Chapter 564 Final Evolution

"Xia Nan!?"

Shattered by the force field energy, the Fire Elemental's orange-red flames transformed in the air into a luminous blue mist of life energy.

The pitch-black energy swirling around Xia Nan hadn't even fully dissipated when he heard a hoarse but familiar voice beside him.

Looking over, he saw the Spined Devil he had just saved—the one capable of manipulating shadow energy—staring at him in astonishment.

It had clearly recognized him through his highly distinctive combo of combat techniques.

Seeing this, he was almost entirely certain the Spined Devil before him was possessed by Lorraine, captain of the Blade of Vengeance.

Yet he was in no rush to acknowledge her, instead maintaining his patience.

After confirming there were no other adventurers around, they exchanged a few details only the crew—or just the two of them—would know, such as the scene of their first meeting or who had introduced them.

Only when he was absolutely certain did Xia Nan wave over Sasha and Sarissa, who had been hiding nearby.

Lorraine looked deeply surprised, clearly not expecting Xia Nan to have already gathered two teammates.

After hearing how they had met, she marveled at the strange workings of fate.

In turn, Xia Nan and the others learned what Lorraine had been through since her arrival. Because a Spined Devil possessed a vocal structure similar to intelligent races, she could speak normally, making communication much easier.

Lorraine had been rather lucky. When she was first swept into the secret realm, she possessed a Shadow Demon Bat—a creature with a Challenge Rating of 0.5 in adulthood. Protected by a massive colony, she safely made it through her most vulnerable infant stage.

Her early development mirrored Sasha's. She used her skills as an experienced adventurer to explore her surroundings while growing stronger.

Unlike him, however, the first adventurer she encountered a week after arriving in the secret realm wasn't a teammate from the Blade of Vengeance.

In fact, even now she still wasn't sure who they had been.

That unfortunate adventurer, who had possessed a mountain wild horse, stumbled blindly into her Shadow Demon Bat colony's cave. By the time Lorraine found them, they had already been drained into a dried husk.

Thanks to that stroke of luck, Lorraine absorbed the life energy floating above the corpse. She completed her First Evolution, grasped the basic mechanics of the ritual, and mapped out her next steps.

From there, she advanced steadily. On the rare occasions she bumped into unfamiliar adventurers, she confirmed they weren't allies before using her evolutionary advantage to kill them and claim their life energy.

By now, she had reached the stage of her Second Evolution.

It was worth noting that throughout this entire process, Lorraine noticed something through the eyes of her physical human body. The druid Hein, Ellison, and several other adventurers swept up from the port had originally been suspended in the air, wrapped in blue light just like her. But one by one, they lost their glow and plummeted to the ground.

She guessed that those adventurers had died in the secret realm, causing this change.

On the flip side, this implied that dying in the ritual wouldn't drastically harm their physical bodies; at worst, it would leave them weakened.

That discovery pushed Lorraine toward bolder actions.

Just like Xia Nan and the others, she believed that since Dodd had set up this ritual—even going out of his way to drag in a hundred elite adventurers—he had to have a trump card.

If she wanted to survive until the end instead of becoming a supply of life energy for him to devour, she had to grow as much as possible before they crossed paths.

That was exactly why the life energy plummeting from the sky had lured her here.

She had actively taken the chance to ambush the Fire Elemental because she figured killing it would yield a massive reward of life energy. That was the only reason she risked fighting it in close quarters, which led to her reunion with Xia Nan and the others.

At this point, Lorraine paused, casting a strange look at Xia Nan.

"You must have evolved too, right? Twice? Or three times?"

Her doubt was natural.

After all, Xia Nan's current appearance—a hulking beast clad in streamlined metal armor, a longsword gripped in his Wolf's Maw—didn't look at all like a starting form in this realm.

As the core teammate of their allied group, Xia Nan had no reason to hide the truth.

Leaving out any mention of the Attribute Panel, he recounted his experiences since arriving and how he had met up with Sarissa and Sasha.

"You've already evolved four times!?"

