The Rebirth of Evelyn Knox

Even before all of her experience had been exhausted, Evelyn found herself back in her body. Thankfully, she had already accomplished everything she wanted to do, because it was unlikely that she would ever get such a chance again anytime soon.

Of course, once she reached a high enough level of comprehension, she might be able to replicate the process, but that was probably too far into the future. By then, she would probably already have whatever understanding she could gain from entering such a state, anyway.

After hitting the 'milestone' once again at level forty, whatever difficulty her body had been having with accommodating the excess energy seemed to have completely disappeared. Despite the final few level ups accounting for over half of the initial energy, they took only a fraction of the time.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 

—Level 40 [72,780 / 10,000] → Level 41 [62,780 / 10,500] 

—All attributes +5!

—Level 41 [62,780 / 10,500] → Level 42 [52,280 / 11,000] 

—All attributes +5!

—Level 42 [52,280 / 11,000] → Level 43 [41,280 / 11,500] 

—All attributes +5!

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 

Although there was some lingering pain in her body due to the excessive stress from continuous level ups, Evelyn knew that she had escaped the worst part by far thanks to being 'ejected' in her soul form earlier.

And as she tried to observe any noticeable difference in her body, Evelyn discovered that aside from the obvious strengthening brought forth by the enhanced stats, there was indeed something quite different from before.

The previously 'hidden' pool of soul power was now clearly prominent within her, resting in her chest area just above the pool of spirit power in her belly.

Evelyn thought that it must be due to her 'consolidation' of the soul form earlier that caused this pool of soul power to condense. This was great news, because although it wouldn't give her a raw boost in terms of stats, it would make it much easier for her to deploy and use her soul power.

Shortly afterwards, her last few level ups also went by smoothly.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 

—Level 43 [41,280 / 11,500] → Level 44 [29,780 / 12,000] 

—All attributes +5!

—Level 44 [29,780 / 12,000] → Level 45 [17,780 / 12,500] 

—All attributes +5!

—Level 45 [17,780 / 12,500] → Level 46 [5,280 / 13,000]

—All attributes +5!

—Level 46 [5,280 / 13,000]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 

"Phew… level forty six huh… To think that I'm already higher level than Cecilia, no, even Eula…"

Having already checked the stats quite recently, Evelyn knew that Cecilia was only level thirty one, while Eula was level thirty four.

Even if she didn't go strictly by number levels, and considered the 'gradation' system used by the rangers, it would still put her in a superior grade to Eula.

Of course, Evelyn knew that she couldn't get conceited. After all, even someone as talented as Bree, who had already reached level 82, felt helpless while trying to protect her family. She still had a long way to go before she could feel truly safe.

After ascertaining the state of her body, Evelyn checked little Ruru next, and was relieved to discover that nothing seemed to be wrong with the little fox.

She was just in a deep sleep, and should be perfectly fine when she awakens tomorrow.

Having obtained a part of her experience, Little Ruru had of course also leveled up and even acquired another milestone ability!

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-Lotus Moon Spirit Fox (Ruru)

—Level 21 [39,830 / 600] → Level 30 [28,830 / 5,000] 

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 

Milestone Level Reached! [Level 30 Milestone!]

Milestone ability unlocked: [Green Maiden Transformation!]

All Attributes +30!

Attribute bonus per level increased from 3 to 4.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 

—Level 30 [28,830 / 5,000] → Level 34 [5,830 / 7,000]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 

Unfortunately, this newly acquired ability of her little pet didn't seem to have any description at all, and she could only helplessly wait till her fox woke up tomorrow to try it out.

"I guess it must be some sort of ability to turn bigger or something, right?"

