Second Evolution

We separated upon exiting the dungeon and offered both teams a profuse amount of thanks.

“Don’t worry about it,” Lise said, smiling. “Go rescue your kids.”

“Make sure you tell ‘em how cool we were!” Brian called as they headed back inside, presumably to resume lounging around.

We were exhausted, but it had already been three weeks. I'm going to evolve now, I told them. Then we’ll get going.

“Wait, you can evolve on your own?” Maxwell asked, eyes widening. “How’s that work? Can she do it too?”

No, it’s just me. I don’t know why.

He shook his head in amazement. “Alright, let’s see this then.”

==Evolution Available==
                   YES

Time stopped, and I found myself in an empty space in front of Fyth. "Congratulations on your second evolution, my dear servant," he said, clapping politely. "May I just say that I love how devoted you are to your Master?"

I ignored that. "What are my options?"

He bowed, and the screen appeared with my options. There was only one. My eyes narrowed. "What are the other options?"

"Does it matter? We both know what you’ll choose," Fyth said with such a wide grin that I couldn’t begin to discern whether he was serious. "Now, please, evolve your Master."

“No. I want to know what the other options are. Why are you hiding them?”

Fyth’s lips twitched down for a moment, but then he sighed loudly as though he found my demand unreasonable, and the other options appeared. Gamble and Limited Store. I wavered. What if one of those was the better option? Limited Store probably wouldn’t help Nero right this second, but I didn’t know what Gamble did. What if it could rescue him?

“What does Gamble do?” I asked.

Fyth scowled. “It’s a gamble, exactly as the name implies. There are no limits to what it could do. You might become God, you might get a packet of tissues, or you might be erased from existence.” He snorted. “So you see? I was simply, out of the goodness of my heart, I might add, offering you the option you need to select. I merely wanted to save my dearest, most cherished servant the agony of worrying whether she chose the right option.”

“Do you even have a heart?” I wondered idly.

“Of course I do. Do you want to see?” He looked disturbingly excited about the possibility.

“No, thank you.” I considered it. That really was a gamble. With LUCK UP, the probability that I’d get a bad option was reduced, but there were so many possibilities that it was unlikely I’d get one that helped my Master. And yet, Fyth had tried to present me only the option to enhance Nero. Didn’t that mean he also wanted to avoid me choosing one of the other options? “Can I look at the Limited Store without deciding that’s the one I want?”

“Nope.”

Gamble really did seem too risky, and I really did think that enhance Master was the correct option… But I decided to make my own sort of gamble. “I want a favor from you.”

Fyth froze. “What?”

“I want a favor. I’ll choose to enhance Nero if you grant me a favor.”

Fyth laughed, but the sound was uneasy. “You’ll choose it anyway, because choosing either of the other options is almost guaranteed to mean letting him die. I don’t need to agree to anything.”

Almost guaranteed. In other words, he thought there was a possibility I'd save Nero even without enhancing him. “Even so, unless you agree to a favor, I’ll choose something else.”

The air grew cold around me. I struggled not to shiver as my fur started to freeze. My ears hurt. My nose felt numb. My eyes burned. Fyth bared his teeth at me, and I made myself stay still and not flinch away from the sharp teeth and rotten breath behind them. “Why should I care?” he snarled. “Do as you like.”

I felt like crying. “Alright, I’ll choose Limi -”

“What kind of favor?”

I paused, thinking. “I want you to answer one question for me, fully and honestly.” If he agreed to this, I'd have to be careful not to ask any accidental questions and waste it. He was definitely the sort to give me an exhaustingly detailed answer to 'how are you' and then claim that was the favor fulfilled.

Fyth remained silent for several moments. At last, the atmosphere eased. “Fine. You have my promise that I will answer one question, fully and honestly, and in exchange, you will enhance your Master.”

I let out a loud exhale, nearly collapsing as relief flooded my body. “Enhance Master,” I told the world.

Time resumed. I looked around. I was bigger. That much was certain.

Status.

Name: Luna (former: Lena)                                        Level: 50/120
Summon Date: 10.21.19                                            Master: Nero
Type: Demon - SSR
Status: normal                                                             Health: 100/100
Skills:                                                                             Available Points: 4
     Active: Assess Lv. 5, Shadow Claw Lv. 10,           Passive: AGI UP Lv. 3, 
     Blessing Lv. 4, Stealth Lv. 1, Fly, Demonic           LUCK UP Lv. 4, Sleepless
     Blade Lv. 1, Illusion, Telepathy, Intuition,            Night, Abyssal Veil
     Scout Lv. 1, Devour
Titles: Agent of Fyth, Hated by God, Ruler

There were some things in there that I didn't know what to make of, but overall, it was about what I expected. I hoped that his evolution helped Nero survive. I switched my attention to my body, a giddy grin spreading across my lips as I realized that I did, indeed, have opposable thumbs. I looked down and could see human legs and arms. I was pretty flat, but whatever. I’d been part of team ‘Flat Is Justice!’ anyway, so I wasn’t going to complain if I fit my ideals. I definitely did need to obtain some clothing so that I wasn’t a walking public indecency report, though. 

