Jade looked at her hand with sparkling eyes as she did very basic control of magic. It was like a child discovering a new thing it could do and just wanted to keep doing.

Thanks to the knowledge of reading and basic magic knowledge she was finally literate and at the very least, could actively learn magic now.

In front of her was a book on light magic. It was some of the most basic light magic naturally. She held an orb of light as a result of this and was happy. There is a reason for this naturally. Goblin mages are rare, more rare than you would actually expect. Out of 10,000 you might still have trouble to find 1 of them.

Of course, this is not counting trained and tamed ones. Naturally this is natural goblins.

This isn’t just talking about dungeons either. This includes wild goblins in the forests and wilderness. Mage goblins are basically the most intelligent of the bunch and oftentimes, a mage will take over a tribe from a common brute chief.

A perfect example of this happening is the ogres from the mission a few months ago.

Logan, naturally, didn’t understand the biology of monsters in general since he had so many to take care of, after finishing his training and finally grinding his mana pool for the first time since converting to complete F rank, he searched up how monsters biology actually worked.

The origin of monsters is pretty obvious to see, it is thought that originally there were only three sentient races in the world of Urotrope. The first were humans, second were demons who are angels cast down from heaven for coveting power and having their holy powers stripped from them and finally the crystalline beings, dungeons.

At the start, neither humans or demons could actively protect themselves due to being primitive knowledge. Demons had lost their powers and had yet to discover their demonic abilities from dark magic.

Dungeons naturally grew unimpeded and didn’t care about the eruptions like the trolls. With this happening constantly, eventually monsters with solid bodies were born and escaped into the world.

This happened and filled the land with creatures that neither could fight but they learned from them and adapted and grew eventually finding a balance in the era predating the demon lord.

The first tamers to appear were the most clueless but they gained trust of wolves and pack animals and in doing so, they began to learn about monsters. How to tame, how they grow and more.

As strange as it sounds, monsters have countless possibilities even if it originates from a common animal. Even a common wolf can be tamed, have their mana channels and pool trained to become a monster. Depending on the magic taught to it, this would actually affect their biological evolution resulting in different possible evolutions.

That said, what was an evolution. In a sense, it is like a metamorphosis. There are basically two ways for it to happen, either a monster contains sufficient quantities of mana that it achieves the necessary rank or it has the purity and development to reach a rank.

Both situations produce vastly different evolutions. Wild monsters who focus on quantity of mana are wild, brutal and unrefined in its use and generally use their bodies while trained ones have skillful usage of it but more often lack vast quantities without years of accumulation.

This presents a strange breed of evolutions when you touch upon humanoid creatures.

Trained humanoid creatures have a tendency to lose monstrous features. The main reason for this is that most mana development techniques are created for humans by humans but the channel flow matches greatly the system of monsters. This connection actually eventually led to sentient monsters seen today.

After the war of the demon lord, it became more and more common to see sentient monsters living among humans and training. As they processed the immense mana in their bodies, their monstrous forms actually become humanoid and more accepted by humans forming hybrid races.

Categorizing evolutions is a big and very hard job but thankfully there is a world system that exists for this. Identification magic can go only so far but human knowledge led to technology that had the capacity to connect to this world system and the glasses many identifiers use actually connect to this network. It was how, despite being basically a totally new species, Storm was properly identified.

Goblins on one hand are a highly used humanoid. Their low intelligence and high breeding rate makes them heavily used for manual labor and this naturally led to many racial discoveries. Shockingly, goblins possessed the potential to adapt and evolve into more than half the most powerful humanoid creatures including creatures like a minotaur.

The reason for this is because most monster’s souls are interchanged while in the dungeon so oftentimes their DNA also blends.

Goblins are unranked and F rank usually has one of two paths. Either they become a Hobgoblin or they gain a profession such as goblin warrior or mage.

In rare cases, they don’t evolve when they become E ranks but they usually do become lesser ogres, trolls but that isn’t all. Even diet can affect them to the point that if they eat rotting corpses it could turn them into ghouls with a particular type of advanced dark magic, necromancy.

It is extremely strange how it has such a wide evolution pool but the blended dungeon DNA is the most accepted theory about this.

Among the races, there is one breed which is most heavily developed by humans who possess goblins.

