Thunderer City.

"What did you say?" The mayor entered the control room. There were several officers maintaining a close look on the reconnaissance team.

"Sir!" A middle-aged man who covered his right eye with a big eyepatch saluted.

"What is the status?"

"There is a potential beast outbreak. These beasts are currently chasing our Recon Team 3. The scale is already in the thousands."

The mayor’s expression turned solemn. "How is their movement? Are they really coming here? Where’s the location?"

"The location is 14 km from this city. The beasts may already have an overlord among them, which is why the target has been upgraded to a potential outbreak. It may turn into a thousand-level beast wave."

"..." The mayor’s expression turned solemn. "Do we have a countermeasure?"

"As usual, Sir. We will fight them at the wall, using our firepower to bridge the gap between us. However, we need to locate the overlord among them. As long as we can kill that beast, the beasts will become disorganized and we can take them down quite easily."

The mayor continued, "What about our boys out there?"

"Everyone is already dead, with only the captain remaining, sir."

The mayor was stunned at first, but he soon gritted his teeth. It was painful to know that people had died.

However, he couldn’t stop here. He took a deep breath before asking, "What are we going to do next?"

"We will have to ring the alarm and inform everyone to fight. The scale of the beast is quite huge, but it’s not the biggest we’ve faced."

"Command!" Suddenly, the captain’s voice echoed in the room.

"Fox 1." The commander turned back to the screen, responding to his call.

"I’m not going to make it, Command."

The commander and the mayor closed their eyes with a pained look.

"Tell my wife and kids that I love them." The captain was making his final move.

"Sir! The enemy is shifting its direction."

"!!!" The commander realized that the captain was trying to lead them to a different location so that the beast wave wouldn’t form.

It looked like he had succeeded at first. If he brought the beasts away, they would end up breaking apart somewhere.

However, as the commander expected, it wouldn’t go smoothly. The enemy suddenly split into two.

Only a smaller portion of the beasts followed the captain. Still, even though it was small, there were at least a few hundred beasts moving away. These few hundred beasts could kill many humans.

After a few minutes, the signal suddenly went off.

The commander gritted his teeth and looked away. The captain had died.

The mayor took a deep breath. "The city won’t forget his contribution. However, it’s not the time yet. Commander..."

"Yes, sir." The commander nodded. "We have to send an ala..."

"Commander?" The mayor was confused by his sudden stop.

The commander saw the beasts that were supposed to have been led away turn back as though they were trying to join the ranks. However, because of the distance, it would take time for them to regroup.

"This..." The commander frowned.

"What is going on?"

"Normally, once they break off from the group, these beasts will stay there or continue elsewhere. It means that they’re no longer related to the group. That’s why it’s strange for them to suddenly want to join the group again..."

"Is there another beast commanding this pack?" The mayor gasped.

"Two leaders?" The commander looked down. "Normally, there is only one overlord. Two kings can’t exist in the same jungle. This beast outbreak is anything but normal."

"I don’t like unknown variables..." The mayor crossed his arms.

"We will have to stop these beasts from rejoining. No, wait..." The commander noticed something even weirder.

This smaller group suddenly changed its movement again.

"This... what is going on?" The commander truly had never seen anything like this before. On the one hand, he wanted to send a team to figure out exactly what happened. On the other hand, they didn’t have much time left.

The enemy was approaching. Looking at their speed, the beast wave would reach this city in three hours.

The mayor realized that the situation had gone crazier. There was no telling what would happen in this beast outbreak.

Nevertheless, they needed to make a decision.

...

The people in the city weren’t aware of what had happened yet. Auric was one of those people.

He simply smiled, looking at the Moon Store that had just been set up. There were two artificial heart methods available in the store. The first one was for a plant element. This plant element came from Arina.

After all, there was something special about the first. The second one was for a water element. It was a water element unrelated to anything he had.

This water element came from one of his customers. There were no other connections, which made it harder for everyone to trace it. Besides, the water element’s rating was 1.5 out of 5. He planned to start from the weaker elements.

Once everything had been set up, Auric opened the Sun Store and uploaded the first rank 2 gathering technique. He chose the wind element for his first one.

This book would change everything, including the evaluation of this store. However, it would probably take some time before Auric found out about it.

Now that he had set up the two stores, Auric felt satisfied. There was actually another reason why he was so happy this time.

The two stores were important, but he decided to set them up only after his evolution.

That was right. Auric had evolved another element.

The element he chose this time was none other than his first element, the plant element.

Auric had Arina’s plant element and the wood element from a customer. Arina had given him the most powerful technique she had back then, so with the wood element, he managed to get a total of 52% energy from these two.

Then, Ruka appeared with her element—Gentle Nature. Not only did her element rating reach as high as 4.6 out of 5, but the amount of energy he could gain from her battle technique was 30%.

As a result, he only needed 18% left to reach the perfect 100% and evolve. Unlike other elements, Arina’s plant element had a rating of 2.2 out of 5. This was weak enough to serve as his foundation.

