The Glorious Evolution

Making her decision, Jasmine’s hidden eye turned into an erased swirl again... immediately, color was sapped out of the real world, making it resemble the Shadow dimension in her vision.

The only colors shown were those of the hundreds of nightcrawlers infesting the mountain... they were all sharing a similar race... giant brown-furred moles with horrific claws and two frontal sharp yellowish teeth protruding from their mouths, almost touching their stomach.

Jasmine ignored them and kept her vision focused until it landed on their leader, who was hiding in the depths of the mountain with two more tier 3 nightcrawlers.

All three were sitting around a table, playing cards, and smoking cigarettes, embracing the earthlings’ lifestyle in peace.

The moment she saw them, Jasmine extended her arm to the side and summoned her signature weapon from droplets of black ink.

As the droplets combined, a two-meter otherworldly inkbrush emerged into the world... its size as big as a spear, but its appearance was nothing like it.

Its shaft was a pale glasslike spine, sharing a similar color to Jasmine’s skin... Its handle was an inscribed, beautiful white sphere that seemed to be made out of white wood.

The white bristles at its crown spiraled inward, each filament untangling like trapped smoke, yet never dispersing... This formed a mesmerizing brushstroke attached to the glass-like wooden shaft.

The moment it fully manifested, the brush felt weightless yet dense in her grasp... a familiar sensation she was already used to.

When Levi saw it, he couldn’t help but be surprised by her weapon choice... having no idea what kind of powers she wielded.

Levi asked Nurah and Shia about her powers after they were given the evolutionary formulas, but they told him it would be better if he saw it in action.

Hearing this, Levi didn’t impose on Jasmine, knowing that she was bound to use them in their training.

”If that’s your weapon, what kind of powers do you wield?!” Arthur exclaimed in disbelief, but he forgot Jasmine was deaf, so she ignored him.

While Levi used to see darkness all around... Jasmine’s world was like a TV with a permanent mute button pressed. Life was happening all around her, yet all she could hear was her own thoughts... even then, those thoughts had an inner voice of her nightcrawler.

For she had never spoken to hear her own voice and have her mind register it as the default.

Yet, this was much better than thinking in signs or images, as those born deaf had their thoughts often manifest as flashes of hand shapes, movements, and facial expressions in their mind... essentially, signing internally.

Some people think that being deaf was peaceful, and might not be a bad disability to have to curb their chaotic world... but it was such a cruel thing to wish for, when one had no idea how horrible it was to not perceive anything or have your own voice.

Once Jasmine entered the mountain’s area, she stopped, making Arthur and Nurah stop too.

-Do you want to win or test your abilities?-

Seeing the peculiar holographic question, Nurah and Arthur glanced at each other... then, Nurah giggled.

”Win, of course.” She said, knowing that Jasmine was about to go all out.

”Win.” Arthur nodded too, having no clue what he had signed up for.

-Oki.-

Jasmine showed them an okay sign with her hand and a harmless smile... then, she swiped her brush on the ground three times until it somehow became as yellowish as an empty aged scroll.

’The f*ck is this magic...’ Arthur’s lips parted slightly, but he kept his questions to himself.

Jasmine was about to start.

’Midnight Calligraphy Arts: The World is My Canvas.’

The moment she activated her battle arts, a sphere of liquid ink manifested next to the scroll. She dipped the brushstock in it once and lifted it... dripping with ink that seemed almost alive, absorbing the light around it.

With swift, deliberate strokes, she traced the outline of a mountain, its rough peak rising across the scroll.

Every ridge, every cliff, and even the forest near it, was etched into the parchment... sinking at the weight of her intent.

Then her brush moved faster, drawing something that made Nurah’s pupil widen in disbelief... a reaction not earned easily from her.

Meanwhile, Arthur was scratching his head in confusion, having no clue what any of this meant.

Finally, Jasmine dipped the brush once more, signing her name at the bottom in flowing, authoritative strokes.

The moment the ink touched the paper, the scroll shook violently, and then... everything about the painting came to life inside the scroll.

Jasmine and Nurah immediately turned their heads, looking behind Levi and the others’ backs, who were standing above a small mound at a far distance.