They are called Goblin Lords or just lords. They appear from hobgoblins with high intelligence and a development technique when they form horns and generally have human size. The unique part of this race is that they are specialized breeds. When a hobgoblin becomes a lord, they generally have a specialized field.

It is also the most regarded among them as they are very humanoid. Every lesser lord has the natural strength at E rank and eventually evolves into a full lord of their specific breed.

However, despite this being well liked, it is difficult to actually achieve because the conditions are hard to get. The problem is that lords are a type of ogre so their bodies naturally contain mana but the archive didn’t tell him the specifics sadly but there is a clear difference between them because they have more refined mana but he didn’t know how they would store all that excess as the quantity seems to even equal ogres despite it being processed and compressed.

Logan didn’t know and he clearly had to learn what the specifics were. This was important for properly developing Jade as a healer. That said, until she is a hobgoblin he had few worries.

It was unlikely that until he was nearly balancing his body that she would face such troubles as she was just a normal goblin at this point.

As he was about to get up to go wash up and prepare for heading to fight more he felt his communicator vibrate.

He didn’t have many people that knew his number and he looked and frowned. He thought a while and decided to answer.

Olivia’s face appeared and had a frown, “So you finally decided to answer my calls after 2 years.” She said.

“Are those really your first words?” he asked, prepared to shut it already.

“Hey! Don’t give me that look! I know you are thinking of shutting it down! I already asked the guild your location since we are family and they gave me the last location your ID was connected to the Nexus! I know you are in Helix already! Did you already reach E rank!?” she asked.

“Of course not, do you think i am so magically gifted that i could get that far in 2 years. What do you want?” He asked.

“I’m arriving at Helix capital, come down here and help me up to 20th floor city!” She said.

“You are stronger than me, I went up even without help from Storm and soloed the floor boss get up here yourself.” He said.

“I don’t want to waste extra time.” She shouted.

“Neither do I.” Logan replied, stone faced.

She groaned in discontent, “You come down right now or i swear I’m going to beat your ass when i see you!” she said.

“Try it. I was always better at fighting.” He said and finally lost his patience and shut it.

“Should you really speak with her in such a manner, master?” Storm asked.

“I’m not wasting extra time going back down and climbing up. I got through it with only the most basic F rank mana. She is likely already balanced E rank so she can literally walk right through. It was even when I didn't have the golden lion techniques so she can easily do it as well.” He said and got up.

He washed up and they headed to eat. After Jade formed her main channels, her body finally broke down food quickly so despite being round for a good 30 minutes, she wasn’t stuck like that. Now her body was properly gathering mana but she had a long way to go.

When they were done, they climbed the stairs and headed to the 25th floor to hunt.

***

Olivia watched as Logan’s face vanished and a blank tone followed. She was like that for a good ten seconds before her rage began to bubble up.

“That little piece of shit!” she growled.

“Ah miss…” a voice said and she turned and glared, making him jump, “Can we please inspect your items?” he said with a forced voice.

“Oh, right.” She said and took some breaths to calm down and put the magic bags. In the same stretch that Logan used his inventory to hide important items, she did as well.

The airport security forced a smile and handed it back to her and let her go.

As soon as she walked out, her eyes screamed rage but she didn’t jump head first. Instead she looked around and found supplies shops.

She purchased supplies, food, pills and didn’t even wait to gather information. Her anger towards Logan made her lose her head and she jumped in without even updating the map. This is mainly because when she got at the gate, the blood rushed to her head.

However, even before reaching the end of the 1st floor, she came out retracing her steps and went to upload the maps.

“I am going to beat him up so hard for the pain I am suffering!” she said growling in rage.

***

ROAR! BOOM!

An eruption of lightning came from Storm who had rushed into a goblin settlement and began destroying a full clan alone.

Logan watched from outside and Jade was looking worried while holding his hair standing on his shoulder.

“Seems he is basically done his second cycle already, did he do the third mana pool?” Logan muttered but glared at Storm for leaving him behind so much. It should be said that the bigger the body, the larger the mana pool will be. It is the same as Jade’s mana pool being tiny and requiring far less mana than Jin’s who had to cover the entire spirit.

