The Ultimate Evolution

The short man stood forward and said flatly, “The Fool’s fighting style is special, so he does not wish to be seen. If he doesn’t come back in five minutes, we’ll treat it as our loss. I know that you people can communicate through a mental connection. If your companion feels like the duel is unfair, he’ll surely inform you, right?”

Next, a blazing inferno rose in the distant battlefield, giving all the contestants a feeling of chaos and distortion, as if the laws of time and space were invalidated in that instant. In that place, the density of air felt greater than the density of steel, the soil flowed like water, the time accelerated forward for an hour and then rewinded back by fifty-nine minutes, and spit flew back into the mouth….

Sheyan was struggling in such distortion and chaos. He was like a candle in the wind which could be extinguished at any moment. However, the tiny ember kept persisting and refused to go out!

Suddenly, something seemed to erupt, and a huge invisible force pushed everyone back by a few steps. But the flame was still burning strongly like before! All they could see was a crazy and brutal fire which felt like it would sweep through the whole world!

With the passing of time, the confident expressions on the faces of their two native opponents started fading. Their frowns became deeper and deeper. When three minutes had passed, the expressions of the two became really ugly. Sure enough, before long, a person slowly stepped out of the battlefield in the distance.

The man cut a pathetic figure, with black and red burns all over his body, and only ashes were left of his hair and eyebrows. The contour of his impressive muscles were in full display. He walked on flat ground, but each step he took required considerable effort, as if he was climbing a mountain. However, his steps also felt exceptionally stable, as if every time his foot landed on the ground, it would leave behind a deep footprint!

When the person finally reached the camp, the others saw that his face was covered with black soot. Patches of black and red were all over his body. However, his eyes were shining with unswerving determination. Who else could it be but Sheyan?

His left hand was dragging a person like he was dragging a bag of garbage. That person was the middle-aged man who fought with him.

The middle-aged man had turned back into his former appearance. There was a defeated look on his face, and he seemed to have grown older by twenty years. He was being dragged along like a sack because all his bones seemed to be broken. He also appeared to be in a deep coma.

Sheyan ignored the native humans and walked straight to the contestants, then showed them a part of his attributes with a solemn face. After the contestants saw the “Defence” attribute displayed by Sheyan, they could not help but draw a cold breath!

Sheyan’s Defence was glowing dark red akin to the colour of blood, and the number being displayed was 10!!

All the contestants here knew that Sheyan was an insane MT. An MT with a Defence value of 10 was absolutely inconceivable. Only contestants who had just entered a Nightmare Realm or lunatics who went down extreme paths would have a Defence of 10. Something must had happened!

“This guy who called himself The Fool actually has the ability to secretly reduce my Defence to zero! And this ability has a very high precedence too! My Defence has only just started to slowly recover,” Sheyan looked at the team and told them with a firm voice.

“If it weren’t because my HP and life-saving measures were beyond his expectation, I would’ve died in his hands! I was lucky that his biggest weakness is his stamina, so he can’t maintain that high-intensity transformation for very long. Keep underestimating the enemies if you wish to die!”

Sheyan’s words immediately caused a great disturbance among the contestants. Many people were starting to have a serious look on their faces, like they were about to face a formidable enemy.

Only Aldaris kept observing Sheyan with a deep frown. He had always regarded Sheyan as a rival, so he had always paid him a lot of attention. The Sheyan in front of them now gave him a very different feeling from the Sheyan before, but he could not pinpoint exactly what the difference was.

Meanwhile, Paul found that although Sheyan cut a sorry figure right now with burn marks all over his body and his clothes in tatters, his temperament had completely changed. He was like a dormant volcano that had finally broken through its shackles and was about to erupt with fiery magma and hot sulfuric flames!

Sheyan had actually hidden a lot of things from his teammates.

The Fool’s ability did not reduce his Defence to 0….it was much more terrible than that!

The moment Sheyan felt that something was wrong, he had checked his attributes and found that his Defence had been reduced to the absurd figure of -15! That was why those three spikes could do such shocking damage.

His Defence would slowly recover every two seconds by an increment of 5, so it went from -15 to -10 to -5. After reaching 0, it would increase by 1 every 3 seconds until it returned back to normal.

