Chapter 77: Evolution

“Again, it failed.”

Looking at the fading magic on his little red paw, Kuku sighed.

“Unstable mental output? Insufficient magic? Incomplete model? Elements rejecting me? Or all of the above?”

Kuku nodded. The answer was probably all of the above.

Compared to Kuku, who had zero innate talent, Li En was already immeasurably fortunate.

The prerequisite for a spellcaster is constructing a “spell model”—mental energy is the blade that carves this model and the source of its material, the foundation of everything.

Kuku’s mental energy as a dog-man sorcerer was even weaker than an ordinary human’s, let alone the “geniuses” in the mage tower.

Not only did he output insufficient magic, but the flow was also unstable.

The magical model shaped by his mental energy was fragile beyond measure; lacking even basic mathematical or geometric education, he couldn’t even form adequate spatial imagination.

The hardest part was that he simply couldn’t imagine a “spatial model of the spell”—how can you shape something you cannot comprehend?

Learn a few hundred times and master a cantrip? Kuku didn’t even know how many thousands or tens of thousands of times he’d practiced—and still only failed.

“It worked! It worked!”

After countless failures and reviews, after long years of supplementation and accumulation, he finally achieved a lucky success filled with sheer chance.

Yet in that moment, the pure joy surging from his heart remained unforgettable to Kuku, even as he later became a top-tier spellcaster.

Insufficient magic, insufficient mental energy, insufficient knowledge, insufficient spatial imagination. Admit your shortcomings, then constantly catch up, repeat trial and error.

“Master! Master! I learned it! I learned it!”

What Kuku remembered even more vividly was his master’s bewildered, half-amused expression upon seeing his apprentice take over a year to master a cantrip.

But the next moment, the master stroked his beard and smiled from the depths of his heart.

“Well done. Excellent work.” He patted Kuku on the head.

“I always knew you could do it.” He smiled, proud and satisfied.

Time flew by, and Kuku’s studies in the mage world were anything but smooth.

It started poorly, then grew even worse.

You can indeed compensate for slow progress through diligence, but so can the geniuses—time only widens the gap between you.

You may advance slowly, ignoring your surroundings, but the resources, money, and opportunities required to learn magic are all limited.

If you have it, I don’t; if you fall behind, these chances and resources slip away from you.

The more you’re left behind, the heavier the psychological pressure becomes—assuming you aren’t deemed a worthless waste of resources and thrown out outright.

You can indeed stay up late studying complex spell models, but once you reach third- or fourth-rank spells, the computational load and modeling power required multiply a hundredfold or a thousandfold; when you’ve deconstructed the spell blueprint into an incomprehensible scripture, you’re often left only with exhausted sighs after endless overtime.

The third rank is a barrier, the bottleneck most mage apprentices never break through in their lives—but for sorcerers, it might be nothing more than a bloodline awakening or a stroke of inspiration during sleep.

Kuku had already vaguely realized: with his talent, he would never reach the third-rank mage realm in this lifetime.

“Heaven never closes all paths.” Strange—every path seemed blocked, yet why did he still feel hope?

At this point, Kuku had been expelled, living as a war sorcerer who studied while working odd jobs, yet he never abandoned magic.

By then, he was already middle-aged, his mind nearly mature.

His adventurous life broadened his horizons; he still loved magic, but no longer fixated solely on the “academic standard magic” of the mage tower.

“Alchemy! Alchemy! It’s change! Transformation! The possibility of overcoming deficiency!”

For a long time, alchemy acquired from dwarves and elves wasn’t even considered a legitimate branch of magic—only low-tier spellcasters bothered to learn it.

They became adventurers’ supply clerks, wandering streets with racks of bottles and jars, even selling hair-loss potions and fertility elixirs, yet still weren’t regarded as true mages.

The specialized field of magical pharmacology, derived from alchemy, had not yet matured in Kuku’s era, nor had racial evolution been systematized.

“Witchcraft! Interesting! Learnable! Dark magic too!”

During his adventures, he discovered that wild monster tribes—including goblins, ogres, treants, and others—each had their own spellcasting systems.

Many weren’t merely bloodline-bound sorcerers, but shamans blending rituals and incantations, or curse-wielders practicing dark arts.

These spells could still be classified under magic, though they were fragmented and unstructured; yet they demanded little from the caster’s intellect or mental energy, requiring instead strange, bizarre components unique to each race.

“Learnable! Easy to learn!”

At this moment, Kuku’s dog-man appearance actually helped him—he easily infiltrated these “evil creature tribes” as an “evil being.”

