-Robert Fayn-

“It has been two days relative time since you became the blackzone manager of this Enigma. Have you decided on the first type of monster that will populate this place?” inquired System Assistant once again; it was literally clockwork with the constant reminders: at least he was getting me used to fact days inside my Enigma were thirty-six hours and not twenty-four. 

“No! Now can you please stop reminding me for one second?” I replied before groaning and getting up out of bed. I could see the soft glow of the first core from the penthouse’s second story bedroom’s interior window. How the hell am I supposed to appropriately protect this thing? I mused to myself, trying to shift through the options in my head once again. I’m in charge of a dessert-themed Enigma so I couldn’t just mindlessly throw out things like goblins or elementals, the further away from the theme the more costly they were to create and the less efficient they were in combat.

Not to mention I had to figure out exactly how I want to manage Historie Pastoria Sweets. I couldn’t make it so dangerous that people wouldn’t risk exterminating it, cause I knew I didn’t have the personality or skills for it, and there could be no half measures if I ever went down that route. Couldn’t make this place super profitable and friendly either, cause that would just attract too much attention and likely end up with me enslaved to some group. And the flip side was even worse, cause if this Enigma wasn’t profitable enough people would just consider it a waste of space and eradicate it, with me in it.

“There’s just too many factors,” I muttered to myself as I got dressed. Walking out onto the balcony, I looked over my Enigma once again. I still had the protection of the Protean Shell barrier, but that wasn’t going to last forever. “System Assistant, are you absolutely sure that you can’t help me brainstorm ideas?”

“Affirmative. As it stands, my capacity for creativity is infinitesimal.”

“That’s just great. What a great helper you are.” Wasn’t surprising that the System Assistant didn’t bother with a response; for something so plain and emotionless, it did a really good job on picking up on sarcasm. “Well not like moping around is going to help me at all.”

Making sure I was properly dressed, more for my own sanity than any actual sense of decency, I took a deep breath and bounded over the balcony’s railing. A definite upside of having a skyscraper that looked like a demented wedding cake for a base was it was tiered: made it so much easier to moon walk bounce down. 

Nearing ground level, I waited for a metro train to come screeching by the south side of the building and jumped onto the roof. After slipping slightly as I hit its strangely soft roof, I frantically worked to regain my balance; I didn't want to start the day off with another faceplant onto the tracks. 

After bearing through the accursed screeching of the train’s wheels, I finally found my stop: the local public library. I was damn lucky to have my Enigma swallow up a public library, and doubly lucky that the whole terraforming process left it mostly untouched. There was some damage to the books though, a good chunk of them were now unintelligible, but beggars can’t be choosers.

“Let’s see… magic section… cooking section… children’s section?...” I muttered to myself as I walked back and forth between the silent aisles. I was half-tempted to ask System Assistant for advice but then remembered the last time I did that it went on listing the pros and cons of every single section in such a way I felt like my life force was being drained out of my ears. “Hmmm… let’s just go to the children's section again.” 

It felt sort of weird looking through books meant for little kids, but this place honestly was a treasure trove of ideas. So many fantasy stories in easily digestible packages that I could accept or toss aside. Closing my eyes, I trailed my fingers along the spines of the books and stopped randomly on... Nursery Rhymes for Kids. 

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” I noted as I sat down next to a sort of yellow cocoon-like thing. They were honestly everywhere but I never really felt the need to pay them much mind, Enigmas were surreal places by nature and mine was no exception. But feeling curious, and honestly craving a bit of conversation, I finally asked System Assistant about them as I flipped through the pages of the book of nursery rhymes.

“Hey System Assistant. What the heck are these cocoons anyway?”

“They are stasis cocoons made from a rare material called Homeostasis Silk. Their primary purpose is to protect living organisms that were caught in the birthing of a blackzone.”

“Wait wait wait, hold up! Living organisms? Like people?” 

“Affirmative. Humanity would fall under the umbrella of living organisms. Do you wish to transform them into witch-cursed?” Holy shit I can’t believe I forgot about that. I ruled this Enigma… that meant I could mutate people into trapped subraces so that they would have to keep coming back or even live here so their health didn’t deteriorate. Looking at the cocoon right next to me and noting the size, it was obviously a little kid. My stomach flopped as it hit me, just how many people, innocent people, were currently trapped in this Enigma? In some sort of demented ‘protective’ stasis? “Shall I turn this individual before you into a witch-cursed so that you can experiment with a trapped subrace?”

