Novels2Search

16: evolution

I looked over my evolution options with all the wonder and excitement of a child choosing a video game. My desire to make my choice count spiked as I scrolled through the list of pixellated monsters, dismissing common choice after common choice. Greater Phyllopteryx, Water serpent, Phyllopteryx mage, Mega Sea urchin... Their stats didn't do anything special, sporting rises of 7 to 13 each; barely even worth the loss of my Twin Minds. No one was guiding my evolution, in fact it was my time to guide that of the kobolds- but only after I got my feet under me. Especially in a more literal sense, I was tired to flopping around on fins every time I wanted to move.

[Filter applied: Must be able to walk.]

My locomotive exhaustion resonated with the system, knocking out two-thirds of my choices. The scrollbar tripled in size, and my selection jumped wildly down the list. Choices like Toxin drake, Two-headed great Kobold, wind serpent, and Dracogator made up my selection. And while these were all passable, I knew I could filter for more.

[Filter modified: Must be able to fly.]

The list sharpened still, to several brands of wyvern. "Lesser dragon" was tempting, but too plain for my tastes; plus I didn't know if I could afford to be a lesser anything. I ate as I pondered, having to [Bite] just to get through the more muscular meat. While my primary brain calculated a path ahead, my secondary one appreciated the flavor and challenge in equal measure, until it got to the upper spine.

[Cannot integrate Kanastone] scolded the system as my other head bumped into it. Remembering how I had lost mine, I willed it forward.

[Kanastone integration in progress] It said, my flesh feeling pushed aside as the stone made it's way into my primary head.

I felt my capacity for magic soar. Most dragons didn't have two heads. Most dragons didn't have two kanastones. Hell, most dragons couldn't survive the loss of one head, grow it back, and slot a newer, stronger kanastone. From the fallen dragon, an absolute windfall of Mutagen poured in. enough to evolve my heart a step further and put a new organ on the map, or bump up my skull twice. I chose to hold off until after evolving on this decision, one of many that could make a dragon's heads spin. I knew I wanted something dual-elemental, and that desire alone yielded... nothing. Nothing on my list had two real elements, unless you counted poison.

"Until I add it myself" I thought, bringing up my Skill panel. I filtered that too, left with three skills.

[Fire magic]

[Poison magic]

[Acid magic]

"The choice was a no-brainer" I thought, reaching for the first one. I'd take it, integrate it, and-

[Multiple base elements of magic blocked by Title: Useless.]

First, I stalled. Then, a tear fell from my eye. Then, I pounded the ground in frustration. If elemental magic was blocked, there was only one thing to do. Acquire magic so weird that the title didn't even recognize it.

With renewed desire, my options filled. While they appeared repetitive due to my trio of filters, those very filters ensured all of them would be something I was at least satisfied with. Winged fire kobold, flying salamander, charred lizard...

Not questioning how the last one had wings, I brought up my 3 rarest options.

[Wrath wyvern (F): +38 Strength (60), +21 quickness (35), +5 vitality (30), -5 mind (20). Includes wings and a mutable fire gland. Grants the flight and sight Skills] This evolution would take the near-opposite path from my previous one, and make me far better in a straight fight.

[Triple-caster orb. -2 Strength (15), +6 quickness (20), -5 vitality (20), +70 mind (90). Upgrades twin minds to trio minds. Allows for three kanastone slots. Grants one free mana manipulation skill]. This one had the strangest design I've seen so far, both physically and numerically. It's body consisted of a lone orb, vents pockmarking it's surface for what I guessed to be respiration and movement. Three heads, placed in a triangle on it's sides, menaced anything in the third-of-a-circle before it, eyes positively glowing with magic. and those stats... they dumped everything and then some into casting. I wanted to be a wizard, but not that much!

[Mana drake. +23 strength (40), +26 quickness (40), +15 vitality (40), +10 mind (30). Grants the skills Roar and Slash. Includes a free mutation, mana-draining claws]

This was perfect. It balanced what I was looking for, allowing me to return to embody the fighting style of equal parts breaking, dodging, tanking, and out-thinking my foes. It didn't have any wings, but fit so much of my other desires that I didn't mind at all. Or even question how it defied the filters. I hid in the carcass of my fallen foe, and with some difficulty, maneuvered my head to tap the screen.

