He had created a world; now he had to fill it with something—and someone. Yet the very first life in this nameless world (Alex was never very good at naming things and decided he would choose a name later) was already there.
All kinds of plants covered its islands, plains, and mountain ranges. There were grasses, shrubs, and trees.
After reaching Manager Rank 2, a new function appeared in [Landscape Creator], enabling Alex to copy samples of living matter from his native world and recreate them. It was admittedly a bit dull, but rather than rushing to invent something unique, it was wiser to first replicate existing patterns to better understand how they worked and what made them tick.
Moreover, Alex aimed for a classic European fantasy. There would, of course, be some fictional fruits, trees, and animals, but only as exceptions to the ordinary ones.
Alex set to work, and within just a few hours, all sorts of fish filled the great, dark western ocean; worms burrowed into the continent's soil; horses stamped across its meadows; hares dug burrows into the hills; and the howling of wolves echoed through the moonlit forests.
All these animals appeared in their natural habitats in small populations, numbering only a few dozen individuals. Alex was not permitted to create more at his current Manager Rank. Still, that would be enough. After all, some invasive species that conquered entire continents began with just a handful of creatures carried aboard a single ship.
After populating his world with animals, Alex activated [Time Acceleration], reclined in his chair and started waiting. He had sown the seeds of an ecosystem, but it would take a great deal of time for them to flourish.
Perhaps it was crude of him to do it that way; perhaps he should have seeded the waters with the simplest organisms and waited millions of years for evolution to run its course. But that would take far too long, and he wasn't sure what might emerge without his supervision. Alex had a particular vision for this world, one that natural evolution might easily stray from.
After that, Alex relied on the detailed statistics provided by the silver plate to oversee and govern his world through numbers. For instance, if the deer population grew too large, he would increase the wolves' birth rate to restore balance.
After a long week in his own world—and more than twenty years in the world he had created—Alex at last launched [Organism Creator].
He was about to create his first sentient being.
Creating a human would have been logical—Alex was, after all, quite familiar with them—but also dull. Instead, he chose to use humanity as a template that he would modify to create an ancient race destined to rule the world before humankind.
There were myths of ancient peoples, the Lemurians and the Atlanteans, being giants, so Alex gave his newly designed humanoids an average height of two meters. He also made their skin smoother than that of humans, yet far more resilient and durable.
Every member of this species would be unique, but on average they possessed the following abilities:
[Strength: 1.2 (Potential: 1.6)
Stamina: 1.2 (P: 1.5)
Dexterity: 1.3 (P: 1.7)
Intelligence: 1 (P: 1.4)
Average lifespan: 80 years
Level 1 Creature]
The [P] in parentheses indicated the maximum potential a member of this race could ever achieve. By contrast, a value of 1 represented the ability of an average human like Alex himself.
After some consideration, Alex decided it would be more interesting to create a being that, through persistent training, could rise far above its peers. Like the heroes of ancient Greece.
To achieve this, he began raising the Potential values, and as he did, the image of the creature on the silver plate began to seamlessly shift and transform…