Chapter 51: A Pocket Dimension With Limitless Growth Potential

If Hiro wanted to increase the overall level of his dimension's ecosystem, it would be akin to filling a bottomless pit with the amount of spending necessary.

He could go down two routes.

The first is to unlock the living creature's rudimentary intelligence and leave the rest in the hands of time, and the second is to invest tons of achievement points to directly raise a few wise leaders among the various species.

Both sides had pros and cons, but Hiro wasn't patient enough to take the first route.

After thinking about it, Hiro decided to take the second route and start by increasing the detection range of treasures, and once he located a few promising creatures to be enlightened, he could take advantage of the upcoming away game to raise his popularity.

Once Hiro gathered sufficient achievement points to enlighten creatures in the masses, his high-priority mission could be considered to have been half completed.

Hmm, I should find a test subject to check the effect of the enlightenment feature.

Hiro started looking around his surroundings for small animals. Soon, he found a target.

It was a small snake, coiled in the shade of a wooden plank. Eh? What's a snake doing here?

Hiro was stunned for a moment, but he didn't think too much about it. With a twirl of his finger, the wind pressed down on the snake to immobilize it.

Alarmed, the snake started struggling and wiggling around, but it was useless.

After approaching the snake, Hiro placed his hand on its head and spent one achievement point to bestow it with heightened intelligence.

A stream of mysterious energy that felt both familiar and unfamiliar transferred from Hiro's hand to the snake's brain.

The white snake's sleek body trembled for a moment before calming down. Hiro canceled the wind's pressure and waited patiently.

A few seconds later, the white snake moved.

It slithered along Hiro's arm, climbed to his shoulder, and started to nuzzle its triangular head against his cheek.

Hiro raised an eyebrow.

Wait, don't tell me this ability comes with an automatic brainwashing effect? Honestly, it's quite convenient.

Hiro was tempted to try this ability on humans. However, he denied it a moment later.

Not because of some morality or bottom line, but because he didn't have the achievement points to spend on human experimentation.

Maybe after the away game if I had the points to spare… Hiro thought to himself.

He then reached with his finger and tapped the snake's head, simultaneously investing 10 achievement points to elevate its intelligence to that of a human toddler's level.

The snake's eyes widened and glazed over; its head wobbled about before it snapped back to its senses.

Suddenly, Hiro had a weird feeling.

He focused, trying to grasp this fleeting sensation, and soon, he realized—telepathy.

He looked at the snake in shock. A mental connection?

Hiro realized that he could read the snake's thoughts, even though they surfaced in his mind in fragmented images.

It was an inexplicable feeling, but he was sure of his intuition. It silently expressed its desire for a… A name?

Hiro thought for a moment. He didn't know much about naming animals since he didn't have pets in the past.

However, he did read a lot of fiction and myths during his free time.

Hiro expressed his opinion, "Since you're a snake, how about Medusa? She's pretty popular in my hometown."

The white snake shook its tail and hissed happily, and so, Hiro decided on its name and gender in one go.

Hiro spent a couple of hours roaming the antique city together with Bella, and he even bought a few useless trinkets for the girl.

Soon, his encyclopedia registered over 1,000 different treasures of varying values, and some of them were Paranormal treasures.

Although Hiro was surprised to find them, he didn't care to buy them since they were mostly silverware to ward vampires or statues of deities.

Although unwilling, Bella eventually called her family's driver to get her home while Hiro returned to his mansion, quickly locking himself up in the study.

Once inside, he opened the portal and stepped in.

…

Hiro appeared in a hollow concave near the core of the dimension.

"I didn't expect the Fantasy Crystal to have this effect too," Hiro muttered as he crossed his arms. seaʀᴄh thё NovelFire.net* website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

No matter how he looked at it, his first priority mission couldn't justify such a reward.

At the moment, the Fantasy Crystal was fusing with the core of this small dimension, slowly integrating the entire pocket dimension into his system.

He could already see a stats panel for the dimension, and the fusion rate between the immaterial and material dimensions was also displayed.

Judging from the system's assessment, this pocket dimension was a minor realm, and it was still in the early development phase.

Every pocket dimension had a core of its own, but what makes Hiro's pocket dimension special is that it had already nurtured a will of its own, all thanks to the existence of the Fantasy Crystal.

More aptly described, Hiro's will is being integrated into the core of the pocket dimension as the fusion between the core and the crystal is carried out.

Furthermore, with the Fantasy Crystal as a medium connecting this realm to Hiro, whenever he completed a game and added its laws into the crystal, the core of this pocket dimension would digest the laws and discharge them into the pocket dimension.

Put bluntly, if Hiro wanted this pocket dimension to be capable of nurturing demons; all he had to do was complete a game with demons as the focal point of its storyline.

That goes to say that at the moment, the world is slowly but surely getting saturated with elemental-attributed spiritual energy.

Hiro wanted to step out and leave, but Medusa started expressing her thoughts frantically, catching his attention.

He almost forgot that he had a snake perched on his shoulder.

"You want to go up there?" Hiro asked to confirm, feeling incredulous.

Medusa fervently expressed its agreement.

After thinking about it for a while, Hiro picked it up and placed it beneath the floating, multicolored orb.

Bathing in the multicolored light, Medusa expressed her joy before it coiled all over herself, burying her head and going still a moment later.

Hiro observed her for a while, then shook his head and left. Whatever, let it do what it wants for now; it's just a child.

Hiro synchronized with his Arcana Lord for a split second to teleport back to the surface of the pocket dimension.

In that split second, the world shook imprecisely. Hiro heaved a sigh of relief and wiped his sweat.

He thoughtfully changed his entrance point from the core of the pocket dimension to the open plains outside.

He looked around.

Unlike the poisoned pocket dimension on the verge of collapse, this one was a vast world brimming with verdant hills, towering mountains, open meadows, and running rivers.

Although it didn't have any seas or oceans, there were plenty of massive lakes; some of the mountains were anchored in the middle of the largest lakes.

There was no sun and no moon, but a wide astronomical belt covered the sky from one horizon to the other.

It was multicolored, like a rainbow, and its luminosity varied in intensity; sometimes it was so bright it resembled the midday sun, and sometimes it was gentle and dim, like the full moon on a summer night.

After enjoying his surroundings for a while, Hiro spread out his treasure scanning halo and started walking around.

At the moment, this pocket dimension wasn't very stable, as the integration between the core and the Fantasy Crystal had yet to be completed.

The higher the degree of integration, the firmer this pocket dimension's foundation and correspondingly, the higher its degree of tolerance.

Until then, this pocket dimension is sealed to outsiders, with Hiro being the sole exception.

After walking around for half a day, Hiro found many natural treasures in the form of plants, precious stones, and rare creatures.

As he walked around, enlightening the leaders in each pack of wild beasts and the oldest plants in a range of flora, Hiro finally stopped when he spent a total of 4,220 points.

His achievement points count fell to a rounded figure—5,000 points to be exact.

He used 1,000 enlightenment option on four creatures in the four directions respectively, making each of them a lord in their respective regions.

As for the other 220 points, he ended up spending them on a whim when he found a family of fluffy, tri-pupil squirrels.

Each of the parents was bestowed with the intelligence of a toddler, while each of their two children was bestowed with the intelligence of an infant.

It was done on a whim because Hiro realized that other than these four, he couldn't find any creatures of a similar species.

And they weren't living in a tree hole, but rather in an underground rockery that trickled with a sweet, spiritual nectar.

It could be said that Hiro did this out of curiosity and a sense of investment, leaving him with a sense of anticipation toward their future.

Once this matter was over, Hiro was delighted to find that the integration process jumped to 41%.