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  !System Informational!

  As you move into your D-grade racial evolution, the nature of racial evolution changes, and thus the naming convention changes to Evolutionary Mutation to better describe the process. Your body is no longer so weak and malleable that it can be overhauled with a single evolution. And thus, you can not change who you are with a single decision, but rather, redirect yourself toward a new path, with each step along that path coming with more subtle changes. Keep in mind that the path you select here will not completely change who you are, but alter how you move forward, and what options will be available to you if you reach C-grade and beyond.

  But do not worry! Selecting a path will not lock you permanently into the selected path, unlike the E-grade stage that changes you at a fundamental level. You may still alter your path as you continue down it, but be cautious; the further you travel down a selected path, the harder it will be to rewrite the decisions you make.

  Progress toward a new path — Specter Evolutionary Mutation!

  These deathly beings of ghostly energy exist between the realities of the living and the dead, feeding on fear. Their appearance is that of a ghost, often transparent and shadow-like. Abundant with aether, they are far more vulnerable to direct attacks as their HP and other tangible defenses are low. But they make up for it by being extraordinarily difficult to hurt and gaining the Racial Skill [ Phase ].

  Specters favor cunning and deception, and make for powerful mind-corrupting casters. But rarely excel in the martial realms.

  Warning: Becoming a specter may change your view on the world, and your relations with the living!

  Progress toward a new path — Shinigami Evolutionary Mutation!

  The shinigami is neither dead nor quite alive. They are the helpers of the dead, ferrymen, those destined to lead the dead on their journey to what lies beyond. But shinigami are a unique species. Unlike many who deal in death, the shinigami maintains its living features, and is not truly dead itself. As a guide for the dead, shinigami can channel and grow aether naturally while maintaining their physical attributes. This natural ability toward aether usually results in lower levels for other energy sources. However, beware that deferring from one’s main racial evolutionary path into that of the shinigami may deprive the user of advanced tempered aspects that come with their usual racial evolutions.

  Shinigami specialize in combat that attacks both the physical and spiritual, and can make decent casters as well as melee combatants.

  Warning: Shinigami may receive quests and other links to the spirit realms hidden from others.

  Progress toward a new path — Thickhide Ogre Evolutionary Mutation!

  The thickhides are no ordinary ogres. Sturdier than most, taking down a thickhide is no easy task. These ogres are exceptionally tough and bigger than most, taking particular pride in their bellies, or rather, the size of their bellies. The Thickhide Ogre Evolution provides a significant bonus to the user's durability against most damage types, but their hunger massively increases in return. A thickhide is almost always hungry.

  Thickhide ogres favor melee Classes, and make for great tanking warriors who are more than happy to eat an enemy blow to enable them to return with one of their own.

  Warning: Becoming an ogre will distort your perception of ogres, including physical attraction.

  Continue evolutionary path — Advanced Human Evolutionary Mutation!

  Remain human, but have your life and energy expanded to match that of a D-grade species, including special tempering for advanced human species, which further strengthens their natural abilities.

  Aaron’s brow furrowed as he read through everything. It was a lot to take in. Three new races to pick from, and while they were only mutations, it still seemed like an overwhelming decision to process.

  Luckily, it seemed that the decision he made now was not as much of a big deal as his previous one at E-grade. Still, that didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to need to take this seriously.

  Besides, even if the mutation didn’t alter him that much, C-grade was a long way away, and he had a feeling he wouldn’t be tasting it anytime soon. After all, part of what made leveling as quick as it had been was that the world around him had outleveled him so much. Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t be so fast, nor would he have the same access to high-level ingredients, like what he took from the bear.

  In all likelihood, once he caught up with the rest of his new world, things would start to slow. Unless he was able to venture out and find tougher prey elsewhere, but he wasn’t currently sure if that was even possible with the barriers in place.

  Okay, think, dammit. This is important. Do I just continue doing what I’m doing, or do I mix things up? I know I don't want to be a specter, at least.

  Even if he only mutated slightly toward the specter race, it didn’t sound like something he wanted to do. For starters, he didn’t want to be a ghost, and the fact that they made poor melee combatants cemented his decision. The race simply didn’t suit him in the least.

