Chapter 98 - A New Companion (1/2)
”Evolve Fenrir!”
Whoosh!
At the very next instant Aurus was finished commanding the system to evolve his one and only pet, Fenrir's body was hastily shrouded with an overbearingly bright light as Fenrir's body structure gradually changed to morph into a blob that was made up of an unknown substance.
Although Aurus was interested as to what Fenrir was going to evolve into as he watched his evolution process, Aurus decided to do other things while waiting for Fenrir to evolve, since in the end, he would still find out how Fenrir evolved.
After commanding the system to position Fenrir's body at the center of the green jade hall, Aurus then used his authority over the whole Tempest Cliff Inheritance to open up a pathway towards one of the special rooms within the inheritance, the skill room.
Swish!
Not long after, an entrance was formed at one side of the hall that led towards the skill room. After Aurus saw this entrance, he hovered towards the entrance as he looked at Fenrir's currently evolving body.
”With a potential grade like his, his evolution will definitely not disappoint me. His A-grade form alone gave me a great boost in speed already!” Aurus reassured his doubts as he traversed through the whole entirety of the pathway, arriving at the skill room a few minutes later.
Being greeted by the sight of multiple rows of bookshelves that housed techniques and skills that ranged from being so simple that a baby could understand it, to being quite complex that even an Animate would be hard pressed to understand, Aurus could not help but take a breath in through his body as he said, ”Time to find a defensive technique.”
Indeed, Aurus entered the inheritance to find a defensive technique. After fighting against the bosses, he realized that he had no way to defend himself whatsoever. He could dish out high amounts of damage and heal his HP back to full when time allowed it, but what would happen to him if the enemy could kill him in one shot? Just accept his fate that he was not able to dodge the attack or retaliate in any way?
Definitely not!
Although he had the Flux covering his body lately as a sort of passive defense, it was utterly lacking when compared to active defense. Sure, with his Spell Core being of the Middle-High grade, he obtained access to an extremely great spell that boasted active defense, [Spirit Gale Barrier]. But…with the long cast times needed to unleash such spells, he might already be dead before he could even defend.
This was his true purpose for coming back to the inheritance, evolving Fenrir was just out of whim.
”Hmm…” Aurus gradually browsed through the bookshelves as he slowly hovered along the way. Some of the techniques he found would make his nonexistent eyes glisten for a bit, but then after a bit, it would dim down, thinking of the disadvantages it held.
”Oh? A defensive technique that allows me to conjure shields to protect my body? Yeah…no, although I can conjure a lot of shields, it would probably take me a lot of SP to sustain that.”
”A defensive technique that casts a reflective mirror in front of me…I'd just get hit from behind if that's the case.”
”Using swords made out of SP to actively deflect attacks…quite nice but incredibly flashy. Hard to sustain as well by the looks of it.”
”Hm…” After a while, Aurus finally stopped in front of a bookshelf, staring quite well at a certain technique as he scanned it through the help of his system. A few seconds later, rather than his nonexistent eyes dimming down just like what happened with other techniques, it instead brightened, showing his great motivation to learn it. ”This is the one!”
Without hesitation, he commanded the system to learn the technique.
Ding!
Hearing the notification sound resound through his mind, Aurus could not help but think of the multiple possibilties and situations he could use the technique in. Adding in Fenrir who would probably be tanking all of the attacks, the possibilities became even wider.
He opened up his notification log and read the name of the technique, making sure that it was the technique he chose to learn.
'You have learned [Barrier].'
'Due to the incompatibility of the skill with the user's body, the skill has been adapted to [Barrier of the Spiritas].'
”Yep, this is definitely the one I chose.” With a cheerful aura radiating around his body, Aurus then hovered back towards the green jade hall, thinking about the new defensive skill he obtained and the Learning module of the [Artificial Intelligence] portion of his system.
Wait…
[Barrier]. The most basic defensive skill anyone could learn…ever. Now why did Aurus learn that?
Think about it, would Evinkell—I mean Kevin, allow such a simple technique to enter the bookshelves of an inheritance's skill room? With his standing in the Animate world, highly improbable.
”Let me just make sure of my choice one more time…” While travelling back to the green jade hall, Aurus thought of using the system's Learning module to level [Barrier of the Spiritas] to its max level before leveling it up. ”Identify [Barrier of the Spiritas].”
Ding!
________
[Barrier of the Spiritas] (Level 1/3)
Grade: Mortal (C)
The most basic defensive skill optimized by the Great Sage Kevin, which has been adapted to the user's body through the system, allows the defensive skill to become an extremely strong defensive skill that can be comparable to defensive skills that allow the user to withstand attacks from tens to hundreds of people at once.
Through the Sage's optimization, the defensive ability of the conjured barrier is proportional to the combined power of the user's Defense and Vitality stat. This proportion can grow bigger whenever the user infuses more SP into said barrier.
Minimum SP Cost per second: 2 SP
Cooldown: 10 seconds
________
After skimming through the text twice, Aurus then commanded the system to nurture this skill whenever he was not using it, to which the system promptly replied with a notification.
Ding!
'[Barrier of the Spiritas] is now being passively nurtured by the system. If the user wishes to hasten the rate of improvement, the user must upgrade the module to higher levels.'
Although Aurus was quite tempted to upgrade the Learning module, he knew that he should focus on the Battle module more, rather than on the former.
…
Arriving at the edge of the green jade hall a couple of minutes later, Aurus was greeted by the sight of a new and improved Fenrir.
At first glance, one could notice that Fenrir's body became more detailed when compared to his A-grade body. If one could compare it to something, then Fenrir's body was comparable to a novice sculptor creating their first wooden wolf sculpture.
Though it did not capture much of the ferocity of the wolf, many details that could be seen on a wolf that were not seen on Fenrir's body before, was now visible. Claws, a sleek body, some tufts of wooden fur, these are some details that were now added on Fenrir's body.
Not only that, Fenrir grew in size once more, now being thrice the size of Aurus' body, and that's taking into consideration that Aurus' body grew a bit after evolving to S-grade!