Chapter 167: Getting Used to the New Body
Author note: The Excerpt in this chapter explains why Mira can fly, use telekinesis and psychic energy. Damn, this is a really long chapter!
When she got within range Samuel said "I never picked you for the fire type". Most people were looking at Mira in admiration as they hoped to evolve into something as powerful, even though only 2 of them had gotten Transcendent rank stats already and were waiting for her to finish evolving before they did.
Mira sent a psychic message in response saying 'I'm not a fire type; this is just my normal body temperature now'. Samuel laughed and said "Your diamond armor was bad enough but now you have no hope of being a stealth fighter".
Mira laughed and replied 'Do I look like someone who needs stealth to you?' Samuel smiled and said "You definitely don't. Jake and Charlotte are out fighting some other major King. They've been doing that while you were sleeping you might want to go join them to test out your new body".
Mira said 'Do you have any idea how I can reduce my body temperature?' Samuel pointed to his heart and said "Reduce your heart beat rate, Vampires are cold because of our extremely slow heart beat and low blood pressure. Your body might have other organs keeping your temperature up though".
Mira nodded and used her Morphing ability to reduce the beat per minute of her heart until it completely stopped. She felt no discomfort at all as the amount of energy in each cell in her body could last her hundreds to thousands of years with the low energy activities she was currently doing.
Her blood cooled and the Uranium under her skin became solid turning her skin silvery. Her skin was completely transparent so it reflected anything that was underneath it. She could still move her body freely though due to her high strength stat compared to the tensile strength of Uranium.
The layer of diamonds thinned as some of them returned back to her energy zone and the body suit of lava cooled and hardened until it became rock again. The rock body suit also didn't offer any restraint to her movement as it broke at her joints anytime she flexed her limbs but was kept on her body by the new weird telekinesis ability she had.
Samuel said "Look at you, all grown up. Now you're looking down at me". Mira laughed at his joke and said with her mouth "Do you have any idea how I can reduce my height?" Samuel shook his head as he said "I've never had the power change height. If I had the power though I would increase my height"
Mira shook her head at his jealousy and said "What is radiation? My IP said that this race emits that now". Samuel was surprised at the discovery and told the people to back away. Only he could store blood in his heart and regenerate constantly with it if Mira made a mistake and released some of the radiation.
Mira said "Why are you so worried, don't you trust my control?" Samuel smiled as he replied "Considering that you're basically a baby with a nuclear missile launcher, I really don't trust you". Mira was surprised as she said "Nuclear was also mentioned in the description. What does it mean?" Samuel sighed and said "Tell me the things you don't understand about your race".
Mira spent some minutes after that asking Samuel questions about various things she didn't understand in the Gene Lord race description. Samuel was shocked at the mention of so many things related to nuclear technology and genetics. It made him wish he had waited to get Transcendent stats but alas he had made his decision.
He advised Mira to practice on the Morphing ability so that she could live without hurting people. Mira told Samuel about the Boundless races and the Boundless title's effect and how to get it. Samuel was very glad at receiving such information that could help the people get the best out of their evolution.
…
{Excerpts from the article 'High stat natural effects' by Avatari, the *** and Chao Feng, the Prince of Stars, published by Avatari}
{Chao Feng: It is known that some martial arts can only be performed at certain stat Grades. But not all of those abilities that we denoted as Martial Arts were in fact proper martial arts.
They are still Martial Arts in a sense because it is just a person using his/her/its body's capabilities but in that case Magic would also be a Martial Art. These abilities require no training of any kind to use but some training in martial arts will enhance them but simply increasing the stat will also make them better.
Some people generally ignore stats like Strength in favor of Agility or Stamina in favor of Durability because Strength is considered just brute force and Durability is only useful for meat shields. This is a very stupid way to think.
There are a lot of good martial arts that require a certain Strength threshold and having a high Agility or Strength without a proper amount of Durability will get you injured. But I digress.
For physical stats the features and capabilities you get when the stat is Grade 4 and above are shown below:
Strength: You get a force field centered on you that you can use ot fly, control objects within the field as if you were holding them and enhance the force behind your moves. The higher the strength stat the stronger the force field and the wider the range it covers.
Agility: You get the ability to leap through space, teleportation. It is nothing compared to space technology but it allows you to do some impossible maneuvers that break common sense.
This ability is quite complex since if your agility is focused on your legs you'll be able to do it with Grade 3 stats if that body part meets the requirement and if you have Grade 4 agility focused on your hands you can only use the ability on your hands and can only fully teleport if you move your whole body with your hands.
Stamina: Stamina is the backbone of all physical stats. When it reaches Grade 4 it becomes a pillar. Those who fight for long periods know that as your stamina reserve decreases, the amount of strength you can show reduces also. Grade 4 stamina completely removes this restriction as your body can fight at its peak power even if you're about to faint. At Grade 4 breathing is unnecessary as the energy stored in the body is so large it can completely do without a supply of oxygen as long as there is food and nutrients in the body.
Durability: Grade 4 Durability makes a person completely inhuman. The person doesn't bleed and is nigh-immune to injuries caused by excessive strain when performing moves. Most poisons, radiation and corrosion abilities don't affect the molecular structure and cell activity of the person's body as they can either be digested or resisted. The greatest boon is that the person can fight at their peak with extremely grievous injuries that should normally weaken the person. A lot of them can recover even after half of their head is blown away.
