Chapter 40: The Calculation
Malrik sat with his back against the cave wall, staring at the space where the cocoon had been, and let his mind wander somewhere far more dangerous than any spider.
Strategy.
Two evolutions in one afternoon had already reshaped half his understanding of what this Class could actually do. Now came the part that mattered more — deciding what to do with everything left over.
[ Total EP: 12,750]
12,750 points, give or take whatever I’ve burned since then.
He had options. Too many options, actually, which was its own kind of problem.
Do I push Lilith and Fenrir both to Epic, the same way I just pushed the Queen? Or do I spread the points wider — bring the rest of the army up to Rare, and let the top tier stay where it is for now?
He turned the question over slowly.
An army of forty souls, all sitting comfortably at Rare, would be reliable. Consistent. The kind of force that could grind through ordinary Morveth without much drama.
An army with three Epic-Rank souls at the top — Lilith, Fenrir, the Queen — would look completely different. Fewer guarantees. Far higher ceiling.
Numbers only carry an army so far. I proved that myself last night.
Forty souls hadn’t been enough against one Awakened-Rank Queen. What actually turned that fight was Lilith — not more bodies thrown at the problem, but one soul operating on a level none of the others could reach.
If Epic-Rank souls change the shape of a fight the way Rare-to-Epic just changed the Queen, then quality wins this argument. Not quantity.
He nodded slowly to himself, mostly satisfied, and then a second thought elbowed its way into the first one before he could finish being satisfied.
What about my own Class?
He hadn’t actually checked. All night, every evolution point had gone toward the army — wolves, spiders, a Queen who now spoke in complete sentences — and none of it had gone toward the one soul that mattered more than any of them.
Himself.
He pulled up his Class status out of pure curiosity, expecting a modest number.
[ Class: Soul Binder ]
[ Class Rank: Epic ★ ]
[ Evolution Required Points: 0 / 5,000 ]
Five thousand.
He stared at the number until it stopped looking like a typo.
Five thousand.
He ran the math against everything he’d learned about the army’s pattern tonight. Each soul’s evolution had cost roughly three times the previous tier — a hundred, then three hundred, then nine hundred. Predictable, at least. Something he could plan around.
His own Class didn’t follow that pattern at all.
This isn’t triple the last cost. This is five times it.
He sat with that for a moment, letting the implication settle properly.
My Class evolves slower and costs more than any single soul in my army. Which means the souls are the efficient investment, and I’m the expensive one.
That felt backwards, somehow — the idea that the man holding the leash was harder to upgrade than the things on the other end of it — but the numbers didn’t care how it felt.
And even if I spent five thousand points right now, what would I actually get?
He thought about it honestly, instead of just chasing the bigger number because it was bigger.
The Queen’s jump from Rare to Epic wasn’t a bigger number. It was a different creature. Different shape. Different mind. That’s what made it worth nine hundred points — not the stat increase, but the fact that "Rare" and "Epic" aren’t the same category at all.
My Class is already Epic. Spending five thousand points would take me from Epic-one-star to Epic-three-star. Same category. Same shape. Just... more of what I already have.
He frowned slightly, turning the comparison over once more to be sure he wasn’t fooling himself.
A meaningful jump happens crossing a Rank boundary. Rare to Epic. Epic to Legendary. Not climbing stars inside the same Rank.
If that’s true, then five thousand points buys me a marginal improvement. The same five thousand points, split properly across my army, could push two more souls into Epic-Rank entirely — two more Queens, essentially. Two more fundamental changes in what my army is capable of.
That means if I want to evolve my class to Legendary ★, I’ll need 125,000 Evolution Points.
Damn... I’m starting to feel poor again.
If I had been reborn as the son of an ordinary family, reaching that number would’ve been nearly impossible.
But now... I’m the son of one of the strongest men in all of Valthera.
Maybe... obtaining that many Evolution Points isn’t as impossible as it first seems.
He didn’t need to think about it much longer after that.
The real prize is Legendary. Whatever it costs... that’s the goal worth saving for. Not this.
For now, the army eats the points. My own Class waits.
Decision made, at least on that front. He filed away Legendary Class evolution as a future goal, something to work toward deliberately rather than stumble into by accident, and turned his attention back to the more immediate question.
Who gets pushed to Epic tonight, and who waits?
The Queen was already there. That left only two obvious candidates at the top of his roster: Fenrir, who had already reached Rare ★★★★★, and Lilith. The problem was that he had absolutely no idea how to evolve her. Unlike the others, she wasn’t a soul he had raised from a corpse... yet she possessed the same potential.
Fenrir’s earned it. He’s been with me since the beginning. And unlike Lilith, I actually understand what pushing him does — I’ve watched the pattern happen twice already tonight.
He checked the cost.
[ Evolution Required Points: 0 / 900 ]
Nine hundred, same as the Queen’s final tier. Consistent, at least, which was more reassurance than he expected to feel over a number this large.
1,800 points total if I push Fenrir and Lilith now. Leaves me over eleven thousand, which is more than enough to bring the rest of the army up to Rare.
And I should keep something in reserve. I’ve still got nine open contract slots. If I run into another leader-tier soul before the Trial, I don’t want to be sitting here with an empty vault and no way to actually use it.
The math lined up cleanly enough that the decision stopped feeling like a decision and started feeling like the obvious next step.
Fenrir would become the second Epic soul in his army.
The third... would be Lilith.
In truth, she had been the very first soul he had ever contracted.
If anyone deserved priority for evolution... it was her.
But...
The moment her devilish smile crossed his mind...
Followed by that wicked laugh of hers...
A chill ran through his entire body.
Just imagining how much stronger she’d become after reaching the Epic Rank was enough to make his scalp tingle.
"...Hopefully..."
"...I won’t end up creating a monster I can’t keep up with."
Even so...
He had already made his decision.
He exhaled, satisfied with the shape of the plan, and called out into the chamber.
"...Fenrir."
The shadow-wreathed wolf appeared almost instantly, bounding across the stone floor with an energy that looked, for a creature currently classified as a five-star apex predator, uncomfortably close to a puppy greeting its owner after a long day.
Malrik couldn’t help the small huff of amusement that escaped him.
He set a hand against the wolf’s head, feeling the shadow curl faintly around his fingers, cold and alive.
"This is going to hurt," he said quietly. "More than last time, probably. But it’s worth it. I promise you that."
Fenrir’s ears flattened, not in fear, but in something closer to acknowledgment — the wolf understood, or understood enough.
Malrik fed in the nine hundred points.
"...Evolve."
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