Becoming the Dark Lord

The notification hovered in front of Luke, huge and impossible to ignore. It felt like the sum of every step he had taken so far, from waking up inside the Forgotten Temple Dungeon to stumbling into the tutorial and somehow beating it. Even the title notifications had been shoved aside for this one.

**You have evolved from Rank F (Half-Demon) to Rank E (Half-Demon)!**

Congratulations, Assassin and Witch. You have taken your first, crucial step toward becoming a deity. Your strength has risen significantly, your body has grown sturdier. Your soul has gained power, and your shell has become more resilient. From here on, you will walk many paths, now that you have taken the true first step.

Your attributes have been completely reshaped to fit the new configuration of your body. Due to the limitations of your mortal shell, your previous attributes could not be drawn out to their proper potential.

- At Rank F they were: Strength, Agility, Endurance, Vitality, Perception, and Intelligence.

- At Rank E they become: Strength, Lethality, Agility, Dexterity, Endurance, Vitality, Toughness, Perception, Wisdom, Intelligence, and Willpower.

Your attributes have been recalibrated to reflect their true nature. After all, an Assassin should not be focused on raising Strength, but Lethality. Your Health Points will now replenish on their own over time. Your body can even burn HP when necessary to heal injuries. And naturally, your lifespan has been extended by an additional 100 years beyond what you would have normally lived.

Only you can continue walking the path toward divinity. Many perish, many give up, and few succeed. It is up to you to decide how your story ends.

Race Bonus per Level: 2 points to all attributes and +5 Free Points.

The notification collapsed by itself the moment Luke finished reading the very last word.

“Looks like a lot changed for me,” he murmured, trying to process everything. For the first time, he realized he would live longer than his family.

Life’s cycle dictated that children outlived their parents. Everyone was born knowing that. But knowing he would live so much longer than all of them left a strange weight in his chest. He did the math quickly. Maybe he would have reached seventy, eighty if he got lucky. But now… he would live at least to one hundred seventy. Maybe two hundred.

He wouldn’t get sick like a normal human, whether because of the system or his blood. Most illnesses that ravaged the elderly wouldn’t touch him. No brittle bones, no high cholesterol, no diabetes, no malignant diseases like tumors or cancer. He would live a healthy life not because of good habits, but because his body was built to stay strong.

“As you reach the peak of a higher Rank, your lifespan grows with it,” Samael remarked. Maybe he understood what Luke was thinking, or maybe he was just reciting the script the system had handed him.

He continued, “Someone at race level forty-nine in Rank F gains fifty extra years. That one final level that pushed you into Rank E changed you completely. Now you’ll live an additional hundred years beyond what your race normally would. Congratulations. The farther one is from death, the more reason there is to celebrate.”

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Luke let the thought settle. If leveling up a race also increased his lifespan, even indirectly, that was good to know. It wasn’t just about rising in rank.

But that also meant something else: a Race Level at Rank E might not add only a single extra year of life. It could be much more.

“The average is ten additional years per level,” Sigil said, reading his thoughts without hesitation. “One Race Level at Rank E is expected to give you that. And when you reach Rank D, you gain a large bonus. For example, you just earned fifty extra years on top of the fifty you accumulated leveling to fifty.”

Ten years for a single level?

That was… undeniably not human. If he went back to living a normal life in modern society, he would naturally outlive his own children.

Retirement was going to take a very, very long time.

“Your appearance will stagnate as well,” Samael continued, his tone shifting into something almost clinical. “You’ll age much more slowly. For example, you’d look like a forty-year-old human by the time you reach a hundred.”

He gestured lightly, as if outlining data in the air.

“And that’s assuming you don’t gain even a single additional Race Level. I’m basing this on your current state. As you level up, your appearance will simply stop changing. By human standards, the evolution of your rank has already made you significantly more attractive. Advance to the next Rank and your lifespan extends to a thousand years, then ten thousand, fifty thousand, a hundred thousand.”

Samael offered a faint, knowing smile.

“Eventually, if you choose that path, you can reach true immortality… even divinity. And you’ll have more than enough time to enjoy every step of the system’s progression. This is your first real step.”

A new notification appeared in Luke’s interface.

[Your skill Meditation is undergoing an evolution…]

It shifted again.

[Meditation (Common)] -> [Advanced Meditation (Uncommon)]

That was the last thing he expected. His simple race skill had changed. Of all his abilities, that one had slowly become one of the most valuable. Meditation was what allowed him to regenerate mana and stamina much faster than normal.

His original skill:

[Meditation (Common)]: Enter a state of absolute focus, blocking all distractions. While meditating, your stamina and mana regeneration increase significantly. However, you are unable to perform any action, and your perception of the surrounding environment is drastically reduced.

And now:

[Advanced Meditation (Uncommon)]: Enter a state of absolute focus, blocking all distractions. During meditation, your stamina and mana regeneration becomes even stronger than before, allowing far faster recovery. Thanks to your race evolution and expanded understanding of mana and the soul, you can now walk while maintaining the meditative state. However, any sudden movement beyond walking will immediately cancel the skill. Your perception of the surrounding environment is still drastically reduced.

Luke exhaled slowly.

He hadn’t expected any of this… but it was exactly the kind of upgrade he needed.

It really was an upgrade, one that left Luke genuinely impressed. With the Meditation state active, he used to recover 416 mana per hour, twice as much as his natural regeneration. The downside was having to stay completely still. But that had changed. Not only could he replenish mana even faster now, he could do it while moving, while simply walking. That alone opened up a whole new range of possibilities.

He could keep his mana climbing while exploring new places or wandering through city streets. Since the ability didn’t cost anything, only demanded a level of concentration intense enough to blot out everything around him, he could theoretically keep it active whenever he needed. Before, he constantly worried about how to manage mana when using epic skills. Now… maybe that problem would disappear entirely. It was going to take tests, a lot of tests.

“I can answer any questions you have about your titles. Go on, take a look,” Samael said.