Still, Storm’s power was in a constant upward increase as his mana grew towards his body strength. He still hadn’t grown beyond the 8 meter length and meter and a half of height. He watched as Storm used the massive tail skillfully as a whip before the crystal spikes gathered lightning before he jumped straight up and shot down a compressed lightning ball into the middle of a pack.

It should be said, it was only hobgoblins here and he was easily destroying them all.

Finally, the chief came out and rushed at him with a hard wooden log. The chief was particularly muscular showing that it was close to evolution into one of its high species but sadly the fate wasn’t meant to be this lifetime.

Storm lifted his body and with a claw he gripped the club stopping all the momentum before growling as he looked down before his body exploded with his AOE attack. The lightning encased both of them and the chief roared in pain before Storm chomped down on his neck and ripped chunks until it died.

After that, there was no escape and Logan made sure of that by blocking the only exit.

When they were finished, they gathered up the mana crystals. They were pretty big and he smiled at that before raising on to Jade. “Go on, eat up.” He said.

Her eyes sparked and took it and stuffed it in her mouth and started to chew. However no cracking came from it and instead, she happily licked it in her mouth like candy. Storm had said that depending on the breed, there were different flavors to the mana released but not many monsters really cared. However, seeing her like that, he knew that it was a matter of situation. Her mentality was similar to that of a child now that she was safe. She also only acted like this when she felt safe and not around other people.

As she did that, when Storm got near, she jumped onto his shoulder and looked around and running along his body she found a few wounds. A small green glow appeared and she waved it along the wounds while licking the mana core until she swallowed it.

Storm had a strong regenerative ability thanks to the green lightning his body now naturally produced but that didn’t mean healing magic wasn’t effective. In fact, when used together, they complimented the healing process even more.

Storm looked and his crystal spines released a faint green light as he began to focus the lightning on that wound.

Both Logan and Storm thought of her as a child and this action was to give her confidence to learn healing magic. Like raising a child, you let them do things and give incentive but after a short bit he looked at the storm and he stopped channelling it.

This was to make sure she didn’t think her magic was completely effective.

She came back huffing as her mana capacity was still low so he fed her another mana stone.

“How are you feeling now?” he asked.

“Strong, soon I can finally balance my body and will grow even more. Master will even be able to use me as a mount through the dungeon.” he said.

Logan smiled, maybe because he had access to the net, he had actually looked for many things. Among them were people who raised lizard or dragon kin as dragon mounts. Possibly because he was said to be reverting to some kind of ancient prehistoric drake, he considered himself a dragon as well. It wasn’t strange to think this of course, at one point, all reptilians were as big as dragons. It is just that the generations slowly grew weaker as time passed. It can be seen even today where infants not trained specifically with powerful stimulation can’t even achieve adulthood.

Ironically, actual dragons don’t find being mounts actually a good thing but Storm looked up to them as if it was a status symbol that being able to allow your master to mount you in combat and fight together was something extremely honorable.

If he were to raise crystalback lizards into a new breed of dragons, it would be incredibly funny if they formed a unique culture around his thought process.

Before Logan could reply, his phone began to ring and he picked it up and found Olivia again.

He groaned and answered it but was surprised to find her bruised.

“YOU BASTARD! WHY THE HELL DID YOU SHUT OFF THE PHONE AND LEAVE ME TO THIS DIFFICULT DUNGEON!” She roared.

“Difficult?” Logan said surprised and looked at Storm. He shrugged his shoulders when he was looked at. “The dungeon isn’t that hard. Also, aren’t you E rank, you shouldn’t have trouble getting through to the city. Even if the floor boss changes to be stronger, it is based on your strength so it is within your margin of strength.” Logan said.

“Fuck that shit! That is totally not true! I just got to the floor boss and guess what! There was a fucking lesser drake!”

Logan blinked and looked at Storm. Lesser Drakes were usually infant or hatchlings but the strength of newborns to adolescent is E to D rank a lesser drake evolves into a full Drake at C rank and if it can evolve again, it can become a dragon at B rank.

Naturally, the ogre Logan fought was also E rank because it was a test.

“Are you seriously unable to kill a lesser drake at E rank?” he asked.

“Just come down here and fucking help!” she shouted. “If you don’t, the next time we meet, i will kick your ass so hard that you won’t be able to sit for an entire month!” She roared and shut the phone.