I strained to look behind me, and sure enough, there was a tail twitching about. I reached up to touch my face and was relieved that it felt human, save for a pair of cat ears. My wings had grown, too.

It all seemed perfect except for one thing.... "Justice, did you grow?"

"Not… to my knowledge."

I glanced at Heather. She and Justice were both still much taller than I was. I looked over at Maxwell, who was carefully not looking at me, and he was also about twice my size. I clenched my jaw. “Fine. Lend me one of your dresses, Heather, and then let’s get going.” If I spent the rest of the journey back to Flint City fuming about being a child-sized human, could you blame me?

***

Nero lay on the ground in the pitch black of their small shelter and wished he’d gotten Assess. How was he supposed to know whether Alicia could manage a bit longer or not when he couldn’t see her, couldn’t talk to her, couldn’t even check on her Status? She’d passed out when Fay died, though, and there wasn’t anything he could do about that. All he could do was wait and hope that she regained consciousness before he grew too weak to do anything for her.

“Mister Nero?” a small voice asked. It was one of the handful of other adventurers who had stayed behind in this shelter with him. Her sister was dead to the world, having lost her summons, and this girl, Clara, was doing her best to hold herself together.

Nero forced himself to sit up and turn toward her voice, even though they couldn’t see each other. “What’s up, Clara?” he asked. He tried to make himself sound friendly and reassuring.

“Are we going to die here?”

His heart broke. “No. You’ll see. Alicia and I have summons on the outside, and they’ll find a way to save us. I promise.” It was an empty promise. It had been more than two weeks since the dungeon had changed, and if there was something anyone could have done, they’d have done it by now.

He and Alicia had been on the ninth floor when it happened. One moment, they’d been going through it as normal. Then the mist had disappeared, and they’d found themselves standing on what appeared to be nothing. Below, beside, and above them, they could see small groups of adventurers and summons, all standing on equally invisible surfaces. Some appeared to be upside down or sideways. The space between them looked empty, but there had to be something there, Nero remembered thinking.

Then a grinding sound that was both so deep it made his organs thrum in harmony and so high it made his teeth hurt started up, and he’d clutched his ears for a moment before realizing that the world was slowly tilting. He’d grabbed Alicia, who had grabbed Fay, and then they were sliding. The slide turned into a tumble, and then a fall, before they hit another invisible surface and started tumbling again.

Over and over it happened, with Alicia ordering Fay to heal them as often as she could. Nero could see, at times, the other groups of adventurers. They weren’t always falling, but they usually were, and as time passed, they found themselves being drawn closer together until at last, they were all piled in one great heap in the middle of the invisible maze. The sound stopped, and the world stopped moving, allowing them to finally separate themselves from each other.

Despite the chaos, there were few serious injuries. They were adventurers, after all, and anyone entering a dungeon was sturdier than your average person. As they collected themselves, walls started to fade into being around them. They were no longer in a field-type dungeon. Instead, they seemed to be in a cave system. Stalactites and stalagmites rapidly grew until they were standing on the lip of a massive underground lake. Above them, crystals sparkled like stars, and the walls glowed with the gentle green light of phosphorescent fungus.

It was beautiful in an entirely different way from Rainbow Sky Slide.

“W-what happened? Where are we?” a girl maybe a year younger than Nero asked. She had an Earth Elemental with her. Beside her, an identical girl clutched a small, fluffy bear-like summon to her chest.

Most of them were equally lost, but one woman with lined features said, “I… think the dungeon might be evolving.”

Nero wasn’t sure about Alicia, but he felt stupid for not having realized the possibility existed. If dungeons could appear - be born, in a way - then why shouldn't they be able to change further - evolve?

“If that’s what’s happening,” the woman continued, “we should find a safe spot as quickly as we can, before monsters spawn here. We don’t know what rank this dungeon will be when it finishes evolving.”

They’d listened to her advice and found themselves a dead end they could easily fortify. They spent a few days with one group of people building a wall between their safe spot and the rest of the dungeons, and other groups scouting out the floor they’d ended up on.

Then, about a week after the dungeon had changed, the monsters appeared.

