One of the bigger Litho-Crabs, noticing Jay and Kai’s vulnerability, raised its two colossal claws for a crushing downward strike. Jay closed his eyes, knowing that as an ordinary human with a common class, his base didn’t have the defense needed to survive a direct hit like that.
The rest of Silver Lotus was too busy dealing with their own opponents to step in in time.
"DON’T HURT PIP’S FRIENDS!" Pip’s voice rang out, sounding completely different from the cute, upbeat tone he always used, showing a trace of the fury he’d only ever displayed once before, when he’d been controlled by the Beetle Queen who had kidnapped him in the past!
In a black blur, using everything at his disposal to boost his own speed, with Lohan also using everything possible to accelerate the boy’s flight, Pip shot down from the sky and positioned himself directly above Jay and Kai.
In the split second the granite claws came down, Lohan’s Slime around Pip expanded violently.
The black gelatin grew into a rigid, spiked dome, activating its non-Newtonian resilience at maximum output.
The impact of the claws against Lohan’s armor produced a deafening metallic sound that made Jay’s ears ring.
The Silver Lotus group froze for a second, shocked at the sight of the level 13 monster’s massive claws having stopped abruptly against the black mass, unable to pierce or even dent the surface of the obsidian scales.
Halon’s Slime not only tanked the blow that would have been fatal, it began digesting the crab’s claws right at the point of contact, letting off an acidic hiss that made the monster shriek in pain.
"Yes hahaha, that’s Master Halon!" Pip laughed, while Lohan, through the clone, fed a dose of natural energy directly into Jay and Kai’s nervous systems to calm them and subtly keep the injury under control for the time being.
Taking advantage of the giant Litho-Crab’s immobility, Pip extended his tiny hand and channeled the energy of Lohan’s clone into a kinetic burst.
The crab, despite being very heavy, was hurled backward with its claws partially melted, crashing into another of its kind.
The display of Lohan’s armor’s absolute resilience renewed the group’s morale in an indescribable way.
Jay, feeling the warmth of Halon’s energy, got back up with a look of determination he’d never had before, returning to the fight with renewed ferocity.
The war of attrition tipped decisively in Astralis Requiem’s favor.
With Pip covering the gaps and Lohan coordinating passive defenses through their synaptic sync, Silver Lotus managed to take down the last crab in under ten minutes.
Silence returned to the forest, but this time it was a silence of triumph and satisfying exhaustion.
As soon as the last Litho-Crab dissolved into particles of light, a cascade of system notifications appeared before the eyes of every scout. The shock on their faces was even greater than what they’d felt during the fight.
"Ten thousand experience points?!" Devon exclaimed, nearly dropping his staff. "That’s more than we used to earn in a whole day of solo farming near Aethelgard!"
Jenny wiped the sweat off her forehead, looking at her axe in disbelief. "If we could hunt like this, I could level up again in a day or two! This is insane... A big Guild really can bring changes we couldn’t even imagine..."
Lohan was pleased with their reaction. Even Players with Uncommon bases needed groups to hunt monsters to level up, which was why only now, after so many weeks since Elysium’s launch, had this group reached Level 11.
Considering that from now on they could play together and with the advantages Astralis brought, their growth rate would rise to an entirely new level.
But the moment of celebration was interrupted by a change in Pip.
The little fairy, still wrapped in Lohan’s black clone, began giving off an intense pearly glow that shone through the Slime’s biomass. The glow wasn’t an ordinary level notification, it was a dense, liquid light that seemed to be rewriting Pip’s very structure.
"Pip? What’s happening to Pip?" Vonde asked, approaching cautiously.
Pip didn’t answer verbally, but his face showed an expression of pure ecstasy.
His butterfly wings began to grow, becoming more translucent and gaining veins of a golden color that Lohan recognized as a more intense form of Natural Energy.
Lohan’s clone gently detached from Pip, returning to its blue sphere form, as if making room for what was coming.
Lohan immediately understood what was happening through their connection.
The steady stream of biomass he’d injected into Pip, combined with the massive experience from this last battle, had been the final trigger.
The little fairy was undergoing a qualitative evolution, breaking through the bottleneck that separated ordinary beings from Elysium’s elite entities.
"Back away, everyone," Lotus warned, feeling the density of the mana rising around the fairy. "Pip is evolving..."
The glow reached its peak, wrapping Pip in a cocoon of emerald and golden light that lit up the entire clearing as if it were midday.
Jay, Kai, and the other scouts watched in absolute silence, and even though they themselves had already gone through something similar, they had never personally witnessed an evolution so beautiful.
Everyone there watched with anticipation, waiting to see how Pip would emerge from within that glow.
Especially Lohan, who had known the little fairy for so long, and knew just how much he wanted to become stronger, more powerful, and to be able to help the Guild even more, now with this opportunity the little boy’s small mind was probably feeling as much ecstasy as could be imagined.
But then, precisely because he knew Pip so well, knew how much he yearned for this evolution, how much anticipation the little boy had built up over it, Lohan knew the disappointment could be even more intense if something went wrong in this process, and a worry crept into his mind.
’I hope he really manages to follow an evolutionary path focused on combat... if he ended up with something focused on support or tending plants like Elle, Pip would be devastated...’