[Species Level Cap Achieved: Evolution Available

Evolution Options:

Species: Eagle Soldier

Description: Evolves you into the most common type of adolescent Eagle-type Monster. Immediately boosts all of your Stats moderately and allows you to retain a relatively diverse pool of evolutions after you reach your Level Cap once more.

Species: Fire Eagle

Description: Evolves you into a specialized variant of an adolescent Eagle-type Monster. Immediately boosts all of your Stats moderately while granting you Fire Resistance and a Potency Multiplier for Fire-type Skills and Spells.

Similar Species: Water Eagle, Earth Eagle, Wind Eagle, Elemental Eagle, and Sonic Eagle.

Description: ...Immediately boosts all of your Stats moderately while granting you |Water, Earth, Wind, Elemental, Sonic| Resistance and a Potency Multiplier for |Water, Earth, Wind, Elemental, Sonic|-type Skills and Spells.

Species: Enhancing Eagle

Description: ...Immediately boosts all of your Stats moderately while granting you two different Potency Multipliers for Personal and Targeted Strengthening Skills and Spells.

Species: Healer Eagle

Description: ...Immediately boosts all of your Stats moderately, grants you the right to learn Light and Life Magic, and grants you a Potency Multiplier for Healing-type Skills and Spells.

Species: Arcane Eagle

Description: Evolves you into a special variant of an adolescent Eagle-type Monster, only attainable by Lesser Eaglets that have managed to learn all Skills and Spells recorded in their Common Eagle Bloodline before evolving. Immediately boosts your physical Stats moderately while greatly boosting your Magic-related Stats. Common Eagle Bloodline bypasses Lvls 6-10 and converts to Arcane Eagle Bloodline Lvl 1. Be warned, however, the Arcane Eagle Bloodline only accepts perfection.]

Wow, I went over the description of what would obviously end up being my choice over and over again to make sure I wasn't missing anything. Becoming an Arcane Eagle was a no-brainer, it's just… I wished the Akashic Decrees didn't make it out to be so ominous.

Oh well, I'd already changed my outlook on this life to appreciate challenges. This would only end up adding an extra degree of excitement.

So, it was with little preamble that I closed off the hole I had made to the first mountain I saw after coming out the eastern side of the Black Swamp and began the process of my evolution. Without Katherine and her group to watch me while I was at my most vulnerable, this had been the best course of action I could think of taking.

[Evolve: Lesser Eaglet → Arcane Eagle? Yes/No

WARNING: Evolution induces a temporary state of extreme weakness that lasts anywhere from several hours to days.]

Motherfucker!

I nearly bashed open the hole I had just sealed off, I was so mad. I can't believe the world would do this to me!

What do you mean, 'temporary state of extreme weakness?' Where was that nap that skipped over the whole process the first time!?

"Ugh," I grimaced, thinking, 'Now I have to deal with this shit for god knows how long...'

Whatever.

I accepted and immediately slumped onto my rear. Almost exactly like I envisioned, I lost the strength to even sit up straight. I was rendered immobile, like ten years of muscular dystrophy had instantly passed by all the non-vital muscles in my body.

My only saving grace was the fact that I didn't feel like my visceral organs had shut down or degenerated in any way. In fact, instead of getting worse, it seemed like my organs were 'more than' functionally operating. I could distinctly feel my heart rate skyrocket as my body started pulsing out with random bursts of what seemed like electricity.

For hours… Or was it days? Let's call it, 'a depressingly boring amount of time...' I felt myself slowly growing. Some time closer to the start than the end, I regained enough strength to pick myself up and slowly walk around the hole in the mountainside I had dug out.

The closest thing to entertainment that I found from that point on was watching as my feathers slowly started jutting out sharply. I couldn't be sure without a mirror, but it sure seemed like I was growing into armor made out of feathers; just, more scalelike and yellowish-brown, rather than platelike and metallic.

Then, just before the end of my conscious evolution, right after my body finally finished growing in size, I nearly fell on my face as a terrible flash of pain swept across my body. In the most literal way possible, it was as if I had been tattooed through my feathers, skin, muscles, and bones, all over my body in under ten seconds as right afterward, I started glowing with said tattooed inscriptions.