They already had a full map of the floor they were on, though they had no way of knowing how many floors there were altogether. There was no way to go backwards in a dungeon, so the best they could hope to discover was how deep the dungeon ran. The scouting groups had started mapping out the next floor down that morning, and they should have come back that evening.

None of them did.

The group that had stayed behind, which included Nero and Alicia, heard nothing from outside. The next day, Nero used Stealth to check what was happening outside their shelter. What he found horrified him. Dark, silent shadows crept about the caverns now. He didn’t know what level they were, but he felt the same dread from them that he’d felt from the Skeleton King and the Goblin King. He retreated without exploring further.

He reported this on his return, and they sealed up their shelter, leaving only a tiny hole, in hopes that it would prevent any monsters from noticing them.

There were a few dozen people in the dungeon originally, but at the end of the first week, that number fell to only seventeen people. The people doing the scouting had been some of their strongest, and they’d been in parties, not alone, and yet almost everyone who had been scouting was gone.

One scout did make it back, several days later. He fell against the outside wall of their shelter and collapsed there, breathing heavily. He told them not to bother letting him in.

“The shadows aren’t too bad,” the scout said. “Stay away from the light. You can’t kill them, but you can avoid them. The rest, though… There’s things. They’re made of rotting meat, but they ain’t zombies. I dunno what they are. They can sense you, and they’re strong. I saw ‘em rip a person in two with their bare hands…” His voice trembled. “And there are the mushrooms. We ran out of food, and one of us tried to eat them… He died. Don’t eat the mushrooms. And then there’s these lights. Will o’ the wisp type things. A lot of us died to them. Saw one and just went funny. Got up and went straight to the walking hunks of flesh and laughed as they got torn to shreds.”

“What level are they?” one of the adventurers inside the shelter called.

The scout laughed hopelessly. “I dunno. Seventy? Eighty? Too strong. That’s all I know. We can’t kill them. We’re done for.” With that, he got up and disappeared. They never heard from him again.

Sixteen.

Alicia tried hard to keep everyone’s spirits up. She tried talking, singing, and telling stories. As their food ran low, though, it started to get difficult. And then one of the shadows found them.

Someone disappeared in an instant, nothing but a shadow left behind where they’d been. The shadow spread. As the scout had said, nothing they did even affected the shadow. They’d lost more people and a good dozen summons before Clara, in a fit of desperation, doused all the lights. 

The sounds of fighting - or attempting to fight - continued for a few moments, but gradually, they fell silent. Nero asked everyone to say their names. They got back eight names, in addition to his. Slowly, by feeling around, they were able to gather up the people and discovered that three people were alive but unresponsive. One of them was a girl named Marie. Her sister, Clara, recognized her by a bracelet she wore. Another, they didn’t know the identity of… and the last was Alicia. They grouped everyone within their shelter and waited in the pitch black of their tomb. There was nothing they could do.

Food ran low. They’d rationed it as best they could, but there was only so much they could do.

God, Fyth, anyone… If you can hear me, please, at least save them. You can take me. Just save the rest of them, please. Anyone. It’d become his prayer, one Nero said over and over again just to break up the silence of his own mind. No one ever replied.

“Nero?” a weak voice asked from the darkness.

Nero reached out and groped for Alicia’s hand. “Alicia! You’re - you’re awake.”

“Fay…. She’s…” She broke into quiet tears.

They waited longer. Nero prayed. No one answered. Alicia prayed. No one answered. Everyone prayed. No one answered.

“Nero?" Alicia said faintly. She sounded like she was crying again. "Please don't hate me. I think that if I… I think that I could manage to –”

And then Nero found himself once more in front of a shadow of a man. Fyth. Luna had managed to do something. He'd given up entirely, but she'd managed, somehow, to evolve. 

“Congratulations. My dear servant has granted you the chance to evolve. Do feel free to shower her, and me by extension, as her true master, with praise and adulation,” the demon lord said to him.

Nero grimaced. “She’s not a servant. She’s a person.” He understood this wasn't the time or place, but the way Fyth staked some sort of claim over Luna grated at him. 

Fyth grinned broadly as though he could see the heart of Nero's irritation. “Isn’t she? Ah, but perhaps ‘slave’ would be a better descriptor? Tell me, what rights does she possess? In what way is she not a slave? In fact, I’m being quite kind by merely calling her my servant.” He chuckled and patted Nero's shoulder. “But fair enough. I should use the proper terminology. She’s really our slave, isn’t she?”

As much as he wanted to protest it, Nero realized with a sinking sense that Fyth was right. Luna had no rights in this world. She’d been her own person in her world, but since arriving here, she legally wasn’t a person. She could disobey him, which was unusual for a summon, but she was utterly dependent on him if she wanted to live in human society. It wasn't fair.