Then, he was fortunate to encounter a customer with an element called Thorny Flowers. As the name implied, it allowed him to summon thorny flowers.

This element surprisingly had a rating of 3.0 out of 5. As a result, he spent his time filling up the energy and evolving this element.

Unfortunately, nothing changed after he evolved this one.

When he first awakened, Auric was able to see particles within the energy. After his first evolution, he was able to see energy within a person’s body.

After these two instances, he speculated that something would change after he evolved his element further.

So, he let go of any expectations on the remaining elements for the time being.

"Huuu..." Auric was satisfied with the result, regardless.

He checked the information on his bracelet.

Name: Auric Elfe

Avatar: None

Grade: Error

Affinity: Error

Element: (Fire 80%), Water (56%), Lightning (104%), Wind (60%), Earth (44%), Plant (100%), Light (20%), Dark (41%), Unique (88%)

Lindwurm couldn’t help but say, "As expected, you broke your bracelet."

"..." Auric smiled wryly. "I guess so?"

"Normally, after evolution, your number will go back to zero. However, you have so many elements. The bracelet doesn’t seem to be prepared to handle this kind of computation. As a result, instead of resetting the number, it continues beyond 100%."

"I think it’s fine." Auric smiled wryly. "From the looks of it, it’s still calculating correctly even though it’s broken. The 4% excess from the lightning element is truly equal to a 4% excess for a rank 2 lightning element."

"That is... true." Lindwurm couldn’t deny it. "I guess this makes it easier for us to keep track of your progress."

"Yes. Once it reaches 200%, it just means I have evolved the element one more time. After all, unlike the others..." Auric looked at the grade and affinity.

These two were supposed to let him know what his talent was and which element he was paired with.

But after the first evolution, the ’Grade’ and ’Affinity’ had changed from ’None’ to ’Error.’

This evolution had confirmed the situation for him.

"Hey, at least this bracelet is a private tool. No one has access to it." Auric shrugged.

"Fair point. What element do you want to focus on now?" Lindwurm asked.

"Because of the absolute fire, I was a bit too focused there, thinking it would be a good way to overpower my enemies. But the circumstances had made me focus back on my wind and plant elements. The plant element has evolved, while the wind will still take some time.

"Still, I guess I will prioritize the wind, since it’s the element I use publicly. However, unlike the previous case where I had to focus everything on the plant element, I want to power up other elements as well.

"In this case, I’m thinking of focusing on my unique element. The fire element is good, but the unique element makes my power tricky. Hence, I want to evolve them first. Looking at the progress, the unique element might even evolve before the wind element."

Lindwurm nodded in understanding. "I don’t really have any objections. It looks like you have thought this through."

"Yes." Auric had considered the pros and cons. The fire element might have the absolute fire, but the unique element was on a completely different level.

Besides, he had also created several new techniques. It would take time to master them, but he was satisfied with all those techniques.

"With this, I can finally tell my teacher that everything has been set up. I guess we should focus on finding light and dark elements. I only have two for both of them." Auric stretched his arms as he walked to campus.

To his surprise, as he had just stepped out of his room, Auric received a call.

"Hmm?" Auric took out his phone and saw the name.

’Teacher.’

"Speaking of the devil..." Auric smiled and accepted the call. "Good morning, Teacher. How can I help you?"

"Where are you right now?"

"I’m about to go to campus."

"So, you’re still at your home. Perfect. Come out now."

Auric was confused. He went down the stairs and waved to his mother. "Mom, I’m going."

"Sure. Be careful on the way." Natasha waved back.

When Auric came out of the house, he saw a car waiting outside.

Maya opened the front passenger-side window and waved to him, gesturing for him to come.

"Good morning, Teacher." Auric opened the door calmly.

"Just get in. We don’t have time."

Auric was baffled. "Why are we rushing? Is anything wrong?" He still sped up even though he was confused. Maya wasn’t the type of person to do something meaningless after all.

"We’re here as well."

Auric’s body shook. He turned around and saw Ellia and Arina. "You two are here? What’s going on?"

Maya explained, "A beast outbreak is imminent. According to the information, the beast wave has already formed. Soon, they will send an alert to everyone’s phone and sound the alarm an hour later."

"What?" Auric took out his phone. "I should tell my mom."

"Don’t tell her yet." Maya waved her hand. "The scale of this outbreak is quite big, but it’s not exactly the biggest. However, the movement of the beasts is strange. That’s why we’re not sure about everything. If you take a look around, you will notice that only one agent has been left to protect your mother.

"The rest are being reassigned to handle this outbreak. Once the alert is given, that agent will most likely guide your mother to the nearby shelter. So, for now, you need to stay calm. Ellia, explain everything. I’m going to speed up!" Maya snapped her fingers. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

"Understood." Ellia nodded. "I will give you a short explanation first. All of us are going to fight the beasts, but because of the tricky situation, it won’t go according to the usual method."