Evolution (1) (Revised) - A New World Arc (3)

We must do everything we can. This world is strange. We are just city kids who aren't used to a life like this. It's only been 3 days since we came here. The beds we sleep in are so different from the ones in our world. Our initial attitude had proven to be more of a farce, a brave face to put on. But we have no choice but to get used to this. I may have found a way for us to make our survival easier, or at least Hana's. I never cared about living but I do care about Hana, she seems so hellbent on living despite everything bad that has happened. Well, the king had to kick us out. Goddess Ifrit is on the point of resurrection and we can't hang out there. But I am content with what the king did, I expected him to be more of an asshole from how he behaved at first. This world is strange for sure. I still have questions about Goddess Ifrit and why she hates monsters but I think our questions will be answered in due time. Today is a whole new day, we have to fight to evolve, I want to do it today so that me and Hana reach levels 20 and 15 specifically so that we can finally grow. It's very hard to find monsters around this house so we decided to go to another area that will facilitate us leveling up. But before we do all of that we need a plan, we need a good cover story. We must not target high-level monsters even if we can do that, people will be suspicious of us. I don't know if there are any guilds here but with how the world is here I bet there are guilds, but only in the city

"So, what are we going to do today Hikaru?"- Hana, looked up at the sky, while thinking about all of this we decided to go a little bit into the clearing and sit down looking at the clouds

"Well, we will need to fight monsters, maybe we will evolve, maybe not. We don't know how exp works all that well in this world and if there are any conditions for evolution. Plus if we kill monsters it will be a waste to let the items they drop go to waste, I bet the town of Welcia that the King mentioned is nearby our cabin if I remember correctly, but we need a way to disguise ourselves. I don't think people will appreciate us as monsters being there."- My gaze dashed between the clouds thinking about ways to disguise our skin color and horn. My skin remained white but you could see a small layer or something black and at the same time transparent over it, and my horns weren't hidden, Hana can hide them in her hair, she tried it and it worked, they weren't visible but made her hair look weird, almost like she was concealing something.

!Exp is gained based on the level of the monster you defeat and also its rarity. There are special monster variants grant more exp upon killing them. Some races of sentient monster may gain exp faster or slower. At your current level I recommend that you only kill low-level monsters, other types of monsters might be more dangerous. If you are faced with a monster like that you should try fighting it together!- After a few seconds Sia spoke in her monotone tone of voice.

"Well, thanks for the explanation, but for the disguise?"- I currently have 1 skill that I don't know what it does: King of Deceit and Lies Lucifer, I am clueless to its effects.

!Lords of Deceit and Lies Lucifer is a skill that allows you to fully change your appearance, however, it has some limits. You can't hide the amount of magic you emanate, but I will try to restrict it as much as possible. To clarify magic emanation is the phenomenon in which magic sips from the bodies of monsters when they try to disguise themselves as humans, this goes for both sentient and non-sentient monsters.!

"Well, Hana, I think I have the disguise part solved, remember that skill that I didn't know its effects? Well, Sia told me we can use it to disguise ourselves with it. It's better than nothing. It's not like we have that many skills anyway"- I rose from the ground and looked around the forest, I wanted to see if we were being watched.

"That will come in handy. Let's try it!"- I helped Hana get up from the ground.

*Use skill: Lord of Deceit and Lies Lucifer*- The 2 of us were enveloped in a bright blue light for a few seconds.

After the blue light subsided we looked at each other, we had a completely different form, our bodies were way different and looked nothing like us. No one, not even our colleagues could recognize us looking like this.

"Sia, what should be our next move"- I think it's wiser to question Sia during the first few months while we are in this world, I see this as the only choice for Hana to survive in this world longer.

!Go to Welcia and register with the Guild. It's a few km walk away from here. You 2 should be ok like this. I will try to suppress your magic as much as possible.!

