The first notification was a pleasant surprise with how difficult the ability was to level. He really would have to find something more potent to train with.

  [Acquired Resistance: Toxin — Lv. 40]

  The text faded and was replaced by new letters that began to spell out some exciting news.

  [Skill evolution available. Skill available for evo

  Actually, before getting too hyped up, there was one more thing he wanted to do.

  Thirteen Living Manifestations answered his call, slithering out of his skin and curling themselves around his head, neck, torso, arms, and legs, making him look like the world’s best snake charmer.

  That meant he had hit level 14 with Living Manifestation since one was still installed stealthily in some Gohkamorian punk somewhere.

  That deployment had been a bit of an opportunistic decision and probably wouldn’t lead to anything of importance, but he still felt a juvenile sense of satisfaction in having managed to plant a stow-away without being noticed.

  “Search the bodies inside and out,” he ordered with a sweeping gesture of his hand. From the rucksack of holding, he took out one of the smooth stones he had looted from the lightning userand shield bearer earlier. “This is what we want. Anything you find I want brought to me. Understood?”

  The Profound Toxic beasts just stared up at him with those flat, featureless eyes, making no indication whatsoever that any of them had comprehended even a single word that had come out of his mouth.

  “Al-Alright, then just… go, I guess,” he muttered with a half wave. They scattered and dove into the bloody mass as Eik went back to the wooden plaque.

  [Skill evolution available. Skill available for evolution: Resistance: Toxin]

  [Choose one:]

  [Enhanced Toxin Resistance]

  [Component Identification]

  [(Unique) Profound Absorption — Evolution derived from intimate relationship with — (Unique) Profound Toxin]

  Profound Absorption? Another Unique with a clearly stated relation to Profound Toxin. Given his tendency to go with anything linked to the Worldbreaker, it should have been a quick and simple choice.

  But perhaps that wasn’t the best thing to be doing right now.

  If the trait called Component Identification did what he thought and allowed him to ascertain the elements of which a toxin was made up, it could throw wide open the doors of multiversal alchemy and medicine in a way that just wasn’t feasible with his current proficiency.

  But the fact was that he simply wasn’t sure that he would be able to make full use of the knowledge the trait would provide — if it even worked as expected. No matter how you flipped and turned it, he was still a complete beginner in alchemy, even if he was uniquely capable from an Earth perspective.

  What he could realistically do with it at this stage was probably not that much.

  Enhanced Toxic Resistance, on the other hand, while headed by a rather boring title, might just be exactly what he had been looking for.

  Besides the devastating destructive power of Profound Toxin itself combined with Accelerant, Backflow was by far his most potent offensive ability. The drawback — the horrific bodily harm and high potential for death — was what made it so risky to use. He had yet to activate it while in a sane state of mind.

  He’d done it a couple of times inside the Profound realm but even in there, while he had come out of it alive, it had hurt like a bitch. Almost as much as the failed fusion of Profound Toxin and his aura. As far as he could tell, control of the ability could definitely be trained and improved. It was just a matter of biting the sour apple and deal with the fact that it was going to be a journey of mind-breaking agony.

  What if Enhanced Toxic Resistance could be the difference that made it possible to use it somewhat safely? It would quite literally multiply his combat power to the point where he could easily rival most C-rankers despite being mid D-rank himself.

  If this single choice could make him more capable of withstanding the overwhelming toxicity of his own Worldbreaker, then was there even anything to consider?

  Well, then there was the Unique trait, Profound Absorption.

  It would probably be some kind of ability to utilize the properties of toxins by which he was affected. Or it might pull the Resistance: Toxin ability itself into the fold of Profound Toxin to act like a kind of evolutionary trait. That didn’t seem too far fetched considering how greedy and egotistical the little blue devil was.

  One was cool but maybe not what he needed right now. The other was… difficult to predict the consequences of. If it caused the resistance effect to scale with the level of Profound Toxin, it would instantly elevate it and put it on track to level better in the long run.

  Enhanced Toxic Resistance would provide a certain and instantaneous boost, though.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  For almost a minute he chewed on the options, weighing them against each other. With no way to verify any of his assumptions it was pure guesswork, however.

  “Ah, screw it.”

  Before he could get into his own head too much, he picked Profound Absorption. Recently, the Profound Path of Toxin had really made its power evident, so with so little legitimate information to work with, the best choice seemed to be to keep trusting it.

  [Evolved skill Resistance: Toxin. Skill acquired trait (Unique) Profound Absorption — Evolution derived from intimate relationship with — (Unique) Profound Toxin]

  [Lost skill Resistance: Toxin]

  [Acquisition of (Unique) Profound Absorption caused the loss of Resistance: Toxin]

  [Resistance: Toxin had reached Lv. 40 before being lost. 8 level will be transferred to (Unique) Profound Toxin]

  [Acquired (Unique) Profound Toxin — Lv. 63]

  [(Unique) Profound Toxin inherited all skill effects of Resistance: Toxin]

  [(Unique) Profound Toxin inherited all evolutionary traits of Resistance: Toxin — Skill inherited evolutionary trait Noxious Invigoration]

  Holy shit! Eight levels in Profound Toxin for losing Resistance: Toxin, even though he still had access to its effects and traits. This was even better than he had hoped. Or at least, it seemed to be better than he had hoped.

  The logical assumption here was that Resistance: Toxin now functioned as if it was at level 63, right? Well, only one way to find out. Some other time. The chunks of poison weren’t potent enough to test the difference anyway, and Backflow could potentially hurt him to the point where he would be forced to drop out if such a thing was possible. That or die.

