Michael’s gaze remained on the frozen body, but his thoughts had already moved far ahead.

Now the question was simple – what could he actually do with it?

At first, several possibilities flashed through his mind. In the end, it returned to the same conclusion he had reached before, though unlike before, this level of information was too large and too dangerous to act on alone.

This wasn’t Michael being too cautious. The whole demonic faction wasn’t something Michael could afford to offend. Even with the hatred in his heart he was still self-aware of where his power stood.

Even if he wanted to act alone, he could not cover everything. And acting recklessly might only alert the demonic faction instead.

The best option was still the academy. Or more precisely, the Federation and the academy.

If this information was handed over, it would not just result in one or two victories. It could shift the entire situation.

"...I’ll give it to them," Michael decided.

However, there was still one issue.

The source of this information. If they asked where he got it from, what would he say?

Michael’s gaze flickered slightly. Jester and the old man could not be exposed, but compared to the benefits this information could bring, that problem was minor. There were ways to avoid answering directly, or to give a partial truth.

Michael did not dwell on it too much. Instead, his thoughts shifted to something more immediate.

It was time to power Jester up.

In the limited space he could afford in the coffin, Michael created a small gathering with him and Jester in it. Now that it was finally time to evolve his undead was when Michael actually realised this would be the first time for Jester.

Then again, it wasn’t surprising. There was a reason Jester wasn’t any less important than his other undead, because compared to all of them that were evolved with his talent, Jester was a natural Extraordinary grade creature from the start. And the highest grade too.

Basically this meant the next evolution form for Jester was Epic grade. Michael considered his own current form at this grade, and when he had wanted to evolve the last time he needed as many as 1,500 evolution points, which was fifteen times the amount he needed to evolve to a high human.

Though his evolution just made him more of an evolved high human than changed him to a new race, it should be different for monsters or creatures like Jester and the rest.

Even before looking at the points needed to evolve Jester, it was going to be a huge amount.

Michael quickly ran through the numbers in his head. The system of evolution was simple in structure, but the cost scaled sharply with each step.

To begin with, evolving a One-Star Common creature to Three-Star Common required only 1 Evolution Point. This was the most basic stage, almost negligible now.

From there, advancing into the next grade took 5 Evolution Points to move from Three-Star Common to One-Star Rare. Once within the Rare grade, the scaling continued.

To evolve from One-Star Rare to Three-Star Rare, the cost increased again by five times. That meant 25 Evolution Points.

Breaking into the Extraordinary grade required another fivefold increase. From Three-Star Rare to One-Star Extraordinary, the cost rose to 125 Evolution Points. From One-Star Extraordinary to Three-Star Extraordinary, it required 625 Evolution Points.

Michael had more than 2,000 Three-Star Extraordinary grade creatures, meaning to reach this number his talent had generated at least more than a million evolution points.

No wonder he was in serious student debt to the academy, and this was after almost exhausting his territory’s raw material reserves back in the Land of Organ, hunting monsters in the Everlong Forest, and devouring all the law seeds he had after studying them.

Thanks to his current number of undead Michael was getting at least 2,000 evolution points a day, but to accumulate it to a million he would need at least 500 days, which was already more than a year.

No wonder they said that as one grew in power it became incredibly hard to progress.

If he relied solely on natural accumulation his progress would be painfully slow. Fortunately the current stage was still sufficient for him.

If others knew of Michael’s thoughts now, they would not care whether they could beat him or not before trying it out.

As several thoughts flashed through Michael’s mind he finally saw the amount of points needed to evolve Jester and sucked in a deep breath.

[Do you want to use 9,375 Evolution Points to Evolve ’Jester’ to One-Star Epic Grade?]

"Nine thousand?!"

Though he had suspected the amount would be fifteen times like his own, Michael was still shocked, and he turned to look at the thousands of undead around him as his eyelids couldn’t help but twitch.

To this day he still wondered why the evolutions of intelligent creatures and monsters were calculated differently.

The first thought that came to Michael was that being a Viscount was now insufficient. At this rate of consumption he would need to be a King or Emperor to have the resources to fund his future endeavours.

Of course, Michael could also go and hunt in Hell if he wasn’t afraid of the risks.

Putting aside the points needed to evolve Jester, it was almost certain that the same thing that had happened during his own last evolution might potentially happen to Jester.

Fortunately Jester did not have a primary and secondary body like Michael, so his main body could be evolved inside the Damaged Coffin of the Forgotten.

Just as Michael was about to evolve Jester he noticed something else.

Aside from evolving Jester, his talent had given him another option.

[Merge ’Jester’ and ’Pseudo Divine Clone’ for 1,000 Evolution Points?]

Yes. Merge was also another function of his talent. He actually didn’t know he could merge his body with Jester, or more accurately, hadn’t thought in that direction, but after a quick thought it made sense.

Michael could already imagine that if he were to take this option, the slight difference between his clone body and Jester – in that Jester just functioned as the brain – would disappear and they would become one.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​