The five-hundredth experience point arrived courtesy of a beetle the size of Andy's fist (his frog fist, not impressive by human standards but perfectly adequate for punching beetles, a sentence he never thought he'd think). Thonk. Dead. The evolution notification arrived with the corpse.

  [XP: 500/500]

  [TIER 4 EVOLUTION AVAILABLE!]

  [CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE REACHED THE THRESHOLD FOR TIER 4 EVOLUTION.]

  He dragged the beetle's remains into the shade of a fern (this was his fourth tier evolution and he had learned that the restructuring process left him vulnerable; shade and cover first, existential deliberation second) and settled into a crouch to read the options.

  [TIER 4 EVOLUTION: COMPLEX ORGANISM (ADVANCED)]

  [YOU WILL TRANSITION FROM A SIMPLE MULTICELLULAR ORGANISM TO AN ADVANCED COMPLEX ORGANISM. FULL ORGAN SYSTEMS. ENHANCED SENSORY CAPABILITIES. SIGNIFICANT SIZE INCREASE.]

  [CHOOSE YOUR BODY TYPE:]

  [1. CANINE-TYPE] - Quadrupedal mammal. Pack-oriented. Exceptional olfaction and hearing. High endurance. Opens paths toward: Wolves, Dire fauna, Canid spirits. Social XP bonuses with pack members.

  [2. FELINE-TYPE] - Quadrupedal mammal. Solitary hunter. Exceptional reflexes and night vision. Burst speed. Opens paths toward: Great cats, Shadow fauna, Feline spirits. Stealth XP bonuses.

  [3. EQUINE-TYPE] - Quadrupedal mammal. Herd-oriented. Exceptional speed and stamina. Large body frame. Opens paths toward: Horses, Magical beasts, Equine megafauna. Endurance XP bonuses. NOTE: THIS PATH IS COMPATIBLE WITH HORN MORPHOLOGY TRAIT CHAIN.]

  [4. CERVINE-TYPE] - Quadrupedal mammal. Forest-oriented. Exceptional agility and sensory awareness. Antler development. Opens paths toward: Deer, Stag spirits, Forest guardians. Terrain navigation XP bonuses.]

  Andy read the options once.

  He read them twice.

  He read the third option, the equine path, a third time, with the specific, focused attention of a man who has been reading between the lines of a mystery novel for three hundred pages and has just arrived at the chapter where the detective says "it was the butler all along" except the butler was a calcium spike and the detective was a frog.

  NOTE: THIS PATH IS COMPATIBLE WITH HORN MORPHOLOGY TRAIT CHAIN.

  Compatible. The System had never been this direct. This was not a breadcrumb. This was a neon sign. This was the System pointing at the equine option and saying: this one.

  Horse. Horses with horns were...

  Andy sat very still on the forest floor, and the full picture assembled itself with the clean, inevitable click of a puzzle's final piece.

  He was going to be a unicorn.

  The calcium spike he'd picked as a bacterium. The horn chain he'd nursed through three tiers. All of it, every pointy choice, had been building toward this. Horn plus horse equals unicorn.

  "The System flagged it COMPATIBLE," Andy thought, with the giddy, slightly unhinged energy of a man who has just discovered that the lottery ticket he used as a bookmark is worth eleven million dollars. "The most famous virgin animal in mythology. For the reincarnated virgin. The System is either the greatest game designer of all time or the cruelest comedian, and honestly it might be both."

  He needed to calm down. He was a frog having a revelation under a fern and his horn was pulsing with golden-blue light in response to his emotional state (that was new; life magic reacting to strong emotions) and the light was going to attract predators. Deep breaths. Or whatever the frog equivalent was.

  "Horses," he thought, and then: "magical beasts," and then: "equine megafauna," and then, because the thought was irresistible: "unicorn."

  The canine path was fine. The feline path was elegant. The cervine path had antlers, which were horns in a different font. But the System had specifically flagged equine as compatible with his horn chain, and ignoring a flag was the kind of decision that got you killed in video games and in crosswalks.

  Andy selected Equine-Type. Obviously. He had been selecting Equine-Type since he was a bacterium. He just hadn't known it yet.

  [EQUINE-TYPE: SELECTED]

  [HORN MORPHOLOGY TRAIT CHAIN: COMPATIBLE. TRANSFERRING.]

  [INITIATING TIER 4 EVOLUTION...]

  [WARNING: SIGNIFICANT BODY PLAN CHANGES. ESTIMATED SIZE INCREASE: 400-600%. FULL MAMMALIAN ORGAN SYSTEMS DEVELOPING. THIS PROCESS MAY BE DISORIENTING.]

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  Four hundred to six hundred percent. From a nine-centimeter frog to something approaching half a meter. The size of a small dog. Not the size of a horse, but "proto-equine" was presumably the starting configuration.

  He was going to have hooves. A mane. The body plan of a creature designed to run, and Andy had not run since the body that got hit by a truck. The prospect of speed, of the ground passing beneath legs built for it, made his amphibian form tremble.

  The restructuring began, and it was the biggest jump yet.