[Status

Name: Nova

Species: Arcane Eagle

Level: 1/15

Rank: C-

Life: 100%

Condition: Completely Healthy

Magic Reserves: 93/93 → 250/250

Attack: 72 → 110

Defense: 48 → 105

Speed: 60 → 115

Endurance: 45 → 100

Magic Potency: 41 → 175

Magic Resistance: 42 → 180

Condition Fulfilled: New Skills "Instant Cast Lvl 1" and "Wordly Resonance Lvl 1," Created!

Skills:

Common Eagle Bloodline Lvl 5 → Arcane Eagle Bloodline Lvl 1

Acute Vision Lvl 5 → Evil Eyes Lvl 1

Peck Lvl 6 → Lvl 8

Grip Lvl 5 → Lvl 7

Magical Gizzard Lvl 5 → Lvl 6

Flight Lvl 5 → Lvl 6

Appraise Lvl 4 → Lvl 5

Swipe Lvl 4 → Lvl 5

Bash Lvl 3 → Lvl 5

Run Lvl 3 → Lvl 4

Title Earned: For The Worthy

Method of Acquisition: Opt into a special evolution — Lesser Eaglet to Arcane Eagle.

Effect: Along with the benefits of your special evolution, you've made it incalculably harder for yourself to ascend up Levels and Ranks.]

Holy. Fucking… Sh—

Just as I was about to lose my mind over the insane changes to my Status, I felt a pull from my Summoner's Return Skill.

Katherine was calling for me again.

…

As the setting sun's gentle rays hit my face, I couldn't help but let out a hardly audible moan. "Finally..." A let out a whine as I savored in the frigid, yet infinitely preferable, clean air of the world outside that damned Trap Ice Dungeon.

"Cheer up, Kate," Barin, as expected, barely even reacted as he came up behind me. "We were only stuck in there for like a week." He ignored my eyes, which threatened to light him ablaze, as he continued to say, "Just think of all the goodies our extra time in the dungeon awarded us. Or maybe even, just the fact that for the first time, we managed to leave a Trap Dungeon without suffering a single near-casualty."

"Not funny, Barin," I nearly hissed as Stella and Puck's muffled laughter almost set me off. I might have continued on to scolding Barin for his morbid humor, especially since most of those 'near casualties' he mentioned were bad memories of me getting poisoned, or cut, or crushed, or…

Anyways, it sure was a weird coincidence for Uncle Tebolt to be calling me just after I managed to leave the Dungeon. Actually, now that I'm looking at the Transmission Seal that had formed from his Magic, the inscriptions on it seemed to suggest that he'd manipulated the Spell to constantly be prompting me for a call since… Yesterday?

It must have been important, so I answered it.

"Oh, it seems I finally managed to get a hold of her," Uncle Tebolt's voice resounded from the long-distance communications seal.

"Really?! Katherine, my precious niece!" Uncle Armond shouted at the top of his lungs through the seal, "It's not like you to avoid calls from your uncles!" He sounded like he was about to cry as he asked, "Are you alright? In danger?"

"Would you shut up already?" Uncle Ransel could be heard snorting. "Let the girl explain herself." He then got much quieter as he could barely be heard saying, "And don't worry, whatever's been holding her up for so long won't be a problem after we finish our mission. I'll personally make sure of it..." He darkly concluded.

"Uh… Uncles?" I was somewhat nervous as I said, "I was just caught up in the Dungeon, alright? It was a Trap Dungeon, but I'm completely fine now."

I started sweating as the sound on the other end of the line went dead quiet.

"I told you she was fine!" A loud crash from the seal nearly knocked me off my feet as Uncle Ransel shouted, "You two and you're delusional theories… Of course, she was just being held up by those damned Dungeons and their annoying Magic Disruption Fields!"

"Anyways," the sounds of Uncle Ransel shouting grew distant, probably as a result of Uncle Tebolt walking away with the seal as he said, "You managed to finish your Guild-issued job, right?"

"Lord Heliotrope, we managed a hell of a lot more than just that!" Barin interjected. "With your niece's broken Earth Sensing Skill, we managed to fully clear out a Trap Ice Dungeon without suffering a single loss and we even left with a Lesser B Ranked Glacial Shard!"

"Is that so?" Uncle Tebolt sounded genuine as he said, "Well, good for all of you. I'm sure that after your party takes on a couple more Dungeons, you'll each have gotten enough experience to qualify for B Ranked Status."

