Chapter 377: Evolution

Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Pranav

“To sum things up, the me from back in the day made modifications to Cher’s soul as I was filled with hate over her betrayal. Now, as long as Cher falls deeply in love with someone, her passionate emotions will cause a trap placed deep within her soul to explode, thus starting a new cycle.”

“During this time, she will undergo a split in personality—just like the three-headed dragon Evelyn. Her memories will create a new Evelyn that will gradually overwrite the current Cher’s personality. Her body will evolve into genes superior to the previous generation. With the personality and soul as the software and her body and life as the hardware, a new Evelyn will be born. Only Cher’s soul shards will be left over, and when put together with an infant body it will restart the cycle. Evolutions will accumulate so… As expected of myself! Truly outstanding and marvelous—I mean truly an insane maniac!”

The condescending looks aimed at me made me change my wording in the end. But inwardly I was certain that I was a genius back then, else I wouldn’t have been capable of making a creation with the potential to topple everyone’s worldview.

Evelyn was absolutely correct in saying that I was likely the only one who could break this cycle. It would be impossible to one hundred percent analyze this complex design unless I first understood the way I had thought back then. If I couldn’t analyze how I designed Lust, how would I possibly be able to cancel this curse?

Of course, it would also be possible to forcefully cancel the curse. It was similar to wielding a sword to cut a rope or a hammer to break open a door—with these tools, you would be able to open the lock, but it was unlikely the lock would be able to survive.

Still, this was originally my design. Analyzing how it worked wasn’t that difficult.

“Understanding the secrets of the soul through pure and stubborn feelings. Continually improve the soul to have the entire physical body evolve. This was the basic way I had thought on this area of research.”

A good analogy to this is what a middle school student would think when they saw their homework problems from elementary school. Perhaps the homework would be filled with code or scribbles nobody else could understand, or perhaps they’d already forgotten the content of such scribbles. But as long as the student substituted in their own way of thinking and knowledge, it would be possible to reverse engineer the way of thinking they had used to solve the problem.

“…This is related to the understanding of ‘Concepts’ and ‘Logic.’ Finally, I managed to make the individual Evelyns evolve together as an entire species. Every new Evelyn born would help the entire group of Evelyns to evolve. I must have reached the peak of Myth back then.”

“Stop bragging about yourself. Hurry and think of some method to break this cycle. Can’t you tell that everyone else is looking at you quite strangely?”

Indeed, everyone around me was someone I knew—most of them were my subordinates. Yet they were all looking at me with confused and hostile gazes. Little Red in particular seemed to be clenching her fists and wanting to rush at me, as if she was saying “I finally have such a great chance to viciously beat you up.”

“What’s the matter? Why is everyone looking at me like that?”

“…What do you think you’re doing?!”

Only now did I notice that Diana had arrived while I was out acting ridiculously for a month with the Slimes. She was also glaring at me, full of hostility.

Although her tone clearly indicated her anger, Diana remained quite calm and in control of her emotions. It would seem that she had indeed greatly matured. However, I had no idea why Victoria was hiding in a corner, staring at me with a terrified expression.

Meanwhile, Little Red chuckled menacingly.

“…No need to mince words with this bastard. Let me beat him up first to vent a little. As for his explanation, let’s listen to it after I finish beating him up.”

“What exactly did I do? I’m just checking Cher’s body, aren’t I?”

“…Does anyone else check like how you do?”

I looked down at Cher who was currently in my hands, but she met my eyes with a terrified expression. Next to us was a pile of shredded clothing, torn to pieces…

And that was how I came to a sudden realization. I silently took off my shirt and put it on her to show what a gentleman I was…

“Gentleman the hell! Would a real gentleman suddenly go berserk and rush into a woman’s room, defeat her in combat, strip her naked, and then stare madly at her body? In front of so many long-time subordinates—who are all witnesses now—you still dare to call yourself a gentleman!? Not even Beifeng is capable of doing something this outrageous!”

I thought back to what I just did. All that Harloys had just said indeed seemed to be true. My mind was in complete chaos when I returned, so I rushed straight to Cher’s room and began inspecting her body. Of course, to make it easier to check her body, it would be necessary to take off her clothes. And so everyone had heard her screams and arrived right when I was in the midst of giving her a serious inspection. Only now did I recall that I also saw many white, uncovered parts of flesh, which was why everyone must have misunderstood me.

“…Beifeng wouldn’t do something like this? That’s because the great majority of Beifeng’s targets don’t wear any clothes! Fine, I won’t talk back… If I tell you all that I was looking at her with only a researcher’s perspective, will you all believe me? Fine, fine, I’ll kneel—just don’t hit my face!”

Little Red unleashed her fists and took this opportunity to vent her grudges against me. During this, she muttered to herself:

“We caught you red-handed in the act. I wouldn’t believe what you said if it was anyone else. But since it’s you I believe you—you’re a bastard who’s no normal person at all.”

“Then why are you hitting me?”

“I soaked in magma for an entire week in a volcano and almost got heat stroke! Isn’t this your fault?”

Alright then, I was rendered speechless. This was quite obviously just an excuse for Little Red to vent her displeasure. Yet I mysteriously found myself rather happy that Little Red had trust in my character. However, the silly cat suddenly chimed in with a retort that instantly made me displeased.

“You idiot, she’s saying you’re not even a man.”

“…I am a man! Try me if you don’t believe me! Forget it, I’m not Beifeng. There’s no need for me to deal with a cat.”

And what came afterwards was that instead of the dragon beating up Roland, it became the cat and the dragon beating up Roland.

