The seventh day ever since the battle against the Giant Earth Eater shook the entirety of the forest.
The first rays of sun peeked through the leaves of the beautiful red-leaved trees, signaling the coming of the morning. However, Aurora was already long awake by now, tirelessly working on her constantly increasing mastery over her Ice Creation.
For the past two days, three with today, she would get up early and train with her relatively new skill. She would spend most of her mana early so she could get it back as soon as possible.
This way, her mastery with the skill kept steadily increasing, and she also wouldn't be in any danger due to the lack of mana. Unless, of course, something attacked her as soon as she finished her training.
Even then, however, she was confident in being able to fight practically anything off, even with just her physical stats. With her strength probably even higher unless the wolf used his skill, and with her defense pretty high as well, there weren't many things that could be an actual danger to her.
*Bang*
'Tsk, I'm dry. All my mana is gone, and I don't even feel like I made progress.' Aurora sighed internally as she shot her last ice bullet at a tree that she used as a dummy.
'This skill is definitely tricky. It basically purely depends on your skill with it. Of course, with each level up, I get to understand it more and more, but the core is still my own mastery over it.' Looking back at the demolished tree once more, she headed back to their temporary base.
During her three-day long recovery, Aurora grew fond of the little cave where she resided while recovering. It was also a nice place strategically, with a water source nearby as well as some weak beasts to prey upon in the need of sustenance.
And so, even after her more-or-less full recovery, the two still remained around the place, using it as a little base of operations for the time being.
By the time Aurora finished her training and returned, the sun was already up completely, meaning that the morning time was at its peak. In her old world's terms, it would be around 9 am; at least that's what she thought.
When she came back, Rejoke was naturally already up. The reason he didn't come to find her was because he knew that his alpha had something important to do.
So, while Aurora was training with her ice, he went ahead and hunted some 'light' breakfast. It was a blue-featered bird, quite similar to the Great Wind Bird, but it was much smaller in comparison.
Aurora looked at the dead creature with shining eyes, ready to dig in at any moment. Ever since she tasted the meat of magical beasts, she wanted to always try out new types of it. And while she loved every single meat she tried, she always preferred bird meat over any other type.
Without wasting any more time, she walked to the fresh corpse on the ground and dug in, eating the tasty parts while leaving aside some of the less tasty ones. Even if she loved meat, there were some things she couldn't eat no matter what.
Things like internal organs or some super-greasy meat—those were things she absolutely couldn't even put in her mouth. Even monster bodies tasted better than those things, in her opinion.
Surprisingly, Aurora became quite picky with her food. Still, by now, Rejoke has already known her for more than a few, and since he was observing his alpha as much as he was, he knew what she preferred.
That's also why he decided to hunt a bird today. For the past three days, the two mostly ate some other meat, mostly of some furred creatures like wolves or rabbits. Aurora was really craving some bird meat by now, and Rejoke knew that.
He took advantage of that knowledge and hunted a bird to make his alpha happy, which worked phenomenally. The little fox was eagerly eating the blue bird, looking incredibly cute despite the gory sight.
Soon, Aurora finished eating the bird, and despite her small size, she ate most of the bird, only leaving the parts she didn't like. Actually, she was a glutton who was able to eat meals many times bigger than herself multiple times a day.
The little fox licked the blood off her lips, swiftly walking to a nearby stream the two used as a water source and cleaned her fur. Since there were no humans in this forest, most of the water sources here were very clean, so they were ideal baths.
Washing off all the blood she got on her fur, she also drank a bit of water from the stream and then returned back.
It took her but a brief moment to meet up with Rejoke once more, and as soon as she arrived, much to the wolf's confusion, she threw him a scrutinizing gaze.
She was clearly asking for something. She wanted to know what was on the wolf's mind for the past week because every time she caught him staring at the sky, his eyes were filled with a complicated gaze completely unfit of a creature like him.
Obviously, Rejoke didn't understand what his alpha was trying to say. He didn't exactly understand what it meant to read the eyes of others, so he was confused right now.
Aurora, who noticed the confusion written all over his face, felt so annoyed at his stupid face, and she walked over to him, looked the wolf in the eyes, jumped onto his back, and smacked his head with her paw.
The poor wolf, who didn't expect such a thing at all, found his head swiftly approaching the ground, smacking the lower part of his mouth against it. Aurora actually put considerable force into the hit, not enough to hurt him seriously but enough to cause him a bit of pain.
Right after hitting, she jumped off his back and landed in front of him, looking at the whimpering wolf with an irritated look.
Meanwhile, Rejoke had no idea what he had done wrong. Aurora, who was happily eating the bird he hunted just a minute ago, was now clearly angry at him and even hit him all of sudden.
As he looked at the angry face of his alpha, what he saw wasn't hatred, fury, or anything like that. Yes, she was angry, but what he rather saw in her face was disappointment.
Aurora was disappointed in him, for whatever reason that may be. He had no idea what he had done to make her disappointed, but he hated that look his alpha was giving him at the moment.
And as if all of his doubts had been cleared from his mind, he made his choice and began his first evolution. He would become better, so his alpha would never be disappointed with her ever again.
As the process began, a wild, red aura with black tinges began to circle around the black wolf, soon enveloping his entire body like a cocoon.
Meanwhile, Aurora looked at all of this with a stupefied gaze.