"Got it"- Hana looked and waved her hand in front of my face. I was talking to Sia and I forgot that I was staring at her

"Sorry, I was talking to Sia. We should go to Welcia city and register with the guild there first. We can obtain information on where monsters are located this way.

"Sure. Let's go"

Hana and I started walking to Welcia city, the road there was not that good, at least for our first time, even with Sia's guidance we got lost a few times and didn't know the way back on the main road, we were mostly scared of wild monsters that there were stronger than us, I think monsters here are over level 20, we are barely level 20.

After 3 hours of struggling to understand Sia's directions, we arrived in Welcia city. The city was looking good, with a few houses here and there at the entrance but nothing special. The guild is close to the entrance so we entered there. We didn't care much about the other houses or shops that were there.

We opened the doors to the guild and there were a few people there but no one paid attention to us

"Those 2, the magic emanating from them is so weak"- I can hear someone whisper, I don't care.

!I masked your magic, you appear at a lower level than you are!- Check out

"How are you 2? Have you come to register with the guild here in Welcia City?"- The receptionist looked at us strangely, he was a middle-aged man who looked battle-hardened. In most skis I have seen most receptionists are female instead of male, but I guess this isn't an ordinary isekai.

"Yes, we want to register with the guild. We want to take some requests to hunt monsters, I am level 19 and she is level 14."- I whispered to him. I don't want the other people to hear what we are saying. The man looked at us again, but this time his gaze was a little more relaxed.

"Well, you can take G and F rank quests then only. Only after 30 quests you will be promoted. All the quests need to be of your rank or 1 rank higher, those 1 rank higher count as 2 quests of the lower rank."- He guided us to a room and told us to put our hands on a crystal globe, we both listened and put our hands there.

My skill is enough to deceive even this crystal ball, our race is human on both cards, I don't know if demons or other sentient monsters are allowed to join this guild but we both are ready to take on some quests.

"Well, here are some quests, you will both receive exp points from completing the quests and from defeating the monsters or gathering the plants"- He gave us 5 quests that are of F rank, mostly, 1 of them is for gathering medicinal herbs, should be easy to do with Sia, and the others are for fighting monsters like wolves and giant sheep and fruit monsters? I didn't know such monsters existed in a fantasy world.

!Those are low-tier monsters, even if they are high level they won't compare to other monsters that you can encounter out here. It's recommended that you kill a lot of high-level monsters that are of lower tier!

"Got it"

"We will take all 5."- Hana reached her hand and grabbed all of the papers that had quest instructions on them

"Well, glad to see that you kids are up to earning some money. Not many young people like yourselves want to become adventurers these days"- Well, true, while we need some money, we still have good gear and don't need to buy more gear. We might buy things for our house but nothing more or less. Maybe we will visit the shop or people that can teach me new skills that I don't know, if we want to defend ourselves out here we should be able to use more skills than the ones we already have.

"Well, we will be back once we finish off the monsters, or likely when we finish all the requests."- We left the guild and decided to go and fight the monsters in the nearby forest, well, we didn't find them right away, so we are now doing the medicinal herb request.

We walked until we arrived in a part of a forest with dense vegetation, the deeper you go the more bushes and plants you find. We were pretty deep into the forest. There were a lot of plants, some of them we used as a seasoning, some were poisonous for humans but tasted good and some were straight-up toxic to both monsters and humans

"Sia, What do these herbs look like? I only see something that looks like poison Ivy"

!Despite the look that is a medicinal plant in this world. Poison Ivy is a monstrous plant that looks similar to this one, only difference is that the plant is alive and will try to kill you!

"Good to know"

"Hana, we should gather as many of the plants that look like poison Ivy as possible"- We started to pick most of the medicinal herbs there, there were many more herbs than just the 1 Sia mentioned, so we gathered those as well. Even when we are monsters our backs still hurt from bending over and gathering all of those plants.

!Being low-level makes this happen, also if you don't have the appropriate skills you are bound to have back pain from this. A regeneration skill can come in handy!

