While Ayah had her class evolve, receiving showers of rewards alongside the changes brought by her Legendary Contract, Uriel, too, received his fair share of notifications.
[You have forged a new Ascendant Path of Evolution!]
[You have achieved a singularity feat!]
Uriel laughed even harder, already aware of what would be coming.
He accepted it with wide open arms.
[Your Forging-Assimilation thod has been perfected!]
[Your Evolution thod has been perfected!]
A flood of information entered his mind, perfectly slotting into the Path Creation thod he had forged not too long ago—a logical continuation, seamless and inevitable.
[You have pleased the Weave!]
[You have satisfied the Weave!]
Uriel didn’t even seem to have heard the last few notifications.
His gaze snapped toward Enoch, locking onto the bag of pills the latter carried. With a spell, he pulled them over, gulping down half of them in nothing but a mont.
He seized another egg and instantly got to work again, as if nothing else existed, having already forgotten the ache and fatigue drilling into his bones.
It wasn’t over yet.
Not nearly.
...
Evolution.
It defined the steps of Ascendance that led toward Godhood, but it was also the core chanic of the First Step, the Mortal Realm.
The First Step had nine stages: the G Rank, all the way up to the A Rank, followed by the S Rank, and completed by the ninth rank—the Ex Rank.
The structure of each of these ranks was identical, and deceptively simple in its initial chanics, though it grew increasingly complex the deeper one delved into its intricacies.
Each rank possessed four steps: Initial Assimilation, Branching Root, Purifying Replacent, and finally, Ascent.
Initial Assimilation, the first step of any rank, was rather straightforward.
Within that step, the awakened was required to choose what was known as an assimilation subject, then employ a specific assimilation thod—one that demanded precise materials—to fuse with that subject, sparking a Major Evolution.
In the simplest terms, at the beginning of each rank, an awakened had to define their path by choosing an object or creature upon which to base their evolution, then use a specific thod and set of materials to fuse with and absorb said subject.
This would trigger the Major Evolution of the rank.
The subject of assimilation could be anything. Most commonly, awakened chose living beings, creatures and beasts closely aligned with the workings of their sparks.
So more niche specialists, however, selected subjects as esoteric as weapons, elents, runes, and even more obscure concepts.
For those paths, the required materials often beca extraordinarily rare and prohibitively expensive, and the assimilation thods necessary to properly fuse with such subjects grew so scarce they might as well not exist.
Enoch, for example, throughout his long life had only encountered a handful of weapon assimilators.
They were rare.
But they were monsters beyond reckoning.
He himself had been one, once upon a ti.
The choice of one’s subject beca even more significant once the specifics of Major Evolution were taken into account.
Lesser Evolution, Greater Evolution, Subli Evolution—these were the dividing lines of Major Evolutions.
A Lesser Evolution was the worst of the worst, the result of barely achieving the minimum requirent: a 30% assimilation rate.
Anything below 30% assimilation was considered a failure and would most likely either kill the awakened outright, cripple them permanently, or, at best, leave them heavily wounded.
Lesser Evolutions granted only a slight physical enhancent and minimal core refinent.
And that was it.
It was bad. Truly.
But it was easy to achieve and accessible to the common populace, with thods to reach this minimum spread far and wide.
At such a low percentage, additional materials were often not required at all.
At 50% assimilation and beyond, awakened entered the domain of Greater Evolutions.
Greater Evolutions granted massive spiritual and physical enhancents, pushing one far beyond the limits of past humanity—and most races, for that matter. The leap was staggering.
More importantly, at 50% and above, awakened received the fad Lineal Spark Talents following their Major Evolution, as well as what were known as Spark Characteristics.
The higher the percentage of assimilation, the more powerful and refined these talents and characteristics beca, and the more perfectly they aligned with the individual.
At 100% assimilation, the most difficult threshold to achieve, one attained a Subli Evolution.
It granted everything the prior evolutions did, but on an entirely different level.
The enhancents were otherworldly, forming a true chasm that none could bridge. The abilities bestowed were unmatched.
Their cores underwent massive expansion and refinent.
So did their minds.
But a Subli Evolution also granted sothing else, a Uniqueness.
The most coveted boon in all of evolution. The holy grail.
Only those deeply familiar with the depths of evolution could truly comprehend the value of such a gift, or the sheer worth of a Subli Evolution as a whole.
Lineal Spark Talents represented the purest, most condensed essence of the assimilation subject, the sum of all its abilities and heritage compressed into a single talent, from which a myriad of impressive abilities could bloom.
For a fire dragon, for example, a 51% Spark Talent might take the form of sothing like Draconic Fla Core, an ability allowing one to wield flas as naturally as a dragon, among countless other wonders.
At 100% assimilation, however, the Spark Talent might beco sothing like Royal Dragon Heart, the condensed might of the fire dragon and its ancestral lineage, encompassing its endless aether pool, its divine flas, and its unmatched flesh.
Percentages mattered. Very much so.
Spark Characteristics, on the other hand, were physical mutations born from the subject’s corporeal and spiritual essence, designed to enhance the talent’s might, ease its use, and further reinforce the body.
Continuing with the fire dragon example, a 51% Characteristic might be called Fla Mantle, while a 100% Characteristic would manifest as Dragonic Scale Fra.
The forr would be a thin film of crystallized fire aether beneath the skin, granting major resistance to flas and functioning similarly to a mage’s engraved runes.
The latter, however, would be a real, tangible layer of scales beneath the skin—burrowing deep, twisting bone and flesh into fla-borne matter, approaching the closest thing to a true elental body.
With such a boon, one would be entirely immune to flas, possess massively enhanced defenses, and might even gain the ability to spiritualize into forms of fire, much like the dire dove.
And that would only be the tip of the iceberg.
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