Despite falling asleep shortly after he had squeezed his body into a wall, a sudden movement outside brought his senses back to full alert. He plopped back to the ground and peeked out of the window to find out to whom belonged the quick footsteps he kept hearing.

"So annoying." Frei grimaced when he saw Nitarja, who had the same idea as he, but was clearly slower and much worse with directions.

"No, that is not why." His face turned serious when he noticed the nearing Nitarja was constantly glancing behind her. Shortly, he heard another footsteps echoing in the area of the abandoned school building.

"The Officer! I am so out of here!" Frei crouched immediately to hide behind the wall. He quickly recalled the possible entrances of the school, but all the windows of this wing were facing the street, leaving him with no viable escape roads. He quickly exited the locker room roughly at the same time as Nitarja entered the school.

"I need to find the right corridor to enter a different wing of the building." The school building was quite large and Frei was unfortunately not at the right floor, this floor had a nice view, but was not connected to other wings of the building. He regretted not walking around the building more before he had gone to sleep, now he felt too disoriented given the dangerous situation he was in and he had only himself to blame.

He reached the stairs and simply jumped down one floor without using them, having all the abilities that could help him switched on. Dashing immediately in the direction opposite to the sound of quick, menacing steps, he kicked the door in front of him, startled by the room he had found himself in. There was a line of holes made in the floor and it took Frei a precious few seconds to realize where he was.

"Fucking toilets! Can't they mark it properly?!" The room had no other exits, making him only waste his precious time. The toilets were of course announced by symbols on the walls outside, but the symbols were too unfamiliar for Frei to recognize. He ran out of the small room, but to his horror, he was too late. He emerged just in time to see the officer from before grab Nitarja by her hair and slam her against a wall, when she was trying to run up the stairs that Frei had used just a moment ago.

"You will pay for playing pranks on me." Frei could hear the anger in the man's voice and quickly backed away, reentering the toilets and closing the door behind him carefully. He was lucky that the officer seemed distracted by the mad chase and had not noticed him, his back turned to Frei the whole time.

"Your soul is mine!" Frei heard the officer and used the keyhole in front of him to look at the scene outside, where the pursuer had already grabbed Nitarja by her neck and began to strangle her, deliberately not finishing her off quickly.

"Allancard, stop!" There was another voice of a person that appeared on the scene, but Frei could not see him given the limited view of the keyhole. The officer flinched when he heard the voice, but still continued what he had started. Nitarja's futile struggle did not bother him at all, as all she could do was to produce muffled screams of desperate resistance.

"I said stop! You are overstepping your rights!" The person revealed himself to Frei, when he remained standing just a few meters away from the officer. His uniform was the same, the only notable difference from the officer was his long, black hair. Both of the city guards had no swords, but it did not seem strange, as Frei roughly knew what their kind was capable off.

"Fuck off, this is my business." The officer had almost completely silenced his victim's hoarse whimpers at this point, Frei had no doubt what she was trying to say.

"Stop right this moment Allancard, I will not repeat myself again." The atmosphere in the place changed a little and after a while, the newcomer moved.

"I have enough of your arrogance!" Allancard had to quickly withdraw his hand from Nitarja's neck, letting her fall to the ground, a dazzling green arc of light passing in between Allancard and Nitarja.

"You have pointed a sword at me! I have finally a good excuse to put you down." In Allancard 's hand, a blue glaive materialized and he swiftly changed the target of his attention, launching a vicious assault at his comrade in arms.

"It cannot be helped, you are rotten to the core. Secretly killing off people and collecting their souls is not what we do in our lands." The man conjured a shield in addition to his sword and an intense exchange began, both of their weapons shining with light, as their weapons were probably made from some form of mana. Allancard¨s glaive was azure and his opponent's sword and shield shone bright green like he possessed something along the lines of life magic.

Both of the fighters had similar abilities and skills, the duel continuing for minutes, until one of the combatants risked a sudden move. The swordsman suddenly blocked the glaive with his sword instead and his shield dematerialized. He grabbed his opponent's glaive with his free hand and jerked it upwards, freeing a path for his sword that aimed at Allancard 's stomach a second later.

"Trash." Allancard in response dematerialized the middle part of the glaive's shaft and forced the blow aside with the stick he now had in his right hand, performing a quick stab with his left hand that held the bladed part. The blade sunk into his opponent eye, ending the battle with this final deceptive lunge.

His legs spread wide, Allancard let out a long shout of victory and then . . .

"This is it!" Immediately, Frei used [Rock Spike] at the moment he had waited for all this time, cutting off Allancard's shout of victory short, as it skewered the duel winner right in his moment of victory. The penetrated body tensed for a second, before the head of their adversary fell lifelessly to his chest, his body supported by the spike of rock that carried rivulets of blood down to the floor.

"Perfect timing." Nitarja congratulated him when he emerged victoriously out of the toilets. Her voice incredibly hoarse, she was still lying on the floor, but lacked any visible injuries. He gave her thumbs up and continued towards the feast. He checked that both bodies were truly dead,

"The feast begins." His eyes flashed with greed, he remembered very well what a similar two bodies yielded the last time, but he would not have to give up half of it this time around.

It was time to become a fiend!

