Chapter 141—Distorted Evolution

Tom endured the agony as Mr Cricket continued his training. It had been at least half an hour and if he was lucky, it would finish soon.

Corrine snapped into existence, filling the space on the side of the table between him and his torturer. She was an excellent excuse, so he didn’t hesitate.  He leapt to his feet and shot the open competitor what he hoped was a brave glare. “We’re finished for today.”

“No. We most certainly, am not! I’m not done.”

“We are. I have to consult with Corrine.”

“Like hell you do. Don’t you know how… how valuable my time is?”

“I’m willing to pay for my insolence later. Plus, it isn’t like if you stop earlier you lose all progress. I can feel it. The first ten minutes of every training session are the most valuable. The benefits of the rest of the training are minor.”

The ball of arms hesitated for a moment and its limbs vibrated like an anemone as it considered disputing what he said.

Abruptly, having clearly concluded that he had no chance of convincing Tom otherwise, Mr Cricket vanished.

Tom sagged in relief as the tension he hadn’t registered, which had building inside of him was released. 

Corrine crocked her eyebrows at him. “Wow Tom. Fucking oath you were magnificent. I’ve never seen you like that. So forceful and, to be honest it was kind of sexy.”

Like always when she was trying to bait a reaction out of him he ignored her. “I’m glad you came to get me. I need your wisdom.”

“Is my wisdom really valuable enough to justify the consequences of your insolence?” She said flatly while pulling a face.

He couldn’t help it he burst out laughing. “No, no. There’s no consequences. He tortures me to the best of his ability anyway, so it’s not like I was risking anything.”

“Well, that makes me feel a little better.” She studied him quizzically. “What’s got you so excited. It isn’t like you to be so bouncy.”

After assessing what was in the room, she went over and sat where Mr Cricket had been. He had perched in and on a weird boulder that was filled with air gaps which would be hellishly uncomfortable, but as Corrine approached, it smoothly transitioned a human chair. From experience, it would be tailored to her butt and despite it being stone it would be comfortable. Corrine was so used to the functionality she didn’t even blink. “Well, spit it out. Did DEUS herself come down and gift you something. Is it a tier 16 skill? Let me guess. Is it an instant death to anyone who pisses you off with a three second cool down?”

“No, it’s just an evolution potion.”

“I’m guessing its tier ten and you’re disappointed it wasn’t twelve.”

“Only five.”

“What the fuck Tom. How the fuck did you get a tier five potion. Let me see the description.”

“I got an evolution potion.”

Without prompting, he shared the description. A significant part of him had considered lying and just talking about the tier four that he was actually given. In the end, he had decided to be truthful. There was such a huge gulf of value between the tiers that if he lied, he would have been worried that Corrine would have given him bad advice. Not because she wanted to or was incompetent, but because he had set her up for failure by not sharing the full picture. He had decided that telling her the truth was worth the risk. Her chatting with the hammer wielder was exceedingly unlikely and if they ever did chat, he could just say he lied about the grade because he had assumed his fate investment would effectively bump it up. “I’m going to evolve it tomorrow, but I’m not sure about what to target.”

“What do you mean target? It says it’s random.”

“Yeah, it does, but you know what they say, ‘when pigs fly’.”

She stared at him her face stony.

The corners of Tom’s lips twitched, and that was enough to make her burst out laughing. He joined her.

“Despite what the label says we both know I need to choose.”

“What are the options?”

 “I have a fate generating movement ability, Danger Sense, a variety of spells.”

“Don’t do spells. Using an evolution potion on one would be incredibly wasteful.”

“I know. But does it change your mind at all if I target Lightning Javelin. That’s a core part of my combat set.”

She shook her head. “What you’ve got is too powerful to squander. You have to think about it in the context of your final build not just performing here in the divine champion trial.”

“But if I get stronger, it’ll be more coins and that opens other opportunities.”

“Not for you with your cheat crafting.” She interrupted. “No, it can’t be applied to fucking spells not even Earth Manipulation but if we kill two birds with one stone that would be helpful. You have to boost a permanent part of your build. If that also lets you win extra duels, then that’s great.”