  Shinigami, on the other hand, sounded far more interesting. It sounded close enough to human that he was tempted by it, and the mention of naturally cycling aether sounded like a massive boon to him. Although it sounded like his other energy sources would be weaker for it, did that really matter if he could convert aether?

  He would miss out on whatever tempered humans were, but was that a bad thing? Was it comparable to missing out on more control over his aether? After all, so much of his skillset now depended upon his aether.

  However, he did pause on the thought. While the racial description didn’t say that they were bad melee combatants, the fact that they also made good casters had him thinking.

  He was the furthest thing from a caster. A pure melee combatant, and if he was trying to maximize his effectiveness in the multiverse, shouldn’t he follow a path that was more closely designed for what he was?

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  Then again, Yendal appeared human. Maybe she wasn’t just human, but as far as he could tell, if she had veered from the path of a pure human, she hadn’t veered far.

  He continued down the list, but ogre wasn’t something he took too seriously. He was already too much of an ogre for his own liking, and while he enjoyed the combat benefits, it wasn’t a path he wanted to remain on forever. When possible, he had every intention of trying to move away from ogre stuff.

  It was a little contradictory to his previous thoughts. It was clearly the option best suited for someone who intended to focus on melee combat. But what could he say? He just didn’t want to be an ogre.

  What he really wanted was to figure out how to leave his ogre roots behind without losing the benefits he had gained by following in Oozagh’s path. Which made taking an ogre race, even if it was only a minor change to his racial mutation, one step too far, especially when he feared at times that he might have already gone too far.

  Of course, remaining human was always an option, and not a bad one. But what made humans special? Well, a lot of things, really. But were they specialists? Did the fact that shinigami could excel as casters really mean anything negative when compared to humans? What couldn’t a human do?

  He was a little annoyed that the System didn’t give him a breakdown of the human race. Perhaps it figured that he should already know enough about them, being a human and all. But maybe humans were bad casters and great fighters in the eyes of the System. He really had no way of knowing for sure.

  But his instincts told him they weren’t. He had seen nothing to suggest humans made better fighters than casters, and it made all the sense in the world to assume that shinigami were no different in this respect.

  Not only that, but perhaps this shinigami path could help him resist the ogre path that had been pushed upon him, thanks to Oozagh.

  Or was this line of thinking greedy? Could he get away with taking the best of everything while trying to hang onto his humanity?

  Aaron shook his head. He didn’t want to lose anything, but he would if the only alternative was looking like Oozagh.

  Yeah, that’s not happening!

  But that begged the question, were shinigami less likely to be ogres than humans? But for whatever reason, he doubted ogres were more likely to become shinigami.

  I suppose if I feel myself becoming too non-human, I can always return to my path. A single step in the wrong direction shouldn’t be too damaging in the long term, should it?

  He had great threats looming over him, and the reality was, more power was deviously tempting. What if more aether meant the difference between living and dying against the ants?

  But that wasn’t all. There was also the part about shinigami quests that intrigued him. Was that related to guiding the dead? He wondered exactly what it meant. Why was it a warning? Would the quests get in his way? Or perhaps there was a shadowy underworld of the living dead that would punish him if he refused to carry out his ferryman duties?

  Aaron had no way of knowing, but he did have a little soot goblin that was surprisingly knowledgeable, considering its devious proclivities. He called out for his assistant, who had been in the middle of chasing a few goblin girls around the farmlands with a feathered stick and a creepy grin.

  “Shinigami? Bossman, sorry to tell ya, but I don’t know much about them. What I can tell ya is they’re very secretive. They generally stay away from the main politics and wars of the multiverse and are said to have a hidden fortress somewhere deep in the ancient corners of the multiverse. But who knows, I’ve never met anybody who's been there, and some say it's just a legend. Others don’t even believe shinigami actually exist. But I suppose ye racial evolution option proves those people wrong.”

  “Great,” Aaron groaned. “So there’s no way of learning more about these mysterious shinigami?”

  “Besides selecting the evolutionary option? No. Not in a newly integrated world, at least. I’m sure ye could buy information on an old world easily enough, if you had access to one. Even then, it would cost a fortune in system credits. I mean, if old Sooty doesn’t know anything, it ain't gonna be cheap.”

