CHAPTER 136: THE ANCESTRAL GOLDEN TREE.

Many hours later...

The sun went to grace the other side with its light while Levi and Arthur were seen exiting the capital’s public lab with wide smiles.

They had spent the past hours searching the market for the necessary materials for Arthur’s perfect evolutionary formula. Fortunately, they weren’t too rare since it was still the first evolution.

After Arthur paid for his stuff, he rented the lab for them, and they got to work. Since this wasn’t their first time, and Arthur’s evolutionary formula was much simpler to concoct than Shia’s, the entire process went as smoothly as butter.

Now, they were heading to their apartment to kickstart the evolution. Levi had already requested some off time from Instructor Seraphis, telling him that it was related to his brother’s evolution.

After arriving home, Arthur straightaway sat on the living room floor and removed his shirt, exposing his tattoo.

Khuzan’s head was in the middle with subtle charcoal veins, while his horn escaped from the base, piercing through it. Vapor-like shading coiled around his neck, and a single black ink drop above his head, resembling his obsidian gemstone... It was illuminated softly with black light.

"Are you sure about this? I went through a remarkable evolution. It’s secured, safe." Khu’zan double-checked with his partner after noticing that he was about to start the evolution.

Khu’zan had in mind that he would be undergoing a remarkable evolution again. Although he wasn’t familiar with the formula, he knew the materials needed to concoct it.

However, Levi came suddenly and said that he already had a perfect evolutionary formula prepared for his brother.

The casualness had taken Khu’zan by surprise, making him believe that maybe Levi’s formula might not be legit.

Although he wasn’t suggesting that Levi would actively try to harm his brother’s prospects, he believed that he might have gotten cheated and sold a fake formula... It happened too many times to count for other desperate Daywalkers.

"Sure? You kidding?" Arthur laughed as he drank the concoction in one gulp. "This is my big bro we’re talking about."

No other words were needed... Arthur trusted Levi with more than his life, and he wouldn’t hesitate to jump into a volcano if he asked him to. He simply knew that his brother would never willingly harm him.

Levi smiled at his little brother’s reaction, watching him lose consciousness after pressing the tattoo.

Then, he went through the same process as Shia’s, having the Shadowlife’s tree reach out with its branches to take hold of them.

After reading their genetic code, it started the evolution following the best possible evolutionary path for them.

Levi used Astra AI to narrate Arthur’s evolution while he was watching Khu’zan’s body getting imprisoned inside the revolving rings of inscriptions.

Khu’zan’s form trembled as his muscles swelled, each tendon thickening beneath that gleaming obsidian hide.

His horn split with thin cracks... then it healed itself, now ringed with chunky red gems glowing like hot coals.

This wasn’t all... New red spikes shot up along his shoulders next to the black ones, catching the light in rough flashes.

After the rings’ illumination died off, his new form was completed... His horn glowed half onyx, half ruby, like a living bunker of stone and crystal, ready to smash back anything that hit him!

Meanwhile, Arthur hadn’t gone unscathed from the evolution. While he didn’t get any noticeable mutation related to his appearance, Arthur could feel a huge difference in his body. So could Levi...

"Woah... Your bones and muscles have been reinforced immensely." Levi raised a brow in surprise after noticing the new high density of his brother’s bone marrow and muscle tissues.

"I can tell... I feel like steel was implanted in them."

Arthur grinned as he stood up, finding his balance. He could feel that his body was much heavier, but in a good way.

He waved his arm around, and he felt like he could punch a hole in a concrete wall and not worry about any damage done to him.

The attribute enhancement from perfect evolution was amazing on its own. When added to his newly reinforced bones and muscles, Arthur realized that he was slowly stepping away from mortality.

Yet, this wasn’t even the best result from his evolution.

Khu’zan manifested as a shield, and his mouth appeared at the bottom. Then, he uttered with a dazed tone, "It’s really a perfect evolution... I can’t believe we have already unlocked it so soon..."

"Unlocked? Unlocked what?" Arthur tilted his head in confusion.

"Your ultimate ability... It has been crafted from powers, which I learned only once I reached a Tier 5 nightcrawler. This means..."

"Your next evolutionary main trait will align with the mentioned powers." Levi completed it for him.

One of the main reasons perfect evolutions were sought after was this... Instead of needing to retrace similar steps of the nightcrawler until they obtained their peak powers, perfect evolutions didn’t care about such a thing.

