Lord Evolution: Starting With SS-rank Skills

Xandros was torturing the m with a parasitic magic insect that ate their flesh and drained their mana reserves.

He slowly killed off the other m after asking them the same question, leaving only Dragun, who wore a traumatized expression as he gazed upon the corpses of his colleagues, the fear of death becoming more evidt on his face.

"You\'re the only one alive now, Dragun, and according to our information, you\'re the one in possession of the item we\'re looking for!" Xandros said with a frown, staring inttly at the kneeling Dragun.

"I swear, I know nothing about it! I\'m innoct!" Dragun pleaded repeatedly, but the more he cried, the angrier Xandros became.

Alister stood behind his younger brother with a calm expression.

"Let him be," Alister finally said after a few momts had passed.

"Why?" Xandros barked angrily, turning to look at Alister.

Alister gave him a sharp glare, warning him to watch his tone.

Dragun looked at the two of them with a slightly worried expression. Whatever the outcome of their discussion would determine whether he lived or died.

"We\'ve already slain half of the guards at the cult\'s hideout, and we still hav\'t found it. Do you think killing him will help?" Alister asked with a frown.

"But what are we going to report to the echelons? What if they find out we lost something so important to the cult?" Xandros retorted.

They gaged in a heated argumt with one another.

The crux of their dispute was whether to let Dragun go or kill him like the rest.

From their argumts, their inttions were clear and understandable—both belonged to a really powerful cult, the same as Dragun. However, Dragun and his colleagues were low-ranking members, mostly used as guards or experimtal specims by the cult.

According to Xandros, Dragun was the leader of the group guarding a particular item of great importance to the cult. But a few days ago, they discovered the item was missing, and of the guards admitted knowing its whereabouts.

Xandros was ready to kill every one of the low-ranking members to learn about the item\'s whereabouts because they were the ones in charge of watching it. No high-ranking cult members could access the facility due to restrictions.

On the other hand, Alister believed it wasn\'t the guards\' fault—that there might be a high-ranking member trying to steal the item and place the blame on the low-ranking members.

The argumt betwe the two brothers grew intse and slowly developed into a fight.

Xandros controlled the wind a him to attack Alister, while Alister simply deflected the wind attacks with waves of his hands. He didn\'t attack his brother at all because he understood just how hot-blooded he was.

While they were fighting, Dragun struggled to free himself and evtually succeeded.

He pulled out a teleportation magic slip from his spatial pouch and used it without wasting time.

Immediately, he vanished from the area, unnoticed by the brothers.

Alister and Xandros only realized that Dragun was gone after a few minutes.

Xandros reacted angrily and blamed Alister, while Alister simply walked away.

---

Alister recalled all this and sighed—Xandros still believed Dragun was in possession of it and was ready to kill him for running away last time.

Both of them watched Dragun and Rowan for a few minutes before disappearing.

---

Unaware of the eyes watching them from the beginning, Rowan and Dragun continued discussing magic with one another.

Rowan learned a lot about magic from his father.

He learned that magic can be cultivated by anyone, talted or not. However, the more talted one is, the fewer resources and less time they would need to grow stronger in the field of magic.

According to Dragun, there are several levels of magic—the apprtice mage realm, which is divided into low-stage, mid-stage, and peak-stage. Once one ascds through these three basic stages, they will have all it takes to become a real mage.

There are also Tier to Tier-7 in the ranking of mages, with Tier being the weakest and lowest, and Tier-7 being the highest and strongest. Dragun is a Tier-3 mage!

Rowan learned so much from Dragun, which gave him hope that he would be able to cultivate magic on his own one day.

For someone originating from Earth whose greatest dream is to wield supernatural powers, the news naturally made him excited.

After they finished discussing, they came to an agreemt that Dragun would take Riela as his apprtice and help her awak her magic pottial. But Rowan said he would have to ask Riela, only if she agreed would he let Dragun take her as his apprtice.

Dragun had no objections and left.

After he departed, some of the young soldiers stopped working and strolled toward Rowan to ask questions.

Rowan gave them simple answers and continued with his task.

In the eving, they finally finished digging the foundation and all retired to their homes to rest. On their way home, they met some of the farmers and chatted; their discussions were nothing but positive and heartwarming, clear evidce of the peace and harmony in the village.

Rowan got home and found Riela holding one of his robes with a sweet smile on her face.

"Here, try it on!" she said, waving the robe in front of him.

Rowan immediately checked the status of the robe before reaching to grab it from her.

---

Enchanted Robe: A robe that has be chanted with [Enchanted Embroidery]

Effect - Defse: Wh equipped, defse is boosted by 33%

---

"A robe that boosts defse!" Rowan was pretty surprised wh he saw the stats.

The effect of the robe was far better than a basic-grade item and almost as good as a common-grade one. Ev common-grade leather armor only gave a 50% boost in defse!

"If she keeps evolving in her field, I won\'t need to waste evolution points on purchasing armors in the future!" Rowan exclaimed inwardly as he began putting on the robe.

After donning the robe, he thanked her sincerely and couraged her to do more.

Riela was already very excited, and his complimts made her ev more so.

She proceeded to inform Rowan about her work today. She told him how she had be working to create a robe that warms the body but kept failing to do so.

Rowan saw the sadness in her eyes as she discussed the topic and immediately cheered her up.

To be honest, Riela was already working too hard with the chanted embroidery skill.

Since she received the skill, she had be working non-stop, adding embroidery to robe after robe and trying new effects every day.

"Don\'t push yourself too much, Riela," Rowan concluded.

"I won\'t... thank you for believing in me, Rowan," Riela smiled cheerfully and kissed him on the cheek.

Rowan smiled at her and nodded.

"Let me go prepare something for us to eat," Riela said and began walking toward the kitch.

"I\'ll join you," Rowan said, strolling beside her into the kitch.

"Can you cook?" Riela asked; she hadn\'t se Rowan prepare anything in his life before. She would ev find it hard to believe he could boil water.

"Definitely. Who knows, I might ev be a better cook than you," Rowan smirked.

"A challge?" Riela grinned.

"Yes, we should prepare our own delicacies and see whose is more delicious."

"Okay th!"

The couple proceeded into the kitch, which was a pretty small room with two fireplaces for cooking.

The ingredits were stored in wood cupboards, and some of the food items were neatly arranged on the g. The cooking utsils were nailed to the wall to prevt pests from getting near them.

There was a small wood cabinet for storing plates and other items that needed proper handling.

Riela took one fireplace, and Rowan took the other.

Both of them grabbed the stuff they needed.

Nevertheless, Rowan quickly discovered he had no idea how to prepare something nice with the ingredits in his grasp. They were so differt from the noodles he used to prepare on Earth.

Without wasting time, he oped Riela\'s character status and accessed the full details where he could see all her skills. Luckily, there was [Cooking, E-rank].

He copied and merged with the skill without hesitation. Immediately, he was filled with knowledge about the culinary world. Rowan didn\'t upgrade the skill in order not to cheat too much.

About an hour passed, and they finished preparing their meals.

Riela was the first to finish; th she wt to observe Rowan. She was pretty surprised to see him cooking as though he had be doing it for a long time.

Somehow, they both prepared the same delicacy.

Rowan didn\'t make any noticeable mistakes in the preparation of his, but it wasn\'t as good-looking compared to Riela\'s.

At the d, Riela won because hers was not only good looking but tasted far better than Rowan\'s.