“But that’s not the discussion we should be having now,” Fyth said suddenly. “No. You need to choose what you will take from this evolution. Your options, Nero. Choose wisely.”

Three options presented themselves to Nero. Once more, he had the options ‘Limited Store’ and ‘Gamble.’ This time, the third option was ‘Save two people.’

“What does that mean?” he asked. “Save two people? Why only two? Can’t I choose one of the other options and save everyone?”

Fyth drew near, and Nero retreated, not liking the smile Fyth was giving him. “Let’s just say that saving them otherwise would be wasted. That choice alone guarantees their survival. Personally, I think you should choose one of the others, though. Every soul is worth quite a few points, you know. As your sponsor, I’d be much obliged if you would choose a skill instead.”

“Why not ‘Gamble?’” Nero asked, though he didn’t understand what Fyth meant by souls and points.

Fyth snorted. “Humans. So interested in that option, even though it’s the most useless one. As I told our slave, it could do anything. The possibilities are limitless. Limitless beneficial possibilities, limitless stupid possibilities, limitless pointless possibilities, and limitless negative possibilities.”

That did, indeed, sound like a bad option. Nero thought about the dungeon he was in. Was there any skill that could actually get him and eleven other starving people, two of whom were still unconscious, out of there? “You said it guaranteed that at least two people would survive, right? That doesn't mean everyone else has to die, though, does it?”

Fyth sounded annoyed when he responded, “Technically, no. And before you ask, yes, it will guarantee that the two you choose will survive even if you die. But choosing that option will mean missing out on some very interesting Skills, remember. I'm sure many of the available Skills would serve you well in the future.”

There wasn’t a time limit on that statement. Did that mean that the two people he chose were guaranteed to survive for the rest of their natural lives? That would be nice. More importantly, though, was the way Fyth phrased the bit about the Skills. 'They'd serve him well in the future.' In other words, choosing from the Limited Store wouldn't be what saved him now. In fact, it seemed like Fyth was implying that Nero's survival was a matter of course. 

He might be reading too far into things. Nero understood that. However, he took in the demon lord’s irritation, visible in his too-tight smile and jerky movements, and the way Fyth was still trying to convince him to choose from the Limited Store instead, and decided to trust himself. “I want to save two people. Alicia and Clara,” he said.

The last thing he heard was a loud sigh. Then everything went dark again. He felt different. The fear was gone. In its place came a deep, pulsating hunger, so intense he forgot everything. He breathed in deeply. There was food nearby. He could smell it. Bring it to me. His body was weak right now, but food would make it strong. Parts he didn’t have names for, body parts he’d never before had or controlled, reached out and plucked the food up and carried it over. He bit into it with sharp teeth and moaned in pleasure as hot, bright fluid burst into his mouth.

“Nero? What was that? Are you okay?”

He heard a voice. For a second, he thought it was more food, but then a sense settled about it that this was Not Food. He reached out with the new body parts and prodded at it curiously. The Not Food recoiled, and he followed it. It was weak, whatever it was. It needed food, too. 

"Nero? Nero! Where are you! What is this thing?" 

He climbed onto the Not Food, ignoring the way it kicked and hit at him. He was weak, but it was weaker. Another Not Food came and started hitting him, too, but it was even weaker. 

He concentrated. One of the parts he didn’t know the name of entered the Not Food's mouth and wriggled down its throat, connecting them so he could share his food with it. It tried to rip him out of it. That wasn't good, so he knocked it unconscious. This Not Food was important to him, he thought. He needed to keep it alive. 

The other Not Food was also important, he supposed, so he connected himself to that one and knocked it out, too. Now the food was screaming, but that was fine. Food should struggle. He rose to his feet and staggered from one food to the next, wrapping them in his new parts and feeling thick, hot power flow into him from them. At last, it was silent again. He'd captured all the food, and the Not Food was safe. There wasn't enough food, though.

"Servant. Find more food," he ordered the rocky creature that had stopped hitting him when the Not Food fell unconscious. It didn't appear to understand him. It was not food, though, and it wasn't hostile. He ignored it and extended his own senses instead. There was nothing here. No food existed here beyond what he'd already obtained. He sighed and reached out further, even though he was still weak and needed rest. There. He plunged his new parts through the rock that made up the chamber wall in a specific section. On the other side was another level, and in that level, there was plenty of food. 

The rest could be done automatically. He didn't need to be conscious to hunt down this food. He wove his new parts about himself and let his eyes slide closed. He would rest until he was strong, and then he and his Not Foods would leave. That was a plan. It was a good plan.

He slept.