Chapter 93: Chapter 93: Evolutionary Option
Translator: Dragon Boat Translation Editor: Dragon Boat Translation
It has begun?
Most people would not have fully believed such a news article, but Ren Suo clearly knew what had happened—the training had begun.
Ren Suo had done his own calculations on the number of people who would be involved. There were three stages in the training to be the best priest, of which there were at least a hundred people in each stage. Only one of them would be able to proceed to the next stage and accordingly, if there were a hundred people in stage 3, there would naturally be ten thousand people in stage 2, and so in the first stage, there would be a million people!
That also meant that a million people participated in the training the previous day, and within an hour, 900 thousand of them failed and returned to reality!
Ren Suo was relieved—the setting of “Holy Priest: Survival Battle” was legitimate, and the deities would truly allow the trainees to return, and in addition, ‘transform’ them to become healthier and fitter when they returned.
Almost all of the one million who participated in the training were people who were less fit, were disabled, or ill with chronic diseases. For various reasons, they were less prominent people, who would usually remain at home, and hence, they might not have been noticed when they disappeared during the training. The training lasted only one hour and it was also natural for most of them to have disappeared without being noticed during that short amount of time.
Additionally, although one million people were a large number, they were dispersed all around the globe, and hence, it was not a huge number when compared to the total global population of seven billion. Furthermore, although those people said that they had “a mysterious encounter”, they did not gain superpowers but instead became healthier, and hence, it had not garnered widespread attention as yet.
The government would have likely intervened and blocked access to relevant information while initiating investigations into the origins of the “Ruler of the Wind, Rain, and Snow”, the “Master of the Holy Light”, and the “Heart of Everlasting Warmth”.
However, when the time arrives and “Naisser_Ren” releases his new video…
Ren Suo was also eager to see how the hints he had hidden through the game would be presented in the video. However, there was a one day break between each stage of the training, and based on the trend of Naisser_Ren’s videos, he would not release videos showing events which had not occurred, and thus, the earliest that the new video would be released was two days later.
Ren Suo took a look at the profile of “Naisser_Ren”, and indeed, he had not released any new video. It appeared that he would release a video showing all the stages in one go.
Or would he edit it into a series?
Ren Suo stopped thinking about that and loaded up the game [The All-Devouring Soul] with a slightly heavy heart.
That game would likely be how most of his time would be spent that month.
The difficulty of the game truly matched up to the “3+ stars” it was given, more than Ren Suo had imagined it to be.
It was a single-save game with auto-saving functionality, and previous game checkpoints could not be reloaded. Ren Suo had failed in the previous try and had no choice but to restart again from the beginning.
The start of the game was a world map.
Numerous colors filled the entire world map, but there were three main categories: the blue, the yellow, and the red.
Blue-colored regions had the least sources of Reiki and comprised largely of oceans and the North and South poles.
Yellow-colored regions had an average amount of Reiki resources and comprised largely of cities and towns of Europe and Australia.
Red-colored regions had the most resources of Reiki, comprising largely of densely-populated cities like the Pacific Federation, Fanying Nation, Xuan Nation, and South America.
The time was written on the top left corner of the screen: X May, 16:45.
At the bottom of the screen was a message: [Press ○ to begin random selection.]
Indeed, the game would automatically generate the life form that would be controlled, whether it was an air, land, or sea life form, and where it would be born.
If the player did not want the various attributes to be generated at random, he could simply spend merit points to select accordingly.
1 merit point was required to select the spawn area, 2 merit points were required to designate the type of the generated life form (plant or animal), and 3 merit points were required to specify the life form that would be generated.
Ren Suo had always allowed the game to progress naturally, and likewise, he let the game generate the life form at random. The map began to shrink and his location was set at a mound in a mountain range in the southwest of Xuan Nation–
The scene changed and the screen plunged into darkness. The only light source was far ahead and in the darkness, Ren Suo saw a life form.
It was long and thin, with scales covering its entire body. It had four short and thick legs, and a flat but long tail. Its back was slightly raised and as Ren Suo moved the stick on the game controller, the creature ran forward accordingly.
Shortly after, it managed to dig out of the burrow, and Ren Suo could now see the burrow it was in from the outside. The creature did not receive any command from Ren Suo and curled up into a ball on the ground. Its scales were brown in color, much like the ground.
The creature was a pangolin.
[Press △ to open the evolutionary tree.]
It was an exciting moment. Even though Ren Suo had just started a new game, he could not help but feel anxious at that point.
When the evolutionary treemap opened, Ren Suo saw the entire progression of the pangolin, as well as its scientific name: Xuan Nation pangolin.
A green-colored energy bar could be seen on the left side of the screen. At present, it showed the current energy status and four statistics of the pangolin: Damage 6, Defense 10, Movement 8, Recovery 7.
Natural Talent: Burrowing (Press R2 to activate. Requires 20 seconds to burrow into the ground, the strength of the ability increases with higher Damage.)
Current Status: Full (No effect).
The energy was currently full and there were two options at the bottom: “Evolve”, “Devolve”.
“Devolve” was greyed out—it was only the beginning of the game, and the game character had not undergone any evolutionary changes.
Ren Suo selected “Evolve” and three cards appeared on the screen. Ren Suo’s eyes lit up momentarily!
The three cards were: “Scales of Armor”, “Tough Palm”, and “Mangle”!
The “Scales of Armor” card was red in color with the words written in grey. Its effect was: Adds a defense armor of 5 Defense points to the life form, refreshes every day.