“Honestly I agree with you. I was never going down the spell path. I was just listing it for completeness. Beyond that, I have various spear skills, crafting abilities.”

“Don’t do crafting either.”

Tom shrugged. “I’m not sure about the advice. No, I get where you’re coming from Corrine. You needn’t look so shocked. I’m primarily a fighter, but boosting something like Living Wood to tier five would make it useful in combat and significantly increase my ability to create danger sense disks. Similarly, if I boost my precognition mana generation skill, that’s straight gravy. Won’t do much after I start leveling but until then it could triple or quadruple my effective regeneration rate.”

To Corrine’s credit she clearly considered the argument and then shook her head. “No. It’s too short term. Boosting a skill to tier five is way too significant to waste. Personally I’d target Danger Sense.”

“Really?”

“Fucking oath. It’s leaning into your strengths, upgrading it to tier five triples its effectiveness. It’s already great, but if it’s giving you twice as long to react and more information to act upon. That’s the start of competition breaking power.”

“I’ve considered it in depth,” Tom admitted. “But with my affinity over a couple of years it evolves naturally. I might even get it above tier six before I become an adult.”

“No, you won’t.”

“No, but I’m sure I’ll get one maybe two evolutions from it. So it’ll probably be tier four before we get out and start leveling. Using the evolution potion on it to only get a fifty percent boost when it starts to matter doesn’t make sense to me.”

She nodded thoughtfully and studied his face in detail and then grinned ruefully. “This conversations pointless isn’t it.”

“No. I’m really interested in your advice. Why would you say otherwise?”

“Because you’ve already made up your mind.”

“I haven’t.”

“Tom you have. My body may be a teenager’s, but I’m fucking not. I know how to hit the books and do research.”

He looked at her in confusion.

“It’s not rocket science. There’s a general knowledge library, and it has a number of accounts about the heroes of humanity.”

Tom raised his eyebrows. “Are you serious. You researched my first life.”

She hesitated and licked her lips. “I did but the stuff in the library was a little high-level. In the end, I got Dimitri to lend me a book.”

He leaned forward suddenly interested. “Do you know why I have holes in my memories?”

She said nothing.

He studied her face. It was hard, an edge of stress to the eyes and tight lips.

He slumped back. “You were sworn to secrecy weren’t you?”

“Sorry Tom Dimitri made it a condition. But if you’re worried, it wasn’t anything bad or evil or anything like that. I don’t know why DEUS imposed the restriction, but it’s clear she did, and I’m not breaking it.”

“You read an account. Who wrote it?”

“It was Selena’s. But she died before she finished it. Clare penned the last month of the campaign.”

“Fuck.”

“I’m sorry. Were you close?”

He laughed hollowly. “Does it matter.”

“No, I guess it doesn’t. But what you did is spelt out. From your histories, I’m pretty fucking confident about what your choice is. You’re going to try to recapture the black dodge ability.”

“I’m not. That’s not my role in this life.”

“Then something very like it.”

He went to argue, then slumped back even further. If she was right, she was right. “Damn, you know me better than I know myself. So Selena died.”

She nodded.

“Do you mind telling me who lived? I know Everlyn, Clare and Keikain survived.”

“They were the only survivors from your team.”

“Fuck.” Despite everything he felt his eyes go teary. “I convinced eleven to come and only three made it. That’s terrible odds. Their deaths are on me. They came because I said they should. His mind was in turmoil. Serena was dead and all of his team. Who else did he know. “How about Vidja?” he asked.

“She fell in final fight.”

“Everyone I got close to is dead.” The two least deserving had survived, and Everlyn as well. Despite having now had years to consider the issue He still wasn’t sure how to think about her. The manner of his death had clearly scarred her.

Corrine said nothing and appeared next to him. She pulled him in to lean against her side and gave him  a silent hug to express her support.

“The advice given to reincarnators is to not research their past.”

“Yeah, well, it’s harder when you’re famous.”

“It fucking is.”

He glanced at her, surprised by that comment. Her face looked like how he felt. “You too?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll have to tell me one day.”

