The scorched earth was entirely silent for a fraction of a second.

Hide lay perfectly still on his back, his vision swimming as the edges of his consciousness began to fade into a cold, comforting black.

The massive, unhealed wound in his stomach was leaking dark, thick blood onto the pulverized ashes of the Flock Master. He had pushed his fragile human vessel far beyond its biological limit, fueled solely by a volatile mixture of corrupted mana and an absolute, traumatic rage.

The adrenaline that had kept him standing was completely gone, leaving nothing but the agonizing reality of a shredded torso.

But as the darkness threatened to consume him, the environment around him reacted.

The ambient, heavy mana of Estopia—which hung in the pitch-black air like an invisible, gelatinous fog—suddenly began to swirl.

Within seconds, a violent vacuum formed directly above Hide’s chest. The dark, corrupted mana of the alien world was being forcefully sucked downward, spiraling into his body like water circling a drain.

Hide’s skin began to glow. A deep, ominous violet light radiated from his veins, illuminating the dark ash around him in a spectral halo.

The system window hovering in his fading vision flared with blinding golden light, cutting through the encroaching darkness of his mind.

[Class Evolution Initiated]

Syncing physical vessel with dark mana core...

Restructuring cellular damage...

Class Rank Evolving.

A violent, burning sensation washed through Hide’s bloodstream.

The massive, ragged hole in his stomach violently knit itself together. Hide gasped, his back arching off the dirt as muscle fibers reconnected like woven steel cables, skin regenerating flawlessly over the gap, and his crushed ribs snapping back into perfect alignment.

The dark mana from Estopia was being used as raw fuel to completely rebuild him.

His body was forcefully rebooted, not just to its previous state, but to a newly elevated peak condition.

[Evolution Complete]

Class Rank Increased: (F-Rank → E-Rank)

10 Unallocated Stat Points awarded.

Evolution points awarded.

You have Received a new Talent.

Hide’s eyes snapped open. The deep blue glow in his irises was noticeably darker, now carrying a faint, terrifying ring of violet around the pupils. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

He sat up quickly, dragging in a massive breath of air. He felt completely energized, the lingering fatigue of the battles was entirely erased. But as his physical senses returned, he felt a strange, shifting sensation across his skin.

His Abyssal Scale Carapace was rapidly retreating.

Because the skill had just leveled up to Level 3, and his class had simultaneously evolved, the biological anchor of the scales needed to completely resynchronize with his newly upgraded cellular structure. The indestructible black plates dissolved, sinking seamlessly back into his pores.

And as the last scale vanished from his chest, Hide realized a glaring, immediate problem.

He was completely naked.

The fight had shredded his shirt during the initial ambush, and his own point-blank Abyssal Flame had incinerated whatever was left of his pants.

Hide froze, the cold air of Estopia suddenly feeling very apparent against his bare skin.

Ten feet away, past the edge of the scorched earth, Elara was kneeling on the grass next to the unconscious Evelyn. Elara had her head turned, staring directly at Hide.

Her mouth was hanging slightly open, her eyes wide and face frozen in an expression of utter, shell-shocked disbelief.

"Don’t look!" Hide hissed, his face instantly flushing red. Not like she could without her glasses.

He scrambled backward on his hands and knees like a startled crab, throwing himself entirely behind a thick, waist-high patch of overgrown, bladed grass that completely shielded him from her view.

Hide crouched in the dark behind the grass, his heart hammering against his ribs. The sheer absurdity of the situation momentarily broke through the apocalyptic dread of the environment. He needed clothes.

He couldn’t fight a Calamity Lord with his junk blowing in the wind.

He immediately pulled up the System interface, bypassing his stat screen and directly opening the [Shop].

His eyes widened slightly as he looked at the top right corner of the holographic window.

[Evolution Points: 311,500]

He had accumulated a massive sum. Between leveling up twenty times and hitting a major Class Evolution milestone, he had amassed an absolute fortune.

But as he scrolled through the standard armor section—looking for a quick pair of reinforced pants a small, pulsing red dot hovering over the [Artifacts] tab caught his attention.

Hide navigated to it.

At the very top of the list, a special, time-limited banner was flashing in bright gold text: [Class Evolution Discount — 50% Off].

Right beneath the banner was an item bordered in the deep, radiant crimson that denoted an SSS-Rank artifact.

[Abyssal Slime Cells]

Type: Symbiotic Liquid

Description: A sentient, dark liquid slime that binds at a molecular level to the Host’s body. It can bend, stretch up to 100 times its original mass, and seamlessly take any shape or form the Host desires.

Special Trait: Cellular elasticity allows for the absorption and nullification of low-to-mid tier mana-based attacks.

Base Price: 500,000 EP

Discounted Price: 250,000 EP

Hide stared at the screen, his breath catching in his throat.

Two hundred and fifty thousand points. His heart literally skipped a beat at the sheer magnitude of the number. It would practically wipe out his entire fortune in a single, devastating purchase.

But his mind immediately began to break down the tactical applications.

His Abyssal Scale Carapace was incredibly durable, but it was currently offline, forcibly cooling down to sync with his new body.

If he was caught off guard without them, he was just a fragile human.