He learned curses and elixirs from hags, bloody shamanic rites from ogre wizards, poisons and secrets of the Infernal Plane (Lower Planes) from goblin elders, fallen arts and assassination techniques from dark elves, draconic magic from dragons and dragonkin, and dark arts and profane tongues from devils. Who knew how much he’d learned? His exceptional “linguistic talent” gradually made him an unconventional master of magic.

Along the way, he made many friends and took on many disciples.

His greatest joy was exchanging magical secrets with local tribes and jointly researching and developing new spells with local spellcasters. He had long realized: not all magic required extreme computational power or innate talent.

Sometimes, shifting perspective turned a weakness on one path into an advantage on another.

As he later told Li En, each race’s magic was in fact the crystallization of its civilization and knowledge—the most suitable transcendent arts for that race.

After accumulating enough knowledge, he even synthesized witchcraft, dark arts, and draconic magic into his own spells.

By that era, several spells had already been named after Kuku.

The “Kuku’s Rain of Fire” series of spells still circulated in the spellcasting world under a different name.

Yet at that time, the man who independently developed these spells was still far from being regarded as a great mage by ordinary mages—but most great mages spent their entire lives without ever having a spell named after them (one of the highest honors in spellcasting).

When he returned to the (beast) people’s world, though still not a great mage, he had already surpassed ordinary great mages.

But this didn’t mean he could decipher the overly complex spell models and incantations.

“There’s a way! Perhaps! Ogres! Multi-headed serpents!”

He had an idea—perhaps requiring some sacrifice and experimentation.

Among ogres, a rare multiple mutation existed: among the generally low-intelligence ogres, multi-headed ogres were born sorcerers and shamans, capable of “multi-casting” or “simultaneous casting”—something most spellcasters couldn’t comprehend.

Two heads, two consciousnesses? Kuku also recalled other multi-headed creatures in the world, especially the multi-headed serpent lizards, which shared dragon blood and even had potential to access multiple elemental domains.

If an extra “head” could help him calculate and analyze spells…

“Experiment! Experiment!”

It was hard to say whether this idea came from fragments of his past-life memories (auxiliary computers) or simply from accidentally witnessing a multi-headed spellcaster.

Kuku wasn’t a cruel black wizard—he used small animals, mice, for experiments, combining shamanic rites, natural magic, and alchemy.

But most died within days due to “immune conflict.”

So he thought deeper and adopted a bolder idea.

He hired a priest to “heal the wounds” of the small animals—he cut out their brains, then after cultivating (healing) them, reimplanted them into the animals’ bodies, creating de facto multi-brained lifeforms.

Thus, after countless failures, he created “multi-headed lifeforms” that weren’t multi-headed at all.

But at this point, his research was interrupted.

Another group of paladins arrived. From their perspective, a wizard hiding in a remote village had created a host of bizarre, monstrous creatures—clearly with sinister intent.

When they followed villagers’ directions and saw a horde of multi-headed chickens, dog-faced monkeys, and other deformed beasts, they hesitated no longer.

“This evil must be fought!”

And so Kuku suffered great misfortune.

He repelled the knights—then a knight squad arrived.

He repelled the squad—then a knight order came.

“I, Kuku! I paid for them! All bought! Ask the villagers!!”

This was perhaps the most tragic last cry of a fleeing failure.

But no matter how many failures, no matter how many twists, if you persist, breakthrough will come.

Many may not know: as dragonkin, dog-men are long-lived creatures. Though eighty percent die before age ten, their natural lifespan exceeds 120 years.

Dragon-blooded dog-men live at least twice as long—and finally, Kuku obtained the knowledge and results he sought.

So one day, he took a knife to his own brain—the white blade flashed open his skull.

“Aaaaaaah!”

At this moment, Li En woke up from the nightmare.

And upon waking, seeing Kuku waving a small knife around, he immediately stepped back.

“What are you doing! Kusula isn’t edible! Can’t I just have a little fun?”

Only then did Li En notice Kuku was merely holding a dinner knife, gesturing at a cake.

Li En took several deep breaths and slowly calmed down from the nightmare.

“The… thing you mentioned before—the multi-headed surgery?” Li En recalled Kuku’s earlier words: “a little sacrifice, a little cost, a little resolve.”

That was a “little”? That was just “a little resolve”?

“No! Crude! Outdated! Kuku aims for evolution! Species evolution!” Kuku shook his head—how could he still use such outdated techniques?

“Dragonkind evolution! Multi-headed dragon evolution!”

(End of Chapter)