NOVEL NEXT Chapter 40: Genetic Thief
Mila
Mila dismissed the System message, not choosing to advance at all, and a new System message popped up.
You have absorbed the power of two F rank souls consumed by lust at the time of their deaths and chosen not to advance with their power.
The power will slowly dissipate.
You have four standard days to advance your race with this power.
Mila then sent one of the souls over her bond with Aalam and the System message changed.
You have absorbed the power of one F rank soul consumed by lust at the time of its death and chosen not to advance with its power.
The power will slowly dissipate.
You have one standard day to advance your race with this power.
Aalam then also got the System notification about meeting the criteria for race advancement, but his racial advancement options were different than hers.
You have met the criteria to advance your race to F rank
You have the following four options:
Incubus (F-Uncommon)
The weakest variety of an incarnation of Lust, but an incarnation of Lust nonetheless, one which eats souls.
Racial Abilities: 2
No limits, but a higher chance for charm and disguise related abilities
Max stats:
Strength: 1728
Agility: 1728
Endurance: 1944
Toughness: 1728
Vitality: 1944
Perception: 2160
Magic: 2304
Spirit: 2592
Soul: 3024
Aura: 2304
Attunement: 2304
Luck: 2160
Stat Growth Per Level:
Strength: 2
Agility: 2
Endurance: 4
Toughness: 2
Vitality: 4
Perception: 6
Magic: 7
Spirit: 8
Soul: 10
Aura: 0
Attunement: 0
Luck: 0
Advancement Criteria:
Eat an E rank or higher soul of a sentient creature consumed by lust at the time of death.
Requirements:
Current race is Incubus (G-Uncommon)
Psychic Incubus (F-Rare)
An incarnation of lust and mental powers, one which eats souls.
Racial Abilities: 2
No limits, but a higher chance for charm, disguise, and psychic related abilities
Max stats:
Strength: 2088
Agility: 2088
Endurance: 2304
Toughness: 2088
Vitality: 2304
Perception: 2520
Magic: 2448
Spirit: 3816
Soul: 3384
Aura: 2736
Attunement: 2736
Luck: 2592
Stat Growth Per Level:
Strength: 2
Agility: 2
Endurance: 4
Toughness: 2
Vitality: 4
Perception: 6
Magic: 5
Spirit: 15
Soul: 14
Aura: 0
Attunement: 0
Luck: 0
Advancement Criteria:
Kill 3 E rank beings with psychic abilities.
Eat an E rank or higher soul of a sentient creature consumed by lust at the time of death.
Requirements:
Current race is Incubus (G-Uncommon), has killed at least 3 F rank beings with psychic abilities
Incubus Lord (F-Rare)
The weakest variety of an incarnation of Lust, but a lord of their kind, one which eats souls.
Racial Abilities: 2
No limits, but a higher chance for charm, disguise, and noble related abilities
Max stats:
Strength: 2088
Agility: 2088
Endurance: 2304
Toughness: 2088
Vitality: 2304
Perception: 2520
Magic: 2736
Spirit: 3024
Soul: 3888
Aura: 2736
Attunement: 2736
Luck: 2592
Stat Growth Per Level:
Strength: 3
Agility: 3
Endurance: 5
Toughness: 3
Vitality: 5
Perception: 7
Magic: 8
Spirit: 9
Soul: 11
Aura: 0
Attunement: 0
Luck: 0
Advancement Criteria:
Control a small amount of Territory for an F rank
Eat an E rank or higher soul of a sentient creature consumed by lust at the time of death.
Requirements:
Current race is Incubus (G-Uncommon), has control over a small amount of Territory for a G rank
Incubus Prince (F-Epic)
The weakest variety of an incarnation of Lust, but a prince of their kind, one which eats souls.
Racial Abilities: 3
No limits, but a higher chance for charm, disguise, and noble related abilities
Dual classes possible
Max stats:
Strength: 2448
Agility: 2448
Endurance: 2664
Toughness: 2448
Vitality: 2664
Perception: 2880
Magic: 3168
Spirit: 3456
Soul: 4752
Aura: 3168
Attunement: 3168
Luck: 3024
Stat Growth Per Level:
Strength: 4
Agility: 4
Endurance: 6
Toughness: 4
Vitality: 6
Perception: 8
Magic: 9
Spirit: 10
Soul: 12
Aura: 0
Attunement: 0
Luck: 0
Advancement Criteria:
Control a medium amount of Territory for an F rank
Eat an E rank or higher soul of a sentient creature consumed by lust at the time of death.
Requirements:
Current race is Incubus (G-Uncommon), has control over a medium amount of Territory for a G rank, has maximized stats as an Incubus (G-Uncommon)
Will you advance to an Incubus (F-Uncommon), a Psychic Incubus (F-Rare), an Incubus Lord (F-Rare), or an Incubus Prince (F-Epic)?
Aalam also dismissed the System message, not choosing to advance, and gained the same message as her as a result.
Incubus Prince was quite awesome, requiring a little more than 25 square kilometers of Territory and maxed stats to gain the advancement, and it was better than Chaos Dragon Hatchling in one respect, even though the latter was a Legendary grade race. It allowed for dual classes.
