As soon as Laurent accepted the transfer request, the air around him stilled. It was if the very existence of his surroundings was put on halt. The next second, the colors which he could perceive turned hazy before a new set replaced them.
He ‘felt’ the air around him unfreeze and realized that his surroundings had completely changed. He stood amidst countless corpses of what he thought were of the same species. The corpses were mangled as if the enemies had absolute hatred for them.
Observing the surroundings, there were trees scattered sparsely across the red land below him, with similar bright red leaves on their branches. Stomping on the red surface, he felt the loose structure of the land below him. His skin felt prickly, which he assumed to be due to the quality of the air here. The sky was the same as everything, red, albeit with no celestial bodies or in fact anything in the sky. It was plain red.
He then proceeded to disregard the corpses and felt the rich energy in his surroundings as he attempted to absorb it. The corpses didn’t really disturb him as he had seen far more, even being the perpetrator in few.
[Psych +0.09]
[Psych +0.08]
[Psych +0.06]
[Psych +0.1]
[Psych +0.07]
During a period of few minutes, several notifications popped in front of him as he tried absorbing psych. As a beast tamer in his previous life, he was more well versed in psych and mana, and in his current situation, psych would help more in handling aggression if he were to meet someone.
‘Too slow’
During the awakening, evolution energy modified the body in a way that it would be able to absorb the main four energies without any problem. But compared to his peak it was too slow. It was just like how a rich second generation wouldn’t be able to get used to living on the road and would most likely die, unlucky bastard wouldn’t be able to go back in time though haha.
The universe as Laurent understood, had four main types of energy, and each of them corresponded to a particular aspect of a body.
Mana denoted the external magical energy which the body used to perform magical feats. Similarly, Psych represented the mental energy, Vitality the life force and Mystic the soul of the body.
When their world was initiated into the universe, mana flooded in their otherwise manaless world. With the initiation came in a system, an interface that literally every sentient and conscious being got. Like a virtual reality game, it showed the stats and level of the person with every unawakened being starting at 0. But that was just the most basic part of it. The interesting part was that it granted an evolution tree to everyone out there, leveling out the playing field by a large amount. Not just that, in a sense, it unleashed hell on their planet.
‘Ah yes. I don’t have any evolution route unlocked. Let’s try if the scriptures work.’
Scriptures were a record of certain routes in the body which if you made your energy follow, would help in absorbing the said energy more efficiently.
He took what little psych he absorbed and controlled it to follow along a certain path in his body.
*Blergh*
Almost instantly, Laurent spurted out a mouthful of blood as he staggered backwards. With confusion visible in his eyes, he looked at the warning pop-up which appeared in front of him.
[Detected use of other world scripture. Host is recommended to not use it to prevent backlash again.]
‘Bad start. The lack of knowledge is already showing, it’s better if I go with the safe way of evolution.’
Laurent had never migrated from one world to another in his previous life as he had always followed his parents, wanting to help his father with his alliance and mom with her ingredients. But like everything in reality, things went awry towards the end.
The lowest level of the unit could be a single lifeform, be it any human or beast. These lifeforms could form an alliance together as it provided a lot of benefits and even safety. All alliances had a certain hierarchy and member limits according to the alliance level.
Alliance fought or even negotiated among themselves to become the Ruler of the world as it granted a lot of resources, benefits and opportunities. Ruler of what? Of the World. A world could be called a galaxy but in a sense that it had a thin protective layer. It could technically have countless alliances but it only had a few notable ones, with only one among the alliance leaders being the Ruler of it.
After taking a shelter nearby in what looked like a looted and run down makeshift living quarter, he opened his evolution tree tab.
Instantly, the interface rotated backwards, making a flat surface on air as a lush green 3d tree appeared in front of him which was similarly translucent. Looking at the ends of the tree, he could see several fruits. But unlike the vibrant color of the tree, every one of these fruits had a dim color as if they would fade out of existence.
With a purpose in mind, he rotated the tree until he found a certain fruit. It had small letters hovering above it which read, [Cap].
He lifted his hand and attempted to pluck it, of course, one wouldn’t succeed, but the action triggered a prompt on their interface.
[Are you sure you want to evolve ‘Cap’?]
“Yes”
[Cost : 0]
[The process has begun. Countdown : 59 minutes 59 seconds]
A series of follow up notifications followed up as he simply closed the interface and surveyed the living quarters to see if he could find anything of worth. And he did.
An entire load of multicolored crystals fell down as he poked an uneven surface on the wall. He quickly bent and picked up the crystals and put them in the pouch he got from the system.