“No… maybe… sometime in the future definitely not today.”

“I wish I never asked. I preferred it when I could imagine Harry could walk in at any time.”

“Yeah. It fucking sucks.”

The next day for the orphanage was no different to any other, but Tom found he had to retreat into the champion’s trial before lunch. His nervous energy was blending into his actions and while the flags were green, there was always the risk of unwanted observation.

He was buzzing with energy and couldn’t even craft. Instead, he went into the pseudo system room to take advantage of the faster passage of time. He just paced up and down while he watched the screen.

His brain was filled with different ideas of what the intersection of fate and the tier five evolution potion could achieve. What could he turn Fateful Repositioning into? How awesome would it be if he could get fate to be generated with every movement. It would be a broken skill, but oh so amazing. Unfortunately, the idea was just a dream, a flight of fancy that would never eventuate. This was not a system like in a game. There were no exploits that could break things. But for now, he put logic aside and imagined the consequences.

Finally, his avatar clicked the isolation room door shut, and he seized back control.

“Time,” he proclaimed excitedly as he produced the sparkling blue liquid and held it up to the light. The glasswork was both visually breathtaking and simultaneously a masterwork of pragmatic functionality. The potions that Mus had gifted him in his first life had needed to be stored in boxes to contain their power. This flask didn’t require the extra support. 

He had pondered extensively on this moment and had come up with the fate image he was going to create. The obvious path of throwing everything towards Fateful Repositioning was wrong because Tom didn’t know if the earned skill possessed an upgrade path beyond its current rank. If he tried to upgrade a skill that couldn’t evolve, the potion would be wasted and it was too valuable to risk frivolously. He had to be cleverer than that.

With a final lick of his lips, he dropped into what he guessed some people might call meditation and visualised his intentions. He wanted a combat skill to be lifted to at least tier five. If it went higher, he wouldn’t complain, but that was not the focus. He wanted sideways evolutions and lots of them. To create an ability that added lots of useful functionality. There was a bias in his image towards Fateful Repositioning and then Danger Sense but the desire to achieve the overall result dominated the specifics in his thinking. He wanted that tier five ability.  

For this particular process, he had prioritised success over functionality.

With the image formed, he released all of his fate and gulped the potion down. With the fate restrictions he was under due to his contagious title, there was no building fate up slowly like most others could. Once he activated the fate, he was on a clock and had to finish as soon as possible.

Power surged through him, and he directed his mind energy at the skill he wanted to change. He wasn’t sure it did anything, but, he focused on all the times he had used Fateful Positioning and its benefits.

The energy crashed and burned inside. It was chaotic, hot, freezing, tingling. Then it felt like his insides were floating out of his throat before gravity a moment later was collapsing him into a singularity. It was inconsistent in all but the intensity of the illusionary feelings that it generated.

Probability waves built up and then collapsed as others rose in their place. His conscious mind could do little to direct it, but fate was at play as it rushed from spot to spot systematically, ending each of the waveforms that didn’t match some hidden criteria that it had.

The potion spun and spread over the full extent of his soul. Touching and assessing all of his abilities. He felt it briefly tug on his precognition mana, then Spark, Danger Sense, and then his sleep skill as well.

It was fascinating to observe the process. The sleep ability had been close to evolving to tier five, with four different sideways evolutions before it failed. If that foray had of been successful, then its count downs would have been reduced and he would have gained effectively ten hours of training time while he slept for an hour. The gym rat in him almost wished he had been directing fate toward achieving that outcome.

The crashing waves were becoming less energetic.

“What’s happening?” he asked in horror, knowing the answer. There was never any guarantee with these types of potions. Why he had assumed success with his fate image was guaranteed. He realised that time was actually running out on him.

The process could still be successful.

He could feel that, but instead of seemingly infinite amounts of waveforms that could be created there was only a handful of possibilities. In fact, there were five and none of them felt like they possessed the potential to go all the way.

He knew they always started weak and grew rapidly in power but this felt different.

With the complete certainty of his precognition affinity, that was not the case here. None of them were reaching tier five.