"Thank you, uncle," I said.

"Don't mention it. Though… Now, you're free, I'm going to need to ask you to take Skinny for a ride down south over to my side." As his words died down, my favorite of uncle's summons materialized out of a high-tier Summoning Magic Circle and came over to lick my face.

I ignored the horrified looks of my party's other members as I affectionately petted the meters-tall Land Drake, and said, "That should be fine." I looked over to my still pale-faced friends and said, "I can trust you guys to hold onto my share until I get back home, right?"

After they hurriedly nodded, I turned back to the communications seal and asked, "But, I do have to ask: Just, why do you need me so urgently that you've been waiting for me for over a day?"

"Well… My mission has gotten a bit 'complicated,'" he strangely said. "What should have been a standard search and destroy mission led me and my party to an Orc Fortress way out near the edge of the continent. It took us nine days to find it, but even after getting a location, we found that it's nearly impossible to survey for the three of us."

"Ok? And how do you figure I'll be useful in accomplishing something the three of you guys nearing A Rank can't do by yourselves?" I asked, immediately discarding the idea that my Earth Magic could achieve anything my Uncles couldn't with their decades spent mastering top-tier Skills.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but we're not necessarily looking for you to personally do much of anything," Uncle Tebolt hesitantly said; probably trying to spare my feelings as best he could. "Skinny has already confirmed that the Fortress is lined with countless Detection Spells, so Earth Sensing on your level would just immediately alert them of our intentions."

"But your new Tamed Beast, Nova, if I recall correctly, is an Eagle Monster. He should have evolved to possess extremely keen eyes, which would only improve as he matures. You also previously mentioned he has a striking amount of intelligence, so… It may be a longshot, but he's our best bet in scoping out the place covertly from the sky," he concluded.

"But he can't communicate with us," I retorted. "I mean, I know the burden of teaching him Communication Magic Spells and improving our bond falls on me, but I literally haven't had the time to teach him anything since we last met before my party and I went into the Ganjier Tundra. For all I know, without me around to properly train him, he probably hasn't even had the time to slightly improve his eyes since he evolved," I sighed.

"Oh, don't you worry about that," Uncle Tebolt faintly chuckled. "I have reasons to believe we might all be surprised the next time we see that little guy. Moreover, with me by your side, I'm confident we can get him to learn the basics of Communication Magic in under a day, in the very worst-case scenario."

"If you say so," he wouldn't have been able to tell, but I shrugged my shoulders in resignation. Not to say that I didn't believe or trust in Nova, it's just that…

It had been less than two weeks since we last met. Not only was that too short a period for Nova to grow as a Monster, but I had also given him the barebones idea to head over to a potential disaster area in the Black Swamp.

The more I had thought about my actions on that day we separated, the more I cursed myself for my naivety. How stupid was I to tell a recently evolved 'infant' that it would be a good idea to go to a place which had B Ranked Monsters? How dumb could I have been to not realized back then that for all of Nova's apparent intelligence, there was a very real chance that he would not have been able to infer every little thing I had wanted to convey during our short talk.

I'd cautioned him about B Ranked Monsters in the Black Swamp. But… Could it be that he didn't know what those were? Could it be that he didn't know higher-Ranked Monsters would concentrate on areas closer to the center of the swamp? How would he have even figured out which way was which and gone west to the swamp from the forest? Could he have gone elsewhere, where the outer regions are not as forgiving as the Black Swamp?

Honestly, for every day that passed where I felt our connection remain as stable and strong as it'd always been through our Beast Contract Pact, I felt like I was witnessing another miracle. The very best cases I could envision were what I'd hoped had happened.

Hopefully, Nova had either completely ignored my suggestion and stayed at the Littleroot Forest, grazing on the much weaker Monster relative to his new strength. Or, maybe he had traveled out of the forest and then encountered something threatening enough to spook him back, while still leaving him relatively unharmed.

Oh well…

I guess I'll find out soon enough, as Skinny was already cutting a path through the rapidly changing terrain without so much as slightly breaking. Somehow, riding on top of him was less of a stomach-churning nightmare than it was a smooth and stable shuttle to whatever destination Uncle had picked.

It's a shame that I'll be forced to wait for a couple more hours before I can summon Nova. Although, if our bond hasn't weakened by now, it's unlikely that anything too crazy could have happened to him.

Right?