Angel Project

The Infinite slipped out of North Bay Station under cover of night and continued east. On the way, Kiki asked Lin Xian, "Why are we leaving so soon? There are still so many places we haven't searched."

"We'll never collect every supply out there. Get too greedy, and we could pay dearly for it," Lin Xian said.

"Tang Hai might still be alive. I'm worried that could mean more trouble."

"Not dead!?" Kiki frowned. "I thought he was."

"He isn't..."

Lin Xian took a breath and told them what he had seen.

"I think Tang Hai might have an ability. What happened just now could've been that ability changing."

He turned to Lou Shasha and Lou Ye. "How much do you two know about abilities?"

Lou Ye looked taken aback and shook his head earnestly.

"Not much..."

Lou Ye seemed to know little about his own ability. All he knew was that one day, he had suddenly become much stronger.

"Wait, remember what happened, bro?" Sha Sha said, bringing up a crucial detail. "When Feng Yuming turned into a bug and attacked you, he called you low-grade. He said you didn't even know abilities could evolve after killing Aberrant Entities and Espers..."

Lou Ye scratched his head. "I think he did."

"Really?" Teacher Chen exclaimed. "Abilities can level up?"

"Probably."

Lin Xian took a breath. "If there are levels, Feng Yuming definitely isn't at the lowest one. He's strong, and he knew there were three Espers among us, yet he wasn't afraid at all. He must have been confident."

When he finished, he noticed that Kiki, usually the most talkative of them all, had fallen silent. He looked up and found her watching him with narrowed eyes and a smile that seemed a little strange.

"Just say it!" He knew the little girl had plenty of information. One look at that smile made his head ache.

"What if I told you I know how abilities level up, and that they're divided into lots of categories? Would you want to know?"

Everyone turned to Kiki in surprise.

Lin Xian frowned. "From the sound of it, you have a condition?"

Kiki raised an eyebrow and leaned close to whisper something in his ear. Lin Xian immediately pressed his fingers to his temple, his headache worsening. "Fine. I agree."

"Hee-hee. You promised~"

Kiki looked thoroughly pleased.

"First." She raised a finger. "After the first Polar Night, more than ten thousand cases of humans undergoing changes were discovered worldwide. And that was only a tiny fraction of the post-disaster tally. After Apocalypse Day, the Federal Government urgently set up a special Esper Research Bureau called the Angel Project to deal with the extreme disaster. Besides conducting research, I'd guess they wanted to use that power to uncover the secrets of the Star Abyss and find a way to save the world..."

"How do you know all this?" Chen Sixuan asked in surprise.

Kiki pursed her lips and said proudly, "Hacking into the Federal Government's intranet wasn't exactly hard. Besides, it's the end of the world. Who's going to stop me?"

"Go on," Lin Xian said.

He studied Kiki. She had ridden a rescue helicopter after the Polar Night. Whether or not she was an heiress of Linglong Group, she clearly wasn't ordinary. But since she had useful information, he saw no need to press her about the details.

"Ahem." Kiki cleared her throat.

"On Apocalypse Day, the Angel Project gathered some of the surviving top scientists. Their research found that every survivor who hadn't turned into a Zombie after the Polar Night had a remarkably similar energy that repelled outside forces. They called it Spirit Purge Value. Even the frailest women and children who survived the Polar Night had a value of at least one. By comparison, Zombies and some Dark Aberrant Entities measured below zero—a negative value."

"At first, they thought it was some kind of selection mechanism. But they couldn't find any pattern, so they treated it as the survivors' 'life-force energy.'"

"Now, here's where it gets interesting. Every Esper, and even physically strong adults, scored noticeably higher. Espers especially. After the first Polar Night, the Angel Project compiled a catalogue of thirty-four categories of similar abilities. They evaluated the Espers' functional and destructive capabilities, then compared those results with their Spirit Purge Values. The figures matched."

"Spirit Purge Value represents life force—or the capacity to survive the Night Invasion. The stronger someone is, the higher their value."

"That's the first point."

Kiki continued, "The second key point is that abilities can evolve. The records even show that when a small number of people were first discovered, their values had already exceeded the third or even fourth level..."

