I didn’t doubt it was going to suck for him, but so long as Brenden and I were there, nothing would go wrong.
And that was exactly how we spent the next several hours, in the darkness, taking turns pouring particle water over our Father as he subconsciously screamed bloody murder due to the agony he was experiencing.
The two of us, Brenden and I, were no strangers to evolving to 5C, so we fully understood what he was going through, but about 5 hours into the Evolution, I picked up on a faint scratching sound in the distance.
"Heads up, we have company; Dad’s screams seem to have rung the dinner bell for the undead…" Getting to my feet, I reequipped my Gauntlet Claws, as I had stored them away so that I didn’t accidentally gash my Father while taking care of him while looking down the dark tunnel toward the source of the noise.
"Any clue how many," Appearing beside me, Brenden asked as he brandished his short sword.
"A lot? How the hell am I supposed to have exact numbers? I can’t see in the dark just like you can’t," I grumbled while rolling my eyes; after all, common sense wasn’t exactly my younger brother’s strong suit.
"No shit, Sherlock, but your Perception Technique lets you see four times as far from your body as mine,"
"Fair, they are still outside of my range, but based on the distinct footfalls and dragging sounds, it should be a medium-sized horde, roughly 30-50 bodies in size."
"So whose goin to take care of it, me or you? I suppose we could both go fight, considering we cleared out everything from here back to the safezone, so it’s not like Dad will be in danger." Unbothered by the size of the horde of undead heading our way, Brenden looked over his shoulder at our Father, who was deep into the evolution process and showing no signs of finishing any time soon.
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"I’ll go; we both know I am better against a large number of opponents; you are the one who excels in one-on-one combat. Stay here and monitor Dad’s condition; if he shows any signs of deterioration, go ahead and use some of the high-grade potions I gave you on him…and if things go really south, here." Reaching into my inventory, I handed over one of my Alpha Grade Elixirs.
"Tsk, it’s annoying that you get to have all the fun, but whatever, get out of my sight already." Receiving the Elixir, Brenden placed his free hand on my back and pushed me forward, in turn giving me the signal to rush forward…so I did.
Kicking off the ground and utilizing my Augmentation Skill, I rushed ahead at full speed, and unsurprisingly, the amount of power my legs were able to sustain was significantly greater than before my Rank-Up.
’Hm, it seems that the aging up increased my physical durability too, beyond the purview of my stats.’ I thought while pushing myself beyond the previously set limits I had with my body being that of a 5-year-old.
In almost no time at all, I caught sight of the outermost edge of the horde, around six low Beta-Rank 2C Humanoids, perfect fodder for my Father, so without hesitation or stumbling, I flashed forward, slid on the ground, and hacked through the ankles of the first two undead, causing them to collapse on the ground without any effort at all.
Then, still in control of my forward momentum, I articulated my arms in such a way that I was able to slice through all the muscles and tendons of their limbs, turning them into quadriplegics.
Frankly, killing them would have been much easier and way less time-consuming; however, I kept in mind that none of this was for my own sake; it was for my Father and his future growth.
Although he would be a little shaky after completing the Evolution to 5C, the goal was to help him make that final push to 6C. Speaking of 6C, I surmised that was the reason for my brother’s grumpy mood.
It was one thing for me to be able to reach 6C in only a year, but I had already been at 5C before being forced into that Instance; thus, my bottom line was of a different quality than Brenden’s 3C.
Then here comes our Father, from a 1C Basic Human, all the way up to 5C in less than 24 hours. The speed of his rapid ascent, while noteworthy, was completely expected, at least for me.
In the case of Brenden, he couldn’t help but feel jealous. It had taken him three years to climb his way to that point, but there was a key difference between their Evolution Ascension.
The method behind it.
With all the free time I’ve had over the years, I had spent a considerable chunk of it devising different methods to power up my army of puppets…Once I eventually started building it, what I had done with our Father was the number one plan I had devised.
But before anyone would ever be able to enact the said plan, four key requirements needed to be met.
The First is that the target is a 1C Basic Human, and the Second is that the Target must be at least 2 Ranks lower than the Instance they plan on training in.
If neither of those two reqs is met, there is no point in continuing with the remaining parts of the plan, which involve a Null Amulet and a modified Instance.
The reason is the existence of XP Modifiers within higher-rank instances. At present, whenever my Father kills something in the Necro-Caverns…Caverns of Death….Undead Caverns…yeah, let’s just stick with Undead Caverns; anyway, whenever he gets a kill here, he receives an ASTRONOMICAL amount of XP, even without the use of an XP booster.
And thanks to the Null Amulet around his neck, all that Regular XP which must go somewhere is transformed into Racial Progress.
If my calculations are correct, each kill should be netting him around 100 times the XP Brenden, or I would be receiving for said kills, and the fact that he immediately jumped into the next Evolution after finishing the First was indicative of this.