Logan sighed, “If you can’t even beat the floor boss, how do you expect to beat me?” He said.

“Maybe you know something she hasn’t realized?” Storm said.

“True enough, that said, there isn’t much that I wouldn't know at that time that she wouldn’t.” He said. “The only thing is likely to be the weapon’s mana channels.” he said.

“Indeed, that enhances master’s power by a lot.” Storm said.

Logan thought a bit and nodded as he understood. His strength concentrates a lot when using the sword’s mana channels as well so it makes a lot of sense.

“Welp, it seems we have to go help her or she won’t stop complaining.” he said.

Storm nodded and back to his small size before climbing up to his unoccupied left shoulder. He took out a scroll and filled it with mana, it formed a single use teleportation circle down to 20th city. It had been several months already so going into the boss room meant facing a boss.

He appeared at the teleportation area where you would be able to go between the bottom lobby and all the cities you have visited.

He walked off with Jade and Storm on his shoulders and went to some staff.

“Hello, is there any method to go past the 20th floor boss without having to fight it by entering from the city's side?” he asked.

“Do you need something there?” the man asked.

Logan sighed, “My sister couldn’t pass and is now complaining for me to go carry her through. It has been months since i went through so it will already respawn for me entering.” he explained.

“Oh, I get it. Well the door leading to it has two settings for those going down. You can enter the room itself by pushing the right door of the two double doors or you can go directly out the door outside the boss room by pushing the left door. This only works from this side.” he said.

“Oh, thank you.” Logan said and walked to the entrance corridor and entered there. At the double door, he pushed the left door and it lit up and the doors opened letting him through but he couldn’t keep it opened as soon as he stepped through as it shut.

Looking around he saw a small campfire and a familiar but more mature person. She was bruised and her armor damaged making him shake his head. What was worse is the food being roasted was already burning.

“My god, did you not learn from the books? How are you going to survive!” Logan shouted.

She looked up and scowled as he walked over and took the things out as they released smoke. “Urg, it is already burning.” He said and took a stick and spread the wood.

“About time you showed up.” She said.

“You shouldn’t even need me to come pick you up.” Logan said.

“Shut up.” She shouted.

He rolled his eyes as he fixed up the skewers for her and handed it over.

“How did you pass it with lower mana quality?”She said.

“I fought it alone. The floor bosses change and the one that spawned for me is an ogre warchief from the 35th floor. Although his power was limited to match the floor boss level it still got beat up.” He said.

“How?” she asked.

“Did Maxwell never teach you?” he asked.

“What?” she asked, “Did you hold back when you gave me what you learned!?” she shouted.

“No, I learned this myself.” he said and drew Arashi.

She gasped as she saw the strong purple and red flame markings. “How is it so developed!?” she exclaimed.

He looked and shook his head, “I’m not allowed to say. The event can’t be revealed. I almost got killed in the process so don’t think I have some ultimate easy to copy secret. Nothing is that easy.” he said.

She frowned at that.

“Anyways, the reason I could kill it is because I used Arashi’s mana channels as well.

“Mana channels?” She blinked.

“Yeah, magic weapons are generally made of monster materials so they form channels within the blade. You can only access it by channelling mana through the hilt though, the blade's body rejects invasion. Also, the mana channels can be developed like a living being. This probably also includes magic weapons in general or no one would ever use any other weapon outside of swords if that were the case.” He said

She was frowning and drew Hydra and channeled her mana into the tang and was shocked as the channels revealed themselves. “There really is a mana channel!” she said and began to channel but Hydra started to hum.

“You shouldn’t stress it like that. It is still a young legend sword and his mana channels aren’t developed. Before the incident that made our legend rapidly develop and form the burn mark and the purple flames, she had begun to form the red marks after I finished developing her mana channels. I think that just developing to E rank is sufficient to form the mark.” He said.

She finally understood why he succeeded alone, that said she put it away. It would take a while for Hydra to catch up mainly because she had to use E rank to replace unranked.

It was a more careful process that needed to be taken as the mana channels would be more stressed under the higher impact.

They ate but she eventually had to ask, “Did you get more monsters?” she asked.

“Oh right.” Logan said.

