Hmm...

Hmmm...

Hmmmm...

How long am I going to stay here again?

Alec didn't know how much long it had been since he started evolving. The moment he had confirmed his choices, everything went dark. He had felt it, the moment his very being, started to spiraling down the dark abyss. The darkness, which felt eternal.

All around him there was nothing. No air, no noise, just nothingness.

The feeling he felt was, emptyness.

As one who was thrown into the sea of endless darkness, though he fought back desperately against his predicament, it did nothing to prevent his descent to the depths.

Yet, something wasn't right. The feeling was vague, but what he felt, was not the descent but something else.

A fusion.

A feeling, of being one with the darkness that was drowning him.

The place Alec was in, did not have a particular form. All around him was darkness, spreading all over the endless abyss. He couldn't feel his body, that only meant one thing.

He wasn't physically there.

There was no concept of time there, just the endless spirals of his own thoughts.

How am I able to think without a brain though? It just doesn't make any sense. Where the hell am I?

I don't even know how much time has passed since I came here, but it feels more like an empty lucid dream. It wasn't too much of a far fetched concept in my previous world either.

A lucid dream, where everything fades into darkness and combine it with a nice touch of sleep paralysis. Yep! That's exactly how I am feeling.

It's honestly weird that whenever I try to think of something, it automatically shifts to the worry about my evolution.

Yeah, it wasn't like I immediately made a choice. I thought through and through about everything. First of all, system information was as usual, vague. It told me nothing about the species I was turning into.

Alec remembered having information about his base species, not that it made any sense, but there was atleast something.

But his evolution, seraph, had no such thing. But seemingly so, every evolution was offensive in nature. Perhaps the information of his base species, was actually the nature of his whole evolution tree.

There was no point in worrying about the things he couldn't have controlled. Whatever it was, it would be revealed soon enough.

The second thing, was his choice.

I actually burned through my last two braincells thinking about it. The hybrid options were the most tempting, like why wouldn't they be? There were no penalties on the opposing stats and having an equal increase in the physical as well as mental stats, who wouldn't fall for that.

But I didn't chose that. Reason? The vague information strikes again! It said, having an equal increase in both mental and physical stats, but what exactly are the numbers? Previously, my non-primary stats were always increased by one or two per level. So, the question was, with every evolution, exactly how much was the current stat gain? It would've made everything easier! Like knowing, that a particular stat will increase by this much, would've made my choice much easier.

But the third thing, that made him most anxious, was the hybrid evolution itself.

They were a big fat traps. I almost fell for it!

Strength increased the physical attack power and mind boosted the magical intensity of attacks. It was just as simple as that. Every hybrid had these two options. Mind and Strength. So, what exactly was the trap?

Because those two were absolutely useless by themselves! Strength increased physical damage, but what exactly are we attacking here? I never had any physical training, I don't know how to dodge attacks unless the attacker is predictable like those dumb centipedes. Restrain their mouth, they'll attack with their tail and restrain their tail, they have mandibles for the win.

So, Strength stat was useless for me, without Endurance stat, unless someone was willing to get me some nice and small cat armour, I have no chance of winning in a close combat. Furthermore, due to my small size, I don't stand a chance against anything larger than me in physical combat.

Mind, while being the best stat, had it's own drawbacks too. First drawback, was my mana regeneration. It was literally abysmal. I was so used to the blood chains that I didn't even notice it till the options of evolution became available.

Blood chains had an incredible field of usage. The absorbtion option, that he was this much dependent upon, also had it's one major drawback. It was the skill information, where it said that the effects of this skill would be increased three times in blood mana, and that included absorbtion too.

Even with the 300% effect boost, the current absorbtion rate was barely enough to keep the chains conjured.

I actually did some experiments on this stuff, while I was in the library. I had both the chains on, with absorbtion mode, while I eyed the stats screen to check the exact mana regeneration speed of blood chains. And the result was rather disappointing, my mana decreased by one point exactly after 3782 seconds (yep, I counted all that!).

Now, I had my base mana regeneration(0.003 mp/s), the amount of mana required to keep the blood chains conjured (0.05mp/s per chain), and time it took to have one of my mana points decreased by unity (3872 seconds).

So, yeah, I wish I had a calculator or a notebook at that time, I would've been able to calculate the exact mana regeneration done by the chains.

Not that it was important right now. The only thing he speculated was that the mana recovery speed of the blood chains was lower than the cost to keep them conjured. And that was inside the blood mana, with a 300% boost in regeneration. So, in any type of mana, different than blood, the effects of overall regeneration would drop by three times. So, he won't be able to keep the blood chains on for an extended period of time.

So, without a higher mana regeneration speed or a better mana pool, his high mind stat would only lead him to constant states of mana starvation.

And my experience is not very pretty with that.

So, yeah, hybrid evolutions were nothing more than traps.

I wonder how much longer am I going to keep having this empty lucid dream.

I hope I wake up soon. I can't wait to see how much my appearence will change, once I evolve.

....

....

....

Wait!

Am I a fucking Pokémon now?