Fox Tale Of A Dungeon Boss

" A choice?"

"Yes. Evolution, first and foremost, has a few necessary triggers to happen."

"Firstly, you must have a body in a state that either is in perfect health and can withstand it, or is brought to the edge and unleashes its potential. Next, you need sufficient energy acc.u.mulation within yourself, which happens naturally without much trouble for the first couple evolutions."

Okay... this makes sense and seems more obvious so far.

"But a the true catalysts are you having a job class and a d.e.s.i.r.e to change. For intelligent beings, we must evolve by reaching a point in which we find a path for our bodies, minds, and skill to all change in order to reach the heart of our own way."

"Yes." Lu Ting jumped in. "Our people call this path or 'way of truth' one's Dao."

I'm... not surprised... there is a lot of eastern similarities.

"Yes well, call it what you like. The point is that evolution is the, let's say, passing of a gateway in this Dao. For example, a feature of my evolution is that I cannot be seen under certain circ.u.mstance."

I looked at the invisible carpenter. 'That seemed... pretty obvious dude.'

"My evolution was speed, because my job class was a variant of a high-speed precision attacker, or assassin if you like."

Lu Ting... how do you evolve to have speed?

He saw my confusion and laughed. "My body evolved to work better so it could operate at higher speeds. Those stats of 20 being the max and 10 the average only applies to unevolved species. Once you evolve, having a reaction time so fast you can see lightning move isn't impossible."

Wow. So I could evolve to surpass 20 in other stats... so having over 20 off the bat in an important stat for my class: no wonder learning to control with sound was so easy! Mind Puppet is very easy when you cheat.

"How did you evolve to be invisible as a carpenter? Because that really makes no sense."

A booming laugh. "I was originally an assassin as well kid. I only switched classes to carpenter after giving up violence. However, the evolutions I made to stealth and strength are still there, and I died before I could evolve differently again. It's very hard to undo what's already been done."

Oh. That makes sense. The last bit, not the first. Why would a big dude become an assassin and then quit?

"So to evolve, your biggest task is to figure out HOW you want to change, what it will do, and how that change could take effect."

"Alright. Got it. So monsters don't have a Dao essentially?"

Fu Ting tilted his head. "Not necessarily... more like that as creatures of instinct and violence, they instinctually evolve to such a path. Those who pursue Dao's of slaughter are similar."

Well that's informative. Good to know.

'Wait... what prevents a skill or spell from reaching level 6 unless you evolve? Is it that the spell must naturally conform to your job class at such a high level, so your body must be more compatible?'

I'll be honest, I'd noticed this awhile ago... but my Spells evolved in a way that matched me a bit more than I expect.

'A lot of my magic visualizes as a vibration of energy. Even my foxfires carry a vibration to explode. And that might have something to do with my magic being based in music.'

'...vibration? I feel like there's something just at the edge of my mind... agh. It's like having something at the tip of my tongue!'

The big guy let out a booming chuckle. "Relax kid. You will be back soon enough, so don't agonize over it. You can figure more out in the real world. Experience is your best teacher."

"Experience...? Then can you try and help me? I need some sort of practice!"

They looked at each other(I think, one of them IS invisible), and Fu Ting shrugged.

"Let's hear what you can do so far, and well do our best to help you find a path forward. As the older generation, such is our duty, right?"

***

I was still running, over the barren earth, and large cracks and canyons opened up every once in awhile, with lava pouring forth like geysers or a river.

A lump moved ahead of me, and I pulled to a stop, readying my mind to reach for magic in an instant as a creature rose up.

I snorted at the rather obvious name given by Analyze, and thought about how to approach this.

"Eh, I'll freeze you."

I cast Freezing, but very little happened.

'Huh?' I took a quick look around, my head going back and forth, until I realized what had happened.

"Shit-!"

There were near-to-no ice energies! Just like light energies, ice energies were scarce, crowded out by all the fire and dark elements!

I jumped back as a massive stone arm slammed into the ground before me, a shockwave flying out in time to knock my legs out from under me as I landed.

Crisis Detection blared in my head like a tornado siren as I threw myself away, rolling onto my feet to see a pile of bubbling magma melt the rock where I'd been.

I felt a warning of danger yet again, but the golem wasn't moving?

'Where...-!' My brain caught up as I began to turn, only to feel a massive force slam into my side from behind.

I flew like a rag doll, slamming into the earth hard, and scraping a good bit of skin off my hands and knees.

"Uhhhh... agh..." I twitched my fingers as I tried to get my body to move.

God did that hurt! It hurts, it hurts it hurst! Shit! If I had more of my soul I would've felt it coming up from behind!

I pulled myself upright to see 2 magma golems shambling towards me, and behind them I could see numerous shadows dancing in the haze.

'What are those shadows?'

They resolved into humanoid shapes, skin stretched taught and hairless over their thick boned and gaunt bodies, large collar bones and joints sticking out in sharp relief to its starved appearance.

Claws the length of several feet dangled from each of these demons.

Oh that's a fun name.

I sent out several castings of FoxFire, focusing in on murderous intent within the spell. 'This time... I mean to destroy.'

"Let's break that rock!"