Chương 55: Loot And Evolution

A flash of light fills my Garden as the treasure chest attempts to spawn near the coffin Aurelion rose from. It fades to reveal… …Nothing. I blink. The light flashes again. Nothing. Again. Still nothing. I tilt my head upward as the light continues to pulse, the System desperately attempting to spawn the treasure chest—much like someone pressing the crosswalk button several extra times for emphasis.

"So… that is my Arcana doing that, right?" Older Sister answers.

"Probably." I nod, very scientifically, of course. So my Garden is capable of locally overriding the System. As it should be. I watch the light flash a few more times, just in case. My tail swishes in amusement. Then my Garden folds back into the tear in reality as if it never existed. The treasure chest finally spawns. Okay. Mental task list time. Step one: open the treasure chest. Step two: disappointment (optional). Step three: evolution. Step four: class advancement. Step five: skill selection.

Step six: inspect all new additions. Then, finally, step seven: continue with my plan of total ecosystem annihilation. Yes. The perfect plan. I approach the treasure chest with the cautious dignity of someone who has been disappointed by loot far too many times to expect much. Surely the treasure chest from the final boss contains something actually useful… right? As I reach it, a vine manifests from my shadow and opens the chest for me.

Because why suffer the minor inconvenience of crouching down slightly when I have the equivalent of four bonus limbs that can do it for me? Speaking of… Three more vines slip from my shadow and begin evacuating the items from the chest onto the ground in front of me. When the last one is pulled free, the chest vanishes into motes of light. Alright. Let's categorize. First up: potions. A lot of potions. Like, at least ten of each type.

I suppose the System assumed that whoever fought the final boss of this poorly balanced Tutorial would actually require healing or resource replenishment afterward. Naturally, I, as the most beautiful genius in the world, both took no damage, and my Starborn regeneration has already recovered my stamina. Such is the fate of someone as incredible as I am. My tail flicks with dignified smugness. An Inspect informs me that they are all Uncommon rarity, restoring the exact same amount of resources as the previous ones.

Tragically, my spatial storage is currently full of far more important things—including roughly nine hundred kilograms of dragon meat—so the potions remain on the floor and are promptly forgotten. Next up: what appears to be a human femur. Judging from past experience, that is definitely the consumable item. I glance back at Aurelion's corpse, confirming that at some point while I wasn't paying attention, his femur disappeared. Incredible.

The System grabbed something I was perfectly capable of looting myself and turned it into one of the chest items. Expected? Yes. Still annoying? Also yes. My ears flatten slightly. Then I Inspect it anyway. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [Lich Femur (Rare)] The preserved femur of a powerful lich. Even in death, the bone remains saturated with dense necromantic and arcane residue. Consume to gain +100 Intelligence and +100 Wisdom. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ I sigh loudly. Alright. Quick review.

One: it wants me to eat the bone of a former human. Which is, ironically, far easier to justify than previous consumable items—like the piece of bark, or the strange lump of nope that I adamantly refused to even identify after the spider dropped it. Two: telling me that a consumable item is saturated with "necromantic residue" is a very effective strategy for making me not want to eat it. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

And three: the stat buffs it grants are stats I don't even possess, courtesy of my Starborn trait deleting all traces of mana from my body. Zero for five on stat-increasing items. My tail flicks in annoyance. Then I remove my stamina potions from my spatial storage to make room and place the bone inside anyway. It's not as offensive as the previous ones, so perhaps I can find a use for it later. Worst comes to worst, I'm sure I can sell it to some mage with an adequately sideways moral code.

Next up: a robe nearly identical to the one currently decorating Aurelion's headless body. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [Lich's Veil Robe] (Epic) A dark robe once worn by a powerful lich. The fabric is threaded with dense runic patterns designed to suppress and dampen surrounding energies. Runic Patterns: Moderate Energy Suppression (20%) Skill: Veil of Obscurity ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [Veil of Obscurity (Epic)] A concealment technique woven into enchanted garments.

(Passive) When the hood of the linked garment is raised, the wearer's face becomes magically obscured. Observers are unable to clearly perceive facial features or identify the wearer through normal vision or basic perception abilities. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ I nod once. Alright. Mixed feelings about this one.

On the one hand, it would be extremely useful if I ever decide to cosplay the mysterious robed figure sitting alone in the back corner of a tavern or adventurer guild—the one who is very clearly plot relevant, has at least fourteen pages of tragic backstory, and absolutely refuses to explain anything until the protagonist completes three unrelated side quests. On the other hand… It has two critical weaknesses. First of all— It's big.

A vine snatches the robe by the hood and lifts it up obligingly while I step next to it for comparison. It stretches a solid six inches above my head. Which is impressive, considering I already come equipped with bonus height in the form of fox ears. If you squint very hard—and perhaps stand far enough away that precise measurements become difficult—it might almost look acceptable. Almost.

Unfortunately, the more realistic outcome is that I would resemble a small child who has decided to dress as an ominous wizard for Halloween and is currently drowning inside their costume. Unfortunate. And then there is the second critical weakness. It covers both my ears and my tail. I narrow my eyes at the robe. There are no convenient slits in the fabric for either, and wearing something that compresses my Foxkin features sounds aggressively uncomfortable. My ears flatten slightly in preemptive disapproval.