"I suppose that explains it..."

Xia Nan's number of evolutions far exceeded Lorraine's expectations, but factoring in Sarissa's special ability to sense nearby adventurers, such rapid progress made sense.

"If that's the case, you should absorb all the life energy here, too."

Without needing Sarissa or the others to explain, Lorraine, as the captain of the Blade of Vengeance Squad, made the exact same decision as the rest of them.

For one thing, Xia Nan had the highest evolution stage among them. To stop "Algae Scale" Dodd's ritual, concentrating their life energy into a single powerhouse was undeniably their best strategy.

For another, unlike her—who could only force her monster body's innate abilities to mimic the motions of combat techniques—Xia Nan could actively use his combat techniques in the secret realm. That advantage guaranteed he would be the crucial fighting force for their side.

Cooperating with experienced, intelligent, and seasoned adventurers was just this refreshing.

If they were a bunch of greedy, short-sighted fools with no mutual trust, they would probably have argued for ages just over how to split the remaining life energy.

Xia Nan didn't hesitate. After a brief chat with his teammates, he began absorbing the residual life energy.

That included the four adventurers—Falcon, Gazelle, Cheetah, and Hyena—as well as the Fire Elemental.

It had to be noted that even though the Fire Elemental was vastly stronger in combat than an ordinary adventurer, the blue orb of light it left behind was far weaker in both density and scale than the airdrop from days ago. It was only roughly equivalent to two or three unevolved adventurers.

Even so, it was still a precious and substantial boost for Xia Nan.

"Buzz—"

He absorbed the life energy from four whole adventurers and one powerful monster one by one, letting it transform into a vigorous, warm current surging through his body.

Translucent text representing the Attribute Panel flashed before his eyes.

"Proficiency +6"

"[Gravity Control] lv1 (68/100) → [Gravity Control] lv1 (74/100)"

"Proficiency +10"

"[Ember Echoes] lv2 (61/100) → [Ember Echoes] lv2 (71/100)"

"Proficiency +29"

"[Heavy Tide] lv4 (9/100) → [Heavy Tide] lv4 (38/100)"

Although getting dragged into the secret realm was a complete accident, and he had initially felt nothing but resistance and disgust toward his situation, but he had to admit that seeing his combat technique proficiency—which normally cost massive amounts of time and grueling training to raise—skyrocket in such a short period was changing his mind.

Xia Nan's attitude toward the ritual itself was gradually becoming complicated.

Deep down, he sometimes selfishly hoped the ritual would slow down a bit so he could use the opportunity to grind out more proficiency.

From a certain perspective, if someone called Xia Nan the true beneficiary of this ritual, he wouldn't exactly be able to argue.

Following the massive boost from the airdrop event, he had used Sarissa's help to track down a few adventurers from other camps.

Combined with the life energy he had just absorbed, the [Heavy Tide] combat technique, which had barely reached lv3 when he first entered the secret realm, had now surged nearly halfway through lv4. The next step up was max level.

Even [Ember Echoes] and [Gravity Control] had seen absurd levels of improvement.

If—and Xia Nan was just saying if—he could fully exploit this precious opportunity and have a little bit of luck...

...then perhaps, by the time he escaped the secret realm, his entire level of combat power would undergo a qualitative transformation.

As he pondered this, the translucent text in the empty air kept flashing.

"Ding!"

"Evolution conditions met!"

"Automatically searching for evolution paths—"

1. [Arcane Hound]

Compatibility: 79.2%

Description:

The [Arcane Hound] is not a product of natural evolution. Its creator is widely believed to be Ignatius, a spell master active a thousand years ago. This Legendary figure, known in the mage world as the "Professor," spent the final ten years of his life fusing his lifetime of knowledge and experience regarding life and force-field arcane energy. Ultimately, in the laboratory of his mage tower, he successfully engineered the first breeding pair of Arcane Hounds and released them into the Astral Plane to evolve naturally. It is said that this mysterious, Rare, and powerful creature is born with the ability to sniff out the faintest traces of magic. It possesses an extremely strong suppressing effect on all kinds of stealth, transmutation, and even teleportation spells. Their ability to run freely across the Astral Plane, combined with the arcane siphon inherited from their creator, makes these wolf-dogs the natural predators of almost all Spellcasters.