A small notification came up instantly which he of course ignored.
[Received : 128x level 1 mana crystal ;; 131x level 1 psych crystal ;; 12x level 1 vitality ;; 213x level 1 mystic crystal]
It would be a huge help to the current him sure, but he had seen far more, no need to get excited over it. Just like how a rich person would find ten thousand dollars pocket change compared to some poor blokes.
He rummaged around stuff and managed to gather a few more crystals, some even at level 2 and a few pouches.
Sitting cross legged, he opened the pouches and an assortment of things fell out. Pouches given by the system had a 1 meter cube small spatial dimension in them, automatically connected to the interface so that anything that fell in it was identified and counted by the system. Of course, no living being can be put in them.
Disregarding the majority of things, he scrutinized the daggers he found, as a weapon would be most useful in his current situation. Why daggers? Because it was what he used in his past life as well. Being a beast tamer didn’t mean relying wholly on beasts, after all not many beasts would bow their heads to someone weaker than them.
He put all the crystals in his own pouch and the rest back in the other pouches, which he then dug the ground and kept in. A pouch couldn’t be put inside another pouch and carrying all of them around — although light — would just attract unwanted attention if he met someone. Better if he hid it and came back to them if he fell short on something later.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
He then closed his eyes and began absorbing atmospheric psych again, there were even a few of the other energy particles in there but he would have to ignore them as psych took priority.
[Psych +0.06]
[Psych +0.07]
[Psych +0.09]
[Psych +0.04]
[Psych +0.06],,,
Notifications kept coming but he ignored them and kept absorbing for about forty minutes until finally a *ting* sounded as a pop up soon followed up with a message.
[Evolution fruit ‘Cap’ is ready to consume. Failure to consume within a day would lead to it rotting.]
He opened his evolution tree tab and looked at the fruit on the tree. It now had a bright red color, unlike the other fruits with dim shades. He plucked the fruit after ignoring the warning which had come up as he already knew it.
[Warning : Consume the fruit within five seconds of plucking it. Giving it to any other life form won’t work. No type of storage would work. No type of energy would work.]
He of course bit into it instantly, the fruit, which was barely the size of a strawberry, melted into liquid in less than two seconds as a sweet flavor registered in his taste buds. It was already down his throat the third second as a ticklish feeling spread throughout his body, subsiding the next second.
He brought up his stats window and looked at what his stats looked now,
[Name : Laurent Stryder]
[Level : 1 ]
[Experience : 0/20]
[Mana : 0/15 ;; Psych : 4.7/15 ;; Vitality : 0/15 ;; Mystic : 0/15]
[Evolution tree : Cap]
[Worlds unlocked : 1]
The initial cap of all four energies started out as 10, the evolution fruit he just consumed gave him the extra 5. Of course, he only knew it gave extra five in all four energies as he had already experienced it once.
Everyone had just experimented with it to make the future generation’s life easier. Some of them even winged it as they progressed. Just like you with your life.
Next he would have to evolve his absorption so that his speed of absorption increased. As to why he first raised his cap? Because the lowest level psych skill he remembered required 15 psych units. It would give more security to him in his current situation.
Going through the same procedure, he increased his [Absorption] after waiting for an hour, during which he still sat there trying to fill his psych pool; it was now around 10.
After getting an increase in his absorption, he once again opened the evolution tree and found another fruit,
[Basic build]
Repeating the same procedure, he closed the tab after the process began and sat down to start filling up his pool again. There was a noticeable increase this time.
[Psych +0.12]
[Psych +0.18]
[Psych +0.19]
[Psych +0.17]
[Psych +0.11]
The [Absorption] increased the absorption speed of all four energies by 0.1 units per minute. It wasn't a lot but it was still important. As a person who had experienced it all, he knew the most efficient way to level up but that was only if he was on his planet.
But the problem was his world hadn’t been initiated yet and he wouldn’t want to waste his four month lead. Mana didn’t exist at all and finding the other free energies would be an extremely difficult task compared to here where every energy is free everywhere in the atmosphere.
In a foreign world with no information he would have to take the path that would grant highest survivability rather than one which granted highest leveling speed or power.
Half an hour later he opened his eyes and saw that his psych cap had been reached. He then switched to mana and began his next round of absorption which lasted for around half an hour before the familiar evolution notification rang in his ears. The amount of mana he absorbed seems to have been more than psych in the same duration but he chose to think about it later as the temptation of the evolution fruit was greater.