"Ok, we have more than enough!'- Hana slowly reached her hand to my bag. I didn't mention but before leaving the guild gave us a bag to put the plants in. I should have mentioned this.

"Well, the only thing remaining is to kill those monsters from the requests. Maybe we will reach our next evolutionary stage this way"- I got the list of monster exterminating requests from my pocket, I looked over them again and they looked easy enough.

! Reaching your evolution level is harder than you think, you bottleneck on this level and need exponentially more exp to get to the next level that will grant you the evolution!

"We should go and fight these monsters together. I am pretty confident we will make good evolution progress if we complete these requests as soon as we can"- Hana nodded.

"Well, Hikaru, we should be careful. We are still low level and we might be easy to target or injure, I am not talking about monsters, I am talking about human threats like bandits.

"Let's hope that we don't meet them, at least for now. It will be a disaster if we do."

We began to wander around the forest, well not aimlessly, but it was looking like it. We were searching in the area where the monsters were spotted, the area is pretty big and all 5 of our quests are in this area. On the paper, they say that all of the monsters are gathered up. They say that some sort of intelligent monster or entity is controlling them. But how will this be possible?

!The most plausible case is that there is a leader monster among that bunch of monsters. Monsters have leaders that are ordered in this way, which is more common, Beta which is less common but can still be found, and Gamma which is the rarest variation a leader monster can take, Alpha is usually of a lower level than Beta and Gamma leaders are from level 150 and up. At your current level, even an Alpha leader is dangerous. The recommended course of action will be avoidance!

"Hana, there may be leader monsters. Leader monsters are more intelligent and can control other monsters, even if they are different species. We must be careful when we find the monsters"- Hana nodded and crouched down.

"Hikaru, I feel something nearby"- I crouched down and looked to my right, but there was nothing, to my left, there was nothing. I peered through the bushes, and to my surprise, there was a clearing where there were around 60 monsters, a lot in number but along with them 3 leader monsters.

!Suggestion retreat or prepare a sneak attack. Hikaru, you can extend your shadow tendrils to the Leader monsters and I will make sure they are in a position where they will hit all vital parts of the monsters. They will be very injured and you can take them down easily. The number of monsters in the clearing can be overwhelming, I suggest taking the weaker monsters with ranged attacks first!

"I will do something about the leader monsters, you try to use ranged attacks with your fire magic to keep them at bay. Aim for the weaker monsters first and take them out when they come for us. 60 Monsters are a lot to deal with but most of them are weak"- Hana nodded. The air is getting chilly, I didn't notice it but looks like night or rain is coming soon.

Getting used to controlling my shadow tendrils turns out to be harder than I thought. Moving them seems weird, they slither along the ground like snakes, they don't make a sound but still look a little creepy.

"Whenever you are ready Hikaru"- I moved my head back and forth to see if there were any more monsters, the clearing was quite big and there could be a few monsters that were still hidden.

I nodded my head toward Hana and started the attack. The Shadow Tendrils went through the bodies of the leader monsters, 1 wolf, 1 fruit monster, and 1 golem.

The fruit monster immediately died, exploding the moment my shadow tendrils pierced its body. The golem was in a similar spot, my shadow tendrils pierced a stone that it had in its chest, and that stone exploded shortly after. The wolf was another story, while I managed to injure it, it began charging at us. Hana was already moving her arms up and down throwing fireballs at the incoming monsters

"Here they come!"- A few of the monsters got in front of the wolf defending him. I got my shadow tendril to move toward them, in a mere second my shadow tendrils moved toward the monsters attacking their weak points.

*Use skill: Shadow Hand*- More monsters got in front of the wolf, I summoned the shadow hand and began punching at the monster with all my strength. The shadow hand works differently, it's an extension in the form of a hand that can go further than my actual hand

The monsters were still coming out my way, I was doing all I could to hold them off with my shadow hand, but for some reason, most of the monsters were flocking toward Hana, I didn't want to use my shadow tendrils or I might injure Hana if I don't use them properly

"Well, 20 of these monsters are now dead 40 more to go"- Hana took a step back and stumbled. I need to do something before the monsters overwhelm her.

