Intelligent Design: A Monster Evolution LitRPG

Restoring the grievous injuries sustained within Viktor's lair during those few adrenaline-fueled moments took nearly a full hour, leaving David to fume silently in the darkness throughout the process. Though accelerated by Moonsong's effects, his body recovered far quicker from the torn wing and other physical damage than it did from the seared, nearly melted state of his eyes. He wasn’t happy, and the faint predatory voice in the back of his mind howling for him to return immediately to tear the man’s throat out while he slept was incessant. David eventually lurked out of the derelict machinery to take to the air again, Health and vision restored, and he made a beeline straight for where Claire was waiting near the highway into town several miles away. He buried that little voice under the weight of logic and reason as he flew through the lukewarm night air, but every avenue of thought seemed to lead to the same conclusion no matter how he tried to spin it.

Viktor has to go. Period. One way or another. That Summoning Ability is just too damn strong, I didn’t even know they could get that dangerous. I wanna say that it’s just my instincts talking, that I’m just mad I got thumped for walking in the door, but he’s bad news. If he manages to get another Evolution under his belt or takes down that Area Boss and gets the Fusion Token we’re fucked. Straight and simple.

David’s thoughts were grim as he descended into the trees above where he sensed Claire’s presence after almost 10 minutes of careful flight, and he chittered angrily as he landed in a stout tree above her head.

“David? How’d it go? I felt you rocketing around for a while, you got into a fight didn’t you?” Claire hissed from the darkness below him anxiously. The dense bushes she had sat on like a cushion crackling in protest as she shifted her weight and smashed them further into the ground.

“Claire, I…yeah. Sorry. I found one of the hostages, prisoners, people, whatever. Some guy named Randal. I had a second to talk to him before one of the Goons found me and tried to capture me too.” David returned the hiss as his mane bristled at the memory, “It’s worse than Theo told us. That piece of shit is starving them, forcing them to take the abilities he wants them to have, and using them like target dummies to level his skills. Claire…”

She growled loudly and looked up at the sound of his voice, “What the fuck?!”

“Claire…that Summoning skill…it’s no joke. I saw it in action for about ten seconds. It’s way stronger than it should be, it’s not just a couple dozen little baboon things. It’s like…shitloads. He whipped up easily more than a hundred of those things, fast. He didn’t even stay down very long like Theo said he would, he either ranked it up or he…well…remember what he said?”

“People are worth more xp than monsters.” Claire recited furiously, surging to her feet with a crackle of underbrush, “Tell me everything that happened.”

David spent the next 20 minutes going over everything that had occurred since he’d left: the flight into town, the odd smell of the water inside city limits, his investigation of the building itself, and its description. He recited the conversation between Randal and Bill almost perfectly from memory, described Paul’s serpentine appearance and the ranged skill he’d utilized, even going so far as to describe the effects and sensations of the Corrosive Venom he’d been hit with. Claire interrupted him a few times to ask questions, and he did his best to answer them, but there was one thing she wanted to know above all the others.

“Will this asshole fit inside my mouth, or should I stomp him a few times? Maybe hold him under the water with my foot?” Claire snarled with uncharacteristic savagery, “Maybe we just get him to chase you to one side of the building and I wreck the whole thing down around him?”

“Whoa…Claire, you good? I’m with you on this, trust me, that guy’s gotta go. I can’t think of any other way around it, he’ll get too strong otherwise but…” David barked in surprise as he stared down at her curiously.

“Yeah…yeah I just…” Claire trailed off and clacked her jaws in the darkness, “When I was a kid we were really poor. My Dad borrowed money from a guy like Viktor without knowing what…I know his type. What he’ll do to everyone to get ahead even a little bit. I’ve been thinking about it in circles the entire time you’ve been gone. I think I pissed myself off.”

“Oh, shit,” David replied stupidly.

“I want to be mad at you for not just looking around like you said you would, but…” She sighed, “I think you did the right thing this time. We gotta do something, now. You made him look bad, and he’s gonna have to do something drastic to save face in front of his underlings.”

