Evolution: A Warlock’s Rise To Power

"Come on, tell me about it." Lucan said eagerly.

"Shh, I am reading."

He let her be while looking her over. Her hair had changed from black to sliver. Her ears had grown points on the back. She had shrunk a few inches as her figure became smaller and leaner. Her beauty had grown. Lucan lost himself staring at her concentrated face that was reading all the details of her class. He shook it off and his eyes widened. Her skin was ash colored like normal shadow elves, but black swirls of dark shadows traveled across her skin and rippled through her hair.

Lucan moved in for a closer look. The black swirls were actually shadow mana. He could feel the familiar energy he frequently called on. Her hair looked soft as if spun from silver thread. Before he realized it, Lucan reached out and poked the pointy end of her ear. It was strange to see someone he was always with suddenly grow elf ears.

"Eh em." Silent said clearing her throat. Lucan released the point of her ear that he was rolling between his fingers. He stepped back to see her cheeks were red while she refused to make eye contact with him.

Lucan turned to walk to the campfire she had built earlier and sat down. "Are you going to make me guess? Tell me about your race."

She came and sat beside him so Lucan couldn't stare at her. "I am a unique shadow elf variant. My shadow elf mana is categorized as having been 'tainted by mental and ethereal mana. I got +70 stealth in dim or dark lighting. And +40 dexterity, as suspected. Instead of the daily, 'Commune with Shadows' I got 2 daily abilities. 'Shadow double' an illusion of myself that I can create as an ability once per day. The illusion can last half an hour. The second daily I got is called 'Ethereal Step'." Lucan curiosity had reached his peaked. Silent was blushing again under Lucan's inquisitive eyes. "I can take a single step into the Ethereal realm. That is all the information about it besides that I can activate Ethereal step for 10 seconds per day."

"This is amazing. I had no idea there was an Ethereal realm. Do you want to try it?" Lucan asked excitedly.

"Uh sure, might as well. I need to learn how to use it. Maybe you want to try and open your eye first. It has been 10 days. Does it still hurt?"

"It hasn't bothered me today. Your right." Lucan started to unwrap the bandage around his head. Silent had been changing it twice a day. The first few days his body rejected the eye and it was a nonstop source of pain. Recently the eye stopped causing him pain. Today he was able to move it around while his eye was closed with no discomfort.

He took off the last layer and opened his eye. The light was blinding for a moment. He blinked several times and wiped a bit of eye scum away. He could faintly see magic in the air and ground. As he looked at Silent, not only were there black swirls of shadow mana moving across her body, but he could see faint streaks of transparent blue and green mana.

[Eye of Mentas]

[Unique Item]

[Has the ability to see the base magic at work. The eye of Mentas is not affected by psychic or mental magic illusions or manipulations.]

[Standard vision is enhanced by a degree of 10.]

[Night vision is enhanced by a degree of 5.]

[Thermal vision has been gained.]

[+100 perception]

He could see 10 times as far, 5 times at night, and he gained heat-vison. The benefits were crazy when he wasn't even mentioning the fact that he could see magic. Now when he experimented with magic he would actually be able to see mental and ethereal magic.

Lucan told Silent everything his eye could do. "How does it look?" He asked.

"The scars aren't too bad, but the eye is purple."

"What?! I thought Mentas had green eyes."

"Yes, its green and purple. Hold on, I have a mirror."

She pulled out a mirror for him to use. It was a green eye, but the white part had turned a deep lavender color. Probably because of Razes influence. His skin was scarred with 3 black char marks around his eye where Raze's magic cursed Lucan's skin.

Lucan activated the newest ability of his ring and started to slowly work on making his new eye look the same as his old one. The ring overwhelmed him with information and choices making it impossible to do the change quickly. Lucan went through making changes with Silent's help. She was the judge of whether it looked right or not. After half an hour Lucan finished touching up his eye and returning his appearance to normal. He saved it as the standard face for Lucan Quilldrake. The best part was that his features really changed. There was no magical effect or illusion. The ring had the power to actually change his appearance.

"Okay, I am ready and watching." Lucan said to Silent after returning her mirror.

"Here I go."

Lucan watched as she was overcome with the transparent green energy. She took a step forward but Lucan didn't notice anything.

"Notice anything?"

Silent deactivated her ability after 3 seconds. "No, nothing was different, everything looked the same and I was able to take more than one step. Maybe there is some trick to get it to activate."