Seeing this, Levi and the others glanced at each other in confusion.

”Are they looking at us?” Jojo tilted her head.

Just as Levi was about to answer, his ears twitched once, picking up on a peculiar howl behind them...

’Hmmm?’

He turned his head and released his echolocation’s range to reach the source of the noise, thinking that maybe some Daywalker was flying around.

But, as his echolocation landed on the source of the noise, Levi’s lips parted slightly in disbelief at the sight before him.

Seeing his weird reaction, Jojo and Shia turned around too.

That’s where they saw it... a scene snatching their souls at once... a gigantic pitch-black meteor was blocking the moon as it pierced through the clouds, plummeting toward the mountain with unstoppable force!!

Its surface gleamed like moonlit obsidian, smooth yet unyielding, exuding an aura of impending doom!

-We should retreat.- Jasmine signed with the same harmless smile.

Seeing this, Arthur glanced at Jasmine and then at the scroll that came alive... he gulped a mouthful as he watched the gigantic meteor in the sky, getting closer to the mountain, just like the inked meteor on the scroll.

It didn’t take a genius to understand what was going on.

”I thought you drew the f*cking moon!”

Just as Arthur was about to run away, not wanting to be close to the mountain during impact, Jasmine stopped him with her palm raised.

Then, she created another scroll on the ground and drew one swirling dot, connecting it with an inked line to another similar dot on top of her friends’ mound.

Then, she signed it, and it came to life as well, creating a swirling, inked gateway before them.

She gestured with her head for them to follow her... Seeing the approaching meteor getting bigger and bigger, they swiftly stepped into the inked portal and emerged on the other side... their confusion matching Levi’s and the others.

Just as they turned to Jasmine for some ’questions’, the meteor flew past their heads and landed on the mountain at last... It was roughly a one-hundred-meter-diameter black rock, landing on a mountain no taller than half a kilometer hundred meters.

The impact was earth-shattering!

”Arthy!”

”Heavens Breaker Arts: The Last Bulwark!”

Hearing his brother’s voice, Arthur swiftly created a vermillion fortress around them, sealing all of the walls and the roof.

BOOOOOOOOM!!

The aftershock smashed against it in no time, followed by colossal fragments; rock and earth thrown into the sky like shattered glass!

The thunderous roar consumed the mountain, and the nightcrawlers below were utterly obliterated, unable to escape the crushing weight of the ink-born meteor.

”I raise you...”

”Heh, foolish mistake.”

”Shit, I fold, you bastards are cheating someh...”

BOOOOOOOOM!

The chilling three Tier 3 nightcrawlers’ lives were instantly extinguished, having no clue what happened before their corpses got buried under the mountain’s weight.

The same happened to the rest of the hundreds of nightcrawlers, not even their digging mastery could save them...

After the dust cloud was carried away by the wind, Arthur removed the castle and absorbed the kinetic energy inside Orryn’s heart.

Then, everyone was left to gaze at the aftermath with their jaws agape at the scale of destruction Jasmine had wrought.

No words could capture it... only the silence after the storm, heavy with the weight of powers none seemed to understand.

None but two.

’Well, I will be damned... Their bloodlines haven’t gone extinct after all.’ Ash’Kral murmured with a flicker of astonishment in his eyes, not expecting his original assumption of Jasmine to be proved correct so soon.

’I remember now...’

The Titan uttered... a written myth resounding in his mind, akin to an old man telling a story of pale-skinned people wielding giant brushes, pens, quills, and such creative tools meant for drawing and painting, but they were using them to paint the universe.

A myth, older than time itself...

A myth, so old, only a select few might still know it across the entire universe...

’First Levi and now this... what’s so special about this tiny region in such a desolate planet?’ Ash’Kral murmured to himself, his brain failing to accept such a ludicrous coincidence.

He could understand finding a Half-Radian thrown here by some miracle... but to find another half-blood in the same region, the same city? Nah... his senses were tingling, something was going on. Something must have happened in the distant past in this exact area.

Meanwhile, Levi and the others stood frozen, their eyes fixed on Jasmine... mouths half-open, words caught somewhere between shock and silence.

-I guess breakfast on you?- Jasmine smiled as she gazed at the stunned Levi.