World Evolution! Awakening Limit Grade Talent!

Aiden, seeing the skill created was an E-rank skill, is pleased; however, knowing the reason, he doesn't think too much about this and decides to use the skill to see what is the difference between using the spell without creating a skill or after creating a spell.

He moved to the other zombies, and after cutting their chest open, he used the skill; however, after using the skill, he didn't feel much of a difference from before, as the time it took to activate the spell was almost the same. But he was not expecting to just magically become faster, so he continued using the skill on different zombies one after another.

The speed at which he is extracting the cores is the fastest, given his control over mana and the amount of mana he has. While it didn't take much mana for others, given the number of corpses, they had to take a rest after 20-25 zombies.

Time passed, and Aiden continued to remove the cores from different zombies one after another, and after a certain period of time, when he had almost removed the cores of more than a hundred zombies, he suddenly felt a change happening, as the time it took to use and also his control over the Mana Hand has increased slightly—not too great, but he can definitely notice the difference.

Noticing the change, he called out the status in his mind to see the change in the rank of the skill, and just as he expected, the rank of his skill increased from (E-) to (E) rank. He didn't think he would have been able to increase the speed of something that was already this fast and only took a second for him to cast normally. So, seeing the perks of creating a skill, he has already developed many ideas to create some skills using his most offensive element, thunder.

But for now, he focused on the task ahead.

Aiden continued as he harvested more and more cores, and by the end of finishing all the zombies, he had already taken out about 300 cores. At the same time, his skill rank has also increased from (E) to (E+) rank.

Now that all the cores have been collected, he is thinking about how he should continue after this, but first, he checks the time. Seeing it was already 2 pm, he decided to have a break and let everyone have lunch before continuing, while he didn't feel very hungry himself, he knew this was not the case for all the others.

Ava has collected all the cores from everyone except Alicia, and now she is moving toward Aiden to give him all the cores. Her heart felt heavy as she still remembers the scene clearly in her mind; she didn't know how she would behave when she met him face to face, but she didn't want to act differently than usual and wanted to do her job as she was supposed to.

Aiden can see Ava coming toward him with a backpack in her hand, and unlike last time, she is alone. He didn't know why, but Ava looked a little different than usual; while she looked the same, something still felt off about her, which he couldn't put his finger on.

'It must be my imagination,' he ignored these thoughts for now.

He can see Ava standing in front of him. He was about to ask her about the details of the cores, but before he could speak, he heard her voice, and there was one more thing he had noticed now: for some reason, she was not looking directly at him, but instead looking at the ground, trying to avoid eye contact.

A few thoughts appeared in his mind, seeing the unusual behavior.

'Did she become this shy only after our single interaction where I showed her a little bit of affection? I didn't think she was this shy; I thought her reaction would be different and much calmer than this.'

She extended her hands and said in a low voice,

"L-Leader, these are all t-the cores we have c-collected, excluding the ones y-you and your sister h-have collected."

Before she could continue and tell him everything as quickly as she could, she heard his voice, which was not like his usual commanding tone; she could feel the softness in his voice, and her heart clenched tightly inside her chest, hearing the tone of his voice.

"Ava, you should look me in the eyes when we are talking; it would feel much better if you did that."

Ava heard him clearly. She wanted to say something, to ask him why he was doing this to her. She has already thought many things about them after what happened previously, but after what she has seen before, she can tell she is not special at all.

She didn't want him to act nicely toward her; she only wanted him to act with indifference like in all these years they have been assigned to duty as his guard. But she couldn't reject him, knowing he was her leader, and she had to follow his commands. For the second time in her life, in such a short period of time, Ava felt following rules was not always good, and both times, he was the reason for her to think that.

'Why are you doing this to me? I am not someone who can handle affectionate things... I-If you act like this, even while knowing you are only hurting me, leader, I couldn't help but hate you... But some part of me still wants to feel the warmth.'

Ava was confused; she didn't know what to do, as her leader was only playing with her emotions, even though she didn't know who the person she had seen with him previously was. But his actions only tell her that she is not even sure if it would be the last time he would do something like this.

Because she didn't like the feeling of seeing that heart-wrenching scene previously, she knows she is a hypocrite for feeling like this, as she didn't feel anything when he showed intimacy toward his own sister. It only made her feel even more interested in him.

'I am such a messed-up woman.'

Still, she nervously looked up as his handsome face slowly appeared in front of her. Like always, his long black hair fluttered as the wind whistled past it. His facial features were, as always, perfect. Once again, she realized how handsome her leader was. Spending so much time together with him, she didn't focus on his appearance much and only did her job.

But now, just like all the others, she also started to notice his attractiveness more and more, which is not something she liked doing, especially now. She tried to keep a poker face and not show any emotion, and luckily, she had hidden her emotions.

'Argh! Why is this so hard?'

It is already hard for her to not show her sadness. However, only after a second of looking at him, she could see a dazzling smile appear on his handsome face. All her facade broke down in an instant as she saw how he was smiling at her, even after what he had done.

But she has no words to say to him. Even if she tried to ask who the person was that he had given the same care to her only a few hours after he had done the same thing to her, no words came out of her mouth. Even her hands are shaking due to nervousness, as deep sadness is visible on her beautiful face.