******

“Lust” Cher was the true firstborn Sin of my Seven Original Sins. She was also the model which all my other Sins were based on. Since I obtained enough information from her body earlier… I could understand the true foundation of this cursed cycle. Actually, this wasn’t a curse to begin with, but rather a blessing of “Evolution.”

Just as how I had given the wood spirits gifts that I termed “curses” of the Sins, those curses were, in reality, blessings that would help them evolve. This was the accumulation of my research results.

From the very start, my research was the exact opposite of what the Holy Church told everyone. The Holy Church would warn humanity to overcome and restrain their desires and instincts. I, on the other hand, believed that desires and instincts constituted a necessary part of humanity. In fact, I even considered them to be the most basic motivation for humans and society to evolve and progress. These Seven Original Sins existed because they were the most basic needs of both the soul and the physical body.

That was actually how I had come up with the core concept of my Seven Original Sins. Gluttony Ah Dang was capable of devouring others to evolve. Bastian could use Wrath to make himself stronger. Greed Harloys was capable of massively increasing the number of her Slime bodies and types to obtain the ultimate evolution. Pride Omar could make all his undead become part of himself, and, through the entire combined power of the species, could evolve. Although Envy was still incomplete, Marsolit, too, walked the path of stealing from others for the sake of his own evolution.

“These Seven Original Sins, which represent the most basic human instincts, are the source of evolution.”

This was the core concept of my personal theory. Meanwhile, the Holy Church and most other Gods’ churches believed that “Humans are born with sin. Only asceticism can absolve humans of their sins so that they may be saved after death.”

My philosophy was the utter opposite of theirs. Who was truly right and who was truly wrong would likely be impossible to determine. But, at the very least, my research had obtained results. The common point about all my Seven Original Sins was that they possessed the ability to evolve themselves!

Yep, I only needed to leave them alone and let them grow freely. Their potential would be impossible to calculate.

However, one factor that always influenced growth was time. I was only a bit over three hundred years old, after all. Ah Dang, the one who I had believed to be the oldest of my Seven Original Sins, was only two hundred years old. Keeping in mind the Sins’ mega-long life expectancies, this was far too short a time for them to reach their full potential. If I had to rank my Seven Original Sins based on their combat strength, the strongest would indeed be the oldest, Ah Dang. Second would be the true big brother, Bastian, while Omar, the youngest, would also be the weakest. Back in the Underground World, I had known that Ah Dang had reached SemiGod-rank combat strength. In fact, he even possessed multiple SemiGod ranked combat forms.

Yep, their strength ranking was basically the same as their order of birth. This wasn’t because my techniques got worse and worse as time went on. This was simply because the older they were, the more time and opportunities they would have for evolution and growth. But now, their real oldest sister appeared. Theoretically, she had already lived for approximately three hundred years, so she had the longest time to evolve herself. She should have been able to display a mature Sin’s level of power.

However, Cher seemed to be quite weak and powerless… Fine, I knew that she was currently a Gold-ranked mage. But when I was stripping her earlier, she screamed pitifully like a little girl who’d never even seen blood before. How could that possibly be considered to have a power level expected of the oldest Sin?

“No, I can’t look at things so simply. Although the me from back in the day only wanted to resurrect Evelyn, the method I used to resurrect her was no different from how I created my Sins… That is to say, Cher is capable of evolving as well. And the end result of her evolution is that she will produce more Evelyns that all evolve together. From a certain standpoint, Cher and Omar are both under the special condition that the entire species evolves together. If I count the ten Evelyn sisters all as ‘Lust,’ then Lust would perhaps have greater combat strength than my other Sins combined.”

The draconic might emanating from that three-headed dragon had been far above the SemiGod rank. The Copper Dragon chatterbox Evelyn also appeared to be an Immemorial Dragon. If I calculated their approximate combat strengths by these two, then they would possess, at minimum, seven or perhaps even ten SemiGod ranked individuals’ worth of combat strength. This meant that the Evelyn family was astonishingly powerful. No wonder Evelyn had been able to become one of Dragon World’s leaders.

If my inference was correct, the Evelyns and Cher had now become a unified existence despite being different individuals. All of them together consisted of a species. Every time a new member was added to them, the entire species would undergo rapid development and evolution. And as they evolved together, Cher’s soul and emotions would develop along with the entire Evelyn group’s accumulation.

Perhaps this was a two-way system. Not only would Cher produce more Evelyns, but the Evelyns’ accumulation would also create the new foundation for the next infant Cher. They would keep stacking on top of each other, reaching higher and higher like a Jenga tower.

After analyzing to such an extent, I pretty much knew what I should do next. However, I had doubts about this research of mine.

It wasn’t because I was unable to resolve this cycle. Instead…

“It seems like too much of a pity to stop this experiment. The next Evelyn will be even stronger—a super Evelyn! Then a super super Evelyn! Then a super x3 Evelyn! Can a dragon who’s already reached her level evolve even further?”

Indeed, this seemed like too much of a pity. Originally, I had set Lust’s goal as evolution. The fact that I succeeded with my creation was most likely a result of luck more than anything else—at the very least, the current me would be unable to reproduce the results. It was such a rare chance for me to meet a “Sin” who’d already been around for three hundred years. This should have been a perfect chance to harvest experimental data and results. Giving up on all this seemed like a pity.

“…Even though I’m called the evil Banshee Queen, I still don’t think I’m as bad as you. Even if I’ve become shameless long ago, at least I still have moral limits!”

“Limits? Can they be eaten? Relax, I’ll complete Evelyn’s request and make it so that Cher can continue living. After all, I am her father!”

“You’re still not bored of this Star Wars joke of yours? Fine, it’s whatever as long as you aren’t an Oni Chichi!”

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