The True Ancestor Falls

Beneath the city that the battle's aftermath had rightly reduced to ruins, a blood-soaked lump of meat twitched and writhed.

"M-my body... is moving... This is... ridiculous..."

"Haaah, goddamn it... Stubborn bastard to the bitter end."

Should I praise a vampire's regeneration for still moving in that state? Or marvel at the sheer tenacity of a creature that refused to let go of life even like that?

Either way, it didn't matter. No—there was simply no need. I dragged my exhausted body forward for the finishing blow.

"Die already!!"

Crunch!!

I shaped the shadows under my shoe sole into spikes and stomped the meat lump flat. Simply crushing it wasn't enough; I worked the shadows like a grater shredding vegetables, grinding the flesh to pulp. The final step to wring out every last drop of blood. After all that effort, I deserved at least this much payoff.

The rest belonged to Keres.

"Gyaaaaah...!"

The thing screamed from somewhere that wasn't a throat as it roasted in real time, its thrashing gradually slowing. Finally dead?

Yep. Dead. Only after the system alert confirmed its complete annihilation could I finally let out a long, deep breath.

Nowhere in the city remained standing; nowhere on the ground was free of blood. Corpses piled into mountains and blood pooled into lakes—a literal sea of blood and mountain of corpses made real.

At first I'd watched at my leisure. The problem was that brief peace shattered into pieces in under an hour.

While I was casually mopping up the vampires that came in dribs and drabs, a force rivaling an entire army suddenly poured in from every direction.

Unlike the self-proclaimed knights, these ones moved with real discipline—an actual knight order. Those arrogant parasites would never form ranks like that without orders from a commander far above them.

I had Haze sweep the surroundings at once, and sure enough, nestled among the vampires was one that felt distinctly off.

I only learned later that it was a True Ancestor—the pinnacle of the vampire race—but the fact that the enemy had begun moving in earnest was already a clear omen of a brutal fight ahead.

In practice it turned into a chaotic free-for-all that my summons alone couldn't cover. Even after I brought out Kallion, whom I'd been saving for emergencies, the gap refused to close. Just as I was about to have no choice but to step in myself, that thing appeared right on cue.

A True Ancestor. The primordial vampire also called the source of all spreading blood. It revealed itself.

Honestly, fighting it wasn't easy. No joke—it was far stronger than the boss.

Still, I won. More precisely, Kallion won.

On pure specs it was definitely strong. Being a True Ancestor gave it a measure of resistance to holy power, so Echidna's attacks barely scratched it.

But Kallion's nature was the exception. Though it carried divinity, that divinity leaned toward rejection, refusal, and exclusion. The True Ancestor, failing to account for that, was snuffed out in an instant.

An anticlimactic end for something with the name True Ancestor, but most of my summons were hard counters to it, so the outcome was possible. Without Kallion, the one dead right now would have been me, not it.

Another decisive reason I could win was that this place was a dungeon.

I'd been half-skeptical at first, but the longer the fight went on the more certain I became. Even that True Ancestor couldn't escape the dungeon's rules.

Stronger than the boss, yet treated as a mere "Named" rather than the boss itself, it couldn't unleash power beyond the dungeon's boss ceiling. All it could do was spit out thoroughly mediocre attacks. It should have been able to do more. It simply couldn't. I saw it hitch and freeze mid-motion more than once, like lag. In game terms, certain skills and stats were sealed.

Even in that state the fight was so fierce and desperate that if I had to do it again I'd probably lose three times out of ten. Let's just leave it at that.

Thanks to it I raked in a mountain of byproducts, and my summons and I leveled up like crazy. All that remained was the boss, who would drop dead if you so much as poked it.

Part of me wanted to clean everything up here and leave, but there was no guarantee another True Ancestor-class vampire wouldn't pop out if I dawdled, so I decided to cut my losses fast. Honestly, the biggest factor was that killing the True Ancestor had completely drained me.

"Shiz."

"Hoooo..."