*Use skill: Shadow Tendril*- I used my shadow tendrils to kill some of the monsters that were attacking Hana, this gave her enough time to grab her katana. I forgot to mention but she brought her katana with her, it's only common sense to do so.

"Thanks for the support"- She began to slash at the monsters, her blade going back and forth in a precise rhythm that was almost perfect, her eyes followed every move of the monsters that were in front of her, her body movements flawless. Unlike me, Hana did practice Kendo in our old world for 4, almost 5 years. She was on top of her team.

I was only focusing on the small monsters, but I forgot about the leader monster. A sharp pain coursed through my body as sharp teeth dug into my flesh, the leader wolf was biting into my right arm, well, joke on him, I am left-handed. I dug my shadow tendrils into its body again, the wolf whimpered in pain, and I proceeded to punch the wolf with my shadow hand. I can think Hana could hold her own, she is more skilled than me when it comes to fighting, I don't have that experience.

The monsters on Hana's side are taken care of. I was trying to hold back the leader monster away, but I couldn't do much damage, Hana slashed at the wolf and finished it off.

"Thank you Hana"- We looked at each other, both of us were exhausted from this, our breaths heavy. My body can still move, I am in pain, but I need to keep pushing on.

I extended my shadow tendrils all over the bodies of the monsters. The guild wanted proof, I managed to cut off some parts from the monsters, like ears, a foot of whatever was left. Hana began to gather a few parts herself.

"Well, we have enough proof for the guild. We should return soon"- I looked around the forest to see if any monsters were remaining, but from what I could see none were remaining. Something that I did discover just now is that we have an inventory system, a big screen suddenly opened, and looked like a standard grid inventory system from a game I played. Looking at the values, there is no weight limit to how much I can carry, only the grid is the limit.

Most things that we have here were 1x1 grid size, some of the materials were bigger, like 2x2 or even 4x4. Our inventories are big, Hana's is bigger than mine for some reason, but we had a place to store our monster loot

I feel dizzy and lightheaded.

"Hana, let's move out as far as we can"

We got moving out of that area, we couldn't stay there for long, Hana was feeling dizzy and light-headed too. Our movements were getting slower and slower, our run turned into a walk. Our steps started to become slower and slower. We managed to get into an area of the forest that is safe, most humans use it. By that point we sat down under a tree, we couldn't keep walking, our bodies didn't allow us to go anymore.

!Evolution commencing!- Wait, this voice. Sia? Is it finally happening?

!Yes!- This is the last thing I could hear from Sia before everything went black

We woke up in the middle of the night hours after. I tried standing up first, my legs were hurting like hell, almost like I had a bad case of muscle fatigue from an intensive workout, my hands were sore and every time I bent a finger it hurt.

Hana was in the same spot as I was. I helped her to get up, the pain in our bodies was evident.

!Your bodies are adapting to your new evolution, the more you evolve the less this will happen.!

"I get it. Sia, I want to see our stats"

!Showing status now!

*Status: Reincarnated

Race: Orc

Evolution: Greater Orc

Next Evolution: Arch-Orc

Evolution Line(Can be viewed due to having the skill Lord of Wisdom Sia): Greater Orc(15)-Arch Orc(30)-Orc Lord(45)-Ogre(90)-Greater Ogre(120)-Arch Ogre(160)-Ogre Lord(200)-Kijin(220)-Greater Kijin(240)-Oni(300)-Greater Oni(340)-Oni Lord(380)- Divine Oni/Cursed Oni/Yin-Yang Oni(Demon Lord Evolution via the Demon Lord Seed while reaching the last evolution step. Divine or cursed Oni evolution depends on which skill they obtain, if they obtain Holy Light they will evolve into a Divine Oni, if they obtain Cursed Flames skill they will evolve into a Cursed Oni, if they have both skills they will evolve into a Ying-Yang Oni)

Evolution Requirements: Reach Level 30

Skills: Flame Burst, Spatial Movement, Godspeed, Great Wiseman, Lord of Beauty Aphrodite, Lord of Compassion Afriel

Items: Flame grenades.