2. [Frost Source Wolf King]

Compatibility: 58.3%

Description:

In the farthest north, in the deepest reaches of the polar region, lies a land untrodden even by the bravest and most powerful Barbarian warriors of the great tribes. In that white hell with no visible horizon and no distinction between day and night, where eternal blizzards howl and spiral, slumbers the master of this realm: the Frost Source Wolf King. The Frost Source Wolf King is considered an energy lifeform with a lupine appearance. It wears auroras and cold flames as fur, uses wind and snow for flesh, and structures its skeleton from condensed frost crystals. It spends the vast majority of its time in a deep slumber, during which the polar climate remains relatively stable. But when it awakens, blizzards and Winter Wolf packs rampage through the eternal night, devouring anyone foolish enough to disrespect their monarch.

3. [Battle-Hardened · Blade Lord]

Compatibility: 93.5%

Description:

Among all the lupine creatures in the modern biological world of Aifara—whether they live commonly alongside people, or only exist in books and rumors—none are as difficult to define as the Battle-Hardened · Blade Lord. There has never been a verified case of an eyewitness sighting, and no one has ever been able to produce a single bone or tuft of fur as proof. And yet, in the biographies of many Legendary figures whom the world eventually hailed as "Sword Saints," "Masters," or "Grandmasters," there is always a vague but recurring account tucked away in the most private, inconspicuous corners of those glorious Epic texts: "In my youth, I once saw a wolf."

"Ding!"

"Detected that life tier has reached the environmental limit. Remaining energy will be used to enhance physical attributes."

Watching the translucent text flash across his vision, Xia Nan instantly understood.

From the [Temple Nightwalker Wolf] at the very beginning, to the [Winter Wolf], the [Cord-Spine Blade Wolf], and now this.

With the golden finger of his Attribute Panel, every evolution allowed him to choose the option that suited him best, possessed the highest power, and held the greatest potential for development.

Now on his Fifth Evolution, there might still be many stronger Legendary creatures out in the real world, but within the ritual, his biological tier had clearly reached the absolute limit that this secret realm could withstand.

The life energy he originally absorbed and accumulated to break through his bottlenecks would now be spent as soon as he absorbed it, going entirely toward enhancing his fundamental physical attributes.

This was actually very easy to understand.

Just looking at the Attribute Panel's descriptions for these three creatures gave him a good idea of what was happening.

Unlike previous descriptions, which gave brief overviews of the evolved species' habits and combat styles...

...the three creatures presented to him now had extremely vague descriptions, only outlining the deeds and legends associated with them.

Fortunately, the compatibility ratings were still there. Drawing on his past experience with choosing evolution paths, he didn't need to overthink it.

The [Arcane Hound] was an artificial creature inhabiting the cosmic Astral Plane, with strengths leaning toward speed, tracking, and spell-breaking. Its compatibility was decent, but it clashed entirely with the secret realm's environment and the physical, beast-like enemies he mostly faced here. So, that was out.

The [Frost Source Wolf King] was an energy lifeform. It was likely an extension of the previous [Winter Wolf] path, but its development completely shifted away from physical attacks and into the domain of spellcasting—manipulating ice storms and blizzards to fight. That didn't match Xia Nan's role at all, so it was also eliminated.

In contrast to the first two options, the [Battle-Hardened · Blade Lord] had the most ambiguous description. Xia Nan didn't even know its specific combat style.

But he had to admit, that very vagueness sparked his intense interest.

Coupled with the fact that it had the highest compatibility rating of the three, and considering the glaring flaws of the other two wolves...

After only a brief moment of thought, Xia Nan focused his mind and gently tapped the [Battle-Hardened · Blade Lord] option on the Attribute Panel.