- [Lord of Evil]

Deep within a forest, birds were chirping and various animals and beasts were hunting for food. However, they made sure to steer clear of a certain area currently occupied by a visitor.

"9,998… 9,999.... 10,000!" Zex finished his final hand-stand repetition and jumped back up.

Milestone Reached! 10,000x hand-stands! Resonance + 1! Exp + 10,000.

System: Full Resonance achieved. [Unfamiliar Body] debuff removed.

While running from the castle, a prompt regarding his Resonance popped up in the interface. He discovered that Resonance not only regenerates daily but could also be regained by performing certain actions that involve familiarizing with the body, including running.

So he did various exercises, spread out among the physical, mental, magical, and spiritual aspects, and discovered that doing one aspect recovers every other aspect as well. With this in mind, he focused on physical exercises.

After a whole day of working out, he reached full resonance and his stats were no longer decreased. This was possible due to his innate Stamina regeneration, the [Stamina Up] skill, and his completionist trait which he developed after decades of gaming in his previous life.

Gaining full resonance was akin to gaining full control of almost every part of his body. He also discovered that he was able to retract most of his demonic features and pass off as a human while arranging some of the muscles in his body to change his appearance, albeit barely. It was unfortunate that he did not have any transformation skills to broaden his options and control. He still had pale skin and his eyes were still red, giving off a vibe of mystery and danger. These were not easy for him to manipulate.

Afterward, he used up some of his experience to level up his Novice Farmer Subclass to level 10 so he could be eligible for a class change. He was excited to explore the [Soul Manipulator] class that he acquired when he learned the [Soul Swap] skill.

When he opened the class change window, however, he was surprised to see that every option was greyed out except for one: [Lord of Evil]. Simultaneously, he received a notification that additional information was revealed from [Repressed Evil]

(Updated Information)[Repressed Evil Lvl ???] - You have lived your previous life holding back the evil within you. Now is your chance to unleash your inner evil upon this world…

(New) - Grants the Unique Class: [Lord of Evil]. Unable to choose other classes. However, once the class is changed to [Lord of Evil], unlocked classes will automatically add their subclasses to the subclass pool. Special traits from unlocked classes can be toggle on or off.

WARNING: Some special traits that have similar effects will not stack and only the strongest between them will take effect.

"What the hell? Isn't this a little too OP? And why would you show me a tutorial and exempt me from those features???" Zex raged for a while in his mind as he recalled the walls of text from before. "I thought Rito was the best at balancing [1]. Wait? Did Rito create this world? I heard they were planning to create an immersive VRMMO [2]".

However, when he read about the effects of the class, he was dumbfounded once more.

(Unique Class) [Lord of Evil] - You are destined to be a bringer of destruction and mayhem upon this world.

Free Attributes earned per level up increased to 6 and 13 bonus free attributes earned at levels divisible by 13.

Grants the following Skills:

(Passive) [Charismatic Leader - Evil] - Grants + 130 Charisma when interacting with Evil-aligned individuals and factions.

(Passive) [Sense of Evil] - Able to sense if the motives of a target's action are evil.

(Active) [Elite Guards - Evil] - Effect: Sets loyalty of 13 Evil aligned members under your command to 130% - Extremely Loyal. These members are also granted a 130% boost to their Primary Attributes. Gain 13% of the pre-modified stats of each Elite Guard. Please manually select these members. Removing a member from a slot will need 13 days cooldown before adding a member to the same slot.

Cost: 1,300,000 Exp*Number of current members.

(Active) [Evil Eye] - Effect: Observation skill that provides the user a detailed view of the information of targets up to 13 levels higher, while providing a simple view of targets above that. While active, perception of time will be dilated. No Cooldown, No Duration Limit.

Cost: 1 Concentration per 13 seconds.

(Active) [Lord's Domain - Evil] - Effect: Bend the wills of targets within a 1300 meter radius. Creatures with less than 13 levels higher than you shall be hindered, weakened, pacified, disarmed, or dominated depending on the difference of levels. Any Creature within the Domain's Area will also have a 13%-130% reduction to their Primary Attributes depending on the level difference. Does not affect Holy Creatures or creatures with at least 13 levels higher than you.

Maximum Duration: None

Cost: 13 Mana per 1.3 seconds.

Cast Completion: 130 points

Cooldown: None.

…

'Amazing! More walls of text.' Zex was joking around with himself despite being unable to suppress the excitement in his heart.

'Change Class!' He no longer had any hesitation after reading the skills, pressing the button on the interface, and choosing [Lord of Evil].

System: (Unique Class) [Lord of Evil] has been chosen. This unique class does not have a default subclass.

System: Class Change Commencing!

After this prompt, Zex's consciousness was pulled back into his body to let him experience the changes.

A black flame within his heart ignited and suddenly intensified. The demon blood in his veins was enriched by the flames as they traveled all over his body. The intense pain was washing all over him but was many times bearable compared to when he transformed into a demon.

A few minutes passed by as the process was completed.

Suddenly, a familiar sound of the system resounded once again in his head.

System: Class Change complete! You are now permanently a [Lord of Evil]! Exp + 1,000,000.

System: You have changed classes to [Lord of Evil]. Considered an evil action. Additional 1,000,000 Exp from [Repressed Evil].

'Duh...' Zex scoffed at the notification before he hurriedly checked his condition and found out that he could now barely inspect the interior of his body. To be precise, he could now visualize the meridian network where the mana was flowing inside his body. However, instead of the regular bluish fluid within his blood, his mana took the form of black flames and was mysteriously easy for him to control.

