ARC2/C33 - Evolution
Again, the forest stretching out before him. It saddened Sam to think of a once proud race, reduced to servitude. Front line grunts for the Seracians.
He flew down to the first lot of wolves and attempted to communicate with them. At least giving them to have a chance to surrender or something. But they showed no response as if they had heard nothing. Clearly the Seracians had done a number on the wolves and they were now barely sentient.
The wolves crashed down onto Sam but this time their attacks did no damage at all. In surprise Sam looked around at the now dead wolves that surrounded him. They had been eviscerated and were now just smouldering piles of half melted metal and charred bone. Apparently Sam’s body temperature was not unlike a small sun from all the heat energy he had absorbed.
Wanting to experiment he allowed more wolves near, but they were wary so he zipped towards a large group. Then he tried in every way he could think of to use the ability. It was not as easy as he’d thought though as heat was removed from the mechanoid wolves causing them to freeze then almost instantaneously explode as they came in the vicinity of his super heated form. Interesting.
Ok, it had potential for a strange kind of melee range offense, speculated Sam.
Moving on he entered the exact same cave structure. Remembering what had happened last time, he selected a large number of wolves and bound them in a psi-energy bubble before heading off into the cave proper.
He then started on wiping out the thousands there. Using [Life-force Absorbtion] followed by [Heat Absorbtion] on those that came near to attack. It wasn’t long before his hunch paid off and he found that he was getting attacked by less and less wolves each time. As they evidentally had some kind of sentients when it came to self survival.
This allowed him to use [Life-force Absorption] without any hinderance. Allowing him to change his flaky skin eventually to merely slightly blemished rough skin, then normal skin. Which was strange, if it just sped up healing, he would still end up with burnt scared skin. It seemed the system went one better than normal healing and his skin was good as new. And no pain which was the main purpose of all the effort.
Sam could see that many more were exiting the cave system than if he had used more heavily damaging attacks but figured it would stop Traksis from getting too bored.
As Sam was in no real danger. He considered how best to proceed. Leveling abilities was all very well and good but he had seen from the evolution process that there was a possibility that he could influence the outcome through his actions.
Previously he had only rotated the use of his more useful, generally higher tier skills, in order to level them. But now with his increased intelligence tried using as many skills at the same time as possible, even his lowest tier skills. [Tough] one of the lowest tier of his skills was still at a pitiful level 14 but he had a sneaking suspicion that it would level real fast.
He had no long range offensive skills but for the time being could make up for that with his speed and stealth. AOE skills he had close range Pyro and a much wider Cryo AOE. His [Aerokinesis] could be used as an offensive skill, along with his manipulation of psi-energy.
His [Kinetic Flight Level 96] [Energy Drain Level 94] [Aerokinesis Level 94] were all close to tier-ing up. But closest was [Telepathic Illusions Level 199] his first ability about to reach level 200. What was that going to evolve into?
Sam would just have to try and force evolutions hand by repeating what he wanted. As a result Sam stopped using all his abilities simultaneously and instead focused on his new melee ability [Heat absorption] to dispatch the wolves while keeping [Telepathic Illusions] on. He of course created an illusion of a Pyro elemental and other similar forms just to pass the time.
[Telepathic Illusions Level 200 break through to Tier-D achieved]
[Processing… new abilities]
[Tier-E abilities available:
[Perception Manipulation: The user can manipulate perception, which is the mind processing of sensory information to organize and interpret it. Forms of sensory information include visual (sight), haptic (touch), and temporal (time) information.]
[Synergy detected processing… new ability]
[Tier-D ability available:
[Pain Illusion: The user is able to trick an individual's mind into thinking they are in physical pain. Though it has no physical affect on the body only the mind where pain ultimately exists, tricking the mind the body is in agony, all of which can exhaust the victim in mind and body making the pain is quite effective to put a target down no matter the size.]
He had just got a synergy detected despite only one ability tier-ing. Sam did not know why exactly but he would keep on trying this method for directing evolution of abilities until he was proved wrong.
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As to the new ability it seemed the perfect skill for an evil emperor but he could see other uses. It would be a brilliant ability to keep unwanted hordes of beasts away, regardless of their size. This suggested being able to effect beasts potentially at a much higher tier. He would need to experiment with this but even if it only was effective for lower tiers it would still be useful for crowd control. Sam had not at all liked the feeling of being swarmed by the wolves, so he was more than happy to take the skill.
Now he would tier the other abilities after he tested out this new one a bit. He was gratified to find being a Tier-D ability that it was much easier to use, even than the Tier-E abilties. [Pain Illusion] allowed him to not only select whether he wanted to select a group or individual but also to target an area. This allowed him to create a barrier that stopped wolves, dead, metaphorically only.
Then he carefully levelled [Kinetic Flight Level 96] [Energy Drain Level 94] [Aerokinesis Level 94] to try and get them to all level at the same time.
