A few years passed by and the lizard actually looked pretty menacing. John eventually found a spell that would make it so that he could steal the potential from other races and place it on another.
It's not a very popular spell because apparently it can negatively impact the users karma under certain conditions, it can also give you good karma as well. Depends on what you create.
Basically if you're using the spell to help benefit advanced or sentient races then the effects are reduced. Worse yet, bad karma can affect the entire race. Not just the user.
There is an exception to this however.
You just have to place it on an undeveloped race.
As anyone could expect, this is an extremely controversial spell.
Basically most people don't use it because they're not a big fan of creating any alien creatures that could potentially compete, or even surpass their own race.
So it's a forbidden spell.
Not that you can stop others from using it. After all, the benefits are too great. You can't forget, the universe wants almighty godlike beings to protect or even war with other universes.
The universe only rewards planets because it knows that it's beneficial to those living on them. It has nothing to do with the dead soulless planets themselves.
So one thing led to another and after 20+ years of waiting John was staring at a tall muscular beast as large as an ox and as heavy as a humpback whale. The best part? They were standing on two legs carrying spears made out of stalactites!
{CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE CREATED A CAPRION! HERE IS YOUR REWARD! A TIER 5 BEING}
After waiting a little bit nothing happened. He didn't even get a notification on his system.
Just when he was about to ask AR something crazy happened.
The ground began to shake under his feet and he could see hundreds of lizard men scurrying around in panic until they spotted me and began to prostrate themselves.
Obviously he wanted to mingle and interact with his creations. Whenever he grew bored he tried teaching them language but sadly it didn't take just yet.
"Grooooowl!"
"Raaaaa!"
It was mostly growling noises.
They're still not ready yet.
{CONGRATULATIONS! YOU ARE NOW A FIVE STAR PLANET! HERE IS YOUR REWARD!}
"I'm what now?!"
Just like that, his star rating had increased considerably!
The room went from being a 6-star sanctuary to a… 6-star sanctuary, but with considerably more spiritual energy.
In fact the qi actually felt incredibly pure.
"AR, how many Earth-Immortals can I create as a 5-star planet?"
{Approximately 30}
30?!
"Holy shit!"
Just as he had that thought he decided to look at what really mattered.
{CONGRATULATIONS! YOU ARE NOW A FIVE STAR PLANET! HERE IS YOUR REWARD!}
{YOU ARE NOW ABLE TO PUT LIMITS ON WHO CAN AND CANNOT CULTIVATE ON YOUR SURFACE… OVERRIDE… AS WELL AS LIMIT HOW MANY NATIVES CAN CULTIVATE AND HOW MUCH THEY ARE ALLOWED TO TAKE FROM YOU.}
"Holy shit, the World System is super OP! I can basically create a single Earth-Immortal and the rest can stay as mortals. I have a feeling that would upset a lot of people if I did that though.
Perhaps I should limit the king to an Earth-Immortal and the royals to Dragon-rank? That sounds about right."
Of course he's only willing to do that once the 'Caprion' become smart enough to eat his law imbued diamonds and create a "Star Child".
He has such great plans for these little bastards.
Well, it's kind of hard to call them little when they're literally 6 ft tall and have muscles bigger than his torso.
....
After the earthquake ended John decided to look through his status on his spell.
{638-10,000 cursed lizards have been sacrificed.}
Sadly his job was much harder than he was expecting. Manually finding the Diamond Lizards was much harder than he was expecting.
They had amazing perception and seemed to spot his presence almost immediately despite being invisible most of the time.
Of course qi made things easier but it wasn't fool proof.
After thinking for a little while John came up with an idea and started making it a reality.
....
After two years his previous score of 638 lizards had transformed into 2974 lizards.
How was he able to make this possible?
Through Herpetoculture… or is that just just animal husbandry?
Either way he had managed to teach the Caprions how to breed the lizards… sorta.
They kinda just threw them in pits and waited for them to breed after feeding them dead bugs.
It wasn't the most efficient but it was good enough.
Also, the Caprions have discovered that once John curses their bloodlines their flesh tastes incredibly good. It's fatty, soft and even the bones are like crunchy snacks. They constantly offer him lizard carcases as a form of sacrifice.
They have even built a shrine. Kinda.
'It's a pile of rocks located in the area where I usually sit and watch them.'
After John got all of that out of the way he figured it was time to move on.
He figured the Caprion had grown up enough and he had an idea he wanted to try out.
His girls were all anticipating their share of qi and he wanted to give it to them as soon as possible.
He knew the qi was passively making the Caprions smarter and stronger but that was never the end game.
Thanks to the AR he knew that once the qi were all gone they would remain stagnant and would likely remain similar to the early hominins. The first tool users.
It would take them a million years or so before they become smart enough to become fully sentient and self-sufficient.
The reason he's doing this is because he wants to continue farming "potential" from other species while he still can. His Caprions have a long way to go before they reach the top 1000 apex species and he wants to go as far as he possibly can.
So after transferring all his qi to one of his moons he received a few notifications about incoming rewards.
Thankfully they weren't exact copies of the first ones.
They were mostly minor rewards.
A special kind of plant that was a flower that could regulate a person's blood pressure. He couldn't decide if he wanted to keep it for himself or not.
For now he just left it in his storage and watched most of the spirit energy flow to Sofia.
She was eager to create a few hellspawns.
He wasn't sure if that would happen but she was hopeful.
As for his own environment he made sure to keep enough qi to sustain the Blue grass. Fortunately, after becoming a 5-star planet he had enough energy to make all his moons and himself into a 1-star planet.
Not that he would do that.
He wanted to make sure every moon had a 6-star vein at least once.
As for why he gave Sofia the top priority?
Because despite her being being so hot it had a large concentration of flora and fauna.
Not that this made her special.
If anything, the biodiversity was a bit underwhelming, but it would speed up the process.
…..
A few days passed by and John had helped Sofia as much as he could with getting various bugs, and biomatter into the cave system she chose.
It was… creepy.
Dark, mouldy and really hot.
Now with the extra bugs and plants he was hoping to create the perfect environment for some creepy monster like creatures.
As for why he didn't cast his favorite spell. It's because he wanted to make sure that he didn't accidentally drain an important resource, like cattle or a potential food crop.
He made that mistake when he stole the potential from those weird acid spaying bugs he favored. After the second generation they had grown to be as big as his hand.
He had big plans for them but he accidentally cut that short.
Fortunately there were other animals on his planet. Unlike his moons he started out as a 1-star planet whereas they were slightly less, being around 0.8-stars and lower.
This may not seem like much but after a couple millions years the Caprion or something else would've evolved to the pinnacle eventually. He just didn't have time for that.
He wanted to create an apex race sooner rather than later.
So he picked up a few weird alien pig things and spread them out throughout the planet's caverns. He was scared the Caprion would drive them to extinction if he didn't.