shift, my body was being completely rewritten. My blood, my bone structure, my sense of smell, my stats.
If I had a child with Kaera in this state, I'd be ensuring the child would be born as a kobold. If I fought, my stats would be those of a real kobold… or rather, those of the Kobold in Slot 1. I'm not sure if I'd get a new kobold version if I created another type and got Kaera pregnant again. For now, the only stats that remained unchanged were mana and authority, which stayed at 0.
The cost of maintaining the transformation was constantly burning through a lot of mana. But it was worth it. Kobolds have naturally useful bonuses, like better night vision, sharper smell and hearing, and slight poison resistance. On top of that, there's a moderate increase in strength, agility, and endurance compared to an average human. It's not a dramatic change, but in a real fight, those differences can save lives.
And Kaera's reaction to my kobold form was impossible to ignore. She became more docile, clingy, and sniffed me like she was marking her territory. It resembled the behavior of some semi-human tribes, where females feel greater attraction toward members of their species when they display superior strength.
But beyond the physical, what really mattered was the synergy with my innate skills.
Cross-Species Procreator allows me to mate with other races and record their traits. With enough mana, I can adopt a male version of that species, gaining a physical and magical base of my own. This will let me become far stronger than I ever was in my previous life.
If I mated with an elf, I could transform into an elven version, gaining superior magical affinity in both elemental and spiritual paths, along with greater agility. If I did it with orcs, I'd gain overwhelming physical strength. And if I mated with more exotic races like lamias, succubi, or demon hybrids, I'd obtain abilities impossible for humans to achieve through conventional means.
Moreover, thanks to the innate skill Talented Offspring, if I have children while transformed, my offspring would inherit that advantage. Even though most children are born the same race as the mother, they also inherit characteristics from the father. So, over time, I could create an entire bloodline of strong, intelligent, and completely loyal hybrids.
Exactly like the noble families at the top of the hierarchy, every noble child tends to have great talent, beauty, and a stronger body than commoners, not to mention lineage skills.
The only problem is that reproduction between different races in this world is quite strange. For the most part, children are born as the same race as the mother. In several cases, they show the appearance of the father. The rarest ones are hybrids, who display physical characteristics from both parents, although this depends greatly on the races involved.
I looked at the fire, just a small flame sustained with magic, then at Kaera, who was curled up and sleeping, using my feet as a pillow.
[Displaying Kobold Status]
Name: Kaera
Race: Kobold
Class: None
Age: 0 years
Stage: Adult
Level: 2
Mana: 11
Strength: 23
Agility: 10
Dexterity: 12
Endurance: 14
Constitution: 16
Pregnant: 3/60
I looked at her status and came to this conclusion. Her growth rate per level was approximately, Mana: 10%, Strength: 30%, Agility: 10%, Dexterity: 10%, Endurance: 20%, Constitution: 20%, which indicates that her individual talent is quite high despite not having a class.
I glanced at the corpses of the monsters Kaera had hunted. Giant rats, parasitic bats, cave rabbits, and a snake. They didn't pose much danger to her, but they provided a steady flow of DE. At first, I underestimated the gain, but their spawn frequency made up for their weakness.
I sacrificed the corpses, and my DE increased to 45: 32 DE from corpses, 10 from monsters Kaera caught alive to kill inside the dungeon, and another 3 passive DE generated by the dungeon. With that, I could summon more monsters. I thought about expanding the dungeon, but after seeing that a new room cost 50 DE, I discarded the idea for now. Traps rarely work against adventurers, so it would be a waste to place them, and it's not because I think they're too expensive.
First, I needed to improve DE acquisition efficiency. I also needed outside information, human villages, roads, bandits, or hostile monster nests nearby. If none of those existed, I could feel safer, since no large threats would appear.
The only flying species available were cave bats and luminous moths, both with terrible vision, so spending DE on them would be a waste. Still, I needed to summon them to scout the cave without putting Kaera in danger. There could be stronger threats deeper inside that could harm both her and the dungeon. The luminous moth, on the other hand, would be better suited for scouting outside since it would be easy prey inside the cave, unlike the bats.
As I reviewed the summoning options, a strong smell hit me.
Thick. Sour. Sticky. It wasn't noticeable at first, but as days passed, and now transformed into a kobold, the stench became impossible to ignore.
The stench came from one corner: the waste. Leftover remains of the corpses we ate, blood spilled when bleeding the monsters, and of course, my own physiological waste.
Even though I had ordered Kaera to take some remains out when she went hunting, it wasn't enough. I felt bad for her, having to endure that smell.
Besides, a strong odor would attract scavenger monsters, and I couldn't risk getting sick because of waste.
So the fastest way to fix this was to summon a slime.
They aren't strong or fast, but they have a big advantage: they can eat almost anything organic, except plants, and leave the place clean. That's why they're kept as pets by many races, including humans. But you always have to make sure to seal them in a jar before sleeping because, despite their docile behavior toward anything they consider a threat, if a human lets their guard down and sleeps nearby, the slime will most likely climb onto their head and kill them by suffocation.
Therefore, I'll summon a Lesser Slime, a bat, a luminous moth… and I still haven't decided whether to go for a goblin or another kobold type, even if I have to wait until tomorrow to get more DE from Kaera's prey. I'll think about it after I finish the other summons.