[New Skills Unlocked:]
Hive Mind Control (Active): Temporarily dominate the minds of up to 10 lower-intelligence enemies. Duration scales with Intelligence stat.
Crowned Sting of Delirium (Active): Injects corrupted pheromone venom that causes confusion, hallucination, or madness. Deals massive damage and disables targets.
Empress Nexus (Passive): Links all hive units in a 500m radius. Share sight, sound, and basic commands without verbal input.
Monarch’s Carapace (Passive): Reflects low-tier spells. 50% resistance to physical pierce and poison. Releases shock pheromone on impact.
Royal Broodspawn (Ultimate – Locked): Allows the Hive Empress to birth an elite royal drone with accelerated growth and intelligence. Cooldown: 1 week.
---
The Hive Empress clenched her fist, feeling an intense surge of power course through her body. She felt as if she could go against two Expert-ranks or even more without breaking a sweat.
"I feel... amazing," she muttered, staring at her own claws. "Like I can take on ten enemies alone and still win."
Even the other ants present in the room looked at the new form of their Empress with eyes full of reverence.
Nox simply smiled, choosing to allow the ants to have their mont. Now that she had evolved, it could be said that she was stronger than most Experts.
’She’s basically stronger than most Experts now... and I’ve barely scratched the surface of what she can do,’ he thought.
The Hive Empress glanced at him, her head slightly bowed. "Thank you, Master. This power... I’ll use it to protect the nest and the Barony."
"Good." Nox nodded calmly. "Take your ti. I want you to get used to your new skills before I send you out."
"Understood." She bowed one last ti.
Satisfied, Nox turned around and exited the chamber. He moved through the tunnels with ease and returned to the surface a few minutes later.
Sunlight hit his face as he erged from the underground nest and made his way across the garden. He took a brief glance at the sky, then brought up his System Shop again.
The Evolution Ticket was still there.
’No cooldown... repeat purchase allowed...’ Nox narrowed his eyes.
He had a feeling this was intentionally made this way. Almost like the System was baiting him into going all in.
’Dangerous... but useful.’
There were still other cool items in the shop—battle-type passives—but none of them ca close to the Evolution Ticket in terms of sheer ga-changing potential.
This thing skipped everything.
Rare materials? Useless.
Evolution quests? Who cared.
Level caps? Irrelevant.
Nox now had even greater motivation to farm more Shop Points. With the Evolution Ticket, he could evolve all his beasts in no ti.
"I still have 280,000 points left."
Without hesitation, he pressed the purchase button again.
[Ding! Evolution Ticket purchased.]
A second golden ticket appeared in his hand, glowing with the sa shimring runes.
Nox spun the card between his fingers and gave a slight smile.
’Not using it on Hive Empress again... so who’s next?’
This ti, he didn’t use it on his earlier pets. He had already converted a few of them—like Thirteen and Fluffington—into elental beasts and evolved them toward their second forms.
However, a majority of his beasts were still normal magical creatures.
Nox didn’t want to turn all of them into elental beasts as he had done previously. After all, he had a fleet of roughly 15 elental dragons—except the wind elent, as they had died even before entering the Scourge realm.
After so thought, Nox decided to use it on the Granite Colossus.
The rock golem he had tad in the Valkyrie Dinsion.
Snapping his fingers, a blue portal popped out of thin air, and the Granite Colossus stepped out.
It looked around slightly dazed—after all, it rarely ca out from the taming space unless summoned to fight.
When Nox had first tad it in the Valkyrie Dinsion, the Colossus had been a borderline raid boss. Even now, its raw strength, towering presence, and heavy defense made it one of the best frontline tanks under his command.
Nox gave it a once-over, nodded, then pulled out the golden Evolution Ticket and tapped it lightly against the Colossus’s chest.
[Ding! Use Evolution Ticket on contracted beast: Granite Colossus?]
[Y/N]
He pressed Yes without hesitation.
The ticket crumbled into shimring golden light and instantly sank into the Colossus’s core. Its body began to glow gold, the air around it vibrating.
CRACK!
Fissures appeared all over the Granite Colossus’s body, but instead of breaking apart like the Ant Queen, it began to grow right in front of Nox—until it towered over the Cromwell Mansion.
By now, everyone had noticed the golem’s presence and rushed over to the scene, thinking it was an enemy.
Most of them had even summoned their weapons, but abruptly paused when they saw Nox standing calmly in front of it.
"It must be one of his pets."
"But I’ve never seen this one before."
Ignoring the voices, Nox proceeded to check out the beast’s new skills brought by its evolution.
---
[Congratulations! Your contracted beast: Granite Colossus has evolved into Mountain Sovereign!]
[New Skills Unlocked:]
Mountain Manipulation (Ultimate): Control terrain within a 500-ter radius. Raise walls, form spikes, collapse cliffs, or summon rock avalanches. Cooldown: 5 minutes.
Avalanche (Ultimate): Jump and slam the ground, calling down a rain of boulders that deal AoE crushing damage. Deals 300% Strength as damage. Cooldown: 2 minutes.
Seismic Roar (Advanced): Releases a thunderous roar that creates deep tremors, stunning enemies within a 100-ter radius for 3 seconds and reducing their movent speed by 50% for 10 seconds. Cooldown: 3 minutes.
Titan’s Stance (Interdiate): Immovable while bracing. When standing still, gain 50% Defense and immunity to all knockback or crowd control effects.
Nox read through the descriptions silently, his expression unreadable. But inwardly, he was very pleased.
"A walking fortress," he muttered.
The Mountain Sovereign was now easily on par with peak Expert-rank existences—perhaps even stronger.
While Nox was evolving his pets and slowly increasing his strength, in Eve’s manor, a portal appeared out of thin air.
A slightly stunned expression appeared on Eve’s face.
"What are they doing here?" A hostile look appeared on her face as she saw the figures that stepped through.
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