The five paths appeared.
[ INFINITE EVOLUTION SYSTEM — ONLINE ]
[ PATH I ] — DEMON MINOR (F)
Evolution stats per level : MAG +2 / VIT +2 / MANA +1 — Free : +2
[ COMPETENCES ]
[ Demonic Aura (lvl1) ] Passive — Weaker creatures in a 10m radius hesitate before engaging
[ Drain (lvl1) ] Active — On hit, siphons mana from target and converts it to HP — scales with MAG / MANA
[ WEAKNESS ]
[ Holy Burn ] Holy magic bypasses all resistances and deals double damage
[ PATH II ] — DEMONIC SLIME (F)
Evolution stats per level : VIT +2 / ABS +3 — Free : +2
[ COMPETENCES ]
[ Adaptive Membrane (lvl1) ] Passive — Each absorbed creature permanently grants +1 VIT against its damage type
[ Engulf (lvl1) ] Active — Wraps around target and forces absorption contact — deals continuous damage — scales with ABS
[ WEAKNESS ]
[ Deep Water ] Mass disperses uncontrollably when submerged — absorption fails entirely
[ PATH III ] — CHIROPTERA (F)
Evolution stats per level : AGI +3 / FUR +2 — Free : +2
[ COMPETENCES ]
[ Sonar (lvl1) ] Passive — Maps all living beings within 50m through walls and terrain — cannot be surprised or ambushed
[ Death Dive (lvl1) ] Active — Drops at maximum speed onto a single target — damage x3 if target is unaware — scales with AGI
[ WEAKNESS ]
[ Solar Exposure ] Daylight or magical light removes Night Veil and reduces all stats by 15%
[ PATH IV ] — STILLBORN (F)
Evolution stats per level : VIT +3 / STR +2 — Free : +2
[ COMPETENCES ]
[ Undying Body (lvl1) ] Passive — Severed limbs remain functional and can be reattached mid-combat — pain signals fully suppressed
[ Necrotic Strike (lvl1) ] Active — Infects wound on hit — target cannot naturally regenerate HP, flesh visibly rots — scales with STR
[ WEAKNESS ]
[ Healing Magic ] Restoration spells work in reverse — healing magic deals direct damage instead
[ PATH V ] — FLESH DEMON (E)
Evolution stats per level : STR +3 / VIT +2 — Free : +2
[ COMPETENCES ]
[ Scar Adaptation (lvl1) ] Passive — Each damage type received builds permanent resistance to that type — the more punishment taken, the harder to kill
[ Primal Rage (lvl1) ] Active — Triggered below 20% HP — STR and AGI instantly double — human consciousness must hold or control is lost — scales with STR / AGI
[ WEAKNESS ]
[ Magic Exposure ] Zero innate magic resistance — spells deal full unmitigated damage regardless of rank gap
I went through them once quickly. Then a second time, slower.
The first thing that came to mind wasn't the stats. Not the skills. Not the weaknesses.
It was this body.
Seven days in that room without hands, without a face, without any recognizable shape. Seven days crawling, absorbing, existing as a formless thing in the dark. And now, in front of me, five paths — five different answers to the question of what I was going to become for the rest of this new life.
What I wanted, at the end of it, was simple. A body. A real one. Humanoid, with hands, eyes, sensations. Not out of nostalgia — I had dealt with that. But because I intended to live this life fully, whatever it turned out to be. In lust or elsewhere. And for that, I needed a form.
So I eliminated.
Flesh Demon went first. Rank E — already an anomaly among the five, stronger on paper, rawer. But zero magic resistance and above all no guarantee of a functional body in the sense I meant. A mass of muscle and rage. No.
Demonic Slime next. I paused on that one, because I knew exactly what it was. In every light novel I had ever read, the slime was always the path of the overpowered guy who absorbs everything and ends up ruling the world. The temptation was real. But I thought about the last seven days — that formless body, that absence of sensation, that way of existing without really inhabiting anything — and I told myself no. Not a chance I was trading one formless existence for another, however broken it might be.
Three left.
Chiroptera pulled at me — obviously. Every fantasy fan has their vampire fantasy, and the path was right there, readable between the lines. Abyss Chiroptera. Vampire. But the solar weakness killed it instantly. Feeling diminished in daylight, losing fifteen percent of all stats the moment a light source appeared — in a world I didn't know yet, imposing that constraint from the very start was pure stupidity.
Stillborn. I stayed on that one longer because the resistance was tempting and the concept had something elegant about it — a body that refuses to die, that reattaches, that doesn't feel pain. But not eating. Not feeling. A walking corpse. That was worse than what I already was. I hadn't survived seven days as a larva to end up undead.
Only one choice left.
Demon Minor.
