The Five Evolution

『"What doesn’t kill you..."』

Late that night, the training simulation space shook with rising pressure as the War Malice raised both arms toward the simulated sky.

Ethan had about two seconds to process what was about to happen before reality became missiles.

They materialized from nothing, warheads that were about to blow with simulated nuclear fire. A rain of death designed to vaporize everything within a five-kilometer radius.

Meanwhile, the civilians just kept walking. A boy’s ball rolled onto the street and he rushed over to get it without the realization of armageddon hanging over all of them.

The civilians were too spread out. A single dome wouldn’t cover them all, and even if it could, Ethan wasn’t sure he could pull off something that big.

He also had to acknowledge the fact that some simulated civilians were inside buildings. Others were clustered at a café two blocks away.

As his gaze shifted, he spotted more people. A mother with a stroller near the fire hydrant. An old man feeding pigeons. It was clear now. He had to catch every single missile individually.

The first ten were easy, orbs of force materialized around the warheads, containing the explosions when they detonated.

The next twenty pushed him. Thirty made his breathing more strained. Fifty made his vision blur. Eighty made blood run from his nose.

"Ethan, I think that’s enough," Amara called from the control station.

Ethan had never made this many individual constructs before. But he needed more. So he kept making more, despite Amara’s warnings.

Ninety... one hundred... one hundred and ten...

"Ethan, stop." Amara leaned in. "I’m ending the simulation."

"Don’t!" Ethan’s hands trembled from the strain.

Above the city, more than a hundred missiles hung suspended inside individual force spheres like deadly ornaments decorating the night sky.

His second bar blazed orange while the third flickered wildly, appearing and disappearing with every surge of power. "Come on."

The War Malice suddenly appeared directly behind him and Amara’s heart skipped a beat as her hand hovered over the "end simulation" button.

Ethan felt rather than saw the attack, a massive fist driving toward his spine with a force that would pulverize organs if it connected.

His shields responded on instinct, manifesting a barrier between him and the Malice.

CRACK!

Because of how spontaneously it was thrown up, it shattered on impact.

The force still sent him flying.

Ethan hit the ground hard, rolled, and came up spitting blood.

His concentration wavered in that moment. Three of the missile containment spheres dissolved, and the warheads began falling.

"Hmm..." He thrust his hands up, reforming the spheres before they could hit civilian targets. "Okay. That was—that was not ideal," he said, chest heaving.

War was already on the move again, closing the distance in a blink. It brought both fists down in a hammer-blow meant to not only pound him into the ground but crater the entire pavement.

Ethan manifested a barrier and caught it, but the impact drove him to one knee and sent out a shockwave.

Cracks spread through his construct as the Malice pressed down, and Ethan felt his shields buckling under pressure.

Then the Malice’s head turned toward the café. Toward the cluster of civilians sipping coffee and laughing at jokes they’d never actually made.

Red light gathered in its mouth.

"No—" Ethan’s attention snapped toward the civilians, already calculating the trajectory of the blast and manifesting a barrier to intercept.

Completely caught off-guard, the Malice’s fist crashed into his ribs.

The hit was surgical. Precise. The simulation had analyzed his pattern and found the exploit: Ethan couldn’t maintain offensive pressure while protecting civilians.

Every time his attention split, he became vulnerable.

He hit a parked car hard, triggering its alarm. The sudden explosion of pain through his side was coupled with the taste of copper filling his mouth.

From the control room, Amara’s voice emerged from the speakers: "You good?!"

"Yeah," Ethan groaned, pushing himself upright. His tactical jacket had a hole in it, blood seeping through where the Malice’s knuckles had connected. "Super."

The sarcasm didn’t hide the strain. His shields were flickering now, pushed past their sustainable limits. And the War Malice was already lining up another attack, this one aimed directly at a civilian holding a newspaper.

Ethan threw up a barrier, and the Malice immediately struck from his blind side by hurling a truck toward him.

He blocked desperately and ran out of the explosion. But given the situation he was in, he couldn’t make any counters.

He wasn’t able to attack as well. All he could do was react. And reacting wasn’t enough.