"The third and fourth levels?" Lin Xian frowned. "Did you forget to explain something?"

Kiki shrugged. "Oh, I only skimmed it. Basically, a bunch of people in a lab weighted Spirit Purge Value, physical strength, energy output, destructive power, how deadly they were to living things, and a whole pile of other factors to come up with the levels. From what I saw, ordinary people and Espers with Spirit Purge Values between one and a hundred are classed as Origin Seed level. By the third level, Adamantine level, someone has basically surpassed the limits of the human body. They're hard to kill without heavy firearms, and their Spirit Purge Value is set at five hundred to one thousand."

"The fourth level, Rampage level, is considered a major threat to an entire area. It takes large numbers of troops, heavy combat vehicles, and various armored weapons to suppress one. Its Spirit Purge Value is defined as one thousand to three thousand combat units."

"As for Destruction level and above, there aren't any detailed records. They don't have data for those levels yet, so they just estimated them by extending the earlier levels exponentially..."

Lou Shasha listened wide-eyed. "Kiki, how exactly does an ability evolve?"

"Well... probably not the way anyone imagines."

Kiki's expression grew complicated. "I did see something about it in those top-secret files. They confirm that once an Esper reaches Evolution level two, fighting and defeating Night Eerie Entities—or even other Espers—can increase their Spirit Purge Value to some extent. But it was an early report, so there wasn't much detail."

"After level two?" Lin Xian's eyes sharpened. "What about level one?"

"Ha!" Kiki looked at him with interest. "Now you're asking the important question."

She paced as she spoke, her expression serious. "The strangest thing is that, from its early data, the Esper Research Bureau found abilities of different kinds were actually very unstable at Origin Seed level. Those Espers seemed to need some kind of ritual, event, or shift in their emotions or state of mind before they could evolve. The Angel Project even believed that only at the second level did they truly transform or complete their evolution. That's why they called it Evolution level, or Breakthrough level."

"A ritual?" everyone echoed. It sounded almost like something from a religious myth.

"That's right," Kiki continued. "Take Feng Yuming. I think he fell under either the Angel Project's No. 16 Limb Mimicry type or No. 21 Aberrant Proliferation type. For either type, they found that killing a Night Eerie Entity or an Esper, then absorbing their flesh and blood through an aberrant limb or mutated body part, gave them a chance to evolve."

"But..." Kiki turned to Lou Ye. "For someone like Big Lou, your description suggests you have a No. 3 Body Strengthening type ability. It's fairly common among Espers. The strange thing is, the Angel Project had several inconclusive assessment reports on how this type evolves to level two. Feng Yuming's method doesn't work at all. They called it a different path of evolution!"

"Seriously?!" Lou Shasha exclaimed. "That sounds terrifying!"

"Who knows?" Kiki shrugged. "Whether you look at it through biology or physics... Well, all right, neither of those fields seems to apply to this world anymore. We might as well treat it as theology."

"One more thing. The Research Bureau believes ability evolution has two sides. In other words, Espers have a vulnerability much like people infected into Zombies. Without certain conditions, this power can erode them, leading them down the path of failed evolution—or turning them into Zombies. When someone's Spirit Purge Value drops below one, they call it... Corruption!"

"Corruption?"

"What about Tang Hai?" Lin Xian looked at her. "Was the condition I saw mentioned in the files?"

Kiki nodded, her expression serious. "It was. And I'm certain he's a No. 32. That ability type is called Uncertain Infection type. It's fascinating." She knitted her brows. "According to the records, it's extremely hard to detect at the Origin Seed stage. They show no physical changes or changes in Mental Power. Their only distinguishing trait is..."

"Zombies have trouble noticing them?" Lin Xian's face darkened as he recalled what he had seen.

"Exactly!!"

Kiki nodded. "But this type of ability is also the easiest to evolve."

Lin Xian frowned. "If a Zombie bites them to death, they might level up?"

"Yes and no."

Kiki tilted her head, her eyes growing somber.

"Judging by the cases they collected, evolution isn't guaranteed, and it doesn't always have a fixed outcome. It's also possible... for evolution to go wrong!"

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