After eating the fruit, a cooling sensation enveloped him before the familiar itching was felt throughout his body, this time with a little higher intensity and even his head aching a little. It stopped a few minutes later as he got up and checked out his new physique, even his eyesight seems to have increased as his surroundings became a little clearer.
After initiating the process of another evolution [Experience], he left the living quarters and walked towards the corpses which were still littering the ground. As a beast tamer in his previous life, he had always wanted to try the route of necromancy. But unfortunately, the universe, or the system, only allowed one class.
The process was rather difficult if one could say it. Before confirming your class, you could try countless classes to see if you were talented in any, but choosing a class again after discarding it would lead to lower bonuses.
An example was, if a person first got mage class, which let’s say granted him 5% bonus. The person then went on to try a few more classes but he realized that his compatibility with mage class and talent in it were probably the highest. But now if he chose the mage class again, he would only get the bonus 4 or maybe 3%.
In his previous life, Laurent had tried every class and realized that he was average in literally everything. Sure, such people existed but the bonus he got in every class was exactly proportional and he also felt the same amount of compatibility with everything. It was odd. He blamed it on the [Sealed] status of his, as no one he had met knew about such a thing.
People tended to blame the things they had no information or control on.
He bent down near the most complete corpse amongst the bunch lying on ground and put his hands on it, but just then he heard an almost inaudible shuffling behind him. Instantly swerving to the left, he saw what he recognized as a fire arrow spell hit the corpse, it went deep in its chest and burned the skin, possibly even its insides before the fire stopped spreading.
He rolled and took cover behind the trunk of a nearby tree as he tried to determine where the assaulter was. It would have been a play in the park if he had his previous stats and evolution progress but he couldn’t be too greedy.
Another arrow flew in as he hurriedly snapped his head—which he had used to peek and determine where the arrows were coming from—backwards. With his back against the tree, he mobilized all his accumulated psych to prepare for the only skill he could use at the moment as he looked at the fire arrow lodged in the ground a couple meters away.
[Shock], it was one of the skills made by a famous psychic of his world before he migrated to another world. Its principle was simple: gather psych particles and shoot them in a way and spot that it targets the most sensitive spot of the opponent's psych, halting all of the person's movements for a short moment of time if he had his psych barrier up if not effectively killing the person.
He mentally counted from 10 to 1 in a descending order and dashed to the nearest tree while making sure to jump at the first step away from his current cover.
As expected, a fire arrow hit at the place he would have stepped had he not jumped. But now, instead of running towards the tree, he abruptly changed direction and made a run for where he—with his experience—deduced the archer would run.
Instantly he felt a slight shuffle in the tree a couple meters away as he snapped his head in the right and quickly used [Shock].
*Thud*
A body fell from the tree to the ground, by which time he was already there, dagger on the creature’s throat. Without hesitation he proceeded to slash it as blue blood gushed out.
[Killed a level 1 creature; contribution 100% ; experience +2]
Bending down on his knees, he looked at the goblin like creature on the ground while ignoring the notification. It had a light green shade of skin and was two meters tall, but also sufficiently light which would aid in jumping from tree to tree, hiding or even running away, probably something to do with his evolution tree.
‘So they exist here too?’
As far as he remembered, there was a goblin planet in their world whose leader made his own alliance rather than join any other one, just like his father. He remembered them as they were one of the enemy alliances.
It didn’t necessarily mean that the one in their world were descendants of the one here, just that the rare creatures could exist anywhere in the universe rather than just one world.
His gaze turned a little playful as he looked at the complete corpse.
“You partially destroyed the corpse I was about to use, so it’s only right I use yours in exchange.”
Putting his finger on the corpse, he tried recollecting the knowledge about necromancy. As to why he knew Necromancy? Because of course he tried that class too, while searching for a class he had talent and compatibility in.
He had ultimately chosen beast tamer as one, his mentality wasn’t quite used to using corpses for battle as it hadn’t been long since initiation. Second, there were a lot of beasts which had appeared on his planet after mana rushed in, even mutating a few of native ones.
Now? One, he had already experienced a lot, at least enough to not be bothered about using dead corpses and second, the opportunity for a necromancer to grow here was plenty as clearly some kind of war was going on, leaving enough carcasses in its wake.
His finger on the corpse had mystic, vitality, and mana particles rotating around him as he kept on trying to form a connection with the goblin’s carcass. Suddenly, he felt a faint form of link being formed between him and the dead body. Smiling widely, he stepped backwards as he stared at the corpse with fascination and whispered,
“Animate”