Chapter 10: F-Rank Talent
Richard rose slowly. His muscles vibrated, although there was something unusual about them. A contained energy, as if they could explode at any moment. His hands looked sturdier, his breathing deeper, even the scent of the air freshener he had sprayed in his room was becoming suffocating.
Is this…?
He stood up unsteadily, using the wall as support. The image in the bathroom mirror made him stop, admiring the change he had undergone.
His eyes had changed in tone.
They glowed with a subtle brilliance, a trace of toxic green that had not existed before.
"That's a problem… How am I going to explain this to Emma?" he said in a low voice, feeling a shiver run down his spine.
He could already imagine the lecture Ethan and Rebecca would give him about not letting himself be carried away by youthful recklessness that he might regret later.
[name: Richard] [Age: 18 years][Skill: Corpse Plunder] [Rank: F][Infection Level: Threshold of Humanity]
Richard could not believe what he was seeing in the mirror. The excitement of being able to awaken the status window had vanished the moment he saw the rank of his skill.
He blinked once, twice, three times, trying to wake up from this nightmare. Just as he imagined, he was awake. Then… how could fate play such a cruel joke on him?
He took a deep breath to calm himself.
"I feel scammed…" he stretched out on his bed, all his happiness in ruins.
"What kind of garbage is this?" he muttered in a low tone, his teeth clenched.
Richard had hoped to awaken some kind of SSS-rank skill. He would have even settled for an S-rank ability. But fate had kicked him where it hurt the most, granting him a skill that could not even compare to a weak telekinetic control.
Richard pressed his elbow to his face. He refused to look at the information of the ability and was about to go check on his other tenants in the rooms adjacent to his own.
After a few minutes in silence, he let out a sigh of resignation.
"Fine… let's see what kind of luck I've got."
The screen flickered. The air grew tense, with the little hope Richard still clung to.
[Skill: Corpse Plunder][Effect: Upon eliminating a creature, you gain the ability to obtain a part of its talent.][Restrictions: The ability obtained will always be reduced to rank F.][Evolution Condition: ???]
Richard ran a hand over his face and let out a bitter laugh.
"Tsk… did I really expect a miracle? How naïve can I be…"
He let himself fall back on the bed again. At least he felt more at ease knowing he hadn't been stuck with a truly useless ability, like the one his foolish friend had awakened — the one that allowed him to erase his body, turning himself into nothing more than a human lamp.
"Speaking of him… did he survive in this life? He said that during the outbreak, he had hidden in a food warehouse since he worked as a delivery guy."
[Corpse Plunder]… rank F.
It sounded like trash, but… it wasn't.
Richard narrowed his eyes.
Reflecting on it… every ability resembled a block. F-rank, sure. However, blocks form structures. And if I can find a way to overcome that "evolution condition"… then this structure will become an unbreakable fortress.
His smile twisted into a dark expression.
In his previous life, he had witnessed how great Awakened succeeded thanks to a single natural gift. But what would happen to someone capable of gathering them all? Even if they began as inferior versions… what if he had the capacity to develop them?
He already had a path to follow, a way to shatter the limit he once had. He could no longer dwell on the question that had gnawed at him for over fifty years… If I had been given a better talent, could I have avoided so many things?
[Evolution Condition: ???]
That question was like a seed planted in his heart. He wasn't sure what it required, but he was now firm in one idea: he had to eliminate, test, and explore until he understood it.
Richard tried to get out of bed, but his body responded with extreme strength. A metallic sound echoed in the room when he nearly broke the edge of the frame by leaning against it. His eyes widened.
He now remembered how skinny he had been in his youth. He was 1.65m tall, a height that, although not exactly "short," had influenced his confidence throughout his childhood and adolescence.
The arm he had always seen as weak, skinny, without a trace of discipline or training… had disappeared.
He recalled with clarity how delicate his youth had been. He measured 1.65 meters. Not so short as to be a constant target of ridicule, but not tall enough to look others in the eye. That difference, insignificant to many, had scarred his self-esteem from childhood through adolescence, leaving indelible marks that had never healed.
However, in this moment… that skinny boy had vanished.
It was like the growth of a plant. The more nutrients you store in your body, the more you must adhere to the mutations caused in order to continue storing more and more, until you follow an infinite path of evolution.
One of those mutations was the change in height. That was why it had been speculated that humans were actually descendants of titans, and that each step in evolution was, in reality, a return to the origin — an inevitable regression toward a lineage dormant in the depths of our DNA.
Although, fortunately for many, this condition could be resolved upon reaching the Ascended stage, or else humanity would have gone extinct long before the fifty years he had managed to survive.
Richard looked for his new clothes in the closet.
"Good thing I decided to buy clothes in advance… although if I grow taller than I did in my past life before becoming an Ascended, I think I'll have to walk around wearing a loincloth made from my bedsheets because I don't have anything else…" he said with a nervous smile.
He had to prepare some things for when the rest of his tenants woke up. The first thing was to check what had happened with the body. He couldn't leave alive something that could cause accidents in his absence.
Although, the very first thing he was going to do was review the security cameras. Richard was confused about what had happened in his absence. If Emma, Uncle Ethan, and Aunt Rebecca had truly been saved by accident or by some creature, he had to see who or what had saved them.
Although he had a faint suspicion of who it might have been.
Richard looked at the crow sitting on the couch.
"With this, you're betting your stay in this house…" he warned, pointing at it, before turning to the surveillance system.
The hum of the processor filled the room as the screen flickered and glowed with a cold light. With trembling hands, he typed the access code, careful not to damage anything, and selected the files of the most recent recording.
The screen divided into different sections: the sides of the parking lot, the main entrance, the interior corridors. Richard rested his elbow on the table, holding his breath as he rewound the footage.
"Come on… show me what really happened."
The images rolled back to about an hour after the van had parked at the entrance. The silence of the video chilled his blood: the vehicle was surrounded, the creatures pounding against the glass. Even without sound, Richard could imagine the terror they must have felt in that moment.
Then he saw it.
Just as the infected were about to overturn the vehicle, a swarm of shadows began to descend from the sky like a dark cloud, surrounding everyone present. It was a flock of crows…
Richard's eyes widened in surprise.
The leader was the Sky Monarch who had destroyed cities in his past life. That creature was a natural disaster that brought nothing but death and suffering wherever it went. He would never forget its strange plumage, resembling a crown upon its head.
"What is that creature doing here…"
He had to hunt it down as quickly as possible, or else they would have to flee — because if it grew any stronger, it would become unstoppable both now and later. Flying infected were always a nightmare.
Richard kept watching the footage. But the strange thing was that the crow leader seemed to be controlled, and he could already guess the cause of the crow's odd behavior. It was under the effects of a Tamer's contract.
But… who was the one responsible for taming a future Monarch?