Unless… he had to intercede or else the attempt would fail…

But what could he do?

This was a setup, watch, pray and hope kind of deal. It had become clear despite how he might wish otherwise that his mind was useless. His consciousness was not influencing what was happening inside him. The energies acted on a different level and no matter how much he wished or imagined that he was able to touch and influence the probability waves he couldn’t The solution needed to be something else. Something tangible?

His brain spun, coming up with nothing good.

What could he do?

It was that question that felt critical. He had spent all of his fate. Mana was not going to help as the potion had transcended the physical.

Skills?

They had potential or at least they would act in the rights space.

But… an idea abruptly occurred to him. It felt ridiculous, like throwing a butterfly into a cyclone to try to turn it into a light drizzle. But it was the only thing he could do to influence what was happening.

There was one chance.

His heart thumped and adrenaline surged through him, infusing his body with energy and as the panic mounted, he threw himself unhesitantly into a back flip and manually triggered Fateful Repositioning.

It created a single point of fate and he directed it to get him out of this mistake. He just wanted a result.

He didn’t want this to fail.

The five remaining chances crashed together. Two bounced away, another vanished in the violence while the last two blended together to leave his earth shield merged with Danger Sense, in a probability wave that was suddenly a lot more potent.

His precognition told him that it wasn’t quite there but it was close to having the potential to make it to tier five. 

But that combination. It was weird. He didn’t know how to interpret a blend like that. How would it work?

Would it create automatic shielding? He wondered. It was a possibility, but it felt like a step backward from the individual utility of the input skill and spell. A reduction in capacity rather than an advancement.

According to everything he had read about this process, Spells and Skills did not mix. One was knowledge that was tattooed rather superficially to one’s soul and the other was an integral part of it.

They were not things that were supposed to be able to be merged.

The probability waves and the potion energy didn’t care about something as banal as commonly accepted truths.

The now clearly strongest remaining possibility crashed into another wave and absorbed it as well.

That had been Fateful Repositioning, and his heart leapt hopefully. But it did not change the nature of the chimera ability that was being created. The earned skill had merged as a bit part of it rather than as a core component.

He felt like screaming.

Another wave was overwhelmed and assimilated. It was hard to tell what it had been beyond it having an earth mana tinge. Somehow it wasn’t anything he recognised, which should have been impossible. Four different abilities had been merged, but what had been created was not elegant perfection. Instead, it was a cross between a chinese crested dog and a sloth that had gotten the worse part of both parents. It was the epitome of ugliness, and unstable to boot. It felt like it was about to burst at any moment.

It teetered ping ponging through his body and then smashed into a wave so tiny that Tom had not even registered its existence. If everything was different degrees of chance, then the odds of that sliver of probability that had been absorbed evolving into a tier five skill was something close to the likelihood of him spontaneously combusting and becoming a flame elemental.    

Yet somehow it provided incredible stability to the previously buckling waveform. The chances of an evolution of some kind dramatically increased. Curiously, his mind reached out to check what the one remaining probability waveform was shaping to be, and he recoiled in surprise.  

It was no longer forming a skill. That nothing absorption had changed everything. His focus intensified, and it took him a moment to understand what that tiny waveform had once represented. It was both strange and different and nothing like anything else he had sensed through these evolution processes so he resorted to logical deduction.  He had seen spells and skills interacting with the evolution potion, which meant it had to be a different component of Existentia’s magic system. Title or trait were the only options and of them the only thing that made sense was a trait.

He could only sense a little of what the trait had been, and it was weird.

Something related to mana storage.

His heart leapt momentarily. This had to be one of the abilities he had been unable to see. After reading about how soul bound artefacts functioned during reincarnation and that he had owned a soul bound mana crystal, he had always suspected he had a trait or skill that would draw on some of the properties that his artefact had possessed. And this was apparently it.

Other questions struck him. Was it going to be consumed as part of the evolution or was it only a supporting metric? Was he about to lose it before he even knew what it was?

His mind raced and assessed how it reacted with everything, and then realised how silly he was being. Nope, it was not part of the probability wave rather something to anchor the emerging ability to him.