At my call Shiz appeared and dimmed the flame in her lantern, shutting down the active Hell Path.

The boss, already long past its limit, crumbled into dust and died the moment the effects of my skills Sadism and Torture wore off. It had literally been living only because it couldn't die; the second the chance came, it expired without delay.

How the hell is a Named more of a pain in the ass than the boss? I grumbled curses at the gods under my breath, and at the same time the system seemed to register that no more vampires remained inside the city, sounding an alert.

Zzzt!

The reward window froze amid a burst of static. My breath caught for a second at the sudden glitch. A chill ran down my spine; I forgot to exhale and just stared at the system.

The system's voice that followed was mechanical, yet the clear note of fluster in it only made the whole thing feel more alien.

My eyes widened on their own. Someone had interfered with the system. The proof was right in front of me. But I had no way to verify it. Even Haze, a spirit of space, couldn't get a fix on the presence—how the hell was I supposed to catch it?

Still, it was fine. I could see the possibility. The key was simply creating an exceptional situation that exceeded the limits the system had set.

As if its work was done, the source of the wrongness vanished at once. Like a debugger appearing to fix an error, "that thing" showed up to redefine content the system's framework alone couldn't process.

Before, I never would have noticed such a tiny discrepancy. But now that every power had woven together, I could catch even a fragment of it.

Gulp.

I was steadily closing in on them. That much was now confirmed. For now I'd let it slide. But not next time. Next time I would catch it for sure—and kill it.

"...Clear."

The moment I declared the clear, light swallowed my vision. When I blinked and opened my eyes again I was standing at the dungeon's entrance. The time was early evening, just before the sunset fully set in.

In my hand sat a ticket glittering gold and a rough stone embedded with a crimson gem. The ticket vanished as if absorbed into my status window, leaving only the red stone. I shoved it into a pocket of my shadow clothes and immediately checked my device.

After filtering out the usual junk, two messages remained: results of the class from Lucia, and a blanket notice to all students from Hong Su-ah.

Hong Su-ah was one thing, but Lucia sending me something like ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠this was a little unexpected.

I reserved a private training room on the spot and, with nothing better to do on the walk over, decided to read the contents at a leisurely pace.

First, the class results. No worries there—I'd passed. It had been an event to wake up those half-witted kids in the first place, so the outcome was only natural.

"Huh...?"

But the moment I reached the end of the message my brow furrowed. It listed tomorrow's class details and the assembly point: the First Arena.

The problem was that it was a joint class for the entire first and third years.

My gut said it was a one-day man-to-man session to review yesterday's failures and open their eyes to the path of growth—or at least a method for it. But my instincts were screaming that this was groundwork for the third-years, who had little contact with the protagonist, to meet him. And that it would ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠definitely kick off another storyline.

"...Haaah."

A sigh slipped out already at the thought of getting dragged into more annoying business. Worrying about it now would only give me a headache, so I decided to set it aside.

Tomorrow's problems could be handled by tomorrow's me. Yeah, that sounded right.

So today's me would just wrap up today's business and get some proper rest. With that resolve I scanned my device at the training room door and stepped into my private space.

I immediately shaped a chair out of shadows, sat down, and snapped my fingers to summon every last one of them. From Hive all the way to Shiz, the once-spacious room was suddenly packed.

"Hive."

Flap!

Without a single cry the bird flew over. I stretched out a shadow perch for it to rest on, and it settled there. After stroking its beak and the feathers around its neck in turn, I promptly pulled out the Book of Summoning and checked its status window.

Compared to the other summons, its skills were overwhelmingly well-honed and proudly displayed. Just looking at them filled me with satisfaction. Pride swelled at the thought that I had raised it this far.

But something more important demanded attention. I eyed the marker next to its level and, out of habit, twitched a finger.

Just as I'd expected, the moment Hive hit level 20 the [Evolution Available] tag had appeared. Including the ten levels accumulated through previous evolutions, that made thirty—enough for a second evolution.

Up to that point there was no problem. I would have welcomed it. The me of a little while ago would have hit evolve without a second thought.