"Maybe. But your skin did become infused with ethereal mana. I saw it happen." Lucan sat back down and began to think. "I got an idea." He said while picking up a pebble. "Since the magic sinks into your body, maybe it is like some armor the negates damage. Let me throw a stone at you."

Silent scowled but said okay. When she activated her ability again Lucan tossed the small pebble. It whizzed out of his hand and passed straight through her, flying into the telekinetic wall in the formation.

She turned the ability off and had wide eyes. "It went straight trough me." She turned on her ability and boldly walked through the fire. She didn't move a log or even disturb the ash. After passing through she turned the ability off again.

"Hmm, if I had to guess, when you are a 'single step' into the Ethereal realm, people can still hear you and see you. It doesn't look like you will be able to do damage. But with how you walked through the fire you may be able to walk through walls."

"If I can walk through walls why don't I fall through the ground?" Silent asked curiously.

Lucan opened his mouth but didn't know what to say. He was confused. "We will have to do more experimenting later."

"I swear you only keep me around for your experiments." Silent joked. "Now let's try the double. I have never controlled an illusion before."

Suddenly her skin started glowing blue while the black swirls conjured a duplicate of herself.

"Start slow. Try to wave to yourself." Lucan said.

She did just that. Within five minute the illusion was copying all of Silent's movements while they stood across from each other. It was like looking in a mirror.

Lucan felt a strange connection to the illusion that was jumping around, he then had a curious thought and decided to test it.

The illusion stopped following Silent. "Hey something happened. I lost control." She turned to Lucan for an explanation. The grin on his face worried her. She turned to the illusion to see it dancing closer to Silent. The illusion was shaking her rear end and being an embarrassment.

Lucan rolled over laughing as Silent took out her daggers and tried to kill the illusion. He let go of his control and the illusion obediently listened to Silent.

"You jerk!" She hollered after understanding what happened.

"This is good." Lucan said after sitting back up. "I can control your double because it is an illusion made from my own mana. See if you can control mine."

Lucan summoned another copy of her. Silent stopped grumbling and focused her efforts on controlling the illusion. As soon as Lucan released his control, she was able to manipulate it at will.

"Good, good. In the future you can practice with my illusions and save your 'Daily' ability for when you need it."

Lucan dismissed his illusion and stopped bothering Silent while she was practicing with hers. He had over 2 million experience in the bank. Scrolling through his wish list that was now over 2,000 items deep he decided to make a choice.

He spent 250,000 experience to upgrade his illusions. The upgraded illusions would emit sound and could be spoken through. He paid for the advanced sound placement ability. Small things like footsteps, a heartbeat, light breathing, fabric rustling in the wind. They were just some of the minor sounds he could add to help sell the illusion. And now that his illusion could attack, he hade great hopes for illusion magic.

Lucan then spent 500,000 experience on a new type of illusion. It was called Delusion; it was a spell that would target an opponent's mind causing them to sense something that wasn't actually there. If the delusion was strong enough and the target truly believe it was real, it's possible for the delusion to cause damage to the target. It couldn't be considering a reliable damage spell because there were to many variable that would cause the target to ignore the damage, but the spell had plenty of positives to it. Surprisingly, it used shadow mana. There was a similar spell that used mental mana, it was more powerful and guaranteed damage. The mental version was a single target spell where this could target multiple enemies.

After creating a variant spell and spending a couple days experimenting in his off-time Lucan came to a realization. With how things were worded, he didn't know if he could make more than 4 variant spells. He wanted to meet with Glen in the near future to ask. For the time being he would operate under the idea that he would only be able to make 4.

This idea made Lucan cast aside any notion of quickly making 4 spell variants. If he could only make 4 they needed to be useful. His current idea was having illusions capable of 4 different spells. Maybe he could even combine it where a single illusion could use all 4 spells. He was on the lookout for spells that would work well to that effect.

Lucan received a request from Lucy. She wanted to speak with him. He connected via telepathy and they had a short conversation.

"Hey Silent, I just talked to Lucy. There is a monthly competition coming up that the others want to try in 4 days. Are you interested in going to Avalon and checking it out?"

"Sure, that works out great. I need to get some new headgear and a new facemask." She said with the idea of obscuring her remarkable presence. Lucan barely frowned.

Silent laughed. "it's not like I am trying to hide from you but you know I don't like the attention when we are on crowded places." She said.

Lucan didn't blame her. He found it hard not to gawk at her after the change of her race.