'It seems these flames are not as simple as they seem.' Zex made a mental note regarding this property.

He took a look at his surroundings and noticed something peculiar. He used [Evil Eye] to get a better view. He experienced for the first time how it seemingly slowed time down.

Even moving his body or turning his head around was a dozen times slower than his perception speed.

'I can use this in battle. But I need to get used to the perception and time dilation changes'

Giving the area another lookover, he saw beasts, who were once stalking him, running away from fear.

'My Aura!' Zex was startled when he realized that his mana was leaking that naturally formed a heavy aura around him. The beasts were sensing danger from him thanks to that.

In some cases, such a thing was useful, but for others where he needed to stay unnoticed, having a highly noticeable aura was like painting a target on his back.

He focused his mind on the black flames in his body and tried to transform the turbulent flow of their circulation to that of a laminar one, diminishing the leakages from his body.

However, without learning any skill from the system or in his previous life, he had no experience in this regard. He tried various methods and image training that he read from various manga and novels if they would work but to no avail.

'What if…' An idea shot up in Zex's mind.

'Evil Eye!'

Using the skill on his palm gave him strings of information just like the interface but a more simplified view than the 'simple view' given by the system.

However, there were strings of data that the character sheet did not reflect but the [Evil Eye] unearthed.

Two of which were the Body Quality and the Mana Control.

…

Body Quality: Purple, 100%

Mana Control: Untrained.

…

'The beasts in this area had Body Qualities of around Gray to Green. It seems my body is at least two grades above normal but they don't have the Mana Control data string.'

Looking back at his palm with [Evil Eye], he tried controlling the black flames once again…

After trying several methods, he was finally able to maintain a laminar flow of black flames in his hand and the Mana Control data string turned from Untrained to Novice.

A system prompt then sounded.

System: You have learned [Mana Control (Novice)] EXP + 10,000.

(New passive skill) [Mana Control - Novice] - You have better control over your Mana.

Effect: Mana Effects + 10%, Mana Detection Chance -10%.

'So aside from learning skills through classes, I can also learn skills through creation. This is useful.' He deduced as he was beginning to understand more and more of the underlying principles of controlling his Mana. Of course, being aware of the existence of such techniques from the games he played, anime he watched, and comics he read in his previous life, helped him a whole deal.

Zex spent a natural day changing class and training his Mana Control in and out of his Mind Space. Earlier, he found out that when he enters this Mind Space, time does not elapse in the real world but his concentration drops by 10 points and another 1 point every minute. As time would seemingly stop in the outside world when he enters, Health regeneration, Mana regeneration, Stamina Recovery, Concentration Recovery, and Cooldowns do not tick. After a test, he discovered that when his concentration reached 0, he would be forcefully ejected back to the real world and he could not gain any focus until he regained around 30% of his Concentration.

"Overtaxing, huh?" He was not surprised at the result. After all, using this ability during battles without a cost would be too overpowered.

After investing experience points on his Novice Farmer subclass earlier, the subclass improved into the Farmer subclass and granted him new farmer skills while improving [Stamina Up] to LVL 2. He decided not to level up this subclass further just yet as he was thinking of getting a combat subclass.

Unfortunately, [Soul Art Dabbler] was a subclass that could not be leveled. The [Soul Manipulator] class didn't even have a special trait. He theorized that it was because he unlocked them through learning [Soul Swap] or because it was unlocked through [Repressed Evil]. Either way, he had too little information. As such, he threw these minor inconveniences to the back of his mind before taking a look at his stats.

[Character Page. View: Simple v]

Name: Zex

Level: 10

Race: [Demon]

Age: 21

Class: [Lord of Evil]

Subclass: [Demon General - (7/10) Lvl 0(Exp 0/100,000)]

[Farmer(2/10) Lvl 0(Exp 0/700)

Experience Points Available: 2,996750

Alignment: Neutral Evil

Faction: Alzeius

Active Skills: [True Name Liberation], [Soul Swap], [Elite Guards - Evil], [Evil Eye], [Lord's Domain - Evil]

Passive Skills: [Stamina up lvl 2], [Wisdom of The Aged lvl 10], [Knowledge Seeker lvl 10], [Smooth Talker lvl 5], [Repressed Evil lvl ???] [Soul Manipulator], [Demon's Regeneration Lvl 7], [Soul Contract - Alzeius], [Basic Farming Mastery], [Green Thumb], [Charismatic Leader - Evil], [Sense of Evil], [Mana Control - Advanced].

Buffs: [None]

Debuffs: [None]

Primary Attributes:

(30 unspent)

Strength - 91(91)

Vitality - 102(102)

Constitution - 97(97)

Resistance - 88(88)

Agility - 76(76)

Dexterity - 64(64)

Intelligence - 43(143)

Wisdom - 28(128)

Spirit - 100(100)

Charisma - 15(65)

Luck - 10(10)

Secondary Attributes:

Health = 816/816

Mana = 1,144/1,144

Stamina = 478/478

Concentration = 35/138

Resonance = 90/90

[1] Rito is a name given by its fan community to Riot Games, the company that developed the game, League of Legends.

[2] VRMMO is an acronym for Virtual Reality Massive Multiplayer Online. These games allow players to experience an online game with a huge number of people as if they were in the game itself via Virtual Reality headgear. In novels and comics, this genre involves those games where players could send their consciousness to the game itself, providing more realistic senses and a deeper immersion to the game world.