章 24: Evolving Legion

"Alright, let's check what can be done with evolution," Victor said, as he sat down on the ground and brought out the system panel.

He had some ideas in his head already on what he wanted to do, and which monsters he wanted to evolve, and with some of the samples yet to be analyzed, his options were a bit slimmer.

…

Evolution Material:

-Fiery Tailed Wolf – 1000

-Zombie – 15,000

-Dungeon Bat – 5000

-Dark Poisonous Spider – 200

-Giant Forest Snake – 200

-White Mountain Tiger – 500

-Grey Lycan – 4000

-Ghost Gecko – 2000

-Mantant – 30,000 (can evolve further)

…

After going through the list, the first thing that caught Victor's eye was the last creature on the list, the mantant which could be evolved further. After the zombie, which was his base form, this was the only other one that he could evolve, for now.

While he was going through everything and the possible combinations, a system notification appeared.

[System analysis complete. Grey Lycan has been analyzed]

Seeing this system notification gave Victor an idea, so he put away the evolution of things for a while. Seeing as the mantant could be evolved further, he wanted to have an actual mantant in his legion. With that, he would also be able to evolve the individual mantant to the next stage.

Technically, Victor was only interested in seeing what the evolved mantant would look like and how much stronger they would be in comparison to the normal mantants. If it did well, he would consider leaving that mantant as part of his legion, if not he can always discard it.

It didn't take long after moving around a bit before Victor found a life mantant. He had seen some corpses but didn't want to use those ones as they were too damaged physically.

Without much stress, Victor activated his touch of death and killed it within five seconds. With this method, the body was preserved and would look mostly normal after being raised from the dead. Some seconds later, almost immediately, a cross appeared above the corpse, indicating that Victor could raise it into his legion.

"Arise," Victor said.

With the command word, the corpse twitched and then slowly got up. Like others, the colour of the mantant's exoskeleton became dull, as the brilliant black that once covered its body became a bit faded.

[You have acquired an undying soldier that will forever serve at your side with unquestionable resolve]

[Mantant has dropped in level due to effects of being reborn]

[Mantant Level 40]

Victor withdrew the monster after this and left the area, returning to the area close to the path that led to the next floor.

As he approached that part of the cave, the system gave some notifications that made Victor happy.

[System analysis complete. Ghost Gecko has been analyzed]

[System analysis complete. Mantant has been analyzed]

"Oh, good. Everything is set now." Victor said as he approached the area.

The side he had sat at before was too small, so he moved from that side to another that had a bigger space.

"System, show me all the possible evolutions between all my legion members," Victor said.

Before him, a screen appeared, a bit wider than the normal system panel. It displayed numerous possible evolutions between Victor's legion members. Each was unique, but also there were some that made no sense at all. Victor carefully went through the ones that he saw best to choose, and as he did the rest of the options disappeared leaving those he had chosen.

"These ones are the best," Victor said as he looked at the options.

There were many good options to choose from, but not all were that great when Victor considered the effect of the features. Besides, he didn't know what the future evolutions hold, so he could only go with the best for the moment.

Apart from the ones he had chosen, Victor shifted the evolution panel to the side and called up another system panel. Before he started, he wanted to put the mantant to evolve further. Since the evolution material wasn't bonded with any creature, he wasn't really sure how effective evolving it would be. But since the system said it's good, it must be so, Victor thought.

_ _

-Mantant – 30,000/20,000 (can evolve further)

Next evolution – Mantisant

…

"Start evolution on the Mantant," Victor said.

[Starting evolution on the Mantant]

[Evolution will now and will take 20 minutes]

[During evolution Mantant cannot be summoned]

"Alright, good."

"Now, let's look at the others."

Just like when he had tried to evolve using the fiery-tailed wolf, a large system panel expanded before him, and different three-dimensional images appeared on it with their respective information.

The first one Victor chose was an evolution for Arac. This evolution was combining the mantant with Arac by incorporating some of the mantant's features into Arac. This evolution was going to reinforce Arac's exoskeleton with the mantant's extremely tough exoskeleton, and also add their pair of front blade hands.

The second was for Gurok, and he was simple. Although there was the possibility of turning Gurok into a two-legged walking powerhouse by combining him with a grey Lycan, Victor did want to make such an advanced evolution using a weak monster. Maybe if he could find a higher-rank werewolf or something, but not a low-rank grey lycan.

The Fiery Tailed Wolf was the one that was incorporated into Gurok, and the effects of this gave Gurok a fiery red-coloured tail, and the pattern ran through the middle of his back up to his shoulders. This evolution also gave him an AOE skill, albeit a low-ranked one, probably.

For Konda, Victor had wanted to put him together with the gecko, which was also the only other creature with which the material he had Konda was compatible. But, none of the possible evolutions would grant Konda a skill, so it was useless.

"This should be enough for now," Victor said.

Just like the mantant, each of these evolutions took anything between 10 and 20 minutes to be completed. So Victor could only wait. By the time he was done choosing the evolution paths for two of his subordinates, he got a pleasant system notification.

[Evolution of Mantant complete]

[Mantant has evolved into Mantisant]

[Level of Mantisant has increased]

[New skills have been added]

"Perfect, just in time," Victor said, as he smirked a little before the smirk disappeared again.

"Come forth, Mantisant."

(A/N: Many people, if not every single person must be thinking the same thing when it comes to 'How can a level 20 easily kill a level?!' But, here me out first. If the rank of creatures are from 'E' to 'S', Victor's Zombie Lord form is 'S' rank. Although the other monsters are of higher level, their rank is much lower.

Think of it as a young dragon facing off against a human. I did make a mistake in evolving him too fast, but that is not a problem and does not affect the overall story. Please keep this in mind while reading.

Victor's system is also what helped him to be able to reincarnate into this world, so normally it isn't a normal system. The representation of figures relative to Victor's stats isn't the same with this world(the world he currently is in) so having a strength value of 50 doesn't mean he will show the same strength with other creatures with the same level. Again, this is also greatly affected by his zombie lord physic.

Then again, this is my first book that has an evolution feature, so the whole evolution thing might be completely different from what you guys are familiar with, so just treat it as my own style of depicting evolution.

Lastly, it is quite clear that Victor is an overpowered character, but that is also for a reason. Saying too much about this will only serve as a spoiler, so I'll leave it as is for now.