Starting Unlimited Evolution from Grinding

Chapter 289: Duke Morin's Plan, Richie XVI

"It's been about four days since the Hunting Competition began."

At this moment, far away in the Royal Capital, within the Duke's mansion, Duke Sted Morin was frowning deeply as he looked at the man shrouded in a black robe standing before him.

"I think it's time for you to make a decision."

Duke Morin did not answer, merely staring intently at the man before him, seemingly making a final deliberation. "Cress, are you certain the forces you've amassed are sufficient?"

"Of course, esteemed Duke."

Cress performed a very elegant bow. "For this plan, my teacher—Rory Calde—and I, under the glorious guidance of the great Richi the Sixteenth, have been preparing for dozens of years. Everything is within our calculations."

"Good!"

Duke Morin finally nodded, then turned and walked towards the depths of his mansion.

"Follow me..."

Cress narrowed his eyes slightly, watching the back of the man ahead, as if carefully pondering his attitude.Soon, he followed the Duke's firm, decisive footsteps into a study that looked utterly ordinary.

Duke Morin, with a grave expression, felt along the wall for a switch, infused it with mana, pressed it gently, and then repeated the process, activating three mechanisms within this study one after another.

Afterwards, he turned and left the room again.

Cress followed him, taking a long, winding path that led to Duke Morin's bedroom.

Just like before, this time four mechanisms were activated in succession. Only then did the luxurious bed in the center of the room slowly move aside, revealing a narrow tunnel entrance barely large enough for one person to enter.

"Truly cautious..."

Cress smiled and praised, "As expected of you."

"Hmph."

Sted Morin snorted coldly and stepped into the tunnel.

Cress followed closely behind. After a long journey, what appeared before them was a sealed magical barrier.

On the ground inside the barrier, one could see extremely complex mana circuits, intricately intertwined.

Duke Morin cautiously brought his hand close to the magical barrier before him. Mana continuously surged from his hand, pouring into the barrier.

A full five minutes passed before he, panting, lowered his hand, his forehead already covered in sweat.

The magical barrier before him was deactivated. Duke Morin quickly walked inside, finding a seemingly very plain box in a hidden small room.

He opened that box. Inside, quietly resting, was a crystal-colored key.

Cress, standing behind him, stared intently at this key, his emotions finally becoming agitated. "This is..."

"This is the key that was lost seventeen years ago by the Doria Kingdom, the key capable of directly opening a portal to the Royal Capital."

*Clap—clap—clap—*

Sted Morin applauded. "No one ever imagined that key was actually stolen by the nation's own esteemed and respected Duke."

"I praise you from the bottom of my heart," Cress said. "Duke Morin, you truly are a born schemer... I'm certain the great Richi the Sixteenth would be very pleased to welcome you into our 'family' upon meeting you."

"I have no interest in your shady dealings, skulking in dark corners."

Duke Morin glanced at him coldly. "Remember, this is not some form of cooperation. It's merely that, at this moment, you happen to have value worth utilizing to me."

"What a pity."

The smile on Cress's face remained unchanged, but a hint of coldness shone in his eyes.

"Then, please hand the key over to me..."

Duke Morin picked up the key and tossed it to him. "Remember what you said. Otherwise, I have plenty of ways to make you regret it."

"Of course."

Cress caught the key and bowed. "Then, we shall meet again in a few days."

With those words, his figure vanished into the darkness.

Sted Morin looked at the spot where he disappeared, his expression momentarily dazed, before he snorted coldly again. "Kaeo, you forced me into this..."

He then went to his desk, found the magical communication device, and sent a message to the other side: "The plan, begin execution!"

Benerod's sword rose and fell, slaying another demonic beast.

Someone immediately came up from behind to process the materials, collecting them while flattering, "Young Master's strength grows more impressive by the day. With this, your ranking has reached 19th place. Combined with Young Master Satt's points, we might even be able to compete for a spot near the top of the leaderboard."

"Mhm."

Benerod responded absentmindedly.

He was still thinking about the message sent from Sted Morin's side earlier.

What is that fellow scheming now?