According to what she’d learned from Nana Xara, dual classes meant having two classes instead of one, but the classes would both be half as effective. Their stat bonuses per level, class effects, and number of skill slots would all be halved while they would keep their separate advancement requirements, so generally it wasn’t that great of an idea. With an even stronger soul from a more powerful race, however, or the right classes, those limitations could be mitigated and that was obviously Aalam’s goal.
Aalam took a couple more minutes to fully heal himself. Then he found the Left Hand of the Runescribe, put it back on, and gathered up all the artifacts of the generals and skeletons, putting them all in his artifact’s subspace. The two of them then walked over to where they’d left the body of the last general and Aalam collected the man’s staff, robe, and other clothing.
“Where do you think their leader is?” Aalam then finally asked, speaking English.
“They mentioned he was cultivating in a cave.” Mila pointed to the small mountain the mage had been heading toward before she’d ambushed him, visible through the treetops. “Follow me.”
Then Mila used the tracking lessons her grandfather had drilled into her as a child and they walked a couple hundred meters further into the jungle. When they got about half way up the mountain, however, they didn’t find a cave but a sheer cliff, and something wasn’t right.
The tracks through the jungle, both the humanoid ones and the ones that kind of looked like they were from a being made up of multiple snakes, just stopped about three meters in front of the cliff.
Mila focused on the area for a few seconds and only then did she notice what was going on. Her eyes couldn’t see it and her aura couldn’t feel it, but her third eye could sense some kind of magic barrier blocking off a small subsection of the cliff, and, as she focused on her third eye, its sight overlapped with her vision, making the barrier appear like a slight shimmer in the air.
“There’s an illusion formation here, an extremely powerful one.” She turned to look at Aalam. “It’s probably worth a lot, so we don’t want to damage it.”
As Aalam studied the area for a bit, likely trying to sense the formation himself, Mila walked into the jungle for about seventy meters. There she caught a lizard-like monkey thing, a G rank monster about the size of a capuchin, and then she walked back and threw it into the formation.
Nothing changed in her senses, and she saw the monkey thing safely run out a few seconds later, so she again caught it, indicated for Aalam to follow, and then walked right into the illusion.
As soon as she walked past it, she could see the mouth of a cave, the inside lit by artificial magical lights, and she then slowly walked in. About twenty meters later, her senses picked up something else hidden deeper in and she threw the monkey thing again.
This time, however, it didn’t survive. As soon as it got five meters in front of her it got cut into about twenty pieces by some kind of extremely sharp invisible grate.
Aalam stepped up next to her and pointed his left palm at the grate, three needles flying out, one with a gray orb, one with a yellow orb, and the third with a silver orb. Then he used the three needles to make some kind of complicated array over about eight seconds and the invisible grate in front of them temporarily became visible to Mila’s third eye before fizzling out.
Mila was pretty sure he’d made some kind of entropy increasing gas using his Law Eggs of Gas, Entropy, and maybe Multi-Dimensional Geometry, but she didn’t really understand. All she knew was the runes in the array he’d created could be read as ‘Entropic Air’ and that it had been effective.
They walked a further ten meters in and found no other defenses. Instead, they found a room about six by eight meters wide, one with an odd energy infused into its air which made Mila feel exceedingly comfortable, and inside were two beings.
One, sitting on a throne made of stone seemingly raised up from the cave floor, was a Nightwalker about the same size as Aalam, significantly taller than his two male generals or any of the natives she’d seen, who seemed to be 10 cm shorter than humans from Earth on average. And the other was a one meter long black and red squid-like beast lying in what looked like a stone dog bed.
Both radiated F rank power and both looked like they’d just woken up from a long nap, still kind of groggy.
Without talking, Mila and Aalam then both attacked. Aalam sent out all twelve of his needles in three sets of four to stab into the abyssal squid thing multiple times, his aura emanating extreme excitement. Meanwhile, Mila transformed the Twin Dragons into its spear form, activated Artifact Enhancement, and then infused it with all the qi, mana, and psyforce she could muster.
The Nightwalker leader was wearing a pair of black pants and a black T-shirt, as well as a belt holding a sword on his right hip, allowing Mila to know he was left handed. So, before he was aware enough to react, she sliced down on his left elbow and cut off his lower arm.
Then, as he fully woke up and screamed in pain, she placed the blade of the spear at his neck and spoke in Universal Standard. “Surrender or die.”
It wasn’t the language his generals had been speaking, but it was the standard language of the universe, so those from all major powers knew it enough to function, much less a prince. It had also been the language spoken by everyone in the tutorial’s third challenge, so Mila’s proficiency was quite high.
More important, however, she also sent out a contract with her words, neither her or Aalam allowed to kill the man so long as he didn’t try to hurt them first, honestly answered all questions, and made no attempts to escape.
As he got the bleeding of his left arm under control, the man at first looked like he wanted to resist, but then he looked over at Aalam and the squid-like thing.
After killing the beast, Aalam had stuck his right hand into the squid thing's body and then the thing started to glow with black and red light. That light then flowed into Aalam, strengthening him, and the squid-like thing’s soul shattered into pieces and dissipated, the being deader than dead.
The process was visible to both Mila and Prince Morin through their auras, and Mila could sense as the prince grew incredibly fearful, almost immediately agreeing to her contract.