More crucially, Sheyan actually found himself to be in a daze for a split second the moment he was hit. In that short moment, he felt as if something deep within his soul had leaped out and crashed through his body while roaring furiously. He could also vaguely see the opening of a vertical eye that was so huge that it seemed to occupy the whole world!

But the memory was extremely faint. Although the event had just taken place, it had become as unclear as something that happened thousands of years ago. If it wasn’t because there was a clear sign in Sheyan’s own body constantly reminding him of the occurrence, he might really have just brushed it off as an illusion.

The clear sign was the description of Sheyan’s innate ability, ‘Stronghold’, which was currently glowing with a dazzling red light!

And Sheyan also had a burning feeling of fullness and bloatedness, a feeling which was not unfamiliar to him. It was a sign that his innate ability, ‘Stronghold’ had reached a critical point and would soon undergo an upgrade!

***

Sheyan had clearly warned the team that the humans they would be facing were definitely not just lambs waiting to be slaughtered, but the people who could make this team were no ordinary people either. How could they be scared off from just that? Aldaris did not hesitate at all to volunteer himself for the next fight.

This guy was a fighting maniac to begin with, and right now, he was raring to prove that he was better than Sheyan. Since Sheyan won a bitter victory, he would achieve an overwhelming victory! It might not really mean anything, but it could give Sheyan a slap in the face!

Ronnie also stepped out with a fierce look while licking his dagger. He had had a hard time on this planet – everything seemed to have gone wrong for him – so he had a lot of frustration to vent. He had already gave up the thought of getting back at the main culprit who caused him so much suffering (Sheyan), but venting his anger on a native human would be a good choice too.

Besides those two, Pokan, who had just had a boost in power, was also eager to give it a try. The only one who did not show such a strong desire to fight was Dardanian.

Ronnie and Aldaris argued for a while, and eventually decided to roll a dice to determine the winner. In the end, Ronnie won out.

He walked onto the empty ground in the middle. The short man first exchanged glances with a woman in camouflage attire, then consulted with the people around him, apparently to gather info on Ronnie. Finally, the short man stepped forward.

“I’ll be your opponent.”

Ronnie licked the sharp edge of his dagger, causing a small cut on his bright crimson tongue. The blood dripped down his throat. Ronnie flashed a mysterious grin before he rushed into the jungle and seemed to vanish into thin air in an instant. This was his camouflage ability akin to a chameleon’s, which enabled him to perfectly blend into the environment.

The short man suddenly screamed as his clothes split open. His frame and his muscles expanded rapidly, and from within his body came angry howls which sounded like they were made by majestic ancient beasts!

Many of his blood vessels bulged out of the surface of his body, and five oval crystals grew out of his body in places which corresponded to the heart, liver, spleen, lung and kidney.

The light from the crystals interlaced like a magic array. The man gave off an inexhaustible repulsive force. The closer one got to him, the greater the repulsive force became. Even the light that was shining on him was slightly refracted, so that the ground beneath his feet had become a little blurry as if it was being viewed through hazy frosted glass.

The guy’s arms had bizarrely deformed into a pair of huge bone axes. His two red eyes protruded at least two centimeters outwards, like they would burst any second.

While the man was still in the process of transforming, Ronnie suddenly appeared behind him like a ghost.

He held in his hand a simple and bleak scarlet dagger, but there were inscriptions like oracle bone letters on the dagger’s handle. It was actually one of those rare Blood Weapons!

(TL reminder: “A Blood Weapon is a weapon that can only be exchanged for when a contestant reaches a certain military rank. It requires spending a massive load of utility points, potential points and of course, achievement points. When dealing with storyline characters, a Blood Weapon can only count as a silver storyline weapon, but when dealing with contestants, it’s as good as a dark-gold weapon! That’s because many of the properties imbued in a Blood Weapon are targeted towards contestants; being only effective in a PVP scenario.”)

(TL note: I guess Blood Weapons are effective on the people in the real world too.)

No one knew how it happened, but Ronnie’s dagger was already on the short man’s throat. Then, Ronnie toppled over. It seemed that the dagger had to be dragged across the enemy’s neck with the force of a man falling down rather than just with the swing of an arm.