'What did that idiot do now?' She sighed internally, thinking that she maybe shouldn't have hit him.
However, her attention got grabbed almost immediately by the sudden appearance of a system message. And as she read through it, her brain seemed to have farted.
[Your subordinate Rejoke is evolving.]
'Oh, cool.' Not knowing how to react, she blurted out internally and shrugged. It took a good second for her brain to actually process what was happening.
'Wait, what do you mean evolving!? How can he be evolving right now!?' As if reacting to her sudden outburst, the system opened up her archives and showed her a particular entry.
[Evolution]
– Process that allows being to go through a deep change after meeting a certain threshold of levels.
- By evolving, the user's rank will rise and their level will go back to 0. Their stats will, however, be the same, and their max level will also get increased.
- Evolution is a change on the core level of a being, which means that their race or class will change after evolving.
- After reaching the maximum level of your current rank, you will gain the option to evolve. However, there may be further requirements to proceed with the evolution.
'Argh, I know what evolution means! I wasn't trying to ask—argh, whatever!' Aurora complained and grumbled internally, clearly still shocked about the current situation.
'How come this idiot is able to evolve right now? Wait, maybe he could already evolve before, but if that's the case, then why didn't he evolve already?' Finally calming down a bit, she closely observed the red cocoon, which held a large black wolf inside.
'Maybe he was waiting for something? Perhaps that's what he's been thinking about so much these days.' Aurora sighed internally, walked over to the red cocoon, and lied down next to it.
'Whatever, it doesn't matter now. He's already going through with the evolution, and based on how things are, he won't be able to defend himself in the meantime.' She closed her eyes and steadied her breathing.
'I'll protect him while he's evolving. It's the least I can do in return for him taking care of me for days.' With that in mind, she calmed down her mind and fell into a state of half-sleep.
Basically, she was resting as if she were asleep, but her mind was still partially awake in case she was in any danger. The rest this kind of sleep provided was obviously less than that of a normal sleep, but it was still much safer.
....
After about 8 hours, there was a sudden shift in the air around her, causing Aurora to immediately jolt awake.
As she began to look for any source of danger, her eyes fell on the red cocoon. However, it was different from before, as cracks began to appear all over it.
Before she could realize what was happening, the cocoon burst into particles of light, revealing the creature inside it.
[Your subordinate Rejoke had evolved into a Starless Night Wolf.]
Rejoke stood back up onto his paws, his crimson eyes opening to see the light of the outside world once more. As he looked around the familiar place that he came to call home after being here for a week, his eyes fell on the small fox who stood before him.
His alpha was standing about a meter away from him. But what immediately caught his eye was the vigilant look Aurora had on her face, as well as her ready-to-battle stance.
Thinking that she was maybe angry or that she thought he would attack her, the black wolf began to worry a bit. After all, he had just done something completely without his alpha's permission.
However, as soon as he saw Aurora sighing and relaxing her stance, his worries disappeared as soon as they appeared.
Meanwhile, after calming down, Aurora looked at the new Rejoke from top to bottom. There weren't many changes to his appearance, but his fur seemed to be of an even darker shade of black than before, while he had also grown considerably in size.
Right now, he was about as big as he was when he used that skill of his before evolving.
'About a 50% size increase, huh? Tsk, I wonder just how monstrous his stats must be right now.' Although she was happy that he had successfully evolved, Aurora was also annoyed when she thought about just how much stronger he was than her now.
'Well, just from his aura alone, I can tell that he's even stronger than that worm.' Aurora shook her head internally and walked over to the wolf.
Rejoke's crimson eyes locked with her aquamarine ones, and as if understanding her in an instant, he lowered his head to allow her to climb onto his back.
Aurora didn't stand a ceremony at all either, and she jumped onto his head and then onto his back right away. Immediately, she was taken aback by just how soft the large wolf's fur was.
'So comfy~' She nuzzled her little head against a spot on his back and lied down. She closed her eyes, falling into the comfort right away.
But realizing that she couldn't just fall asleep now, she quickly stood back up against and patted the wolf on the back in a way to catch his attention.
This worked like a charm as Rejoke turned his head to look at her right away. Seeing that she got his attention, Aurora pointed in a random direction, basically telling him to go there.
Nodding his head, Rejoke turned his head back forward and took off, running into the distance.
'Fast! And that's probably not even his top speed!' Auroa was immediately taken aback by how fast the wolf was after evolving.
As far as she knew, Rejoke's main stat was strength, but with how fast he was, she was almost sure that he could compare to agility-based rank 1 monsters.
'Just how strong must he be if he's already this fast?' As if wanting to test his limits, Aurora patted the wolf's back once more, prompting him to go faster.
Without even looking back, Rejoke immediately understood her intentions and began to run at full speed, effectively going twice as fast as before.
'Holy!' Aurora had to quickly grab onto his fur not to fall off. Quickly regretting her decision, she patted Rejoke's back once more, telling him to slow down, to which he complied.
'He got smarter. I guess that's to be expected. Actually, it's highly possible that all his stats went up a large chunk after evolving.' Suddenly, excitement began to rise inside Aurora.
'If he's this strong, I can't wait to see my own evolution!' Right now, she was motivated more than ever before to evolve.
She knew that she was probably close to evolving by now. After all, Rejoke's level couldn't have been that much higher than hers when he evolved, so she should probably reach max level soon.
'Alright, new goal! It is time to evolve!'