The initiation of the evolution felt like a burst of lightning.

  A force from within Justin’s body slowly radiated outward, sending his nerves into a shocked state as it edited his and the parasite’s genetic code.

  As a maggot would emerge from its burrow, the once-proud Volta writhed around in the swamp’s filthy water, rocking the lake’s waters to form waves above. Mistakenly opening his mouth from the pain, he was even graced by a flood of the pathogenic soup that comfortably found its way into his stomach.

  Justin sputtered, forgetting in the midst of the self-inflicted torture that he didn’t need to breathe like a normal person. The need for oxygen in his body was being taken care of by the parasite’s tentacles, even now.

  But those very tentacles were not excluded from the affair either. As Justin’s mind rapidly darkened from the taxing biological process like a drunk beginning to black out, the tentacles above the lake began to squirm and thrash against the wet dirt. Everything from their texture to their color was affected too, just like Justin’s own body. Though he didn’t know it just yet.

  The parts of the tentacles that could be seen began to change right away. Their hue liquidized and fluttered like an iridescent illusion.

  They flashed in transitions. From a sickly pale, they deepened into a darker moss-like green, then lightened back to a bright yellow, before slipping down the color wavelength again at an intimidating shade of dark grey with an undercurrent of electric blue.

  Justin’s own body was inevitably changing at the same time as well.

  His once-taught muscles flayed themselves before engorging. They threw themselves against the inner lining of his tattered mechanical suit, before the suit began to break apart from the stress.

  Once, it had been designed to withstand attacks from the C-Grade, but after losing most of its energy and being battered beyond any legitimate hope of repair, it fell apart from the mere spasms of an evolving E-Grade daemon.

  The pieces were then blown away and scattered through the waves and across the lake’s floor. The material was far too dense to rise to float, so the remains of the suit’s chassis and armor was half-buried in the lake floor.

  After having shorn its cage, the Origin’s body was elongating and finalizing its structure. It still resembled Justin’s body in many respects, after having spent so long in the tightness of the suit, but there were still many differences. The tentacles spreading from his body were no longer splayed out in all directions, but had found a purpose in organizing themselves into thick and powerful branches. Contracting and binding together, they wound within the torso before punching out the back. Like the figure of a flower in spring, a dark mass bloomed from behind Justin's back and spread out. More than tentacles, it could have resembled plumage if one was looking from a distance away.

  Some of them then emerged from the lake for oxygen once more, though now far thicker and more menacing. The hollows within them that had previously existed with the idle width of pinheads, now were far more stable and flexible. Large enough to fit hand-sized fruits now without having to actively expand.

  Thoughts within the evolved body began firing again after some time.

  ‘Ah!...? Is it still going on?’

  A few minutes after he had initiated the evolution, Justin’s mind became active once again.

  Justin had been woefully unprepared for the shocking experience of the evolution, predicting it wasn’t going to be much different than an E-Grade class promotion.

  Clearly, he had been wrong. The pain caused had instead sent him into a blackout.

  Justin’s vision tried to adjust to the murky depths, before he realized that his eyesight must still be the same as ever: not able to see in mud-water.

  A promotion of one stage wouldn’t mean a total overhaul, he supposed, even if it had been more dramatic than he was used to. So Justin remained with his eyes closed and summoned the system screen.

  One of the perks of the system was that since it was only visible to the individual and gave off no light to the surroundings, it didn’t matter whether one had their eyes closed or open, if they were blind, or had the capability for ocular sense at all.

  [Grade-E Bonuses:]

  [1 END → 15 Health]

  [1 DEX → 15 Stamina]

  [1 INT → 500 Alpha Hive Capacity]

  [1 Alpha Hive Capacity → 2 Beta Hive Capacity]

  …

  [Level: 10]

  [Grade: E]

  [Status Effects: N/A]

  [Race: Synchronic Intellect]

  [Attributes: 13 STR, 6 DEX, 1 END, 5 PER, 1 INT, 0 CHA, 0 MYS]

  [Free Attribute Points: 3]

  [Health: 15 / 15]

  [Stamina: 140 / 140]

  [CEL: 3 / 3]

  [Biomass: 6085]

  [Alpha Hive Capacity: 483 / 500]

  [Beta Hive Capacity: 27 / 1000]

  [Skills: Assimilate (E-), Consume (E-)]

  ‘The health of the parasite has been improved, what a shame.’

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  Wait, actually, was that even the case?

  Justin had a realization all of a sudden that took him aback.

  Now that he thought of it, wasn’t the fact that he was here, thinking thoughts as himself, the same as saying he had been liberated from the influence of the parasite?

  The gamble had paid off! He had done it!

  The chain of death that had been around his neck for the last week had finally been unlocked and cast aside!

  Or at least, that seemed to be the case.

  Justin’s spirits immediately fell back down to a manageable calm.

  He couldn’t say for sure whether everything had gone his way, but judging from the manner in which the system had put it, and from the apparent change in his own physiology, he could determine that something had definitely been shifted in the balance between the parasite and himself.

  Was it a fusion…or division? Justin wasn’t sure.

  As of this moment, he believed that he was still himself, or as much of himself as he had been since the beginning of the week when all of this had started.

