After that, he could populate his scenarios with many kinds of mundane animals as well as a limited selection of various weak monsters.
Mostly monsters any geek would expect in a low-level campaign of D&D like skeletons, goblins, and kobolds.
There were other monsters, but nothing so strong that someone competent couldn't kill them with a bit of effort.
The only way the monsters would win against a competent opponent would be by ganging up on them.
On top of all of that, he could actually 'program' scenarios the 'heroes' would be following.
He could make them save the princess, or clear out the goblin nest and save the captured girls. Maybe have them fight in a monster pit to earn points to escape. Or a tournament against NPC's.
Because, yes, he could make humans within his scenario. Though they were just regular average humans at the moment. Not even athletes, so likely to lose to anyone with any training whatsoever.
The point was, that he could craft the world and the story that people would have to play through.
Now, if people were going to fulfill his scenarios, they needed rewards. Beating his monsters would grant the person who killed it a small boost to their strength.
The more evenly matched the person is to the monster, the more substantial the boost. Though, substantial is a misleading word.
The weak monsters he had access to currently would give only the tiniest sliver of power to the one that slayed them.
There were other rewards though! Using his mana he could create a limited number of magical items! From what he could tell, the amount of mana an item took to make varied but was never small.
He could also only create items with minimal power. Things like weak healing, stamina, and magic potions were available to him.
He could also make things called Mana Stones, basically just solidified magical power. He wasn't sure what good they were, but they had to have some value to be listed as a possible reward.
There was just one catch, he couldn't use anything he made this way himself. It meant he couldn't make a large number of potions to keep in his inventory and use at will, sadly.
Speaking of rewards, he could now see the value of just about anything and buy it if he desired.
This included really random things. For example, he could see the price it would cost to buy the color white out of the paint on his apartment walls.
He also knew a lot about contracts and contract law. He could now write magically binding contracts that would let him do just about anything as long as it was willingly signed by both parties. He could see a lot of potential abuse from that ability.
Next, he had the ability to learn to cast spells! Which was awesome! Who didn't want to learn real magic? The problem was, he could learn it, he just didn't know where to get actual books on casting spells so he was kind of stuck at zero with that particular skill.
Still, he had magical power and it was supposed to refill pretty fast so when he did get some books, he could learn pretty quick!
Which tied in nicely to his scenario-making ability. Whenever people were inside one of them, their emotions, magical attacks, and all kinds of little bits of energy were collected and funneled into a separate space he could access.
Using the gathered energy allowed him to do all kinds of things, like make his Essence's stronger or gain items he couldn't just summon for his scenarios, things like spell books!
He would have to use the energy he gathered wisely to make sure he had a good amount of growth where he needed it.
The last bit of his new power was kind of grim. Anyone who died within his scenarios became his property, body and soul.
Anyone who died would have their corpse and soul appear inside of his inventory, the place where he could store all of his items and treasures.
From there he could break it up however he wanted and even use them as rewards. Very morbid.
He could see what the bartender had meant by all his abilities coming together to form a theme. They all worked together to become something better but were also now reliant on each other.
It would probably take a lot of time and effort for him to get stronger. It would be a whole lot easier if he could just run his scenarios himself and get power that way! Sadly, such an obvious exploit wasn't possible.
He knew the general rules of his scenarios and he couldn't gain anything by running them himself, not even the items!
Which was a bit silly since it was his magic that made them!
He didn't dwell on that for very long. Instead, he focused on today being his first day of school, the start of a new year, and his last year of high school.
It was uncommon for new students to transfer to a new school so late in their careers, but it wasn't unheard of.
He took a quick shower in his tiny bathroom, lacking even a proper bath, which his new Japanese memories deemed to be a terrible thing.
Living in an orphanage might have sucked, but at least they had a proper bath! Though the old American in him didn't mind just the shower at all. It was a bit weird honestly.
Once clean he dressed in his new school uniform, something else his American sensibilities found rather weird. Though not unwelcome.
The school uniform was kind of fancy consisting of a black blazer with white accents over a white, long-sleeved dress shirt with a black ribbon on the collar, matching black pants, and brown dress shoes.
It sort of reminded him of a professional outfit he might've worn to work, though the ribbon was an odd choice in his opinion. He would have much preferred a simple tie.