All the different waveforms were gone. There was just a single one left. The ungodly amalgamation of multiple skills, spells and apparently, even a supporting trait. It was crashing back and forth, growing with power every time it changed direction and precognition now screamed at him that it had the potential to be realised into something equivalent to his aims.

It had a mixture of skills including Fateful Repositioning an ability he now realised was incapable of being lifted to tier four by itself and his initial sloppy fate image had almost backfired on him and caused him to waste a potion.

Luckily, it hadn’t. This wave could succeed even if it was ever so fragile.

If he pushed too hard, it would shatter, so instead he focused on tweaking it for stability. His attempts did nothing but at least it stopped him from stressing.

The probability crested and finished, and he was left with a hollow feeling despite trumpets going off.
He didn’t have to check the outcome to understand the process. Whatever he got was a devouring monster that was going to use small components of numerous skills for fuel and everything it used, even if it was a tiny sliver, would be destroyed.

Tom didn’t have to look to know that the cost of gaining the trait was significant.

The incredibly loud trumpets in his head continued to crow about the new evolution, but he didn’t feel like celebrating. He would accept the ability, that was a given because everything it had consumed could be re-learned, but he dreaded seeing the list. How many months or years of effort were going to be burned by the process?

The trumpets got louder as they demanded his immediate compliance. That cacophony ensured that he would address the evolution before doing anything else.

Knowing that the annoying sounds would only increase if he continued to ignore them he reluctantly entered his system room and stared at the message on the wall. 

Congratulations, you have evolved a new trait. 

The following abilities,

Spells: Earth Shield, Earth Manipulation

Skills: Danger Sense, Fateful Repositioning

Partially formed Skills: Earth Mana Generation, Earth Mana Storage

Have been merged together to create the trait - Fateful Earth Body.

Do you wish to accept the new trait.

Yes / No

Note: All abilities in the merger (excluding Earth Manipulation) will be destroyed if you accept this trait.

You have ten seconds to decide. 

Tom stared in complete shock at what he was being offered. It was worse than he had feared. Two skills, one spell and the earth mana generation suite of abilities he had been working on for months.

“Only half a year of effort,” he whispered to himself.

For a trait that was a fair tradeoff, especially as earning these abilities for a second time should be easier. 

He hit the accept button and once more the trumpets went off.

Congratulations you have obtained the Trait. Fateful Earth Body.

That was all the information his system room gave him. Just the name of what he had received. Not for the first time, he rallied in the safety of his brain against the injustice of not having full access to the system. It was such a pain to work around the restrictions. An annoyance he had planned for. He went straight over to the ritual screen.

Trait: Fateful Earth Body

This trait grants the following.

·        When stressed by action or combat:

1.      Your body will perform 40 percent better than expected. This bonus stacks with all other boosting abilities.

2.      Occasionally, actions technically impossible under normal physics considerations will successfully execute.

3.      Unaspected fate will be released and, if not used after eight seconds, will be assigned to a random beneficial outcome.

·        Additionally, when your body is about to take a detrimental injury as determined by precognition one or more of the following will occur:

1.       Speed will double.

2.      Skin will harden as if your vitality was a hundred points higher.

3.      A magical earth shield will form to absorb the blow.

·        Generates two points of earth affinity mana per minute. This will increase in line with your magic attribute.

·        Finally, your body quadruples the effectiveness of the trait, ‘Aspected Mana Storage’ for earth aligned mana types. 

Tom stared in shock at the neatly detailed benefits he had just received. He could see how each of the absorbed skills and spells had been used to construct the ability and the trait also delivered on the image he had formed prior to spending his fate.

The result was a trait instead of a skill, but it was just as powerful as he had hoped, with multiple components all of which would be useful. The contribution of Danger Sense to the final outcome was disappointingly minor, but he guessed having a trait dedicated to keeping him alive could only be seen as a positive. 

There was so much there to absorb, but his eyes dropped to that last line. It had named a trait he hadn’t confirmed the existence of.

He was not looking forward to having to wait an hour before he could find out what it did.