Benerod pondered seriously.

Ever since the incident last time, the Morin Family's standing within the Doria Kingdom had plummeted, no longer possessing the arrogant, untouchable aura of its past.

Furthermore, due to the impact of the Noren Trading Company, the Morin Family's alchemy market business had also suffered a significant decline.

If this continued and nothing changed, the decline of the Morin Family would be inevitable.

And by that time, whether it was the Morin Family or Duke Sted Morin himself, they would likely find it difficult to escape the various reckonings that would follow.

Therefore, he had to do everything possible to preserve the family's share of the Doria Kingdom's alchemy market, which was why he wanted to use the Hunting Competition to restore the family's reputation...

This was the underlying logic behind Sted Morin's actions, so whatever he was doing must also revolve around these goals.

No, wait!

Benerod suddenly thought of something. The method to protect the family's interests and avoid being held accountable didn't seem to be just this one.

If they could directly leave this kingdom and take those assets to another kingdom, they could also avoid being held accountable for their past actions.

They could even rely on their family's accumulated resources to slowly exploit and poison the next kingdom.

Normally, this path was impassable.

Because the King of the Doria Kingdom was not a fool. He could certainly anticipate such things.

Especially recently, he had been strictly guarding against the Morin Family. At the slightest sign of trouble, he would immediately dispatch troops, or even take action himself, absolutely not allowing them to leave peacefully.

After all, the Morin Family had been throwing its weight around in the kingdom for many years, siphoning off the wealth of the Doria Kingdom.

If they were allowed to escape with this wealth to another kingdom, the already dire situation of the Doria Kingdom would undoubtedly worsen.

Ultimately, it was the emergence of the Noren Trading Company that shattered the already fragile balance.

Otherwise, even if some evidence of the Morin Family's crimes was discovered, the King would have found it difficult to move against such a behemoth.

In short, for Benerod's current line of thinking, King Kaeo's side certainly had some forewarning.

But, all of this was based on conventional logic.

Benerod had not forgotten one of the charges leveled against Duke Morin back then—colluding with necromancers.

If that was the case then, what about now?

I'm afraid it still is!

"Young Master... Young Master?"

The call from a follower beside him disrupted Benerod's train of thought.

"Young Master, it's time to continue hunting demonic beasts. Our points are about to fall to 20th place."

Benerod nodded. He hoped he was just overthinking things.

The power of necromancers was indeed formidable and feared, but they had never truly risen to prominence. Wanting to casually seize a kingdom wasn't that easy either.

If Duke Morin wanted to find a chance to escape, he would at least have to wait until an undead army was at the city gates, invading the Royal Capital.

The area near the Royal Capital had numerous natural terrain defenses, and there was also Fargard City, a fortress with strong military preparedness and a large number of adventurers, serving as protection. An undead army wanting to break through these defensive lines wouldn't be that easy.

The 5th day after the Hunting Competition began.

Silent Forest, Area 33.

Through Lin Mo's persistent and unrelenting efforts, his series of [Attribute Increase] skills—namely [Strength Increase], [Agility Increase], and [Constitution Increase]—were now not far from evolution.

Once these three skills completed their evolution, Lin Mo's number of Priest class skills would be sufficient for promotion to Elite Level.

What was currently lacking was on the Knight profession side. 14 points of base Constitution attribute—it wasn't a lot, but it wasn't insignificant either.

Yesterday, Lin Mo had already raised the two newly evolved skills, [Heavy Shield Counter] and [Assault Shield], to Level 4, which was the level that granted attribute points. This earned him a total of 6 more base Constitution points. The remaining gap was 8 points.

Lin Mo set his sights on the [Earth-Rending Slam] skill.

As a blue Exceptional-Grade skill, this skill had previously already reached Level 6. It only needed one final push to complete its evolution and become an Epic Level skill.

The attribute points from maxing out the skill level, plus the base attribute points from learning a new Epic Level skill, would be more than enough.

Therefore, today's goal was to focus on increasing this skill's proficiency.