The “Tough Palm” card was red in color with the words written in blue. Its effect was: Adds a defense armor of 15 Defense points to the life form, refreshes every day, but creates a wounded buff—”causes the life form to receive moderate damage, and all abilities of the injured life form would be decreased by 30%, and 3 hours of non-movement are required to recover.”
The “Mangle” card was red in color with the words written in blue. Its effect was: For every damage dealt with the life form, its overall ability would be strengthened when it recovers. Minor injuries increase overall ability by 1 point, moderate injuries increase overall ability by 2 points, and major injuries increase overall ability by 3 points.
There was no need for hesitation and Ren Suo picked “Mangle”!
If the location was set in the city, Ren Suo might have considered “Tough Palm”, since the pangolin was unable to win humans in a fight. But in the wild, it was the best place to level up through training, and “Mangle” would allow it to grow much stronger in just a few days, such that it would not be able to be captured by humans with hunting equipment!
A crimson-red pattern flashed on the body of the pangolin, indicating that it had been evolved with the “Mangle” ability.
Based on Ren Suo’s initial observations, “Mangle” was one of the best evolutionary abilities in the early stages of the evolutionary map!
Ren Suo controlled the pangolin to scout a few rounds around the area and finally saw a spider on a tree. He immediately controlled the pangolin to scurry over.
The pangolin was one of the best life forms Ren Suo had been randomly given amongst the few rounds he had attempted the game—it could climb trees, burrow into the ground, swim in the water and had relatively sharp claws. It was much better than the fat hog that Ren Suo controlled in his first attempt at the game, and the living environment was much better as well.
Recalling the hog, Ren Suo truly felt that he was unlucky—it already did not appear promising to be controlling a pig, but what made matters worse was that it was a hog in a cage, waiting to be slaughtered. There was nothing much that Ren Suo could do in that situation!
The spider on the tree appeared quite big, but it was slightly confused looking at the pangolin. Big Brother, I am not part of your diet.
Nonetheless, the pangolin swiftly maneuvered through the spider’s web and caught the spider. The pangolin jumped down to the ground with the spider in its small paws and easily crushed the spider while remaining unharmed.
The pangolin naturally could not eat the spider, unless Ren Suo evolved the spider with the “Universal Diet” ability. Otherwise, the pangolin could only feed on insects like termites and bees at present.
A green smoke emerged from the body of the dead spider and landed on the pangolin’s body. Following which, Ren Suo saw the empty energy bar rise just slightly.
After playing for three hours, the same amount of time had also passed in the game. From afternoon till night, the pangolin caught and killed numerous spiders, bird eggs, pheasants and even a lost monkey. To capture the monkey, the pangolin had been injured moderately severely and with the Mangle ability, it then managed to puncture the throat of the monkey.
After that, the pangolin’s energy bar was refilled, and Ren Suo selected “Evolve” once again!
There were still three cards that appeared: “Omnivore”, “Armored”, and “Universal Diet”!
The “Omnivore” card was red in color with grey text. Its effect was: Allows the life form to feed on both animals and plants, and increases its overall ability by absorbing the Reiki.
The “Armored” card was red in color with grey text. Its effect was: Adds a defense armor of 5 Defense points to the life form and enhances the effect of the next evolutionary ability.
The “Universal Diet” card was red in color with blue text. Its effect was: Allows the life form to feed on both animals and plants while ignoring all toxic and poisonous effects (digestion time is increased), and increases its overall ability by absorbing the Reiki.
There was no need for hesitation and Ren Suo selected “Universal Diet”. The pangolin was an animal who could only feed on insects initially, and abilities like Omnivore and Universal Diet would appear in the first three evolutions. If he did not choose any of such abilities, the pangolin would easily starve to death.
On the screen, a red glow of light emerged from the teeth in the mouth of the pangolin, and its teeth appeared much sharper.
The sky had turned dark. The pangolin was also injured and Ren Suo controlled it to eat the meat of the monkey from before and its status changed to:
Repleted (all abilities decrease by 10% until digestion is complete)
Moderate injury (all abilities decrease by 30% until full recovery)
Ren Suo controlled the pangolin to burrow a hole to rest. He selected “Fast forward 12 hours” and the day arrived immediately.
As daylight broke, the pangolin’s injuries recovered fully and digestion was complete. Its overall ability was now over 10 points.
On the top right corner of the screen were two values indicating combat ability.
The first value represented the pangolin’s combat ability: 27.
Whilst the second value represented the combat ability of the strongest creature in the world: 43650.
Ren Suo recalled that the combat power of the strongest creature in the world had been 43250 the night before.
Only a night had passed and the combat ability of the strongest creature had increased by 400 points, which was equivalent to 15 of his pangolins!
To complete the game, the player had to control his character to beat the world’s strongest creature!
In Ren Suo’s previous attempts at the game, the life forms he had controlled leveled up at a rate much slower than that of the strongest creature. Some of the life forms he controlled could not even deter humans from capturing it and was kept by humans and studied as rare animals…
“Nonetheless, it is still too difficult to level up in the jungle…” Ren Suo muttered. He felt that it was indeed a pain, saying, “If only it spawned in another country, there would at least be bears or crocodiles to kill and feed on, and it would definitely be so full from eating animals and plants. There are none of such animals here in Xuan Nation unless there are heavenly treasures I have not discovered.”
“The best way to level up as fast as possible is still to enter the human territory, and find… items filled with Reiki to devour!”