But the Abyssal Slime was different. It was a symbiotic liquid. It could stretch and reform.

’Wait,’ Hide’s blue eyes narrowed in the dark as the realization hit him. ’Vora uses gravity. She crushes solid objects by applying overwhelming atmospheric pressure. If I wear rigid armor, the armor will just be crushed into my skin. But liquid can’t be crushed the same way.’

It was the absolute perfect countermeasure to survive the Golden Calamity Lord’s domain. And he was getting an SSS-Rank item—something that usually belonged only to the highest echelons of myth—for half the price.

’Buy it,’ Hide commanded mentally, clenching his jaw.

[Purchase Confirmed. 250,000 EP deducted.]

A small, perfectly smooth, pitch-black sphere of liquid materialized directly into his spatial inventory.

He didn’t stop there. Wearing a skin-tight layer of dark slime would make him look like a walking shadow, and he needed a secondary layer of physical defense to hide the artifact’s true nature.

He quickly navigated to the standard clothing section and spent 2,000 EP on a C-Rank tactical jacket—a highly durable, deep blue jacket reinforced with mana-resistant synthetic fibers. He bought a basic pair of reinforced black combat trousers for another 1,000 EP.

Hide pulled the [Abyssal Slime Cells] from his inventory.

The moment the black liquid touched the palm of his hand, it reacted. It didn’t feel wet or cold like water.

It felt strangely warm, almost as if it possessed its own faint, microscopic heartbeat. It felt like an extension of his own nervous system.

"Cover," Hide whispered, visualizing a full-body suit.

The black liquid rapidly expanded. It crawled up his arm, spreading across his chest, down his legs, and wrapping around his neck. Within seconds, it flawlessly molded to his physique, forming a sleek, skin-tight black bodysuit that offered zero movement restriction. It felt entirely weightless, breathing and flexing perfectly with his muscles.

He quickly threw the black trousers on, followed by the C-Rank blue jacket, zipping it up halfway.

He was fully geared, fully healed, and fully evolved. The entire process—from the moment the system healed him to dressing in SSS-Rank liquid armor had taken barely sixty seconds.

Hide stepped out from behind the tall grass, his boots crunching softly on the scorched earth.

A few feet away, resting perfectly in the center of the ashes where the insect-man had burned, was the core of the Flock Master.

Hide paused, looking down at it. It was incredibly strange. Most C-Rank cores were the size of a fist, jagged and heavy.

But this core was tiny, roughly the size of a metal ball bearing. It pulsed with a dense, sickly green light. It made sense; a hive-mind organism didn’t need a massive core, it needed a highly compressed, ultra-dense processor to control millions of individual bugs.

Hide reached down, his fingers brushing the warm surface of the tiny crystal.

THWACK!

Before Hide could even secure the core, something incredibly heavy and fast flew through the air, violently slamming directly into the center of his back.

The kinetic impact was massive. Hide grunted, stumbling forward a full two steps before catching his balance. The Abyssal Slime beneath his jacket instantly hardened at the point of impact, flawlessly absorbing the kinetic shock and dispersing it across his back, saving his spine from snapping.

Hide spun around, his hand instinctively dropping to the hilt of Night Singer.

Laying in the dirt at his feet, groaning weakly, was Rol.

The spatial assassin was in horrific shape. He had been literally thrown out of the sky. His grey combat uniform was completely shredded, soaked in fresh blood. His body was covered in a myriad of deep, jagged gashes.

Yet, even hovering on the absolute brink of unconsciousness, Rol’s knuckles were white, his hand locked in a death grip around the hilt of his combat knife.

"Rol!" Hide shouted, dropping to one knee beside the man.

Rol coughed, his glowing grey eyes barely fluttering open. "The... gravity... she can invert it..." he wheezed, before his eyes rolled back and he passed out entirely.

Hide snapped his head up, his gaze tracking the trajectory from which Rol had been thrown.

Thirty yards away, at the base of the flattened hill, the battlefield was a chaotic nightmare of red mana and shattered earth.

Elara was desperately shaking Evelyn, trying to wake and drag her further back into the tree line. Garret was dead. Rol was down.

And fighting entirely alone amidst the devastation was Claire.

The A-Rank telekinetic was a mesmerizing, terrifying blur of motion. Her red aura flared like a beacon in the dark as she desperately engaged the Golden Calamity Lord. Vora was floating effortlessly ten feet above the cracked earth, laughing melodically as she continuously manipulated the gravitational fields.

Chunks of bedrock the size of cars were being violently ripped from the ground and hurled at Claire with the speed of artillery shells. Claire was dodging, weaving, and using her fifty orbiting projectiles to shatter the incoming boulders, her massive greatsword spinning wildly through the air to counterattack.

But every time Claire managed to slip a blade past the crushing gravity wells, Vora simply didn’t block. The Golden Sovereign allowed the steel to hit her, her flawless pale flesh instantly turning into a splash of thick, golden liquid, completely negating the physical damage before seamlessly reforming a second later.

Claire was an absolute powerhouse, but the reality of the situation was grim. She was bleeding from a gash on her forehead, her breathing was visibly ragged, and she was fighting an entity that fundamentally defied the laws of physics.