CHAPTER 484: EVOLUTIONARY CHALLENGE

Kastral and Alyrine waited on the Old Dawn’s upper deck. The giant beasts freaked out all the guards and lookouts. Henry, luckily, informed everybody about hippogryphs and that they’re with the Angelic Order.

The people on deck watched in awe as Sera and Bea approached the enormous creatures, petted their heads, then mounted them without fanfare. A second later, they took off, slowly at first, but after distancing themselves from the ship, their speed increased drastically.

They blinked once and the hippogryphs and their riders disappeared, leaving behind a loud sonic boom, as they reached speeds way past the sound barrier.

Their speed didn’t last throughout the journey, though. After leaving the mainland of Europe, going past the Middle East and reaching the Indian Ocean, Sera asked her mount to slow down.

In this case, slowing down meant going only a few thousand kilometers an hour. Instead of reaching Australia in seconds, they would reach it in about half an hour.

The waves passed below them. They spotted monsters and other normal sea creatures, but a moment later they were gone as the hippogryphs sped past.

Sera took a few calming breaths and closed her eyes. Her long golden locks whipped her back as the strong winds made them dance. For a normal human, these speeds would’ve been deadly, but Sera just spread her arms and chuckled, thoroughly enjoying the ride.

Bea smiled lovingly while watching Sera’s ecstatic expression. Her shiny, waist-length brown hair stood still, as she denied it from moving with the wind. The red dress she wore also didn’t react, but she lost a few flower-petals.

For the first few minutes, Sera enjoyed the wind’s calming effects. It helped decrease the bloodlust’s progression, but they still needed to hurry and destroy the Seed of Madness in her mind.

As the calmness left Sera’s heart, she raised her left wrist and opened her status window again. She continued browsing and reading through her abilities for the rest of the journey.

All the descriptions changed. They showed none of the confusing history and instead described the ability’s capabilities concisely.

First, she checked her old abilities, but they revealed nothing new or too interesting. Afterward, she began opening the ones gained after reaching Transcended. She hadn’t seen these, so her heart beat fast as her excitement rose.

’Divine Controller: Gives you full control over the material known as Angelic/Divine Metal. You can also create it without repercussions and change its properties, even its atomic and energy structure.’

Sera already tested this ability’s boundaries, but she can’t do anything to the extent the description suggests. She could make it more dense or carry electricity, but change its atomic and energy structure?

While it sounded impossible, Sera definitely had a few ideas, which she could try out later. An excited smile grew on her lips upon imagining the hidden potential of this ability.

However, since Kastral wouldn’t appreciate if she began testing stronger, dangerous forms of Angelic Metal on his back, Sera placed these ideas in the back of her mind.

For now, she moved on to the next ability... Or more like an ability tree...

’Permanent Ability: Similar to Transformation, but without a base form. One ability always needs to be activated, which alone doesn’t consume any Essence.’

This explained why, even now, riding on Kastral’s back, she couldn’t dismiss her pristine white wings. She could change them to the golden cleansing flames or the Angelic Metal ones, but she needed to have one out constantly.

’Well, I’m an Angel I guess. Angels have wings. I can’t just dismiss them unless it’s a special ability... They’re kind of annoying though. I can’t sleep on my back comfortably anymore...’

Sera chuckled at her dumb thoughts, then turned back to her watch and read the next unknown ability...

’Wings of Divine: A pair of wings made of Divine/Angelic Metal. They’re near indestructible, and can serve as both a weapon and shield depending on the situation.’

This ability felt a bit disappointing, compared to her other wings at least. However, her new ability made up for it easily, and during the fight against War and Peace, her silvery wings became useful too.

She could change their properties while moving, since they’re connected to her constantly. During the fight, she increased its density, which increased her fall speed. Without her wings, she couldn’t put out nearly as much destructive force.

After reading through her abilities a few times, Sera went back to her status window and opened the Heritage tab. This received the most changes out of everything on her page.

Instantly upon clicking on ’Heritage: Power’ a strange new window appeared...

’Angelic Heritage 2/7: Evolved – Principality, Ascended – Power, Transcended – N/A, Stellar – N/A, Ethereal – N/A, Celestial – N/A, Empyrean – N/A.’

