When Liam woke up, it was already the next morning.
He checked his watch with bleary eyes.
"Damn, twelve-fifteen!"
He leaped out of bed and immediately teleported to Mars. From there, he opened another rift and entered the endless void of the universe.
…
Nearly an hour later, he was above his divine realm.
Now that he had reached the confirmed-tier of the condensation realm and become an initial-tier spear king, he could move even faster in the spatial channel before his body showed signs of collapse.
His speed had at least increased tenfold.
With his current strength, he could easily deal at advanced-tier rank 8 existences and defend against beings at the pinnacle of rank 8.
It was the advantage of practicing multiple power systems simultaneously and learning high-level laws.
As power increased, the gap between ranks became significant, making it increasingly difficult to skip ranks in combat.
Liam surveyed his divine realm with satisfaction.
Between the breakthrough and sleep in, it has been nearly 19 hours since he fused the golden environmental pearl the day before.
In the demi-plane, a more than two years had already passed.
On the continent, grass covered the once barren land. The ground was dotted with weeds, small bushes, flowers, and small trees.
Ants crawled on the ground, and insects flew in the air.
The change was even more pronounced in the ocean. Algae, corals, and thousands of colorful small fish filled the previously empty ocean.
As Liam had left the corpses of sperm whales and sharks to the novarians, the tribe didn't need to hunt for almost a year.
The evolved beast meat could be preserved for a long time, and with the advanced digestive system of the novarians, even eating carrion wouldn't make them sick.
Thus, the fish had had time to reproduce fully, and there would be no food problem even if the tribe exceeded a thousand members.
After all, the novarians could soon gather wild fruits and vegetables. Liam had spot many potatoes buried underground.
Regarding the tribe itself, there wasn't much to report: a few new births, two or three breakthroughs to the first order, and several believers had become true believers.
Perhaps the only noteworthy fact was that the novarian chief had succeeded in impregnating the female warrior. It wouldn't be long before the tribe counted a fourth warrior.
Liam shifted his focus away from the divine realm and, for the first time, took out the five pearls he obtained as a reward for the test:
Armor Pearl (1 star | White) – fashion clothes: contains a hundred fashion outfits made by a renowned artisan. (Half are made for men, half for women. They provide no protection but are a feast for the eyes.)
Monster Pearl (1 star | Red) – wolf pack: contains a gray wolf pack: 15 mortal wolves and 1 rank 1 wolf. (Normal wolves that can be found anywhere. The alpha is a beginner-tier rank 1, and there are 9 females.)
Plant Pearl (1 star | Special | Yellow) – blue lotus: Contains 500 blue lotus seeds. (The blue lotus is a semi-aquatic plant that grows in water expanses. They have about a 5% chance to reach rank 1 when mature. They can be used for alchemy, potion-making, or ingested directly.)
Special note: As there is a small number of seeds, the acceptance of the divine realm takes between three to six local months.
Animal Pearl (1 star | Green) – ten species of small animals: contains 50 individuals of each of the following species: rabbits, squirrels, voles, lizards, frogs, hedgehogs, partridges, tits, mice, hares. (Small animals with no combat power. They can only complete the ecosystem of the divine realm. Half males, half females.)
Mineral Pearl (1 star | Blue) – iron ore: contains 10,000 cubic meters of iron ore (raw iron, not yet refined. It can be melted to forge weapons, armor, tools…)
Liam sighed as he looked at the pearls. Except for the green pearl, the others were almost useless. Let alone the clothes. For novarians, they were just pieces of fabrics.
As for the blue lotus, as there was no spiritual energy in his demi-plane yet, they would already struggle to reach maturity, let alone reaching the first order.
He didn't upgrade the ecosystem pearl with the seed of origin for the same reasons. For plant seeds, there was not many way to upgrade: only evolution and growth.
In both cases, it was not a good option for Liam.
On the one hand, the pearl will take way much time to be assimilated by the divine realm while evolved plant would struggle to grow without spiritual energy.
On the other hand, the wolves were out of the question. With the size of the continent, the pack would be enough to destroy the ecosystem that just established.
As for the metal, what was the purpose of using it since novarians didn't know how to forge?
He also had another yellow pearl containing 500 steel stakes, but since novarians had several hundred bone knives made from the bones of a second-order sperm whale, he had no intention of using it either.
In summary, he had no luck.
He put the animal pearl aside and sent the other five into the original seed, which quickly decomposed them into 2.9724 creation energy points.
(Energy provided by the pearls: white: 0.0001-0.0005, red: 0.001-0.005, yellow: 0.01/0.05, green: 0.1/0.5, blue: 1/5)
Most of it came from the blue pearl, which directly provided him with around2.5 creation points.