“I mean…I agree, but right-now right now?” David chattered tentatively as he flattened his ears.

Claire’s reply was blunt, “Yes. David, someone is probably getting fucked up right this very second because he doesn’t want everyone else getting funny ideas about trying to fight their way out too.”

“You, uh…You seem pretty sure about that.” David cringed at the thought, kicking himself for ever going inside in the first place. His mane slicked down and his ears remained tightly pressed to the back of his head as he squirmed with guilt.

“My family had to deal with that guy for years…years. I am very familiar with how giant pieces of shit operate, unfortunately. It’s one of the main reasons I worked so hard to get into college, took a math major, and got into banking. I wanted out of it, and I never wanted to deal with someone like that ever again.” Claire hissed slowly as she almost seemed to deflate before a wicked glint appeared in her eyes.

“Except this time,” She spat, “I’m not some scared little kid being pushed around and used as leverage. This time I’m a couple tons of dinosaur that can rip the head off of giant monsters and eat it.”

“Then trip balls for, like, two hours while a bunch of flyers try to herd you back to a park?” David blurted before he could stop himself.

Claire’s angry hiss suddenly cut itself short with a suppressed giggle, “Fuck you, David. Hah! Yeah, I forgot about that part, I started getting loopy right after I read the…wait a minute, I can’t believe I...”

She went silent and stared off into space for a few minutes while David tried to get her attention, but the enormous reptile brushed him off, her gaze slowly becoming blank and unaware.

That’s weird, it almost looks like she’s in the evolution menu…there’s no way though, we haven’t hit level 15 yet, and–

Claire suddenly vomited a large pool of rainbow light, illuminating the darkened forest in a flash of color that caused David to jump hard enough that he lost his grip on the branch and fell, his wings flailing as he smashed his eyes shut against the unexpected brightness. He yelped as he bounced off of her head, feeling the liquid touch his wings and sensing an enormous rejection of his presence as he was blown away by a crack of energy that sent him tumbling into the underbrush.

–You have taken 3 Impact Damage–

He surged to his feet and cracked his stinging eyes open, forcing himself to watch the spectacle as he instinctively leaped onto a nearby tree trunk and fixed his gaze on her. The blob of technicolor energy hung from her jaws like a waterfall of drool before curving up into the air and angling toward her back, quickly covering her in a shell of kaleidoscopic light that oozed down her tail and up her thickly muscled neck to the top of her head. It sat atop her like a blanket before it began to hiss and bubble aggressively, the plates on her back suddenly swelling and expanded in size, extending outward and spreading down to the tip of her tail. A thick blob of energy concentrated at the end of the appendage, pushing outwards to the size of a melon, then bigger still, not stopping until it was almost the size of a pumpkin before the light evaporated suddenly in a cloud of glowing dust that forced David to slam his eyes shut once again.

“Yeah. That’s better.” Claire rumbled in satisfaction, “I forgot I had that. Should have warned you, sorry. It didn't give me the option to back out once I used it.”

David gawked at her as he chittered out a storm of Echolocations and blanketed her in the special.

The armor on her back had extended, swelling in size to form a protective layer that covered her entire back in a dense shell with tiny spikes extending from the sides. The new mutation extended down her tail, terminating in a thick knot of bone at the end, which she experimentally whipped into a nearby tree, crushing the trunk and blowing splinters everywhere before it collapsed. She turned her head towards him, and David suppressed his urge to hiss aggressively as he took in the bony frill that protruded from the back of her skull along with the short thick horns extending from above her eyes.

“Bonejaw Crusher, now.” Claire snapped happily, “I didn’t realize these ‘Bloodline’ things were so powerful. No wonder you only get one per boss. You can have the next one, I didn’t mean to swipe this, but I’m going to keep it!”

David stared for a long time before he finally found the words to describe his feelings on the sudden mini-evolution.

“You have an ass-club.”