SSS-Rank Evolving Monster: From Pest to Cosmic Devourer-Chapter 150: fuzzy

Others might not have known it, but King Eldros had been trapped at the peak of Stage 3 for centuries—centuries of silent, agonizing failure. Time and again, he attempted to shatter the bottleneck, only to come face-to-face with the same wall. With every failed attempt, hope bled out of him, drop by drop, until all that remained was a void—a consuming darkness that chewed at his sanity, whispering of futility.

And yet... this year, the tides had shifted.

He had found something.

No—he had been given something. A forbidden method. A twisted possibility that rekindled the embers of hope. One whispered to him from the shadows, said to come from the so-called Lord of Hell.

The solution to his lifelong shackles.

The throne room, normally gilded in gold and light, now radiated a sinister aura. Crimson clouds loomed above the towering spires of the royal castle, swirling like the eye of a storm. The sky itself seemed to mourn, casting the world in shades of despair.

A breeze slithered in through a half-opened stained-glass window, carrying the scent of wet ash and blood. It danced across the cold marble floor before brushing the king’s cheek—tender, almost intimate. Like the caress of a forgotten lover.

Then the king rose from his throne.

His dark robes trailed behind him like shadows made flesh, and as he moved, the air grew colder. His crimson eyes—empty yet brimming with obsession—flickered with anticipation.

"Let’s see just how amazing this method from the so-called Lord of Hell actually is," he muttered, each word jagged and sharp, like shattered glass grinding together. His voice echoed in the cavernous chamber, metallic and dissonant, laced with something deeply wrong.

Behind him, an unnatural mass writhed and pulsed, alive with infernal rhythm. The thing was red, swollen and raw, shot through with streaks of fiery purple that throbbed like veins.

On its slick surface, faces twisted and screamed—thousands of them. Some were contorted in pain, others frozen in deranged laughter. A few wept silently, their sorrow palpable even in death. And a handful stared directly at the king, their eyes burning with hatred, glowing like embers in a dying fire.

Their collective gaze felt like a curse, a judgment.

And then, from that gaze, snakes were born.

Spectral serpents, forged of resentment and smoke, rose into the air—hundreds of feet tall. They slithered through the void, coiling around the king’s body, their translucent fangs brushing against his skin as they hissed.

But the king didn’t flinch.

Instead, his expression darkened.

He stared at the serpents with scorn, and with a single snort—cold and indifferent—the entire illusion shattered.

The serpents let out a soul-piercing wail and disintegrated, their forms unraveling like threads of cloth in a flame. The thick black smoke they left behind was darker than night, blacker than death, and it fell heavily onto the stone floor like tar.

Another gust of wind followed, this one sharper, colder—unnatural.

It swept through the throne room like a cleansing tide and erased all traces of the smoke, as if none of it had ever existed.

The king stood still, his posture relaxed, but his eyes... his eyes had grown unfocused. Dreamy.

He was no longer in this world.

His mind drifted somewhere far beyond, a place unseen and unreachable to mortals. Yet behind him, the monstrous red mass continued to pulsate, and the ghostly faces screamed louder. Their howls, once scattered and hollow, began to rise in pitch and madness, twisting into a chorus of hysteria.

But the king didn’t hear them anymore.

He was already descending.

Deeper and deeper—into the abyss.

Just then, Ricky’s heartbeat suddenly surged, thudding against his chest like a war drum. A sheen of cold sweat broke out on his forehead, trailing down the side of his face as his breathing turned shallow and uneven.

"What is happening?"

The thought crawled sluggishly through his mind, as though the very act of thinking had become a burden. His senses dulled, not from exhaustion, but from being overwhelmed. It was as if some unknown force was invading his perception, fraying the boundary between thought and reality.

Then—without warning—the runes hovering before him began to stir. Slowly, methodically, they twisted and whirled, folding in on themselves, rearranging their chaotic dance into something... deliberate. Something sentient.

A face emerged from their union.

And it was a face Ricky recognized.

"The One True Eternal Above."

The words slipped from his lips in a whisper, yet the moment they echoed into the air, Ricky’s entire body shuddered violently. He felt like a taut string being plucked by the fingers of a god—vibrating with unbearable tension.

The face did not move, did not speak, but its presence filled the room with a weight that crushed all other thoughts. It was not merely a being—it was a concept. A force.

The very cornerstone upon which existence had been etched.

Ricky couldn’t breathe.

---

Meanwhile, in another realm entirely—within the isolated sanctum deep inside the inheritance left by Divine Saint Selene Veylor—Ricky floated in silent suspension.

