Chapter 180 And The Questions Keep Piling Up

After Eliza pointed out the digression of their earlier discussion, the trio decided to continue their dungeon diving while Evan and Pride still talked about the status effect situation.

Not long after, they encountered one of the monsters normally found on the 11th -20th floors of the Mansion of the Damned, a rift mage.

The creature was a short-masked humanoid about a metre tall. It was dressed in light blue and white coloured mage robes, showing its ice element type, and held a short staff or wand that was the same height as it was.

Upon noticing them, the monster squealed before waving its staff and tossing a dozen icicles at the group.

In the short moments it took for them to avoid the incoming attack, it summoned a pack of wolf monsters and sent them after the trio.

These were the monsters that they were dealing with while discussing Pride's title. Mid-battle, Evan appraised the creature and saw that besides the default rift mage skills, it also had a unique skill; Mind Control.

The creature escaped right after Evan destroyed its second summoning magic circle, which led to Evan and co following Eliza who saw where the rift mage disappeared to.

Just when they got into range and sensed the monster, it used its mind control skill on Eliza, however, it found that it was unable to take control of her mind and instantly switched target to Pride.

However, that was a bigger mistake as the high demon's mentality was too strong for it to breach, and the act of using its skill on her allowed her to zero in on its exact position.

In a last-ditch effort, the creature reactivated the skill on Evan who was lost in his thoughts at the time, taking advantage of the status effect currently on Evan and infiltrating the young hero's mind through the gap it created.

Pride had created a spear of flames and was about to toss it towards the monster, however, she instantly sensed something wrong with Evan and turned to him warily, just in time to see him suddenly activating multiple skills at once, something a normal Evan would not do as he knew his body would not have been able to take it without repercussions.

Eliza noticed the monster at the same time she saw Evan and Pride's actions. She had wanted to speak up, but upon seeing Kayla materialize herself and gaze at Evan warily, she realised something was wrong.

All these happened within the span of a single minute, long enough for adaptive evolution to kick in and deal with the mind control on Evan.

Thus, the current situation with Evan receiving healing from Eliza to deal with his internal injuries caused by overloading his body with skills.

'The status effect is gone...'

Although Evan was not completely sure why, the status effect on him was not there anymore. He lowered his gaze and looked at the new resistance that had appeared on his resistance tab.

'So, we just talked about how the status effect was a mental thing and some stupid creature decided to use enough mind control on me to trigger adaptive evolution once more.

But still, although adaptive evolution hardly activates, when it does, the things it gives are quite useful.

Though it has only given me resistances so far.'

"Thanks, Liz."

Evan thanked Eliza who nodded while giving him a strange gaze. Noticing this, the young hero only gave a depreciating smile as he understood the reason for her gaze.

He remembered every single thought that passed through his mind in those few moments and couldn't help but heave an exhausted sigh.

'There's no way that those thoughts came out of nowhere. The fact that they came up there meant that they were things I had been subconsciously thinking about.

Though I'm attributing the ones about being 'superior' to the status effect, the ones about the 'disasters' aren't the same.

Or are they?'

Standing up, he stretched his body out with a pensive look on his face as he pondered on the thoughts he had at that time.

['Just let the UNDEAD kill them all.'

'Let the LIZARDS tear them to shreds.'

'Allow the BASILISKS to turn them to stone.'

'Let the BARBARIANS kill them all!'

'The WOLF should end them all!'

'Let that DESERT fall!']

'That just casually picked out six of the seven disasters I haven't prevented yet. Disasters that would be detrimental to Aidos if they happened.

After all, all these disasters were just conduits for the ritual magic the Demonic Hand is preparing to use and destroy the seal on the dimensional rift.'

This was a shocking truth that not even 'The Five' were aware of.

Evan himself, only became aware of it when he battled the 'First Finger' in the game too, as without that, he would have not known this too.

Behind every one of the 'Eight Disasters', there was a 'Finger' of the Demonic Hand involved.

Just like how the 'Sixth Finger' was the one in charge of getting Pride from the Graveyard of the Arrogant, and the 'Eight Finger' was the one in charge of the 'Dullahan Attack'.

The Demonic Hand was behind each one of the disasters, all for the sole reason of causing more death and destruction, and causing more blood to be spilt.

'That's why even if I say I don't care for the people of Aidos, I can't let the disasters happen, and even if they do, they can't happen on the scale they did in the game.

Besides, each one of the disasters involves high levelled beings, so more things for me to kill and gain more experience points.'

It was then that he realised he was just making excuses to himself and sighed. Picking up his weapon from the ground and tossing it into his inventory, he decided to call it a day, even though it was still early.

'I do wonder where the extra experience comes from though, Artemisia didn't explain how it worked, and neither is it explained in the Archive.

I don't even know how the 'Devour Class system' Artemisia talked about works, just what Is being 'Devoured'?

Energy?

Life Force?

Souls?

Energy cores?'