  He moved on to the next message.

  [Acquired Living Manifestation — Lv. 10]

  [Acquired Living Manifestation — Lv. 11]

  [Acquired Living Manifestation — Lv. 1...]

  [Acquired Living Manifestation — Lv. 14]

  [Acquired Living Manifestation — Lv. 15]

  One more level must have ticked in since he sent the little guys out just a couple of minutes ago. Did that mean they found something? From what he had been able to gather, an ability usually didn’t just level from nothing. It had to achieve something. Depending on the ability that something could vary but there had to be something done.

  The text changed once more.

  [Acquired Movement Boost — Lv. 27]

  [Acquired Movement Boost — Lv. 28]

  {Acquired (Unique) Profound Toxin — Lv. 64]

  [Acquired (Unique) Profound Toxin — Lv. 65]

  [Acquired (Unique) Profound Toxin — Lv. 6...]

  [Acquired (Unique) Profound Toxin — Lv. 68]

  [Acquired (Unique) Profound Toxin — Lv. 69]

  Again, holy shit! This stupid cave was an absolute gold mine of levels. He should have gotten himself caught down here from the get go. Another six levels on top of the eight from the absorption of Resistance: Toxin. This was actually insane.

  But apparently that wasn’t all.

  [Skill evolution available. Skill available for evolution: (Unique) Profound Toxin]

  [Choose one]

  [(Unique) Profound Toxin — Infected Trail]

  [(Unique) Profound Toxin — Eager Dispersal]

  [(Unique) Profound Toxin — Visage of Death]

  Infected Trail he had seen before. It was the one that most likely allowed him to track an invaded system over a greater distance than he was currently able. With the Gohkamorian carrying the Living Manifestation he’d planted, being able to know exactly where he was at all times would make Eik capable of staying ahead of enemies if he could manage to infect them.

  Very useful for specific situations but probably not something he was going to bother getting in place of something else right now.

  And when it came to the effects of Eager Dispersal… it wasn’t exactly obvious. What was supposed to be eager here? Profound Toxin? When was that little blue bastard not already eager? ‘Eager’ would be the first adjective he’d use to describe the substance and ‘toxic’ would be the second.

  The best clue was the word ‘dispersal’. It meant to scatter or be scattered. Since the naming of abilities and evolutionary traits weren’t always as explicitly descriptive as he would have preferred, it would probably be safe to just assume that it was a trait that allowed him to spread the toxin more easily. Depending on how ‘eager’ it actually was, that could either be very strong or not worth it.

  Visage of Death was even more difficult to guess at than Eager Dispersal. Visage meant something along the lines of appearance or face, if he was remembering his English correctly. So Visage of Death would mean face of death or maybe mask of death? What the hell was that supposed to be then?

  Would Profound Toxin form a mask around his head to hide his face? No way, right? While it would be both cool and possibly useful in some specific situations, it just didn’t seem like something he’d be offered as an evolutionary trait of a Worldbreaker ability.

  So then what?

  Infected Trail he had kind of already dismissed from consideration.

  Eager Dispersal sounded good if his guess about its effect was at least moderately accurate, but then again, as proven by the growth of his power over the recent months, Profound Toxin rarely delivered anything below standards.

  Visage of Death was a complete mystery no matter how one looked at it. That alone made the trait an extremely tempting option. But the uncertainty was a little too risky, after all.

  With an ability to spread his toxin more efficiently and freely, he could probably have handled the shield and lightning duo more safely.

  But then again, what was life without a little adventurous flavor?

  He drew a line through each of the options except Visage of Death.

  [Evolved skill (Unique) Profound Toxin. Skill acquired trait Visage of Death]

  A final glowing message etched itself into the wooden plaque.

  [Instinct of Toxin — IV]

  Damn… Everything was happening so fast even though he had been through more crazy and memorable crap since Awakening than he had in his entire life leading up to this point. Eik was on the cusp of a C-rank equivalent evolution and it felt absolutely surreal.

  At this rate, he would reach the next power rank evolution before the Championships were over.

  Stuffing the wooden plaque back into his shirt, he noticed all of the Living Manifestations lined up in front of him dutifully, waiting for his attention like a class of kindergarteners. They had adapted their sizes to suit their searches at their own volition.

  “Did you find anything?” he asked hopefully, kneeling down by the first Profound Toxic beast.

  The snake writhed and sputtered as an oval shape was visibly worked up through its slender body until it was ejected from what would have been the mouth of a true living creature.

  It was another of the smooth stones.

  “Great find!” he praised, patting the little thing on the head. It slithered away to the side to watch the rest of them. “Did you all find one?”

  They hadn’t, as it turned out. The final haul ended up being eleven smooth stones, bringing Eik’s total to thirteen. That was a decent amount. Maybe. Well, he had no clue if that was few or a lot, actually.

  Did that mean that challengers dropped one stone each while only a minority of wild monsters possessed one?

  Ordering the Living Manifestations back into his body, he jumped out of the hole in a few quick leaps. Chewing on a loaf of bread from his bag of holding, he started through the tunnel that would lead to the larger cavern he’d initially landed in.

  He’d barely made it through the tunnel proper before a distant rumble reached his ears, approaching at worrying speed. Backing back into the tunnel, he hurled spheres of solid toxin into the space ahead which melted into liquid on the floor, providing spots of glowing light to illuminate anything that got near.

  With his back against the rock wall and his fingers on the handle of the wakizashi, he waited as the rumble intensified rapidly. He steadied his breathing. When was he going to get a damn break?

  Something was coming. And it was big.

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