[Valerie, Hydrapprentice (II) has commenced her evolution into a Mana Drake (III)]

[Egg formation boosted by nearby material. Evolution accelerated.]

[Error: Multiple kanastones detected]. I gulped. Even as my body was being slowly converted to some sort of universal sludge, I felt in my gut something was wrong. My heads blurred together, back into one, when I felt the kanastones touch. A red-hot stabbing ripped through the sensations, accompanied by repeated jolts of lightning jumping between the two scraping stones.

[Mutagen detected. Forming mana cortex from 9 mutagen.]

I felt something rush from my gut upwards, insulating the lightning. Directing it. The back of my head ceased shorting out, replaced with a cool, comforting feeling. I breathed a sigh of relief, feeling of sleep overtaking me.

When I began to dream.

I found myself atop a nest of bronze coins, clinking softly as they stirred under my legs. Neither too thick to be awkward nor too thin to be frail, and neither too long to be imbalanced nor too short to be quick. I looked outwards to walls of a purple-grey stone, covered in symbols that ran in bands near the top. They glowed with a cyan light, thought I hardly seemed to need it as nothing cast a shadow. As I looked around, a door opened on one side of this nesting room. Floating through it more than walking, I looked out over a balcony. Stairs hugged the corner, going a quarter of the way around the room to reach the floor, and four stone statues stood, information panels over their heads.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

[Cilgris, Zybold (II) halberdier (II) Level 10. Combo strike, advanced polearm proficiency]

[Croc, Zybold (II) fighter level 10. Dual-wield, Axe proficiency, Dodge]

[Drox, Zybold (II) fighter level 10. Advanced axe proficiency, Dual-wield, rend, frenzy]

[Khirc, Zybold (II) defender level 10. Shield proficiency, Sword proficiency, parry]

This was my army. The survivors of it at least. I reached out to Cilgris, mental bridge all too easy to make; as if it was already here.

"Cilgris? can you hear me?"

Chewing and swallowing followed, stopped with a muffled echo.

[Valerie! we were worried when you and old Zyr fell. How are you?]

"I'm... evolving. And while I'm not sure what's going on, I can help you evolve too. What do you and your surviving allies want to be?"

I heard echoes of discussion as I explored. I swam downwards past the kobold statues, looking over a set of control panels as Cilgris spoke.

"Khirc wants to be something defensive, Drox wants to specialize harder into attack power, Croc wants to do magic, and I'm interested in balance"

Looking at the two further, I saw words printed across the top of their translucent screens. A green one for evolution design on one side of the room, and a blue one for class on the other. And of course, both awaited my approval.

"Zyradon must have done this to you..." I muttered. "You're okay if I make what I think is best for you, right?"

All four confirmed, so I got to work from the bottom up. First on the chopping block was Class choice. I had no real eyes to strain, but scrolled unblinkingly at myriad options. They seemed simple at first, especially at the first-tier choices, but I quickly became lost in the interbranching trees.

I stepped back, taking a breath I wasn't sure I even needed in this mental realm. There was no way to predict what was ahead, so anything past tier 2 was impossible to optimize for. Cilgris wasn't even high enough level to raise her class, leaving me with three choices- one offensive, one defensive, and one magical.

"This is going to sound gross, but do you still have my head?"

[Yes, what do you-]

"You'll have to have mister Croc fish around for a glowing stone, and try to focus on... being one with it. That's how you get magic here."