This wasn’t working. Every time he protected a civilian, the Malice took advantage and struck at him. And every time he focused on the Malice, someone else was exposed.

His attention kept splitting. His defenses kept lagging behind.

Then a thought surfaced.

Why did he have to choose between defending himself and protecting the civilians?

If he stopped worrying about himself, his mind would be free to focus entirely on the civilians and going on the offensive.

However, the War Malice didn’t care about the conundrum he found himself in as it closed the distance and threw a straight punch meant to cave in Ethan’s chest.

Yet, his attention remained fixed on the civilians. On the falling debris. On the missiles suspended above the city. On every simulated life he was trying to keep safe.

He made the choice to prioritize the city’s safety and braced himself to take a hit that would most likely force Amara to end the simulation.

"So much for being better..." Ethan muttered without looking as the fist closed the final few feet.

BOOM!

A shield suddenly appeared exactly where it needed to be, and War’s fist was brought to a dead stop upon crashing into it.

Ethan glanced at the barrier with an eyebrow raised. The shield had formed before he willed it. Before he’d even thought about defending himself.

In that moment, something clicked. A realization so obvious he almost laughed. His shields were always supposed to operate beyond instincts, as an extension of his belief.

On his shoulder, the third bar immediately ignited, burning into permanence. Power flooded through Ethan like a dam breaking.

"Okay," Ethan said, wiping blood from his mouth, his grin returning. "Let’s try that again."

The Malice tried the same tactic, casually grabbing a car with one hand and tossing it toward a boy walking a dog. Then it coated its fist in swirl of green-red energy and went after Ethan.

Ethan’s forcefield appeared in the path of the car as a razor-thin plane, twenty feet wide and solid as steel. The vehicle approached and was split cleanly down the middle.

Then two additional barriers shoved both halves outward and they screamed past the boy on either side.

Simultaneously, a mirror shield automatically formed around him and reflected the kinetic force of War’s blow right back at it.

War staggered, stumbling back, only to get pounded into the ground by the flat forcefield construct he created earlier, bringing it down like a hammer.

Before it could recover, Ethan manifested a second barrier beneath it, effectively sandwiching the simulation between two planes of compressed force.

The War Malice pushed back with monstrous strength, but Ethan just pressed harder.

The entire sandwich-construct lifted and began to rotate, building up speed before flinging the War Malice into a massive building two blocks away.

The structure exploded on impact as steel and concrete detonated outward in a shower of debris that fell directly toward a cluster of civilians.

"Shit..." Ethan thrust his hands up, manifesting barriers to catch the falling rubble, but he was a fraction of a second too slow.

A concrete slab the size of a car crashed down onto three holographic pedestrians.

SIMULATION TERMINATED.

CIVILIAN CASUALTIES: 3.

EVALUATION: FAILURE.

The chamber dissolved as War, the civilians, the nukes suspended above, and the city disappeared. It was just Ethan now, standing in the empty training space, breathing hard and staring at his hands.

"Just when it was getting good," he said to Amara, rolling his shoulders.

The door to the control room burst open, and Amara rushed down the stairs into the chamber, her eyes wide. "Ethan, your shoulder."

Ethan looked at the third bar and said nothing for a moment. "That explains the adrenaline rush," he said finally. Still processing.

"You leveled up," Amara confirmed, stopping in front of him and reaching up to trace the third bar with her fingers. "That’s... Ethan, that’s incredible."

"You’re a Tyrant," she whispered.

Ethan looked down at the third bar again, almost as if he still didn’t believe it.

Amara’s hand was already on his face when she kissed him.

He laughed breathlessly against her lips and pulled her into a tight embrace, kissing her back.

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

ETHAN BASS | The Shield

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Spirit Weapon: Bastion (Shield of Faith)

Rank: Tyrant

Ascendant Sigil: ▮▮▮ (3 Bars - Left Shoulder)

Abilities Unlocked:

┣ Resonance with the rest of the weapons

┣ Force Field Generation

┣ Belief Barrier

┣ Multi-Layer Barriers

┣ Force Construct

┣ Reflection Shield

┣ Automatic Defense

┣ ??? [LOCKED]

Status: Feeling incomplete, relieved, several broken ribs, definitely horny.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!