[Kinetic Flight Level 100 break through to Tier-E achieved]
[Processing… new abilities]
[High-Speed Flight: The power to fly at high speeds.]
[Flash Step: The power to use bursts of speed to move faster than the eye can track, making it seem as if one has teleported.]
[Energy Drain Level 100 break through to Tier-E achieved]
[Aerokinesis Level 100 break through to Tier-E achieved]
[Synergy detected processing… new abilities]
[Absorbing Vortex Creation: The power to create an absorbing vortex.]
[Absorption Field Projection: The power to project a field that absorbs everything inside of it.]
Sam only saw [Absorbing Vortex Creation] as useful if he was only able to use one ability at a time which of course wasn’t an issue. So picked [Absorption Field Projection] straight away as an AOE absorption that was fast, he presumed.
Seconds later the cave was empty of all wolves, except the bubble wrapped ones. Sam removed those by using his old faithful Constructor skills and cutting a slab out of the cave roof to exit by.
He then found Traksis who was waiting patently by the exit. As they left Sam explained his simple theory about ability evolution to Traksis.
Much later, it was starting to get dark by the time they had finished with their fifth MR full of invading mechanoid wolves.
Name: Sam Slait Level 38
Health Points: 32.5K Skill Points: 19k Stamina: 4k
Vitality: 5k Strength: 2k Endurance: 5k Agility: 2k Intellect: 3k Perception: 1k
Acquired Path: PSI Tier-F Strand: null
Abilities:
Tier-G
[Telekinesis Level 132] [Psionic Drain Level 125] [Telepathic Illusions Level 202] [Tough Level 67]
[Pyrokinesis Level 103] [Cryokinesis Level 103][PSI FLOW Level 56]
Tier-F [Kinetic Flight Level 109] [Opinokinesis Level 72][Energy Drain Level 107]
[Aerokinesis Level 64] [Cryo Wave Level 104] [Heat Absorption Level 12]
Tier-E [Absorbtion Level 111] [Life-Force Absorption Level 27]
Tier-D [Absorption Field Projection Level 23][Pain illusion Level 17]
Sam looked at his free points and just shook his head. He had asked Traksis her point distribution so that he could try factor that into his own build. But it was all just mind boggling. He was kind of jealous that her ability automatically allocated points.
Name: Traksis Level 35
Health Points: 68k Skill Points: 21k Stamina: 32k
Vitality: 8k Strength: 8k Endurance: 8k Agility: 9k Intellect: 7k Perception: 7k
Acquired Path: PSI Strand: null
Abilities: [Pursuit Level 197] [Psychic Energy Absorption Level 123]
[Tier-F abilities [Energy Drain Level 72] [Absorbing Regeneration Level 132] [Psi Shadow Level 67]
[Tier-E Evolved Fusionism Level 1]
[Tier-D Mind Dominion Level 9]
Sam wanted to at least match Traksis’ stats but was loathed to up level them after almost blacking out last time. But did it anyway. Traksis using [Mind Dominion] all the time as he edged his points up first in 1k amounts, until they were level with Traksis’ own. She was glad to see Sam seemed to be fully healed of his earlier injuries thanks to one of his new abilities.
Traksis had taken Sam’s word to heart and had been trying to spam all her abilities as well in the hope of more evolutions. Though she couldn’t decide what was missing in what Sam called her build. She hunted in the way she had always hunted, just much faster.
She had as yet not used her [Evolved Fusionism] much as it required higher tier cores to use. Sam didn’t really understand but was surprised it was not a higher tier than E. It sounded an incredibly powerful ability. But then it had evolved out of her [Absorbing Regeneration] which no way on earth could really be a Tier-F skill. More like an C,B or even A Tier Sam reckoned, from his delving into the core markets. This made Sam calculate that these other abilities deserved also to be in these tiers.
This also suggested to Sam that whoever had engineered this (probably the Seracians) had done it to allow for lower resource requirements for these skills enabling otherwise out of reach skills to be used by normal troops. As well it meant that there were some very powerful soldiers out there, equipped with these and many other daunting skills.
---
Tersius Kimvelo, cradled his fingers and sat back, smiling. He had just received the latest report on the vore experiment. The vore was proving to be a valid use of his resources and was growing at a phenominal rate. Also the fact that there were now two vores was most satisfying.
When the Vanguard had heard of the vore they had the audacity to belittle him. They had stated that the false vore had no real power and was nothing more than an experiment. Powered by the MR it had no real autonomy and was a false hope. They had offered him an extremely handsome deal if he were to eradicate all knowledge of this stain on the name of the true Vores.
Now that the false Vores had more than a hundred times more powerful than a day or so earlier. And there were two of them. He would have the Vanguard at his feet begging him.
He would relish the face of Korpos, the great slayer, prince of lightning frost, as he bowed low before him in supplication. The time had been a long time coming but at last, there would be some restitution. The Seracians would shape the multi-verse anew. And with the Vores maybe the threat of the old gods, the vore, was over.
Another few days and he would kill and capture the vores.