  What that meant was that perhaps he wouldn’t have to assimilate anymore just to survive.

  That sounded great to Justin.

  He wouldn’t have to kill or sacrifice anymore just to stay in control of this hungry machine. Then he could see about fixing his appearance, and maybe getting rid of the tentacles. Then Harr…

  ‘Ah…I’m deluding myself. There’s no way it's all that simple. If the influence of the parasite had been truly severed, then I wouldn’t still be connected to the hive. If everything’s based off of this theory of souls in the first place, then by its own rules the soul can’t be destroyed. The parasite might still hold influence somewhere, I just don't know where that is.’

  Justin sighed internally. He had to learn more.

  [Stage Quest: Acquire 2 or more Talent(s)]

  [Time Left: 29:23:53:09]

  [Progress: 0 / 2]

  [Completion Reward: Random Reward Selection]

  [Punishment for Failure: Level Lock]

  ‘This does not spark joy.’

  Looking at his Stage Quest right after just further compounded how little might have changed about his situation.

  Talents were not uniquely given by the system, but were incredibly hard to obtain through other means. To ask for two of them was beyond his expectations.

  Unlike skills, talents didn’t need to be consciously activated in order to be used, nor were strictly tied to one’s class or racial attributes. They all either improved some aspect of the individual’s strength or extended their abilities or innate natures beyond their normal range.

  Looking at the quest requirement made Justin’s stomach turn. A Stage Quest requiring two separate talents to be obtained within the E-Grade was something he had never heard of someone receiving.

  Even the voltas with the worst luck had only gotten something like this when they were in the higher grades. The middle of D-Grade at the very earliest. So Justin supposed he owed it to his luck that he had gotten it a full grade lower.

  Was it retribution for his prodigious rise?

  Not likely. Despite it seeming unachievable, Justin didn’t think it was totally rigged against him. After all, it still held to his belief in the quests following themes for each stage.

  Being in the middle of the E-Grade, this one should have been ‘Diversification’.

  ‘I suppose getting new talents is like diversifying, but how am I going to obtain anything on this primitive planet without the system rewards?’

  There were a couple ways Justin knew to obtain talents.

  One was accomplishing a great feat, which usually meant a battle beyond one’s grade or level, and being recognized by the system for it.

  The second was getting a good completion rating on a stage quest and being rewarded with a random talent.

  That was it. Those were the only two ways Justin knew of, but either of those things were unlikely to happen in the next thirty days for Justin. The latter was just plain impossible.

  He couldn’t obviously earn a stage quest reward before his stage quest was completed.

  ‘I can only try later. For now, I just have to keep moving on. I need to head further south.’

  Justin went back to focusing on the feeling of his body in the water by manually moving his attention there. It had been something his mind was capable of since the parasite’s involvement.

  Groping around in the water, he found something that felt like a jagged rock wall soon enough.

  The painful static feeling from the evolution was still present in his body, though he knew that by now the process had run its course and the feeling was just a temporary remnant. Taking a moment to reach out to the network, it became apparent once again just how the evolution had changed things for him.

  ‘No matter how hard I push I can’t emerge in any of their bodies anymore. Though I can still feel that the group is roughly above me somewhere in the marsh.’

  Justin was elated to feel that. His early pugilist promotions had been far from this dramatic.

  It almost was like he was back in his previous body, were it not for the jellyfish-like tentacles streaming out from his back.

  ‘The first thing I should do is…wait, what is that?’

  As he had been groping the wall in front of him the whole time while he was still blind, he hadn’t taken long to notice there was a faint suction feeling coming from one of the cracks.

  A small stream of water was being sucked out from the lake he was in. Was it being drained, or pulled?

  ‘I can’t tell if it’s at the same level or not, but how could the pressures be so different? What’s behind these rocks, a cave?’

  Justin tried to push his finger through, before finding that it was actually too large to fit.

  Had the size of his hands changed as well? Justin couldn’t see an inch in front of him down here, so he had no idea. He was working through his surroundings right now by touch, which was easier thanks to his many-times-more limbs.

  THWAMP!

  Just then as Justin turned around, about to emerge from the lake, one of his tentacles smacked against the wall behind him. A low vibration passed through the water, sending shivers down Justin’s spine.

  ‘Oh crap.’

  Then another vibration rang through the water, and then another.

  Justin felt the cracks that were forming in the rock wall by the currents created. Shockwaves passed through the water until everything began to crumble in on itself.

  Blind to the events, Justin didn’t sense that the wall had fallen until he felt a surge of water roar past him.

  Immediately, the lake began to drain.

  Justin quickly attempted to harden his tentacles above land, to dig them into the soil and wrap them around the thin trees of the swamp, but it was all useless.

  He even felt briefly as many pairs of hands tried to pull on his tentacles from somewhere above, but by then, his body was halfway into the hole and the hive soldiers only succeeded in dragging themselves under with him.

  In an instant, Justin had fallen from contemplating his evolved state to being inhaled by the swamp, and all because of a brief display of inexperience in wielding his new body.

  In the instant that followed, as Justin was sucked out from the lake and thrown into the chasm below it, his throaty voice began a bellow in chilling anger that burned into a roar.