(One creation energy point – creation point in short - can directly enhance a blue pearl.)
However, Liam hesitated a bit on what to do next.
He only had one potentially useful divine pearl, and even so, that usefulness was more or less limited. It was almost a waste to use his last fusion slot for that.
Suddenly, he thought of a possibility.
The success rate was very low, but if he succeeded, the benefits would be extraordinary. At worst, he would just lose creation energy.
His consciousness sank into his spatial ring, and he soon found what he was looking for.
In the space above the divine realm, hundreds of corpses suddenly appeared. There were five different races: novarians, kobolds, snakes, lizardmens, and dolphinmens.
For the first time, Liam took the original seed out of his spiritual sea.
For the operation he was about to carried out, he would need all his strength, and acting within his soul might not be a good idea.
He used his spiritual energy to send the corpses directly into the artifact. The seed began to rotate as it decomposed the corpses. Soon, five balls of blood and energy floated in the seed.
It was the blood origin of the five races: their purest bloodline. The dolphinmens' ball was the smallest, while the snakes' and novarians' balls were about five or six times larger. The kobolds' and lizardmen's balls stood in between.
Even if there were twice as many novarians as snakes, the difference in their ranks balanced things out.
Liam held the seed with both hands and sat cross-legged in the void.
He sent his spiritual energy into the artifact and at the same time, immersed his consciousness into the seed.
He used his will to break down the DNA of the five races. The more spiritual energy he sent into the seed, the faster the artifact facilitated the process.
However, the artifact was like a bottomless pit and consumed massive energy. In less than a quarter, Liam felt his mind numb as the spiritual energy in his body was almost depleted.
He withdrew his will and stored the seed.
Still muddled, he began to meditate and drew in the void's energy into his body, converting it into spiritual energy.
His divine realm did not contain spiritual energy, but the void, including the spatial rift, was filled with chaotic energy.
Chaotic energy was very violent, and one couldn't absorb it before becoming a superior existence, or else the body would explode.
Beyond repelling invaders, the spatial wall primarily served to repel void energy.
Before becoming a plane, it simply prevented it from entering.
Afterward, it slowly converted it into spiritual energy, softer and absorbable by all living beings.
Liam did the same.
The process was about a hundred times slower than meditating in spiritual energy.
With the temporal flow difference between Earth and his realm, it was still ten times faster than returning to Earth.
Several hours later, Liam opened his eyes again and resumed analyzing the DNA of the three races.
He had plenty of time. The school gave them a week to improve their divine realms.
With his lifespan of over fifty thousand years, he wasn't worried about losing several years in the spatial rift.
His experiment continued this way for several years.
All of this was feasible thanks to the seed.
Slowly but surely, he deciphered the DNA of the five races. Even though he could speed up the process with creation energy, he didn't want to use it for that. It was still too rare.
Finally, he reached the point where he knew their DNA inside out. Every nucleotide, every allele... he knew exactly what they did and what their utility was.
Liam found many similarities between the five races. For example, dolphinmen and lizardmen shared 92% of their DNA, while novarians and snakes shared only 79%.
(For reference, humans and snakes have 70 to 80% DNA in common.)
Now that he mastered all of this, it was time to… merge!
That's right, it was Liam's goal from the beginning. He didn't want to directly strengthen the novarians with other genes.
That may be easier, but it would only create mutated novarians.
Even if he created a new race, it would be hard for it to breakthrough it in the future because it would still contain the "failed" part of novarians' DNA.
He sent his thoughts into the seed, which immediately lit up.
The five balls approached slowly. As soon as they came into contact, spiritual energy flowed into the seed.
In a few milliseconds, his dantian was half empty. Liam immediately stopped consumption and drew on creation energy.
Slowly, he felt the quantity decrease as the creation energy sank into the bloodline balls.
At the same time, Liam used his knowledge of their genes to accelerate the process.
When he had less than one creation point left, the seed finally darkened and stopped.
A small bloodline ball was rotating slowly inside the seed.
Success!
The genes successfully merged, and the species was viable; otherwise, the genes would have collapsed on themselves.
According to the artifact, such a gene ball could create 63 individuals, including 29 females and 34 males. Why such a ratio? Because there were more male corpses than female corps, simply that.
Fortunately, unlike humans whose genes degraded if the population was too low, this new race could reproduce quite easily.
This new race had inherited several characteristics from each of the five races.
First these creatures were mammals. In other words, females carried their children themselves and had to give birth.
At adulthood, their bodies were about four meters long.
The upper body was humanoid, with two arms and one head, while from the waist down, what should be legs turned into a long snake tail, which was about the two-thirds of the body.
When they stood upright, they were about 1.5 meter tall.
Their head looked like novarians' head, but it was a bit elongated, with sharper and fiercer features.