In fact, this wasn't particularly difficult. Blue Exceptional-Grade skills didn't suffer any proficiency decay yet. Although the proficiency required to go from Level 6 to Level 7 was slightly higher, the proficiency granted by the demonic beasts Lin Mo was currently killing was also quite high.

In less than half a day, Lin Mo had raised this skill's proficiency to 290/300.

The reason he didn't continue was that the [Attribute Increase] series was still slightly lacking.

To obtain the Paladin profession, it was best to have both conditions met simultaneously.

During the noon rest period, Lin Mo checked the scores again.

As the Hunting Competition progressed, the capable contestants continued to exert themselves. The rate of point accumulation hadn't slowed down; instead, it had become faster than the previous two days.

Now, the 2nd place contestant's points were getting very close to his...

Of course, the current 2nd place was no longer the same person as the 2nd place from a day ago.

That's right, Eve had done it.

Her points had successfully surpassed the original 2nd place, securing the 2nd place position for herself.

Lin Mo smiled knowingly, feeling happy for her as well, with not a trace of worry about possibly being overtaken.

Speaking of which, Satt, who originally seemed like he would resort to underhanded tactics, didn't seem to have taken any action so far?

His point ranking had fallen out of the top ten, landing at 13th place.

This was so normal it felt abnormal.

Logically speaking, with the competition about half over, any tricks should have been played by now.

Satt was thinking the same thing.

"What is Father waiting for? Didn't he say everything was arranged?"

He looked at his point ranking, growing increasingly anxious.

"Boss, are we still going to keep killing demonic beasts?"

A follower beside him asked cautiously.

Satt glared at him, causing the man to immediately shrink his neck and dare not speak again.

Whatever, it's not like I'm the one trying to seize first place anyway. If he's not in a hurry, I'll just wait.

Might as well take the chance to rest a bit more.

Satt ultimately didn't want to lose face. He quickly stood up and led his subordinates to continue hunting demonic beasts.

On Lin Mo's side, seeing Eve's points getting closer and closer to his own, he felt it was time to score another wave of points.

Although his main purpose for coming here wasn't to win the championship, there was no reason to simply hand over a championship and rewards he could potentially claim.

He couldn't be bothered to pick and choose anymore. He'd just go check out the core area of this Area 33.

If you really wanted points, hunting higher-level demonic beasts was the fastest way.

The "master" of Area 33 was a powerful demonic beast called the Molten Rock Fire Lion.

The numbers of this type of demonic beast were extremely scarce. According to the estimates of scholars who study demonic beast ecology, the total number of Molten Rock Fire Lions currently residing in this forest was less than ten.

Correspondingly, the strength of this demonic beast was also among the highest in the outer regions of the Silent Forest.

Not only were their levels relatively high, but even at the same level, there had been many instances of Molten Rock Fire Lions clashing with powerful demonic beasts from other territories and either driving them back or killing them.

And for such a powerful demonic beast, the points one could obtain were naturally the maximum for its corresponding level.

Lin Mo's current total points were 61,384. Eve in 2nd place had 57,389, already very close to Lin Mo.

Clearly, over the past few days, she had been killing higher-level demonic beasts, like those at levels 6-8.

These demonic beasts gave significantly more points than the lower-level ones. For Eve, the difficulty wouldn't be too great, the consumption wasn't severe, and she could sustain combat.

The original 2nd place, now 3rd place, wasn't actually far behind Eve either, currently at 55,994 points, still quite capable.

During these days of fighting, Ellie had also gained a lot of practical experience.

Previously, although her level had increased rapidly thanks to Lin Mo and her attributes were fairly well-rounded, her skill proficiency and combat techniques were actually quite weak.

Having been in actual combat with demonic beasts these past few days, plus Lin Mo's guidance on skills and Sherfilia's guidance on combat techniques, she had made significant progress. She had also gained some attributes through skill level-ups and wasn't far from leveling up again.

Sherfilia and Finnie had naturally grown as well. Lin Mo had noticed that Sherfilia seemed to be focusing quite intently on practicing one skill, probably because its proficiency was about to reach its peak.

By that time, her level would likely also rise to Level 9.

"Rest time is about over. Let's move out!"