A week after the raid Deji smiled as he read the reports, he had succeeded in creating a prototype weapon with the aura blade skill. He just needed to perfect the working and it would be ready, the success came quicker than he expected. He checked his body state:

[Pervious State:

Strength: Intermediate (low)

Agility: Intermediate (high)

Stamina: Low (high)

Durability: Low (intermediate)

Intelligence: Low (high)

Senses: Intermediate (high)

Energy: Low (low)]

[Current State:

Strength: Intermediate (low)

Agility: Intermediate (high)

Stamina: Low (high)

Durability: Low (intermediate)

Intelligence: Intermediate (low)

Senses: Intermediate (high)

Energy: Low (low)]

His eyes bulged, he told his IP ‘IP, my en-code state?’ the IP showed him:

[En-code state:

Strength: 0/1,000,000

Agility: 0/1,000,000

Stamina: 0/1,000,000

Durability: 0/1,000,000

Intelligence: 189/1,000,000,000

Senses: 0/1,000,000

Energy: 0/10,000

Unattributed: 0/1,005,010,000]

He had been putting all his en-code in intelligence after he became Rank 4 two months ago, for all the effort he put in his growth had stagnated when he reached Rank 4, the stats he specialized on; agility, intelligence and senses had become almost impossible to improve showing him that there was a major difference between improving from Low to Intermediate and improving from Intermediate to High. Especially for he who was a superior high human.

Deji was in the sanctuary since its start when Jola saved everyone by distributing new gen weapons and killing the undead, he was an IT student before the apocalypse started and making money had been his only goal but when the apocalypse started the world and money he sought to acquire went to shit.

That was until the sanctuary encountered Jade who had already evolved and survived. Deji felt the sanctuary was lucky when they encountered Jade who was a known terrorist and survived and not only that but they got valuable information from him.

When the IPs came out, Deji had found out that he had High (High) Rank intelligence. Because of Jade’s help the members of the sanctuary had known about the IPs before it came. Some people couldn’t believe it but when it came there was no denying it.

Unlike other settlements, the sanctuary knew that the IP was for answering questions, most settlements didn’t even find out that the IP could show their stats until latter. They asked a bunch of questions to the IP and for most of them it said ‘Rank insufficient’.

When they asked the IP what part of monsters were valuable it gave a ‘Rank insufficient’ response even though it told them that the monster corpses were valuable, which was weird to them as Jade had told them the answer; everything.

Although a lot of questions went unanswered, some did, the ‘stellar questions’ as the IP called them. They found out the conditions to get better evolutions, they discovered the ‘superior’ evolution options but only very few people could get them as they required a lot of time and en-code to acquire and they needed to get stronger quickly.

Deji was one of the few people who had the privilege of getting a superior evolution, with Deji’s High (high) intelligence he was recruited by Jola and they gave him enough encode to improve it to pinnacle before he evolved. It wasn’t easy at all for a bunch of Rank 0s and 1s to secure 10,000 en-code but the whole sanctuary worked together to get those who were closest to fulfilling the condition for a superior evolution to get to pinnacle Rank.

Deji felt extremely indebted to the sanctuary for what it had done for him, he felt no amount of en-code could pay them back for all the effort and sacrifice as some people had died in the process and those who didn’t die had to forfeit the possibility of becoming a superior High Human.

The sanctuary discovered that superior high humans had a larger en-code stat for one of their stats and the stat they were superior in was very hard to improve but had the best performance.

He worked very hard to improve his stats so that he could make the sanctuary the ideal place for people who wanted to start out in the future, he wanted people who were part of it to be able to get the best evolutions and not have to settle for second best.

But for all his effort his intelligence had refused to budge; it stayed at the Low (high) Rank regardless of what he did, only his other stats improved. His intelligence along with being superior was already a very hard stat for humans or high humans to improve given it had 100 times more maximum en-code than the other stats, with his superior intelligence he had even more of a hard time improving it.

When Jola discovered how to train people’s energy and how it improved intelligence as well he had jumped on the training but it quickly got unchallenging for him when his sense stat reached the intermediate Rank.

Stat Rank improvement was never completely linear; as one trained a stat the person would grow normally, within the person’s genetic limit, regardless of how much en-code was put in the stat. With the right amount of training en-code is consumed at a high rate although the quality of the stat improves at a normal rate, the stat experiences a major improvement when the Ranks changes which usually happens after a set amount of en-code has been consumed during training.

A person’s stat quality would leap and become very high compared to the previous quality within moments of a stat Rank increase. Increasing a stat’s major Rank was very hard compared to increasing the minor Rank but the gains were obviously more than a minor Rank increase.

When Deji evolved his intelligence was at the Low (high) Rank already so he needed a lot of training for improvement. His research into energy skills had taken the cake in his intelligence training but it was more like groping in the dark for him; developing a new science wasn’t easy especially since he had never done it before.

Studying the Flash Thunder katana had been way more beneficial to him than any of his previous training methods. He rarely ever checked his body stats after reaching Rank 3.

“WOOHOOOOO!!!” he shouted in joy when he saw the improvement, he had gotten so many good things in one go. The shout was loud and Teni ran into the room surprised by the sound.

She entered the room and found Deji doing a victory dance, it was horrible. Teni had never seen him in high spirits. She was a member of his team when she was a Rank 4, but she grew very quickly and became a Rank 5 so she left the team and worked directly for Jola.

She was completely shocked by Deji’s shameful display. Deji saw her looking at him and ran to hug her with a smile on his face. Teni dodged the hug and asked “Why are you so excited?”

Deji said “My intelligence Rank increased!” Teni said with a smile “Congratulation! But please stop dancing”. Deji regained himself, put on his calm and uncaring expression and said “I’ve also succeeded in making the skilled weapon prototype”

Teni was pleasantly surprised, her eyes widened and she said “When can you make the full product?” Deji said “I don’t know exactly, with my new intelligence it could be finished in two days, maybe?”

Teni got more excited and Deji destroyed her hopes by saying “That’s a very optimistic estimate, depending on the new things I learn it could take a few months” Teni looked deflated and said “You always do this; you get my hopes up then you kill it. Fucking sadist!”

Deji smirked and said “I’ll give a full report this evening” he then left and went to inspect the prototype. The prototype was a pink Rank 5 long sword made from the claws of a Rank 5 Hive Predator, he had used the principles he saw from Flash Thunder on the same sword.

He took the sword, energized it and flipped the switch to activate the skill. The sword lit up with red aura; a 5 meter blade of red aura formed, he used the blade to cut a block of metal that was in the room. The metal was split roughly as it required him to add more strength when he had cut into the middle.

Deji thought 'I need to inspect Flash Thunder again, but Jola is training with it now and won't let me have a try...' he scratched his head and something he had put at the back of his mind came up.