Taking into consideration that Bai Zemin had to not only kill a total of 20,000 enemies with specific characteristics and besides that consume an astronomical total of 6 First Order Soul Stones, the amount of resources and time needed to fulfill the requirements needed to evolve the Unranked skill Unstoppable Front Charge to the First Orde skill Shadow Blink could be considered colossal.
To begin with, while it seemed easy, the two requirements where Bai Zemin needed to kill 10,000 Agility-type enemies and 10,000 enemies with high jumping ability were not easy at all. Sure, killing such beings might not be crazy depending on the overall strength difference, however, finding that number of those specific types of enemies would definitely not be a simple task considering that the Soul Record had only just reached Earth a little over a month and a week ago.
As for the six First Order Soul Stones, it was naturally even more difficult since even if one had the power to take down First Order existences with ease, one would not necessarily will obtain a Soul Stone by killing them. Moreover, it was also in question whether one managed to find such existences in the first place.
Although all of the above was exclusively related to the evolutionary stage of the world and its inhabitants, this did not represent an impediment in Lilith's theory nor in Bai Zemin's reasoning.
After all, when the world entered into higher evolutionary stages and its inhabitants became more powerful, the skill scrolls that defeated enemies would drop would naturally be of a higher Order; at the very least, the quantity of First Order skill scrolls would no longer be a rarity.
In that case, who would bother to learn Unranked skills and then consume so many resources to evolve it when they could easily get that skill upgraded from a scroll? Probably no one.
With all this in mind, while Lilith's idea sounded a bit fanciful, it wasn't particularly crazy either.. Bai Zemin could imagine such a thing happening.
"Even if it is, it's insane." He sighed and forced a smile as he said, "By learning a poor quality active skill we would not only be consuming a precious skill slot, but we would also have to consume a lot of resources to raise it... But more importantly, nothing really guarantees that the evolution of that skill will be good. Wouldn't it be reason for suicide if in the end, the skill ends up morphing into a slightly better piece of junk than the previous piece of junk?"
"En." Lilith nodded and looked him straight in the eyes, "That's precisely why I came up with that theory. It's the only reason with any validity that, at least, somewhat backed up the fact that such an occurrence never became universally known among the Higher Existences."
Bai Zemin sighed again before asking curiously, "What about the second theory?"
Lilith narrowed her eyes and said deeply, "My second theory is that you are an anomaly."
"... Thank you...?" Bai Zemin was speechless.
Was that an insult or was it a compliment?
Lilith ignored him and said earnestly, "Either something inside you provoked it or... Or your Blood Manipulation skill has a hidden effect."
Bai Zemin frowned and said puzzled, "What does the skill Blood Manipulation have to do with it?"
"As you well know, we can use skills thanks to the fact that the runes were engraved into our souls." Lilith explained calmly and then asked, "Tell me something, do you know how the body and soul of a living being works?"
Bai Zemin raised both hands and said bitterly, "Before the Soul Record came to this world, mankind on this planet had not even been able to confirm with absolute certainty that we had a soul or spirit inside our bodies... How am I supposed to know how such mysterious things work?"
Lilith contemplated for a moment and then calmly said, "In that case... How do light bulbs and electricity work?"
Bai Zemin didn't know why she asked such a question but still answered, "The light bulb must be placed on an electric switch with an electrical connection to allow energy to flow through and thus produce luminous energy."
"That is correct. Now tell me what happens if the amount of energy or power a bulb receives exceeds its own capacity?"
"The bulb burns out or explodes into pieces."
Lilith smiled and nodded, "Correct. It is precisely the same with the human body."
"I don't understand." Bai Zemin shook his head.
"Let's take the light bulb as if it were the body and the electricity as if it were the soul." Lilith patiently explained, "If the body cannot contain the power of the soul, then the body will immediately collapse and the owner will die, which will eventually lead to the death of the soul as well since souls cannot live normally without a vessel. Easy to understand, isn't it?"
Bai Zemin's eyes glittered with understanding and he nodded firmly, "Easy."
What a joke, it was impossible not to understand something so simple.
Even so, there was something he didn't understand.
"But, what does that have to do with the skill Blood Manipulation?" He asked puzzled.
Lilith blinked at him and narrowed her eyes as she said, "Remember that this is all just a theory, my thoughts on the matter are based solely on limited information."
Seeing him nod, she explained, "Perhaps, your Blood Manipulation skill is nourishing your own blood from the moment the rune containing the skill was engraved in your soul. By nourishing your blood, the Blood Manipulation skill is at the same time strengthening your body unconsciously. This would lead to the consequence that your soul would gradually become stronger, or rather, mold itself to better adapt to a stronger body."
After a short pause, she said uncertainly, "So... Since your soul silently grows stronger, perhaps the skill runes engraved in it will also grow stronger to adapt to your soul."