He watched with glee as souls of different colors moved in his direction, as they changed their owners after the death of the two guards. He would have to run again, but his evolution came first. The blob of souls representing Allancard's souls merged into him first and he could observe the change that happened.

He quickly opened his status to observe the difference.

[Souls] - 9 affinity-arcane 46 affinity-lithoid 22 affinity-plant 77 affinity-none

The line quickly changed.

[Souls] - 119 affinity-arcane 76 affinity-lithoid 22 affinity-plant 368 affinity-none

Frei was surprised at how many arcane-affinity souls Allancard had. He was probably killing even natives to grow stronger. It showed that the Arcane Universe was quite similar to Divine Universe when it came to ferocity of their servants, but it was like both angels and demons had been meshed together into one force.

When the second agglomeration of souls merged with his, he ended up with . . .

[Souls] - 122 affinity-arcane 326 affinity-lithoid 724 affinity-plant 374 affinity-none

"This one had quite a lot of plant affinity, I wonder how he has come to possess it." The only explanation was that there had to be another universe that the Arcane Universe was in conflict with.

He knew that he was lucky today, alone, he would be probably unable to kill even one of them, if he had not prepared a perfect ambush.

"Well, it seems ambushes are the way to go, who needs fair fights?" Frei nodded.

"Oh please! Just look at your smug face, disgusting! You should thank me properly for this." Nitarja complained, when she understood how much Frei benefited from the aftermath of the chase based on his expression.

"Thank you." He turned at her and bowed slightly, his face serious.

"By the way, you are quite cheap, I have a lot of thank yous in store." He smirked and had a wide smile on his face again, Nitarja sighed and turned away to look out of a window, massaging her neck with both hands.

It was time to get overpowered! Frei skipped all the abilities and selected the new entry that appeared.

[Infernopedia]

[Teleportation] - no locations available

[Souls] - 122 affinity-arcane 326 affinity-lithoid 724 affinity-plant 374 affinity-none

[Evolution]

He was greeted by tables and tables of options for his future self.

Evolution Cost Evolutions [100] [Fiend] [100] [Rock Elemental] [100] [Dryad] [100] [Mage] Evolution Cost Evolutions - first order mutations Evolutions - first order mutations [100/100] [Earth Fiend] [Rock Snake] [100/100] [Vine Fiend] [Demon Vine] [100/100] [Void Fiend] [Warlock] [100/100] [Living Metal] [Rock Vine] [100/100] [Crystalid] [Golem] [100/100] [Tree of Life] [Ethereal] Evolution Cost Evolutions - second order variants [100/100/100] [Rock Forest Demon] [Demonic Rock Forest] [Demonic Living Rock] [100/100/100] [Demonic Earth Mage] [Demonic Arcanite] [Arcanite Demon] [100/100/100] [Demonic Life Mage] [Ethereal Demonic Tree] [Arcane Life Demon] [100/100/100] [SoulStone Mage] [Ethereal Rock Vine] [Arcane Life Golem] Evolution Cost Evolutions - third order variants [100/100/100/100] [Empyrean Slime]

"OH MY GOD! Now, what to pick? What now?" Frei held back his breath, dumbfounded by the number of choices he had. Thinking logically, the most powerful evolutions should be those fueled by the greatest amount of souls, but on the other hand, even simple cooking while using such kind of premise could not end up with anything else than a disaster.

More was not always better.

"Let's keep it close to my goals, my goal is to be mainly stealthy and quick with a lot of detection abilities and means of escape plus the ability to engage in indirect combat right?" Looking at the problem this way . . .Frei still felt overwhelmed.

"Do not space out, we need to move!" Nitarja urged him to take action, as it was clear as day that they had just become hunted criminals.

"Then go Nitarja, or my head will burst!" Frei threw his hands in the air. He could not rush this too much. "Give me five minutes."

She clearly intended to cooperate now, when they were partners in crime.

Frei was quite wary of the different affinities, it almost looked like he would become an alien to the Divine Universe if he picked something like [Dryad]. Should he choose only from the options with red brackets?

Well, he could try something first.

"Hey, Infernopedia guy, will the Divine Universe turn hostile to me if I choose to evolve into a [Mage]?!" He opened [Infernopedia], but there was no reaction. There was certainly someone else, but his means should remain the same.

"I have one thousand and five hundred souls now, do not pretend that you cannot hear me or I will just choose [Fiend] followed by [Lesser Demon] and then I will complain about you doing a bad job. And do not think I do not know that you CAN write into those little rectangular brackets whatever fuck you want!" Of course he could not become a lesser demon right now, but he needed to scare the guy at least a little.

After a while, there was a reaction.

[You Have Some Balls] - threatening me. Fine, but I will expect a favor from you for this in the future.

"Of course." He had no choice, he could not evolve into something useless or hostile to everything around him.

[Pick The Most Costly Option] - , but keep the brackets red, or you will change the system of power. You are too picky, you should just rush for the highest rank instead of thinking of nonsense, it is easy.

"Thank you, that is what I needed to know." It was really how Frei had anticipated. that meant that most of the options were out of the question.

[I Expect The Favor In The Future]

"Yes, yes, of course." He thanked the fiend and scratched on his head.

"On second thought what if I switched the systems and stayed in the Arcane Universe?" A nefarious thought came to his mind. A really complicated set of decisions awaited him.