A half-minute later, I heard Croc make a happy roar through the connection to Cilgris. Croc's class was a no-brainer, borrowing from the fighter's strength to advance a mage's casting. It even worked with his use of axes

[Croc has advanced his class into Pyromancer (II)]

Drox's was just as easy. I thought back to the kobold I killed, unwilling to let her class die with her. [Drox has advanced her class into Berserker (II)]

Defensive classes weren't as easy. The base defender class seemed too plain, but another showed up, granting defense and healing magic by proxy. [Khirc has advanced her class to Cleric (II)]

Evolution design had just as many choices, far more accessible. This control panel allocated energy from levelups into a myriad of forms- the creation and reshaping of organs, all of which abstracted into four stats. With every change I forecasted on my guinea pix of Drox, her potential stats changed. some rising, rarely falling, all of it reversed as I cleared the changes. And cleared another set. And was about to clear a third before spying presets. "Zyrbold" had no established paths of growth, but that did not stop me from looking into a sea of pixel art monsters. Anything especially muscular was overly monstrous in shape, and these kobolds seemed fairly happy with their anatomy. Questions such as "Do you want to give up your bipedal, two-armed stance to become a three-headed gasball" simply aren't questions to hit someone with.

I chose a subspecies known as the toughscale kobold, reasoning that this bonus to defense would facilitate reckless behavior rather than temper it. When a 3-dimensional image of a kobold spun on the screen, I saw the raised numbers plain as day. Saw the changes, of mutable scales being given for free, and saw I had much evolutionary energy remaining to make changes. Eyes moving past her base stats, I saw options to add new Skills, skipped over as I could do that with enough levels and training; but more importantly options to add new parts. Extra arms, extra legs, an extra head for some reason, and I gave her a strategy modeled off an old one from me. Larger claws sat at the end of her hands and a way to serrate them, more muscle was packed into her arms, but the bulk of this power was spent on a new organ.

[Bloodthirst gland. Increase attack power and recovery speed when blood is consumed]

I looked over my creation, smiled, and finalized them both.

[Drox is beginning evolution into a redscale kobold (III)]

Very much on the nose.

I didn't want to make Khirc a tank and only a tank. Greater kobolds were the classic leader; armed with larger size, a more complex brain, and pheromones that bolstered and unified kobolds. I spent the last bit adding more impressive horns, for head protection and further stature. [Khirc is beginning evolution into a great kobold leader (III)]

Croc's desires, luckily, came with a "kobold mage" preset. I took more care on this one, trading the generic mana gland for a more efficient fire mana gland. I didn't have enough energy to grant a Fundamental fire magic skill, but I gave him the normal level of one [Croc is beginning evolution into a pyrobold (III)]

Cilgris I knew was going to be special. Her class was advanced, so her race had to be too. Given my own touch. I scrolled all the way to the top of the race selection, choosing the humble, first-tier kobold. The stats, while somehow worse than mine, left at least 95% of my available energy for creativity. I couldn't actually edit stats directly, only the organs from which they were derived. Turning her scales to metal sent vitality to the moon, but sank her quickness. Some more muscle increased strength and seemed to be a fair-weather friend of quickness, returns diminishing sharply after too much volume.

And yet, I wanted balance. I scrapped those changes, leaning harder into the material aspect, and found a modifiers; which could change how a material functioned. I could apply them to flesh, bone, scale, brain material, even blood; and everything got more complicated. Eyes glazing over, I settled on one that looked nearly universal.

[Mana-infused. Increases base capabilities such as power, responsiveness, and durability when provided mana]

It wasn't cheap, but was balanced out almost entirely by three more modifiers

[Mana-dependent. Decreases base capabilities such as power, responsiveness, and durability when deprived of mana]

[Mana-hungry. Slowly takes damage when deprived of mana]

[Valuable. Greedy beings will prioritize acquiring this material]

When I applied all four to her scales, the representation changed, from a reddish-black to a shimmering purple. I felt a pang of envy at the beauty of her scales, same emotion informing me they were working. I interwove new coils of muscle around the old for quick bursts of strength. I added a new organ into her gut, a cyan pearl the size of a fist known as a mana beacon, and everything came together. All it did was increase the range at which mana drew to her, better facilitating her magic-hungry fighting style. With the last of my energy, I streamlined her scales, altering their shape and moving mass to protect the vital parts and allow for easier movement.

[Cilgris has commenced evolution into a mana-] The text began to glitch, letters losing coherence before reforming into something that made my stomach jump

[-into a Valbold (III)]