They inherited the red eyes of snakes, as well as the long ears of kobolds, which stood on their heads. They could control them to lower along their faces, protecting them from damage.
Their arms had the strength of lizardmen and the dexterity of kobolds. They were made to be close combat fighters.
Hidden between the scales of their thick neck were the four gills of novarians - two on each side – so they could breathe underwater.
They also preserved the intelligence of dolphinmens. So, they had intelligence comparable to a human teenager.
As long as they reached the first order, they fundamentally had the same intelligence.
Their whole body was covered with dark green snake scales, but they get a strange ability from hidden DNA in side kobolds' bloodline.
On the humanoid part, they could retract the scales into their bodies, as well as their fang and their claws, displaying smooth and beige skin.
When they did so, their head was affected too, and their face got flatter and even became appreciable to humans.
They were not models, but at least it worked.
At that time, only a long line of scales remained, starting from the forehead, passing through the skull, and running down the back, finally joining the serpent tail.
Even if they were bald, it gave them a particular style that wasn't bad to look at.
Looking at their physique, Liam didn't bother and directly called this race the Red-Moon Nagas.
[PICTURE HERE]
Now, let's talk about the most important thing: potential.
Red-Moon Nagas were very powerful compared to novarians, but they still lacked some crucial parameters, notably organs to store and make circulate spiritual energy.
As their spirit was also too weak to practice magic or arcanists techniques, the entire race was basically stuck as a high-level inferior race, namely Rank 3.
Even so, it was already a huge qualitative leap.
They had a lifespan of sixty-five years.
Up to nine months, they were newborns.
From nine months to four years old, they were children, from four to nine years old, adolescents, and after that, adults.
Their combat abilities began to decline from fifty-eight, fifty-nine years onwards.
Of course, this would increase with the rank.
Rank 1 beings could live up to 90 years, with a decline from 85 years.
Rank 2 beings could live up to 130 years, with a decline at 127 years, and rank 3 beings could live up to 260 years, with a decline at 258 years.
Moreover, this race had an astonishing potential. When they became adolescents, they had about an 80% chance of naturally reaching rank 1.
When they reached adulthood, those who were rank 1 had a 20% chance to break through rank 2, while mortals had a 99% chance of reaching rank 1.
Moreover, as long as they encountered some particular situations, they could still advance to rank 2, or even rank 3.
It was just the current state of the race.
Since strength was hereditary, as the naga population base and overall strength of the tribe increased, nagas would eventually reach adulthood as rank 2, or even rank 3 beings.
However, their progression would then stop at the pinnacle of upper-tier lower beings.
Eventhough, it was not set in stone: maybe some would be born with a particular mutation that will allow him to enter the realm of intermediate existence with only his pure physic strength.
In any case, it was problem for later. It was now more than enough for Liam since Red-Moon Nagas were much stronger than novarians at the same rank.
With the help of the diadem, he represented the statistics of his new race:
[Race: Unknown]
[Race category: half-serpentine half-humanoid, amphibious]
[Race level: upper-tier lower race]
[Racial talents: Underwater breathing, retractable scales, fangs and claws]
[Physical attributes:
[Rank 0: constitution: 1.0 || strength: 1.1 || Agility: 0.8/1.1 (earth/water) || Spirit: 0.7 || lifespan: 65 years]
[Rank 1: constitution: 2.6 || strength: 2.8 || Agility: 2.2/2.8 (earth/water) || Spirit: 1.6 || lifespan: 90 years]
[Rank 2: constitution: 6.5 || strength: 7 || Agility: 5.5/7 (earth/water) || Spirit: 4 || lifespan: 130 years]
[Rank 3: constitution: 26 || strength: 28 || Agility: 22/28 (earth/water) || Spirit: 16 || lifespan: 260 years]
(The norm for a normal, healthy adult human is one point across the board.)
(Theoretical maximum attribute: rank 0: 1.5 | rank 1: 4 | rank 2: 10 | rank 3: 40)]
He looked at the novarian's panel and couldn't help but compare the two:
[Race: Novarian]
[Race category: humanoid, amphibious]
[Race level: Middle-level lower race]
[Racial talents: Underwater breathing]
[Physical attributes:
[Rank 0: constitution: 0.7 || strength: 0.5 || Agility: 0.5/1.1 (earth/water) || Spirit: 0.4 || lifespan: 25 years]
[Rank 1: constitution: 1.9 || strength: 1.6 || Agility: 1.0/2.4 (earth/water) || Spirit: 0.8 || lifespan: 35 years]
[Rank 2: constitution: 4.2 || strength: 3.8 || Agility: 1.9/4.7 (earth/water) || Spirit: 1.4 || lifespan: 50 years]