Above him, particles of mana stirred, converging from every corner of the room as if drawn by gravity. They clustered into a mist, then thickened further, coalescing into a dense miniature cloud that pulsed with divine luminance.

The air shimmered.

The cloud grew heavy.

And then—

Drip.

Drip.

Like the first drops of a storm, liquid mana began to fall.

Each drop struck the floor with a faint, crystalline note, a sound both serene and surreal. The room’s temperature shifted subtly, as if the act of mana condensing into liquid released unseen energy. Heat radiated outward in gentle waves, colliding with the invisible structure of the room—and the impact sent ripples in every direction.

The ripples weren’t just physical. They warped reality itself.

The walls flickered.

And then, they vanished entirely.

It was as if Ricky had crossed some unseen threshold. What lay beyond was not space, not a room, but a boundless sea of mana.

His breath hitched.

All around him, the air swam with incorporeal runes—ancient, ever-shifting sigils of unknowable origin. They moved with purpose, streaming like schools of fish through the mana sea, interweaving and dissolving into one another. Every rune seemed to birth a different elemental essence: flame, water, light, shadow, void.

The room had become a womb of creation.

And Ricky floated at its heart.

Words deserted him. Even thoughts became formless.

He simply watched—and in that watching, he forgot.

For a moment, it felt as though he had never been a person, never borne a name or past. He was merely... awareness. Drifting. Witnessing.

Is this the real world?

Or was everything before this a veil?

Which truth is the illusion—and which illusion is the truth?

As if in response, the face from before surged into his vision again—no longer composed of runes, but of pure causality, made from the very force of the universe’s creation.

The foundational block of reality.

And then—

PAIN.

A wave of searing, soul-deep agony erupted in Ricky’s skull.

It was too much. Too vast. Too eternal.

Before he could even cry out, his body jerked—

And the world went black.

It wasn’t entirely clear whether the room Ricky had entered was completely severed from the outside world. But what was certain was this—the all-knowing guardian spirit remained utterly unaware of what had just transpired within.

She had sensed only a flicker of disturbance, a mere flutter in the grand current of energy flowing through the inheritance. To her, it was no more than turbulence from Ricky’s evolution process—an expected consequence, nothing worthy of concern. She never once thought to probe deeper.

Inside the chamber, reality had slowly begun to stabilize.

The storm had passed.

The sea of mana that once consumed the space receded, leaving behind silence and stillness. The fractured illusion of the room began to mend—its walls reforming, its floor solidifying, the shimmer of ambient energy settling like morning mist after a midnight storm.

And then, Ricky moved.

His body trembled faintly, like a marionette being tugged back to life by unseen threads.

His eyes, once glazed and unfocused, slowly regained their clarity. The dazed fog within them burned away, replaced by the sharpness of someone who had just glimpsed something far beyond comprehension.

Yet his head continued to throb.

His thoughts came in fragments—unformed, scattered. Like shattered mirrors reflecting too many truths at once.

What did I see...?

The answer evaded him.

And yet, amid the noise and pain, a single realization stood firm like a pillar amidst crumbling stone:

He needed to evolve.

He needed to grow—faster. Stronger. Now.

There was no time to ponder or hesitate. No luxury of waiting for clarity.

So, the moment the sharpest edges of his headache dulled, Ricky straightened his posture and took a breath.

His voice was a whisper—but it triggered something immense.

The familiar, cold voice of the system echoed in his mind, steady and impersonal. A golden glow immediately surged from within him, enveloping his entire body. Threads of light coiled around him like serpents of the divine, until he was sealed completely—encased in a radiant cocoon.

His feet lifted off the ground.

Within seconds, he hovered in mid-air.

But unlike his previous evolutions, this cocoon was colossal—not just a vessel, but a monument. It pulsed with an insatiable hunger, drawing upon the ambient mana in massive tides. The golden exterior shimmered with layered inscriptions, glowing runes that flickered like stars imprisoned beneath a silk veil.

And it wasn’t stopping.

The cocoon grew.

And grew.

It devoured energy like a black hole in the form of divine metamorphosis.

Ricky, even in his weakened state, could feel the difference.

This is... completely different.

This time, he wasn’t just refining what he had. He was becoming something new.

Had he tried this anywhere else—in the depths of the Emerald Green Forest, surrounded by prying eyes and limited resources—it would have been a catastrophe. The evolution might have completed, but not without consequences. The draining of ambient mana, the bright flare of unnatural light, the sheer pressure—it would have invited disaster.

But here... here in the isolated chamber of Selene Veylor’s inheritance, none of that mattered.

The mana was endless.

The space unbreachable.

And the transformation—

unstoppable.