Class: Mage

Level: 16

Hp: 3500

Attack: 50

Defense: 120

Agility: 70

Mana: 4000

Intelligence: 250*

Looks like Hana got some new Skills and some of them evolved

Let's see my stats right now

*Status: Reincarnated

Race: Shadow-Ice Demon

Evolution: Demon

Next Evolution: Greater Demon

Evolution Line(Can be viewed due to having the skill Lord of Wisdom Sia): Demon(20)-Greater Demon(40)-Arch Demon(60)-Demon Peer(80)-Devil(100)-Arch Devil(150)-Devil Peer(200)-Devil Lord(Demon Lord Evolution via the Demon Lord Seed while reaching the last evolution step)

Evolution Requirements: Reach Level 40

Skills: Shadow Hands, Shadow Tendril x4, Ice Magic Mastery, Lord Of Wisdom Sia, Lord of Deceit and Lies Lucifer, Predation, Analyst, Space Storage

Items: Ice Sword, Shadow Sword

Class: Shadow Mage

Level: 22

Hp: 4500

Attack: 150

Defense: 80

Agility: 200

Mana: 10000

Intelligence: Lord of Wisdom Sia

Disguise: Lord of Deceit and Lies Lucifer*

We did evolve, everything is reflected in the stats, I don't know if this will be enough but I can only dream.

!As for now it is enough for you 2 to be safe around humans, royal guards will not pose a problem now. Your battle skills also naturally increased.

I took a good look around us, no monsters or humans. Hana put her right hand on my shoulder and pulled 2 times.

"Let's go back to the guild and submit the quests"- I nodded and we were on our way to the guild.

The place we fainted when we evolved was close to the guild, almost on the outskirts of Welcia, the part was hidden and at that time no one was around.

Arriving at the guild we were surprised that it was open.

The receptionist looked at us.

"It sure took you a while"- We opened our inventories and dumped all the materials that we had in there.

"Here you go, all 5 quests"- We gave the quest papers back to the receptionist. I don't know if these were needed anymore but you never know.

"Well, I never expected this much. Here you go. 5 gold coins for everything that you brought to me, alongside the quest rewards. You brought more than needed and the excess is of a very high quality, so it's worth paying you 2 this much"- The man gone crouched down, and a minute later he rose with a bag in his hand, he gently placed the bag on the counter and pointed at it. Guess that's our payment.

5 gold coins, that's a lot for us. This is a good start. Tomorrow we will come to this village to buy some things for the house and food seasonings. The plants we have at home are starting to get bland and the taste isn't the best, mostly substitute for salt and pepper.

We headed home from there, it took a while for us to arrive but I feel like we were faster this time.

!You are correct. The evolution has increased your overall walking speed and endurance, you walk 3 times faster than a human, which is equal to a human running at a medium speed!

"Well, good to know. It's a shame I am the only one that can hear you"- I want Hana to hear Sia as well, I don't know if it's even possible.

!It's possible by possessing any telepathy-related skill, I can make a telepathic network for the 2 of you. You could get information from me at any time at any moment!

"Well, we have a thing to work toward.

"Hikaru, what shall we cook? We only have meat"- Hana looked at the stove and the house. She got a few pieces of meat out of her inventory. Hope these don't taste trash without seasonings. We only have a few of these herbs. But I got tired of their taste.

Long story short we cooked some steak made from monster meat. Used some of the flowers we found as seasoning.

We then went to bed and waited for the day that was to come.