I didn't look at the stats a second time. I didn't care. What mattered was what this path implicitly promised — a humanoid body, sensations, a form capable of interacting with the world. The rest would come. The system was infinite. Stats could be built. But a body — that I wanted now.
Demon Minor, I thought.
That's my choice.
My eyes closed.
I woke up different.
All at once, like a switch. The first thing I perceived was light — not real light, but a thermal and magical perception of the room that was suddenly infinitely more precise, richer. I could see in the dark with a clarity I hadn't known yet.
The second thing was my hands.
I stared at them for a long time without moving. Small, pale, with fine claws at the tips — four fingers and a thumb, clean, functional, real. I closed them slowly. Opened them again. The sound of claws against my palms was the most satisfying sound I had heard since my death.
I stood up.
Upright. On two legs. I had to be around eighty centimeters tall — small, compact, humanoid. I ran a hand over my face. Fine jaw. Sharp teeth. Black hair falling across my forehead. I moved to the north wall seep and looked at the reflection the water made against the wet rock.
A small demon with black eyes, white skin, claws and pointed teeth. A low-rank imp straight out of a bargain bin bestiary.
Fine, I thought. We work with this.
I made a full circuit of the room for the first time actually being in it.
My feet touched the floor with every step — a mundane sensation, an extraordinary one. I drank in long gulps, with a throat, with a mouth, with the cold of the water going down somewhere inside me in a way that was perfectly recognizable. I ate the remaining plants and for the first time they had a taste — bland, earthy, but a taste. I hunted two insects and crunched them between my teeth with a satisfaction I wasn't going to analyze further.
It was while grabbing a stem from a crack in the east wall that I saw it.
An opening. Narrow, barely visible. I touched it with the tips of my claws — the surrounding stone was crumbly, damp, weakened. I pushed gently.
A block fell.
Then another.
A current of air arrived — cool, different, carrying new information. Depth. Space. Something alive in the distance.
A passage.
I stood in front of it without moving for a long moment.
Free.
But I didn't rush.
Two things to settle before leaving.
The first had been sitting in the back of my head since the beginning. This room. These insects, just harmless enough that I could hunt them without dying. These plants. This water. This system appearing at exactly the moment I had reached the required threshold.
Had all of this been designed for me ?
I thought about the message. Larva of Rank F-, destined to die within the first hours of its existence. If a normal larva died within hours — and the system seemed to confirm that — then something had set all of this up so that I, a rank F- nothing with no apparent value, could reach that threshold. Could get this system.
Why.
I sat with that for a few minutes, turned it over from every angle, reached no useful conclusion. No proof. No additional leads. I would keep it in a corner of my mind and move forward. That was all I could do.
The second thing was my system.
I opened it.
[ INFINITE EVOLUTION SYSTEM ]
Nom de l'hôte : —
Espèce : Demon Minor
Rang : F
Niveau : 0
Classe : —
Titres : —
ED accumulés : 847
[ STATS ]
Force : 5
Agilité : 5
Magie : 7
Vitality : 7
Mana : 7
Perception : 6
Intelligence : 22
Chance : 3
Volonté : 9
Points libres : 0
[ COMPETENCES ]
[ Demonic Aura (lvl1) ] Passive — Weaker creatures in a 10m radius hesitate before engaging
[ Drain (lvl1) ] Active — On hit, siphons mana from target and converts it to HP — scales with MAG / MANA
I closed the system.
Rank F. Level zero. Intelligence at twenty-two in a rank F- body — if anyone had been able to read my stats at that moment, I would probably have looked like an anomaly. Which I was, in a way.
I thought about the skills.
Demonic Aura — the problem wasn't that it was useless. The problem was that it was going to actively make my life harder at the start. Instinctively driving away everything weaker than me in a ten-meter radius — in theory reassuring, in practice a disaster for leveling. Every insect, every small creature, everything I could have hunted easily to stack ED was going to scatter before I got close. A skill built for higher ranks, useless and even handicapping as long as I stayed at the bottom.
Drain, on the other hand.
I sat with that one for a moment. Drain mana from a target and convert it into health — in an attrition fight, that was an outright jackpot. No potions needed, no extended rest. As long as the target had mana, I had health. And in a world where magic seemed omnipresent, finding a target with no mana was probably going to be the exception rather than the rule.
Not bad, I thought. Really not bad.
That was enough to start with.
I drank one last time. Ate what remained. Just in case.
Then I approached the hole in the wall, slipped through it, and came out the other side.
The cave opened in front of me in its full scale — vast, dark, alive, threaded with the sound of water and the vibrations of dozens of creatures I couldn't see yet but sensed perfectly.
Somewhere in the dark, something very large moved.
And it was getting closer.