Evelyn shook her head, thinking that it was better to just wait and see, since coming up with useless conjectures won't help at all. Instead, she brought up her own status screen.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 

-Evelyn Knox: Level 22 [420 / 700] → Level 46 [5,280 / 13,000]

Hybrid Physique: Blessed Spirit, Lotus Throne

—Physique: 179 → 340

—Spirit Power: 128 → 370

—Soul Value: [532 / 1,304] → [589 / 1,546]

—Vitality: [166 / 166] → [214 / 323]

-[ Abilities / Enhancements ]

—[Hunter], [Artist], [Basic Spatial Manipulation], [Basic Probe], [Minor Shield], [Disease Immunity], [Poison Immunity], [Advanced Regeneration], [Calamity]

-Cultivation Method: Searing Soul [Grade 9]

—[Soul Avatar: Basic]

—[Soul Dominion] 

—[Locked: Required Comprehension: Advanced]

—[Locked: Required Comprehension: Superior]

—[Locked: Required Comprehension: Complete]

-Equipment: 

—[Kittykat Blue Halter Dress: Grade 2]: Physique +25

—[Shiny Bracelet: Grade 1]: Spirit Power +3

—[The Untainted: Grade 5]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 

Although she already knew it would be like this, Evelyn couldn't help but feel a little giddy.

Even in her most optimistic dreams, Evelyn had thought it would take her at least a year or so to reach Cecilia's level, if not more.

After all, the girl was also a genius, was a few years older than herself, and had similar conditions of growth.

Even with the red mission, perhaps she would never have been able to grow so much if not for Aurora's helping hand. Since the rewards for getting lower grade techniques weren't nearly as astronomical, and there was no guarantee she would have just happened to stumble across a higher grade one, even with her probe skill.

As for the additional [Poison Immunity] in her status, it was of course the skill reward from her red mission.

Evelyn didn't know what other skills she could have gotten, if it was even random in the first place, but she was quite satisfied with getting poison immunity. It would allow her to have some more peace of mind, and open up more options for the future.

For example, if she'd had poison immunity before, she wouldn't have needed to be so careful around the tentacles of the 'Thousand Eyed God'.

Her pool of soul power had already been quite exhausted after exiting the cultivation array, so that part was no surprise to her. Given some time, it should naturally recover.

As for her vitality, it of course suffered due to the damage caused by the rapid level ups, but Evelyn wasn't concerned about that either. Even if she never got her hands on anything that restored her vitality to its maximum limit again, which she thought was quite unlikely, she would still be able to slowly increase it as she levels up. The stronger she was, the less this little loss would matter.

Evelyn knew that her chances of 'succeeding' in everything she wanted to do were slim, but with this unexpected boost, the glimmer of hope she had was just a little bit brighter. She couldn't help but smile as she fell asleep.

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When Evelyn woke up to her little fox's yips, the first order of business was, of course, to test the 'Green Maiden Transformation'.

Her little fox understood what she wanted after just a few short words, and started channeling her spirit power till her body was enveloped in a soft green glow.

Contrary to what Evelyn had thought, the 'transformation' did not just increase Ruru's size, nor did it provide her with additional features and limbs for attacking or defending.

Apparently, [Green Maiden Transformation] really was just a humanoid transformation skill.

And not a very good one at that, because little Ruru hadn't turned into an adult lady, or even a teenager.

She wasn't even a toddler, but a little thumbelina!

Looking at the tiny, pitiful looking pink haired fox girl in her palm, Evelyn felt her lips twitch in mirth.

To think that the higher little Ruru's milestones got, the more useless skills she seemed to be getting… hopefully this pattern won't last forever.

Thinking of how she'll be bullied if someone else saw her like this, Evelyn decisively ordered her to never transform into this form when they weren't alone, unless Evelyn herself said so.

The little thumb sized fox girl still didn't know how to speak, and nodded obediently before turning back into her fox form.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 

The older Gilmore sister, Amara, had also exited her cultivation array not long before Evelyn woke up, much to everyone's relief.

Although going on for longer was unlikely to have really bought any negative consequences for any of them, they would still have been left anxious for the time. 

Evelyn could tell that something was different about Amara, though her probe skill did not show anything out of place, except for the addition of the two skills from the new cultivation method 'Arcane Archive'.

"Are you alright? Did it all go well?"

The older redhead nodded at her with a smile. "Um, much better than I expected, actually."

It hadn't been such a long time since she thought that perhaps she would always lag behind others, and never be able to take care of or protect those that she cared about.

But now, things were completely different.