Onto the floor it goes. Fortunately, it is fabric, which means it can be folded down to occupy the absolute minimum amount of space. Unfortunately, my storage ring is currently filled to the brim with far more important items. … Such as roughly nine hundred kilograms of dragon meat. Therefore— I will grab it later, after I inevitably clear out some inventory space by removing a portion of the aforementioned dragon. The Tutorial may have removed the biological requirement to eat. However.

True dragon tastes good enough that I fully intend to have at least one more completely unnecessary meal at some point during the next twenty days of monster cleanup. Next up: the last item from the chest. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [Phylact Echo Ring (Epic)] A ring forged from fragments of a shattered phylactery. A faint echo of the Lich's binding magic still lingers within the crystal.

Runic Patterns: Greater Mana Reservoir (25%) Skill: Death Echo ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [Death Echo (Epic)] A fragment of phylactery-binding magic that refuses the final moment of death. (Passive) Upon receiving lethal damage, the user instead remains alive at 1 Health. Requires a completely full Mana reservoir to activate. Upon activation, all Mana is consumed, and the skill enters a lengthy cooldown before it can trigger again. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Right.

More mixed feelings. That skill is objectively busted. Absolutely, completely, no possible way to deny it—this should not be an Epic skill. Cheating death is an insane ability. The kind of ability that screams"plot armor," but in a very official System-approved font. Naturally, I would keep it on my person at all times. … If I could actually charge it. Once again, my lack of mana is causing me problems. For now. I will simply pay someone to charge it for me once I enter Asteria.

Outsourcing immortality seems like a perfectly reasonable long-term strategy. I slip the ring onto my left pointer finger and admire it for a moment. Very ominous. Very magical. Very completely useless until someone with actual mana touches it. Still, the aesthetic is strong. I then politely ignore the fact that the ring description mentions a"phylactery," despite Aurelion very obviously not having one. Which is likely because I gave him approximately zero seconds to set that up.

I take no responsibility whatsoever for my Tutorial clear speed. Alright. Loot complete. Disappointment mercifully skipped this time. Which means it is finally evolution time. I open my status and poke the notification. My consciousness snaps away immediately. Everything goes black. … … I open my eyes in the featureless void once more. I do not think I will ever get used to that transition. Only one figure is floating in front of me this time. Naked again. Because of course she is.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Evolution activated. You have (1) Evolution option. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ My current status as a mildly theoretical concept drifting through what I assume is the interior of my own soul unfortunately prevents my ears or tail from reacting to this deeply irritating situation, so I sigh instead. Then I float closer and poke her cheek. The blue window pops up immediately.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Starborne Foxkin [Tier 2] A further evolution of the singular Starborne Foxkin mutation aligned with celestial essence. At this stage, astral energy integrates more deeply with the body and senses, heightening reaction speed and sharpening awareness of hostile intent. Starborne Foxkin move with supernatural precision, their reflexes guided by subtle disturbances in gravity and starlight that surround them.

Future tiers deepen astral alignment and expand celestial influence over the physical world. Stat Growth per Level: → Vitality +5 → Strength +5 → Dexterity +15 → Perception +15 → Free +15 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Well, at least the choice is obvious. Good thing I decided to handle evolution before class advancement. This is objectively less dramatic. So—quick overview.

Stats are now fifty-five per level instead of thirty, with several new ones being added to the pool, as if whatever cosmic entity monitors stat growth looked at my build, stared at my stat distribution for a long moment, and sighed deeply before deciding intervention was necessary. Understandable, honestly. The future tiers section changed as well. It now says they will"expand celestial influence over the physical world," which is a wonderfully dramatic sentence that explains absolutely nothing. Very informative.

And finally, the wording makes it fairly obvious that my next racial skill will be reflex-based. Helpful. Nine out of ten. One point deducted for unnecessary nudity. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Evolution confirmed. Starborne Foxkin [Tier 1] has evolved into Starborne Foxkin [Tier 2]. You have gained the Racial Skill [Astral Reflex]. You have gained +40 Free Points.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ I regain consciousness sprawled on the marble floor of the palace, the back of my head politely informing me that colliding with polished stone is, in fact, not an optimal evolutionary posture. A dull ache pulses behind my skull. Right. I should probably lie down properly next time before evolving. I sigh. Again. Then I brace myself for the intense pain that inevitably follows these sorts of things. I wait. And wait a little longer. Still nothing. I blink. Ah.

So that particular experience was apparently a Mutation Exclusive Experience™. Good to know. Thank the stars. I got half-charcoaled by dragon breath, yet my last evolution was somehow worse. Frankly, that feels like poor design. I pause. There's… an itchiness in my eyes. That's the only way I can really describe the sensation. Not painful. Not disruptive. Just a strange feeling behind them, as if something that has existed quietly my entire life is suddenly being removed. The sensation lingers for a few seconds.

Then it stops. Whatever was there is now gone. Pressure releases. I tilt my head slightly. Strange. It's like my eyes suddenly refocused, despite never realizing they had been unfocused to begin with. Very suspicious. Naturally, I do the only reasonable thing. I shrug. It doesn't appear harmful in the slightest. Therefore— Moving on. Specifically, moving on to my Class Advancement. My tail swishes in excitement.