It wasn’t until Michael was surrounded by a large group of undead that he finally stopped.
With his now abundant mana pool, summoning and dismissing Rank 1 creatures back and forth felt almost effortless—like a walk in the park.
Michael didn’t know why but when the moment came to finally evolve himself, he found his mind clouded with thoughts, his emotions shifting rapidly.
Anticipation.
Excitement.
Doubt.
Fear.
Caution—almost to the point of paranoia.
It was that last one that compelled him to summon so many undead to guard him, even though Spartan, Lucky, and Prince alone were more than enough for protection.
The rest were just numbers—useful, but ultimately insignificant in the face of true threats.
Still, his caution wasn’t without reason.
He didn’t expect anything to go wrong… but if something did, especially during a process as critical and unknown as evolution, the consequences could be disastrous.
This was his first time.
So even if his precautions bordered on paranoia, Michael accepted them without hesitation.
Michael took a deep breath.
He had already given his commands to his undead—there was nothing more to worry about on that front.
All that remained now was the main event.
With an anxious smile tugging at his lips, Michael muttered something he hadn’t said in a long time.
“Evolution points… show me your limits.”
“Evolve!”
The moment the word left his lips, reality itself seemed to twist.
Michael barely had time to take another breath before a white-hot lance of agony tore through his body.
His body began to glow—bright, blinding light pouring from every pore like his soul itself was being melted down and reforged.
The light was so intense it turned the world around him to nothing.
Michael couldn’t see anything—no sky, no land, no undead—just endless white as if he were suspended in pure energy.
His knees buckled.
His vision blurred.
He screamed.
The pain was instant, overwhelming, and absolute.
His body convulsed violently, his muscles locking up as if thousands of spikes were being driven into his flesh from the inside out.
He couldn’t breathe.
He couldn’t see.
He couldn’t even think—his mind a whirlwind of pain so intense it eclipsed everything else.
Then his body exploded outward.
Not literally—but the sheer force of his power erupting caused the earth beneath him to crack, the air to tremble, and a shockwave to ripple outward.
Several nearby trees snapped like twigs.
A few of the weaker undead were blown back, crashing to the ground.
Michael collapsed to one knee, then both, his hands digging into the dirt as he screamed again.
His fingers tore into the soil, crushing rocks effortlessly.
His immense strength, now running wild without control, began to wreck the surroundings unconsciously.
He wanted it to stop. Gods, he wanted it to stop.
A thought then came once—terrifying in its clarity.
End it. Just kill yourself. Make it stop.
And the pain only grew worse.
The longer it went on, the more it felt like his body was being torn apart and stitched back together over and over again, each time with a new intensity.
Every nerve screamed.
Every muscle trembled.
His bones groaned under invisible pressure.
But beneath it all—buried deep beneath the suffering—Michael felt it.
The change.
His flesh was hardening.
His mana channels widening.
His blood… growing strange and powerful.
But the pain was too much to focus on anything else.
He was too far gone to appreciate the transformation.
All he could do was hold on.
So he did.
He endured.
Even as the light swallowed everything… Michael refused to let go.
The light, blinding and unnatural, spread like a second sun over the forest clearing.
The undead reacted instantly.
Though emotion was a foreign concept to them, their intelligence allowed them to mimic it.
And now, they mimicked a few emotions.
Spartan stood firm, his eyes locked on Michael.
Lucky, crouched low like a predator, constantly shifted his head side to side, snarling at unseen threats.
He stayed closest to Michael, pacing in small, sharp movements like a wolf guarding its wounded pack leader.
Prince, normally poised in his stance, looked almost disoriented as he glanced at the writhing Michael and the sky above, his clawed hands twitching restlessly.
The rest of the undead moved.
Dozens of undead formed a perfect circle around their master
Michael’s screams echoed out again—raw, unfiltered agony that pierced through the minds of the undead.
They couldn’t feel it the way a living creature might, but something in them shifted.
The link they shared with him pulsed wildly, like a drumbeat out of rhythm.
They felt his distress in waves—jagged and violent.
Every second that passed fed into a growing tension.
The light from Michael’s body had grown so bright that the forest looked like midday even though it was well into dusk.
Then—suddenly—the screaming stopped.
The light began to fade.
Michael remained on his knees, unmoving, his hands buried deep in the cracked soil. Steam rose from his back. His cloak was in tatters. His hair clung to his face with sweat and dirt.
The undead didn’t move either. They waited.
Michael’s breaths came slow, ragged, shallow—like each inhale had to claw its way out of his burning lungs.
His mind was foggy, thick with the echo of pain so vast it felt like it had left permanent scars not just on his body, but on his soul.
For a long moment, all he could do was kneel there, trembling in the aftermath.
He was alive. Michael knew that. But it didn’t feel like it.
That fear—the raw, primal kind that clawed at your sanity—lingered in the back of his thoughts like a shadow.
He had known it would hurt. He hadn’t expected to barely survive it.
Truly, evolving a living being was nothing like evolving an undead.
An undead seemed to have no choice but to endure, to push through the process regardless of how unnatural or painful it might be.
But for a living being? It was different—terrifyingly so.
The pain was so intense, so all-consuming, that Michael had genuinely believed he might end it all just to make it stop.
A wild thought.
A dangerous one.
But even in that moment, something had held him back.
He didn’t know what.
Was it the red cauldron?
Michael couldn’t be sure, but the suspicion clung to him like a whisper in the back of his mind.