But a problem had arisen. Or rather, a variable. Hive's level had gone past twenty.

If my hypothesis was correct, Hive should have stopped leveling at twenty. Yet the moment we cleared the dungeon its level had jumped past twenty all the way to twenty-three.

What did that mean? After turning it over carefully I arrived at another hypothesis.

Until now I had believed that whatever ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠appeared on the evolution list reflected what the summon had experienced while leveling. But if I dug a little deeper, things that weren't strictly experience had also been reflected in evolutions.

The biggest example was the influence of my title, The One Who Burns. Thanks to that title my mana carried a faint fire attribute—strong enough that it even tinted my pupils and hair. So I had firmly believed that the summons who absorbed that mana simply unlocked matching fire-related evolution trees.

That belief first cracked with Echidna.

If I had to pick the summon farthest removed from the others, it would be her—because she alone underwent a class change instead of an evolution. Looking back carefully, nothing fire-related had been involved in her class change at all.

That gave me the hint. What was the real difference between evolution and class change? I divided them into "summon things" and "non-summon things."

Evolution could happen even if the summon itself didn't meet the conditions, so long as external power was added. Class change, however, required the individual alone to fulfill every condition. The premises had been different from the start.

The summons hadn't eaten fire mana, grown used to it, and thereby unlocked the corresponding evolutions. Simply because I possessed fire mana, the fire-related conditions on their evolution lists had already been checked off.

In plain terms: "I already had the materials in advance." Like accepting a quest and then realizing you'd already farmed the required materials by pure chance. Swap "quest" for "evolution," "required materials" for "conditions," and "already farmed" for "already fulfilled," and it fit perfectly.

It wasn't experience that put options on the evolution list; the options simply became available because the conditions were met.

Early summons, no matter how hard they struggled, could never level past ten. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠That was the limit of an initial summon. But what about after that?

Thinking about it carefully, the way levels reset with each evolution had always been a little strange. At the time I'd just accepted it as a system quirk and believed invisible levels were accumulating. But what if that wasn't the case?

...From here on it's pure hypothesis.

In game terms, the previous crow Hive had been a one-star. A one-star crow's limit was level ten; further growth was impossible. To aim higher it needed to become a two-star. So the crow met the conditions and became the two-star Guild Raven.

That raises a question. Are a one-star crow and a two-star Guild Raven the same individual? Or are they completely different entities that merely inherit the core elements?

In my view, "evolution" is the latter. Not swapping new parts into an existing computer tower, but buying an entirely new computer and transplanting only the hard drive from the old one. The contents are preserved while performance leaps ahead.

Echidna's level never reset because a new part called Dark Priest was simply added to her existing body. Hive and the other summons had their levels reset because the concept named Hive was extracted and transplanted into a newly created body called Guild Raven.

Seen that way, everything snaps into place. The appearance of Hive's evolution option at level twenty is also explained: among the Guild Raven's evolution routes there simply happens to be one whose condition is "level 20." It doesn't mean every other summon can evolve at twenty.

Time to test whether this hypothesis holds.

Conveniently, Growl was exactly level twenty. If I opened Growl's status window and no [Evolution Available] tag appeared, my hypothesis was correct. Even if it didn't, I could keep verifying with Kallion once he hit twenty and Echidna once she reached thirty.

Hypotheses are supposed to be settled through repeated experiments and cross-checks, so I planned to keep examining the opposite case as well.

I closed Hive's window and immediately opened Growl's.

"...Bingo."

The tangled mess suddenly became clear. I still couldn't call it certainty—I'd need a few more verifications—but I figured it was solid enough to trust about sixty percent of the time.

Why only sixty after all that long-winded explanation? Because of the possible meddling of those god bastards. Always prepare for the worst move; that way it hurts less when you get smacked in the back of the head later.

"So this is the fork in the road."

Evolve Hive right now. Or hold off a little longer and watch until level thirty.

I sorted my thoughts and stopped the finger that had been twitching.