Multiple enemies killed. +235 XP
Jake stood among the dead bodies of the mutants he’d just slain. He surveyed the area to make sure there were no more enemies to kill. There were none left. Another ten-story building had been cleared of mutants, from the roof all the way down to the ground floor. During a battle on one of the upper levels, he’d leveled up to 25 but hadn’t allocated the skill point yet.
It was time to return to the rooftop. He pivoted and crossed the room to the staircase. He quickly ascended them, bounding up the steps, taking several at a time. He moved so fast he reached the roof in under thirty seconds.
There were no elite mutants or magical anomalies on the roof. Before leaping to the next building, Jake wanted to allocate the skill point he’d recently received. He planned to use it to advance Claws to Rank III. It should take him just a second to do so. Once done, he would resume hunting mutants for XP.
He closed his eyes and summoned his stats, concentrating on the Rank of his Claws ability.
A raise to the next Rank is available.
Raise to Rank III: Y/N
His Body attribute was at 5, so he could advance Claws to the next Rank. Or so he thought. When he mentally said “Yes”, instead of receiving a notification about the Rank of Claws increasing, a warning message appeared.
The rarity level needs to be increased to Uncommon before Claws can be raised to Rank III.
After reading the message, Jake dismissed it and glanced at the other skills in his stats. Enhanced Senses, Enhanced Agility, and Enhanced Intelligence had all reached 100%, making them ready to be advanced to Rank III too. One by one, he tried to invest the skill point into each of them to increase their Rank, but sure enough, the same message popped up each time. Just like his Claws ability, he needed to advance them to the next rarity level before he could level them up. He had obtained all three available upgrades for Enhanced Agility, but it looked like it didn’t matter. It appeared that a skill could advance to the next rarity level even without any upgrades. The crucial requirement for advancing a skill to a specific Rank was that it needed to be at a certain rarity level.
Okay then, Jake thought. How do I advance Claws to the next rarity level?
He focused on the word Common in the description of the Claws ability, and another message was displayed to him.
To increase the rarity of the ability from Common to Uncommon, you need to evolve to Stage 2.
For a moment, Jake just stared at the message.
So, it’s finally time to evolve to the next stage, huh?
Jake felt a surge of excitement wash over him. He didn’t know what he needed to do to evolve, though. Many days ago, he tried to summon relevant information, but nothing happened. However, now that he was almost meeting the requirements to evolve to the next stage, the system provided him with the information.
Requirements for evolving to Stage 2
Attributes: Body 5, Mind 5, Magick 5
Enhanced Senses - Rank II
Enhanced Agility - Rank II
Enhanced Intelligence - Rank II
Enhanced Reflexes - Rank I
Enhanced Strength - Rank I
Enhanced Regeneration - Rank I
Feral Instincts - Rank I
Even though Jake knew he couldn’t evolve right now, he thought, “Yes.” Instantly, a warning message flashed through his mind.
You cannot evolve to Stage 2 at this moment due to some unmet requirements.
Jake examined the list of requirements one more time. He only needed to invest two skill points into Mind, increasing it from 3 to 5, and acquire three more skills: Enhanced Strength, Enhanced Regeneration, and Feral Instincts. All the other requirements were already satisfied: his level was 25, both his Body and Magick were at 5, and all the old skills had already reached the necessary ranks. He figured it should take him no more than a couple of days to level up one more time and collect enough mana to obtain Enhanced Strength, Enhanced Regeneration, and Feral Instincts. He summoned the skill menu to check if he was correct.
Genetic Development Interface
Evolution Stage 1: “Primordial Form”
Skill: Enhanced Strength
Skill: Feral Instincts
Requirements: Mind 5, Magick 3
Skill: Enhanced Regeneration
Requirements: Body 7, Magick 5, Mind 3
Skill: Enhanced Senses
Skill: Enhanced Agility
Skill: Enhanced Intelligence
Skill: Enhanced Reflexes
Requirements: Body 5, Mind 3
Ability: Bladed Tentacles
Requirements: Body 2, Magick 1
Enhanced Strength cost 3,000 MP, Enhanced Regeneration 5,000 MP, and Feral Instincts 4,000 MP. Therefore, he needed a total of 12,000 MP to acquire all three skills, which was quite a lot. Since he currently had a little over 10,000 MP, he could have opted to purchase some of the skills right away, but he chose not to. Some days back, he’d made the decision to always keep a minimum of 10,000 MP stored inside his body for critical situations such as post-battle healing after sustaining severe injuries.
To obtain Feral Instincts he needed to increase Mind to 5, which was fine as he was going to put the next two skill points into that attribute anyway. He also realized that to obtain Enhanced Regeneration, he needed to increase Body to 7. This meant that he needed to level up three more times rather than just one before he would be able to evolve to the next stage.
So it would likely take him a bit longer than the two days he initially anticipated to fulfill all the requirements for evolving. He figured that by the time he had leveled up three times and increased Mind to 5 and Body to 7, he would have collected enough mana to obtain the necessary skills. It was a good thing that Enhanced Strength, Enhanced Regeneration, and Feral Instincts only needed to be at Rank I. This meant he wouldn’t have to wait for them to progress to the next Rank. Instead, he would be able to evolve to Stage 2 as soon as he acquired the three skills.
With a thought, Jake allocated the skill point to Mind, increasing it from 3 to 4. He planned to assign the next skill point to the same attribute, followed by the subsequent two points to Body. Once this was done, he would acquire the three necessary skills and evolve to Stage 2.
Jake hadn’t obtained Enhanced Strength before because he saw no reason to do so. He didn’t feel he needed to get stronger. Ditto for Enhanced Regeneration. As for Feral Instincts, from its description he’d learned that this skill could provide him with some kind of Spidey-sense, alerting him to imminent dangers.
Jake didn’t feel the need for that skill because he primarily fought mutants, so they were always close to him, which allowed him to keep them within his expanded field of vision at all times, preventing them from ambushing him.
Also, thanks to Enhanced Reflexes as well as the upgrade he’d acquired for Enhanced Agility, improving his ability to dodge enemies’ attacks, mutants no longer could land hits on him. This was another reason he refrained from spending mana to get Enhanced Regeneration.
Why bother getting it when mutants couldn’t even inflict any kind of damage on him anymore? At least, it was the case until now. However, while he hadn’t felt he needed to get these skills before, in order to evolve to Stage 2, he would now have to acquire all of them.
Finally, Jake snapped open his eyes, and all the information disappeared. He pivoted, dashed across the rooftop, and leaped onto a neighboring building.
Hey everyone! Since Jake will soon be ready to evolve into the next stage, I thought we could take a moment to make some predictions! :)
With each level of evolution, Jake becomes more powerful but loses some part of his humanity. So what do you think—or hope—would eventually happen to Jake?
Option 1. He will be able to retain some of his humanity, going berserk only on bad guys while protecting the weak, thus finding some sort of balance between his human and monster sides.
Option 2. He will lose his humanity entirely, throwing away all human morals and becoming a cold-blooded monster in both body and mind, caring only about himself and his own survival.