Bai Zemin was silent for a long time before finally saying with a deadpan expression, "What the bloody hell?"
Blood Manipulation strengthens his blood, his blood strengthens his body, his body causes his soul to strengthen, and as his soul strengthens the skill runes also strengthen which would lead as a consequence to a mutation of a poor quality skill to transform it into something stronger.... Bai Zemin felt like his head was going to literally explode just thinking about the tedious process of this.
However, if Lilith's theory was true.... Then it could be said that the skill Blood Manipulation was indeed just incredibly terrifying; terrifying to the point where it could not be described in words.
"But if that were the case, why did only the rune of the skill Unstoppable Front Charge improve?" Bai Zemin pointed out doubtfully. "Besides, the improvement only happened after Unstoppable Front Charge evolved into Shadow Blink."
Lilith shook her head and said in exasperation, "Didn't I just tell you? This is all nothing but my own thoughts. I have no way of knowing if I'm right or wrong, so I can't answer all the unknowns born here at all."
She was in a bad mood at this point. Of course, she was very happy that Bai Zemin received a powerful skill from a skill not so outstanding from her point of view. However, when something that she did not expect happened, her mood would immediately darken as variables were what Lilith hated the most.
Variable, unknown, uncertain; these were all words that Lilith hated very much as variables could be bad, unknown could represent hidden danger, and uncertain meant that the positive could turn negative before she realized it.
First, the Firmament Fragment where the will of the Heavenly Wolf Sirius rested, and now, the appearance of a First Order skill which Lilith knew in the past as a Third Order skill... In such a short time, the surprises she had received from being close to Bai Zemin had been far greater than she had initially expected to encounter even when she already had a rough idea of where she was getting into.
"Forget it." Bai Zemin slapped his cheeks hard and shook his head. His wandering eyes regained their usual steadiness and he said casually, "Regardless of whatever is going on, since it's good there's no need to worry too much. I'm sure that someday the answers will naturally come by themselves even without us looking for them."
Lilith sighed in her heart. Still, she smiled and nodded calmly, "Maybe you're right... We'll see in the future. But since it's a good thing, I guess it's okay."
"Now..." Bai Zemin pushed the matter of the Shadow Blink skill to the back of his mind since there was nothing he could do about it anyway. Therefore, he decided to focus and work on what he could do at the moment.
"What shall I do with this thing?" he muttered as he looked at the huge body of the First Order snake he had just killed not too long ago.
Should he just leave it here or should he take it back to the base?
While it was true that it was highly improbable for an Unclassified beast to approach the body of a First Order beast that still exuded its terrifying aura despite being dead, the same could not be said for other First Order beasts.
If the precious meat of the huge snake in front of him was devoured by a monster and its valuable scales destroyed, Bai Zemin would really have no place to shed his tears.
The problem was that if he carried this First Order snake to the base, it would probably also mean that he would have to carry each and every monster he killed in the forest. Even if his overall speed was high, it wasn't like if he could maintain such a speed for more than a couple of minutes before consuming all of his Stamina.
"Forget it, apparently tonight I really won't be able to sleep as well." In the end, he sighed tiredly and clung to the tail of the giant corpse.
"I'll give you a shoulder massage later~" Lilith smiled and her eyes closed as her beautifully outlined eyebrows curved into a crescent moon shape.
"I suddenly feel more energetic." Bai Zemin joked before he began to drag the evolved snake's body along.
Even with his Strength stat, it would definitely not be a simple task to carry the body of a giant monster whose length had exceeded 50 meters. However, just as he was leaving a large furrow in the ground where he passed by, Lilith's voice sounded from behind him:
"Why don't you use Gravity Manipulation to lighten the weight of that snake?"
Bai Zemin's footsteps stopped.
"..."
"... You hadn't thought of that had you?"
"..."
"Really... You should stop thinking of skills as only useful in combat! At the end of the day you're still thinking like a normal human doing the hard work."
Bai Zemin sighed and obediently activated Gravity Manipulation.
* * *
Standing atop a large tower five or six meters high, two armed men dressed in police uniforms observed the surroundings cautiously. Each of them held night vision binoculars that were part of the equipment the police stations were equipped with. Making sure that no monsters, zombies, or human enemies would sneak into the base which would lead to chaos; unnecessary chaos considering how chaotic everything was already.
There were several of these towers placed at different perimeters and at different distances around the entire North Camp. That way, if something bad happened, the base would have time to react when the sentries reported the situation.
Today, like most days, was a boring day. The two men were only doing their jobs seriously because of the good pay but honestly, none of them expected anything to happen.
Just when everything seemed normal, one of the militants suddenly exclaimed in fright, "Hey, look over there!"
* * * * * * *
A/N: It is very possible that I will upload a third chapter today since yesterday I uploaded only 1.
If not today, it will be tomorrow.
Thanks a lot to all those who use their Golden Tickets to vote for BW <3