Evolution Of Gifts?

Lucius was lying on the bed for the first time comfortably. Before he had been paralyzed and thus just bore with it, but now that he was healed and could move, he realized how uncomfortable he was sleeping like that before.

The bed had been adjusted according to his requirements, and the proper pillows had been acquired for him as well. In addition to that, an extra table had been added to his room. This was a study table that he had asked for.

There was a study table in the room before too, but it was much smaller than this one. He wanted a bigger one so that it could accommodate more books and notes at once. He was used to a large workspace due to researching in the past and having a small one was a problem.

Another thing was the lack of technology that bothered him. It was gonna make his research slower than before and storing data would also be much more difficult if it was going to be in the form of a solid book.

Lucius knew that creating a computer may or may not be possible for now, but he made that as one of his goals for here. During the time he spent traveling across the dimensions, he had seen some worlds that were more than a hundred times more advanced than his.

He had learned a few things from there and was looking forward to applying them in this world too. He knew that there were two paths to power in most worlds that he had been to.

One was the physical strengths such as fighting skills, magic, and a strong body; while the second was the intelligence. If one took the route of intelligence, the surest way to get great power was nothing but technology.

But this required a great base and needed many people to achieve. Lucius was looking to implement this too, but in a different way. He was gonna follow the path his previous world took, which was the hybrid one.

They combined the magic with technology that allowed them to overcome a lot of hurdles. In fact, that was the reason why they were able to do long distance space travel to distant galaxies despite lacking enough fuel to do the same.

They had greatly developed portal technology that was powered by magic which would be used by anyone, regardless of if one knew magic or not.

For this world, Lucius was betting on the Artifact's. They seemed to be an application of the gifts, but he didn't know how they came to be. For that reason, he had asked Kiana about books related to artifacts and gifts.

They were going to be delivered to him by tomorrow, but he didn't want to wait at that time, as he felt impatient. But Lita and Kiana said that he had just recovered and needed to rest more.

Even the two priests were of the same opinion. They had talked with him for a couple of hours after they had finished up eating but were disappointed as Lucius could barely answer their questions.

But this was still beneficial to Lucius, as he was able to get some of his doubts cleared by the priests.

One of the doubts was the existence of 'divine gifts'. He had understood that the goddess Alana bestowed them upon the people but how did it exactly work. Lucius found out that in order to receive a divine gift, one had to give up on the gift that they already had.

Also depending on the rank of gift that they originally had, they would receive the stronger version of the divine gift.

But along with this Lucius also got a hint of the evolution of Gifts. He learned that priests who were pious and did their duties well would gain an increase in their gift. Thus increasing their powers.

This verified Lucius' original hypothesis that gifts could indeed be evolved and this fact was not hidden. Rather, people were simply ignorant about it. They thought that getting proficient with their gift and it evolving was the same but it was not.

Lucius also reckoned that it was actually quite difficult to evolve a gift and the requirement must also be unique, otherwise many people would have done the same a long time ago.

After Lucius had checked his own gift's details with Nexus, he tried to check the details of Kiana since he already knew the name of the gift. But this turned out to be rather disappointing as he suddenly felt drained of energy and the words that were once there disappeared directly.

Lucius had checked the condition of the Aether in his body and figured out that it was all consumed.

"I will need to increase my aether capacity. Hmm… thankfully all that's needed to do that is practice. That is the reason why the guards have duels every day, so that they can increase their Aether capacity and better use their gifts." Lucius muttered to himself.

While thinking of this, Lucius was staring out of the window at the moon. It was at this time that he suddenly saw a large bird going across the visage of the moon.

The appearance of this bird made Lucius stand up, and he leaned against the window to take a closer look. The bird was unusual to say the least, as it had two pairs of wings and was quite large.

It was almost the size of a bull and flew around in the sky in circles. Lucius didn't know what it was exactly doing but when he looked at the place below where it was flying, he saw a few people there.

These people were rather small and Lucius had a hard time seeing them, but from the glints of light that reflected from their bodies, he assumed that they were soldiers or at the very least, mercenaries.

"Are they looking for that bird?" Lucius wondered as he saw them looking up at the large bird.

Then, a couple of seconds later, one of the men pulled out a long sword and slashed at the sky. The sword let out a strong aura and made the winds streak across the skies.

"What the!…"