  “Old Sooty?” Aaron raised a brow.

  “Yes, Old Sooty. I’ve been around a while. Ye weren’t my first master, ya know? There was a long history of Sooty before my ten thousand years in the void. Maybe I’ll tell ya one day. Suffice to say it, ye ain’t getting information about shinigami easily. Leave it at that.”

  Aaron frowned. That wasn’t good news at all.

  “One more thing, Sooty.”

  “Huh? What is it, bossman?”

  “The dead, or undead, or whatever."

  “Yes?”

  “How do they exist in the multiverse?”

  “What do ye mean?”

  “Like a faction or something? Or are they gods? Or just mindless creatures roaming about?”

  “Oh, I gotcha! Yeah, no single faction. There’s a death god, though.”

  “Yeah! Yendal mentioned as much!”

  “Scary fellow. Best steer far from that guy. Treats the undead like his personal slaves. And for that reason, anyone who has the power to resist him usually tries to avoid him as best they can. And because of that, undead factions tend to be quite weak. They either hide in the shadows to avoid coming under the purview of the Death God, or they are too weak for him to care about. Low-level squatters on weak worlds. It’s not just the undead; there are countless examples throughout the multiverse. Most true powerhouses care little about weak beta worlds that are starved of energy. That includes the weaklings that live on them. Although compared to you, they’re not that weak. But they have no real potential. Maybe the odd low-level C-grade, but certainly nothing beyond on those desolate worlds.”

  “I see. Interesting. So would that be why the shinigami are hiding? They want to avoid the Death God?”

  “Maybe,” Sooty shrugged. “But again, I dunno. The rumors are that shinigami are not actually undead, and so I’m not sure whether or not the Death God actively tries to subjugate them. Maybe they just like the anonymity of no one knowing where they are.”

  Sooty’s words gave Aaron another problem to worry about. What if becoming a shinigami put him in the crosshairs of the Death God?

  Then again, it seemed like their world was already entangled in a drama bigger than he could understand, and the Death God was part of it. And so he wondered if it made any sense to let that deity, or his fear of it, dictate his decisions.

  After all, he needed to gain power. That was the only true means of protecting those around him and himself. If he believed redirecting himself down the path of the shinigami was likely to make him stronger, then he ought to just do it and have the courage to face whatever consequences came with it. Ultimately, those who rose to the peaks weren’t the ones who cowered in fear of potential threats.

  “One thing, though,” Sooty raised a pointed finger. “Many advanced race options do not come with native tempering. This becomes massively important at higher grades, and can lead to bottlenecks, as ye’ll be forced into tempering yeself.”

  That perked Aaron’s attention. What if his progression was blocked because he couldn’t figure out how to temper himself? All of a sudden, he understood why it might be best that he just remained a human.

  Then again, who was he if not someone who stubbornly defied logic and pushed on, defeating challenges he had no right defeating. In a way, being deterred from his chosen path because one sounded easier was an aberration to who he was, and who he was was as fundamental to his path as anything else.

  If he were to follow his natural path, that would itself come with consequences, ones that were not currently clear.

  Bloody fucking hell! Hopefully, I don’t regret this.

  And with that thought, he accepted the prompt and pushed his racial path toward that of the shinigami.

  He didn’t feel any physical changes as the power flooded through him, but he instantly felt his connection to the aether and the spirit plane grow stronger and more intimate.

  If he had felt like he understood spirits before, he now began to feel like he was at one with them. Like the spirit plane was as much his natural environment as the mortal plane was.

  But then he felt something else. A trembling ripple of energy rushed into him, and his brow crinkled with concern.

  “What is that? Wait… Something is wrong!”

  “Huh?” Sooty said, turning back to Aaron’s worried face as he was about to leave the kitchen. “What did you do, bossman? You didn't, did you? You went and followed through with your racial evolution already?”

  “What do you mean, already?! Why do you think I was asking all those damn questions!”

  “Ahh, humans. Always impatient. Or should I say, shinigami.”

  “What just happened, Sooty?! Why does everything feel weird!”

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