I looked over the three ‘evolution paths,’ feeling a bit of curiosity as I did so.

  Currently, it seemed that I had three major directions I could take while upgrading {Endless Hunger of the Ocean}. First, I could correct the major weaknesses of the ability, or I could focus the ability in a more spatially oriented direction, or I focus the ability on copying more skills from monsters I fought and killed using powers like extinguish.

  I thought carefully about each option.

  The ‘Skill’ direction was interesting. It more than doubled my skill slots, and it was also extremely cheap in comparison to the other options. I wouldn’t need to worry as much about how to divide out my Achievement in the future when purchasing things in the Market, which was certainly a relief.

  However, it also seemed like the weakest evolution to me.

  The other two ability evolutions would continuously get stronger the more Absorption Essence I had, because compressing the abilities of multiple runes into the first few runes would also save me quite a bit of absorption essence normally spent on upkeep. This meant that I would advance further into the rune System with the same amount of absorption essence, which would significantly increase my strength in future lives. Moreover, without the help of the rune magic system, my stats would return to being rather average in every world I reincarnated into, until I invested far more Achievement into myself.

  Furthermore, even though the three Skills I had gathered with {Endless Hunger of the Ocean} in this world were very useful, it also wasn’t guaranteed that I would find good Skills in future worlds. After all, for my skill slots from {Endless Hunger of the Ocean} to be useful, I first needed to find relatively powerful monsters and kill them with water. If there were no powerful monsters in a given world, or if the monsters were too strong for me to fight, my skill slots would be quite useless, since I needed to kill something to activate them. My skill slots were an incredibly powerful tool: but they were also very dependent on my environment, and didn’t help me in situations where I was already struggling to get by in a given world.

  I decided that it wasn’t a bad option, but I probably wouldn’t take it. The other two options simply seemed far more appealing.

  Next, I thought about the Weakness Correction direction.

  When it came to my runes, they offered me something that, at least in this world, had proven incredibly valuable: a way to strengthen my body. Creatures like the Orukthyri were several times more powerful than the average Orthanoid in this world. In terms of physical strength, it wasn’t difficult for an Orukthyri to outmatch ten or more trained soldiers, which was the primary reason the creatures had such an advantage over Orthanoid soldiers. The difference between somebody with grade 12 and grade 5 in a stat wasn’t small: it was probably around an order of magnitude plus some change, based on my experiences fighting Orukthyri in close combat. If I was stuck with the same frail body as everyone else in this life, I didn’t know whether our group would have survived the journey to this city. My strong body had been a blessing that had evened up the difference between me and some of the more common creatures in the middle of the food chain.

  However, my limited Perception stat, in particular, was a huge weakness right now. My physical stats were well below what they could be, since my ability to perceive and control my own body seriously weakened me.

  The Weakness Correction option for evolution basically solved this problem. It didn’t do anything more exciting than correcting my weaknesses and saving me the upkeep cost of maintaining runes 7 through 9 in the future. However, it was, in a sense, a huge leap forward.

  On the other hand, the Spatial Manipulation direction was the most expensive and most interesting evolution path of all.

  In this world and the previous one, being able to manipulate space had made a huge difference when it came to combat abilities. The ability to be attacked from dozens of kilometers away had proved nearly crippling for our group in the wastes, because the fog creature had been able to attack us without us being aware of what it was doing or how to protect ourselves.

  I didn’t want to be on the receiving end of such long-range, frustrating attacks in the future. The spatial direction would help me resolve this problem, and create lots of other unique and interesting abilities such as teleportation. It would even allow me to enhance my mental attributes early on, AND give me the ability to interact with magic related to madness, illusions, and mental attacks as a free ‘add on’ for each rune I built. My first three runes in future lives would give me access to spatial abilities, madness abilities, and mental stats. All three things would be incredibly valuable going forward.

  However, it also totally removed the physical enhancements I was used to getting. I would need to reach the seventh rune to strengthen my body, and I would only get 10 points in each stat instead of 20. This would drastically reduce my strength in direct physical combat. It also meant that I would potentially need to wary of diseases again. So far, I hadn’t really worried about getting sick, because my incredibly high Fortitude made me essentially immune to diseases. If I lost access to the 60 points of Fortitude my first three runes gave me, I might need to be wary of getting sick until I invested more in Fortitude.

  This evolution direction would definitely resolve some of my weaknesses and enhance my strengths. However, being healthy might become a problem again until my absorption essence stat increased significantly. And my close-range physical abilities would also suffer as a result of taking this evolution direction. I would basically be cut off from physical enhancements, potentially for several lifetimes.

  During my first fights against the Orukthyri, Sallia and I had discovered a rather unpleasant fact.

  The Orukthyri had incredibly thick, hard to pierce skin. Coupled with their incredibly high Fortitude, our strongest attacks were often only enough to inflict surface wounds on the Orukthyri. Part of this issue could be attributed to our young bodies: we hadn’t finished growing up yet, and so we still experienced a stat penalty because our bodies weren’t grown.

  However, if I traded away all of my physical stat boosts, I might run into this problem even more often in the future. While there might be ways to make up for this using spatial abilities, I hadn’t experimented enough with spatial manipulation to know for certain what I could do with it. It was hard to say what benefits this evolution direction might offer me in the future.

  I thought about it for a moment, but ultimately, at least for now, I felt like the spatial enhancement direction made the most sense for me, despite its weaknesses.

  After all, Sallia was already part of our group, and she was able to handle most direct physical confrontations. She simply lacked the means to deal with ‘weird’ powers and long-ranged attacks right now. Until her abilities evolved and she got more ways to address this weakness, I felt that it made sense for me to step in and fill that role. If I worked as the back-rank fighter, Sallia took over the front rank, and Felix built us items while filling other roles on a case-by-case basis, I felt that our group would be at least reasonably balanced.

  I nodded to myself. My plans might change by the time we died, since my friends might also get new abilities or ability evolutions, but at least for now, I was leaning towards the spatial manipulation route.

  As I was thinking about my ability evolution, Sallia finished pulling me out of the river.

  “Did it work? Did you find a way to stop whatever the fog monster is doing to everyone?” She asked.

  I nodded, grinning. “I also got my first ability evolution. I’ll tell you about the results later, but first, let’s go fix everyone’s injuries. I can’t deal with the long-term damage yet, but I can at least stop it from getting worse.”

  Sallia smiled, relieved, and gave me a quick hug. Then, the two of us started making our way back to the house we shared with the others.

  Shameless plug - you can read up to 21 chapters ahead on Patreon!

  Join my !