She knew the Heritage window was going to change after becoming a different race, since that’s exactly what happened with Bea. However, the previous watch wasn’t able to show this window with so many details.

Sera grumbled under her breath about her useless old watch, then to ease her annoyance, she opened the ’Principality Heritage’.

’Principality: Increases your mind’s output drastically. You gain an inherent understanding of the surrounding reality and can analyze every detail within moments. Your mind became a near-impregnable fortress, and lets your body act on reflex without your manual input.’

Sera raised an eyebrow upon reading her new Heritage. It was awfully similar to Clear Mind, albeit much more powerful.

At first it made Sera excited, but she then remembered her weapon of light and the damage-spreading armor. It seems she lost both after changing races. However, remembering them also gave her a new idea about using the Angelic Metal.

With a grin on her face, she opened her second Heritage, named ’Power’...

’Power: Each death empowers your soul, makes it burn brighter and stronger. The soul’s power directly correlates to physical strength and ability strength. It also increases your body’s damage tolerance.’

Of all her new abilities, this one was the most shocking. She didn’t experience its effects directly, but that’s maybe because she spent the past year dying and resurrecting without control over her own body.

’At least it explains why I could survive against much stronger beings. If every death raised my power a minuscule amount, what would hundreds of deaths do?’

However, while this was an amazing ability, it still left Sera sad. She didn’t like dying, so receiving a permanent benefit felt like a cruel twist of fate.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes again. The strong winds calmed her mind and swept away her sadness. Her golden-green eyes opened again, and her vision landed back on her watch.

After checking everything on her status window again, she went back to the main menu. There she found a new page, which made her curious... Evolutionary Path...

It’s a system connected directly to the archives. It uses an algorithm to collect any relevant information about the user, then compiles the data and crosschecks it with the monsters’ information.

It’s supposed to give the perfect target for Evolution, at least that’s what the description says. For Sera, it simply showed an error screen, since the system was only optimized for human Evolution.

A light chuckle escaped her lips... ’Of course it wouldn’t be this easy. Whatever, I’ll just need to find my target without this application’s help... Wait, what’s this? Well, shit...’

While looking around the watch, Sera discovered a page titled ’Evolutionary Challenge’. This was something she had heard of before, but it only happened with human Stellars trying to advance towards Ethereal.

All of them needed to complete a task before their Evolution became possible. The task’s difficulty varies between people. The real problem came from the lack of knowledge about the task, since the old system didn’t suggest or help in its completion.

Stellar had to randomly figure out what task to complete, then try advancing. The old watch only told you when you’re succeeded, which’s very annoying.

This new watch at least revealed more information and even gave suggestions. However, because of the newly learned information, Sera sighed with annoyance and cursed under her breath.

The ’Evolutionary Challenge’ application recognized Sera, but it also showed suggestions to her current task, which meant she couldn’t Evolve further without its completion.

’Fuck... I guess the other races have it much harder than humans. This is such bullshit! Why do I need to complete a challenge to Evolve into Stellar!’

She needed to take another minute to calm herself. Afterward, she went to see what the watch suggested for completing her challenge. The answer was pretty concise, but also confusing...

’Challenge: Evolution requires considerable strength of both mind and soul. Let go of your insanity and empower yourself to reach heights never seen before!’

"At least you could’ve made the suggestion more straightforward..." Mumbled Sera; however, her words didn’t reach even her own ears, as the loud winds drowned out her voice.

Sera read the suggestion a few times. A few solutions popped into her mind, but it’ll require lots of testing and time until she knows for certain if her interpretation was correct.

While it was annoying, the suggestion only revealed vague information, it still gave her clues to explore. She also had no idea how the watch or application worked, so she might as well appreciate its help.

On the last leg of the journey, Sera decided to do some actual research. She opened the Archive and began reading all the information they had about Australia, which wasn’t relevant at all.

The Archives mostly contained information about its history. They knew basically nothing about its current state, other than the Asian city-states believed it was destroyed.

Faith found humans still living on the continent, albeit she didn’t say any details. She was their only guide to this mysterious man who can remove Seeds of Madness.

While she continued thinking and making up scenarios, both hippogryphs slowed down, as a large landmass appeared on the horizon... Australia!