Storm looked over and crawled behind Logan and suddenly grew to his full size. “This is Storm, after beating the boss, he evolved because I got an Ogre’s horn and it helped him grow his own horns after eating it. He evolved as well and is in a similar situation to me, his mana has already caught up though.” He said.

Next a glow came from his chest and formed at his feet revealing a tiny navy blue lion formed before a yellow ring appeared floating over his back.

“This is Jin, he is a special battle beast called a spirit animal. Thanks to a hint from storm, I was able to complete basic development and he finally took on a real form like a dungeon monster.” he said and finally pointed to Jade, “Finally, this is Jade. She is a goblin but is a bit unique.” He said simply.

“What is unique about her?” Olivia asked.

“She became sentient by drinking holy water but was subject to magic experiments that led to nine out of ten mana channels being fully removed or destroyed. The last one was broken. I just recently finished rebuilding a basic flow similar to what i have to do to develop Jin here.” He said

“So that is why even after so long in here, you haven't reached E rank.” She said.

“I haven’t been here that long, I reached F rank last year and have been here only about 9 month's at most.” He said and checked the date. “Oh… about a year since then. Yeah, basically my time has been more towards skill training and getting both of them to match my current development. They will have a stable body when I am almost done with F rank mana development.” He said.

“You shouldn’t focus so much on monsters, you could have caught up to me already.” She said.

“If you say so.” He said and got up and patted his lap to dust off anything that fell. “Let’s get going. We are likely to get the strongest boss since there are three E ranks now but you can just watch.” He said.

“You are really cocky.” She complained.

He just laughed. Storm was in full size and Logan put Jade sitting on his head before drawing Arashi and as a group, they walked in.

Surprisingly, the monster to be at the center was still a lesser drake. That said, it was much bigger than Storm by a full 50%. It was two and a half meters to the back but over 12 meters in length. Red scales were shining showing it was a fire drake variety.

Logan leaned in as his body began to radiate mana and Olivia could feel the lightning gather to form the clad but the next moment, Arashi began to glow a golden light and his feet burst with static before he vanished outside her cognitive speed.

BANG!

A heavy impact came from the dragon’s location and as her eyes flew to it, she saw Arashi already at full size and the golden light had expanded while the sword was slashing into the neck.

The next moment, the neck was split. Because of how hard any dragon breed’s bones are, Logan attacked right at the joint of the spine bypassing that trouble.

Of course, clearing this in a single hit did not come without a price and Logan began to sweat instantly after it was done as the forces affected his body.

Olivia instantly noticed that at once but that didn’t stop the lesser drake from collapsing and burning away leaving the mana stone and a new box appeared.

Sadly there were no drops beyond before going to the box. The rewards weren’t as great as his first run but it did have some gold bars and the end of it all, he just let Olivia take it.

“Aren’t gold bars expensive. You did the fighting.” She said.

“I don’t need it, you need it more since you are going to need to get Hydra’s mana channels developed and will need to pay the inn. You aren’t staying in my room for sure since I have my own private things to do.” he said.

“You are still distancing yourself.” She said.

“No, I just require privacy.” he replied.

She groaned and stomped after him but he stopped, “What is it?” he asked.

“I’m following you.” She said.

“You made me stop in the middle of my own hunts from the 25th floor, now I have to climb back up. You should work on Hydra and stop wasting more time.” he said before sending her a city map. “I marked the inn I'm staying at so just rent a room there. Although the price is high, a lot of stuff is expensive here but it is better than most.”

Like that he turned and activated Lion’s step to suddenly accelerate before she could react.

“Ah! Wait a second!” she shouted and stepped forward and her own feet lit up but she couldn’t go as fast as him. His best ability has always been the innate skill he personally awakened which allowed him to freely use continuous high speeds without hitting walls and people.

Olivia didn’t have that and so she had to take much shorter strides and in the city with so many people it was bad as she had to stop when people blocked her path.

She screamed in anger and could only turn and head to the inn because she totally lost sight of him.

Logan looked out from an ally he had snuck into and grinned.

“Was it wise to anger her, master?” Storm asked.

“No problem. It isn’t worth it to go back hunting. We need to resupply and all so it is better to just go rest and leave it for another day.” he said.

He stepped out and sped away taking another path to return to the inn and quickly lock the door of his room so that Olivia would not irritate him for the rest of the day.