Avatari: The same way physical stats get abilities mental stats also get some abilities.
Sense: A sphere of awareness is gotten that makes space sensing, time sensing and reality sensing possible within it. Space sensing allows a person sense the space around them and what occupies the space too. It helps the person sense spatial ripples and cracks that are a prelude to teleportation hence the person can know where someone teleported to or is about to teleport to.
Time sensing allows the person to not run mad due to the constant slow movement or fast movement of the things around them but instead adapt their perception of time to fit the situation. It is what allows Mythical races converse naturally with Normal races without thinking they are too slow. Time sensing also allows a person sense when their time is being influenced by Magic or Martial Arts.
Reality sensing is very vague but it in essence allows a person to sense the truth in a million lies. It helps with illusions. The sphere of awareness can be expanded to any size but the clarity of the acquired information reduces the larger the sphere becomes.
Intelligence: All 4 aspects of intelligence are enhanced but only 3 aspects have noticeable growths, they are ingenuity, instinct and psyche. Ingenuity is quite simple as it just makes the person's thinking faster and more complex. Instinct makes the person more observant, faint glimpses of the future start coming to the person. Psyche allows the person communicate with psychic energy and resist psychic influences.
Energy, Biomass, ***, *** and other stats that we didn't possess before the apocalypse don't give any special abilities at Grade 4, 5 and 6. Other grades have not been reached.}
Mira spent a week practicing her Morphing ability. In that time Jake and Charlotte had returned to see her. Charlotte and Jake had visited her during that time. They had already gotten the boundless title by killing a Rank 21 King earlier; it seemed that killing the creature together didn't hinder them from getting the title.
2 other people had gotten Transcendent rank stats. One of them was Anastasia with the Blade tree ability. And the other person was someone Mira didn't know very well, his name was Liam, he was an aura manipulator and he was a High Human.
Transcendent stats had proved themselves extremely difficult for Vampires to get, Kenny as well as 3 other Vampires and 2 Humans that were at Rank 7 had given up. Instead of trying to get Transcendent stats by risking their life like Jake and Charlotte did, they chose to go the slow and steady way by evolving without them after Mira finished evolving.
So after Mira was done training her Morphing ability, Charlotte, Kenny, Anastasia and Liam started their evolution. They were put in different places far from their settlement to avoid the issue that happened with Mira.
Mira could now control her size by compressing her bones and muscles at the end of her week of training. This made it harder for her to move and it also increased her density greatly since she was already weighed tons with the Uranium in her body so she quickly realized that she couldn't live a normal life anymore even though she could enter her room again.
She always had to use her new telekinesis ability to negate gravity so that she wouldn't sink into the floor due to her high density went she walked on the weak ground. This made her resolve to just floating since it took no toll on her mind at all. It was actually straining her body's stamina since it was a strength based ability but her stamina was so high compared to her weight she wasn't feeling it.
She also tested the Gene Copying ability on the Nightmare Octopuses. She wanted to get their nigh immunity to physical attacks. All she needed was to get one of their tentacles which they gladly gave. She spent some minutes fusing the tentacle with her hand but she realized that her radiations had completely destroyed the genes in the tentacle by the time she had fully absorbed it. This posed a major problem to her.
She learnt to fuse faster in order to preserve the genes. In a few seconds she fused with another tentacle and grew a branch on the gene chain in the chromosome of all her cells. From this experiment she learned some things.
She could not create tentacles much different from the one that she had absorbed although she could create them anywhere. She couldn't create them out of her own tough skin.
She could apply their nigh-immunity to physical damage but it didn't help much because she was strong enough to easily hurt them and her Durability made her way better than them at tanking damage.
She realized that the problem lay in her lack of understanding of her own body and the gene she was manifesting. Theoretically she should have been able to make her body nigh-immune to physical damage on her own level and enhanced her durability with the gene.
But she didn't know what the nigh-immunity trait of the Nightmare Octopuses did on a cellular level and she didn't know the how her body resisted physical damage so she only overlaid the Nightmare Octopus's defense on her own instead of mixing them for a greater effect.
This also applied to the tentacles she could manifest as they were an exact replica of the Nightmare Octopus's tentacles. They were not made of her own tissues like she thought so they were too weak. This made her know that her lacking knowledge wasn't going to cut it anymore. She had to learn, she had space to grow and she needed to use it. But that came later, they had fights that needed to be handled.
She, Jake, 5 platoons, some undead monsters and the living monsters that had surrendered to them were going to fight the monsters of the King, Jake and Charlotte had been fighting for a week now. The Rank 23 King didn't know any strategy so once Jake and Charlotte occupied it and its children while its underlings fell like flies to the coordinated efforts of the monsters, the platoons and Charlotte's undead.
The undead had been ordered by Charlotte to obey Jake while she evolved so the only problem was that Charlotte couldn't turn the monsters that died from both sides into undead since she wasn't around. This disadvantage was supposed to be countered by Mira.
Mira's aim for this battle was to test her previous capabilities in battle and see how her new ones worked. She was especially interested in knowing how High Mind which had been on the back burner for a while would work with Morphing since High Mind allowed Mira to control her body with extreme precision and Morphing gave her the ability to control every cell.