It straight away placed them on their strongest available path, and if they wanted to improve or go beyond it, they needed to continue evolving with perfection.

In simpler terms, remarkable evolutions helped one reach his saved point faster, while perfect evolution placed them on it and opened a whole new path, neither the nightcrawler nor the human knew anything about.

"Damn, doesn’t this mean if I keep evolving like this, I will continue unlocking new, unknown, hidden evolutionary traits?" Arthur wondered.

"Yes, but unfortunately, it ain’t that easy." Khu’zan smiled wryly, "We should be grateful that your brother lucked out on a perfect evolution in our first rank. Such a lucky break doesn’t repeat oft..."

Before Khu’zan could finish his sentence, Levi shared casually, "Oh, I forgot to mention that I have your perfect evolutionary formulas up to the Warden rank."

"..."

"..."

This time, even the clueless Arthur was left speechless.

...

After he dealt with his brother’s evolution, Levi left him to discover his powers with his partner. Though he did see his new ultimate ability and what kind of powers Khu’zan was talking about.

Even for him, Levi was left astonished, realizing that his brother might have truly landed on an amazing nightcrawler that fit his style to perfection.

As for Rayan, Melissa, and Jojo? Levi wasn’t yet comfortable sharing Ash’Kral’s perfect evolutionary formulas with them... After all, he had met them for less than two months.

Friends or not, such knowledge was forbidden to be shared without absolute trust... Only his little brother was deserving of his unconditional support at the moment.

People die for this kind of knowledge, and Levi had no interest in announcing to the world that he was in possession of a library.

After Levi returned to the training center, he checked the scheduled spars, wanting to get rid of some before returning to his dorm room.

However, to his surprise, he found that everyone had dropped off the spars list, uncaring that they would be losing their betted money in the process.

After what everyone had witnessed in the expedition, no one dared to challenge Levi. At least, not before they figured out how he killed those ants without making a move or uttering a word.

It was too eerie, and none of them wanted part of it.

"Fine by me, I guess." Levi chuckled to himself while returning to his room.

He found that his bank account had an extra two thousand SA coins added instantly, and he wasn’t complaining in the slightest at such a donation. As for the spars? It was up to Instructor Seraphis to find him new, challenging opponents.

Once he was home, Levi prepared for the last cultivation session needed to help his Sun Origin seed reach the first stage.

He sat on the floor with only his boxers on... Then, he started meditating with slow breaths. In the eyes of outsiders, Levi was doing nothing but meditating under the gentle Holy light.

But in reality? The Sun seed was eating well, sucking on the divine light akin to a starving toddler.

Not wanting to draw unwanted attention, Levi halted the feeding process the moment his body’s heat was about to reach an alarming state.

This was the reason his cultivation was slowed down in the Training Center. There were too many hidden eyes, and Levi didn’t want to expose his ability to absorb the divine light. The fact that he couldn’t be outside the center during training hours made it harder for him to spend time in his apartment during the nighttime.

Still, what he absorbed was enough to finally reach the first stage.

Not showing any peculiar signs, Levi continued his meditation in silence. Though his consciousness was inside his Leywell.

Ash’Kral told him he could travel between consciousness spaces with a slight thought as long as the seeds’ space was accessible... At the moment, Levi’s hidden tattoo was shimmering with golden light.

’Here we go.’

With a single blink, Levi found that the world around him fell utterly silent... then bloomed into radiance.

Before him stretched a vast, tranquil plane, endless and serene, with a mirrored surface of still water that reflected the heavens like polished glass.

Each of Levi’s steps sent gentle ripples outward, but the reflection never broke... as if the realm itself chose what was allowed to waver.

And at the center of it all...

The Ancestral Golden Tree.

A colossal, celestial being of bark and flame, its trunk glistened with layers of etched gold, as if sunlight had been poured into every ring.

Towering branches arced into the heavens, each one trailing radiant leaves that glowed with soft fire. At its back rose a massive golden halo, so vast it eclipsed the sky, casting a divine warmth that Levi felt more in his soul than on his skin.

The reflection below was more breathtaking, the tree’s golden radiance painted perfectly on the motionless water, roots stretching infinitely downward like they reached into another universe beneath the rooted plane.

Levi stood still, breath caught in awe.

Time didn’t seem to move here.

Even his heartbeat felt like an echo.

"Is this... what the soul of the sun looks like?"

Levi couldn’t help but murmur, his eyes captured by the Ancestral Golden Tree’s beauty for eternity...