“No! God no! What the actual hell System Assistant?! Absolutely not!” I shouted, before pausing and regrettably continuing in a quiet voice, “At least not for now.” I couldn’t just completely disregard the notion; turning people into trapped subraces meant I could incur serious repercussions for people wanting to eradicate my Enigma. But I couldn’t just go overboard with the idea; mutating everyone would obviously mark me as too dangerous to let live. 

“Very well, I shall not mutate any cocooned organisms at this time. Now may I remind you that you currently have no monsters or defensives at this time. The Protean Shell barrier will collapse in approximately three weeks.”

“I know geez! Please just let me process all of… this!” I shouted as my eyes darted around on instinct before seeing what nursery rhyme I had the book open to: Humpty Dumpty. Wait a second… Humpty Dumpty… Protean Shell… Homeostasis Silk… “System Assistant, is it possible to create monsters that drop Protean Shell? The same for Homeostasis Silk?”

“That is a possibility, but with your Enigma’s current size and potency, such a monster would not be able to mass-produce, nor would they be able to drop said materials in large quantities.”

“That’s fine. I just needed to know if it was possible.”

“Do you require me to open the Monster Creation Menu for you?”

“Yes, open it up.” A silent whoosh, and my entire field of view was suddenly filled with translucent screens. I couldn’t help but stumble back a step as I felt all the screens passively assault my senses as they hooked up to my mind and my mandalas. Any facet that made up a creature filled my mind: appearance, habitat, rarity, affinities, personality typings, all possible attributes and skills, and drops both physical and produced. 

Okay deep breath, one step at a time. Like filling out a report or medical form… a really really long, in-depth one, I told myself. Obviously I wanted to make a Humpty Dumpty, so appearance was easy enough. Habitat, I really didn’t care about; it could appear anywhere for all that I cared. Rarity… that had to be low cause I instinctively knew that these guys would take up a good chunk of resources for my Enigma to produce. Affinity, well, Humpty Dumpty is a nursery rhyme, so why not a good affinity with elemental fey? I felt like I could do that, so let’s do that.

“Personality types?” I muttered aloud, a bit surprised that System Assistant didn’t try to interrupt me with explanations. Clearly it knew not to ruin my train of thoughts when it was important. Well… it’s supposed to be rare so why not make them skittish? And since they are based off of Humpty Dumpty, why not also be a bit foolish. Let’s toss some mischievousness in for good measure. Now for attributes and skills: people would expect them to be fragile cause of the nursery rhyme, so let’s throw them for a loop by giving it good defenses and the ability to heal itself. Let’s also have its primary mode of attacking be throwing eggs... how about explosive ones? Yeah, explosive ones full of fey mana.

“Good! Good, good… Now for the most important part.” No good monster would be complete without a loot table. Physical drops weren’t the point of these guys, so let’s just have the normal quality of magical cores, and then insides made mostly out of different egg dishes repurposed to be all organ-y. Produced drops will obviously be Protean Shell and Homeostasis Silk and ramp up those drop chances as high as we can without breaking the bank or completely throwing off the ratios of rarity, danger, and value.

“You have inputted enough information to create a monster with. Do you wish for me to have the Enigma generate a unit for testing?”

“Yes! Come on! Let’s see this thing!”

“Commencing prototype monster generation protocol.” The second System Assistant stopped talking; I could feel my mandalas churn and the ambient mana and aether around me drop like a rock. The space in front of me started to crack and chip away to reveal some sort of void. With an almost-liquidy popping sound, the humpty dumpty monster made it appearance. 

It sure as hell looked like Humpty Dumpty, well at least until it didn’t. Its eyes were crystalline googly eyes that seemed to move and crunch up slightly to express itself and its mouth was more of a large crack across its shell of a face. Not to mention its dollish old-timey boy school attire looked almost like you were looking at it through some sort of sketchy camera filter. 

“Is this creature appropriate? Shall I formally document it so that the Enigma can passively generate more?”

“Yeah… Yeah no definitely.”

“Formalizing prototype. Entering monster information into Enigma’s monster generation protocols as ‘Deviled Humpty Dumpty.’”

“Deviled humpty dumpty? Yeah, I guess that fits.” I awkwardly whistled as I watched the weird mockery of Humpty Dumpty scurry off. Felt nice to have my first monster down, especially since I had a good feeling that it would become the face of my Enigma. But I can’t just leave it there, those guys are meant to be rare… I need to make something else to pad up my defenses…

“Shall I leave the Monster Creation Menu open for you?”

“Yeah. Leave it open for me,” I replied before deciding to head back to the penthouse. “Hmmm… how about a flan-like slime with a tiny bit of slime dungeon-mana? A living flan? Have it drop cups of various high quality blackzone flan… Oh yeah that would be novel as heck.”