  His limbs elongated. His torso stretched. His skull reshaped around his brain (which was growing too, thoughts getting sharper in real-time like a screen's resolution increasing while you watched). His skin thickened, developed a coat of short, coarse hair. His gills sealed shut for the final time. He was a land creature now. The water was behind him.

  His toes fused. Three on each foot, the digits merging into something between a hoof and a claw, the early equine compromise that would eventually become proper hooves. His tail grew, thin and bony, and would later (hopefully) become the flowing tail of an actual horse. For now it looked like a rat tail attached to a barrel, and Andy was choosing not to think about it.

  And the horn.

  The horn relocated. As his skull reshaped into an equine cranium, it slid forward along the developing frontal bone, settling between and slightly above his forming eyes, and fixed itself there with a biological permanence that felt like a key sliding into a lock. Front and center. Right where everyone could see it. The horn had spent four tiers migrating from his cell membrane to his tentacle to the top of his frog skull and had now arrived at its final, most prominent position: dead center of his forehead, pointing straight forward, impossible to miss.

  Peak horny.

  [HORN (MAMMALIAN/EQUINE): DETECTED.]

  [TRAIT CHAIN: 4 TIERS.]

  [MYTHIC CREATURE PREREQUISITE: HORN MORPHOLOGY - MET.]

  [MYTHIC CREATURE PREREQUISITE: LIFE MAGIC AFFINITY - MET.]

  [MYTHIC CREATURE PREREQUISITE: EQUINE BASE FORM - MET.]

  [REMAINING PREREQUISITES: SEE TIER 5 AND TIER 6 EVOLUTION REQUIREMENTS.]

  Three prerequisites met. Horn morphology. Life magic affinity. Equine base form. Three boxes checked on a checklist he hadn't known existed until the System decided, four tiers in, to show him the receipt.

  "MYTHIC. CREATURE." Andy thought, bones still growing, muscles still forming. "Three prerequisites down. Greatest character build in the history of gaming, or the most elaborate dick joke the universe has ever told. Either way, I am HERE for it."

  [TIER 4 EVOLUTION COMPLETE]

  [NEW SPECIES: PROTO-EQUINE (PRIMITIVE HORSE-TYPE)]

  [SIZE: APPROXIMATELY 45CM AT SHOULDER]

  [BODY PLAN: QUADRUPEDAL MAMMAL. BILATERAL SYMMETRY. FOUR LIMBS WITH SEMI-HOOVED FEET. FULL MAMMALIAN ORGAN SUITE. ENHANCED VISUAL, AUDITORY, AND OLFACTORY SYSTEMS.]

  [ABILITIES UPDATED:]

  [ACTIVE HUNTING] - Converted to: ACTIVE AWARENESS. Multi-sensory environmental monitoring. Threat and prey detection at long range.

  [GALLOP] - Quadrupedal running gait. Maximum speed: Moderate-to-High. Endurance: High.

  [ENHANCED SENSES] - Significantly improved vision (color, distance, motion detection). Enhanced hearing (directional, frequency range expanded). Enhanced olfaction (tracking capability).

  [TOXIC SKIN: REMOVED] - Mammalian body plan does not support dermal toxin secretion.

  [REGENERATION: RETAINED, REDUCED] - Healing rate decreased from amphibian levels. Standard mammalian healing augmented by Life Magic Affinity.

  [LIFE MAGIC AFFINITY: RETAINED AND ENHANCED] - Horn channels life magic with increased efficiency. Passive healing aura (self only, minor).

  [CALCIUM SPIKE: RETAINED AND ENHANCED] - Horn now centered on frontal bone between ears. Hardened. Stubby. Integrated with cranial structure. Faint golden-blue luminescence persistent.]

  [HORN MORPHOLOGY: ACTIVE. TIER 4 OF 6. TRAIT CHAIN: RARE. GROWING. PREREQUISITES ACCUMULATING.]

  Andy opened his eyes.

  His new eyes. Equine eyes that resolved the world not as a blurry impressionist painting but as something approaching actual vision, with depth and detail and color his frog eyes had only hinted at.

  The forest was green. Actually, vividly, specifically green, a dozen different shades his improved perception could distinguish. The fern above him (much smaller now relative to his body, forty-five centimeters at the shoulder being five times his previous height) was a bright, translucent emerald in the sunlight.

  The sunlight. Individual beams filtering through the canopy, striking the forest floor in golden columns that moved with the breeze. Andy, proto-equine, stood with his stubby horn glowing and his three-toed hooves in the soil and thought: yes. This was worth four tiers. This was worth dying and being a cell and being a jellyfish and being a frog. This moment, this sight, this was the reward.

  Then he tried to walk and fell over immediately, because his brain was still running amphibian software on equine hardware.

  He looked, he suspected, like someone had described a horse to an artist who got frustrated halfway through and submitted what they had. Legs too thick. Body too compact. Head too large for his neck. His mane was a bristly mohawk that stood straight up along his spine rather than flowing gracefully to one side. His three-toed feet were neither hooves nor paws but an awkward compromise. His tail was a sad, bony whip that a horse would be embarrassed by and a rat would find aspirational.

  And between his ears, stubby and short and glowing golden-blue, sat his horn. Four tiers old. Persistent across every body he had inhabited. Ridiculous on a cell, functional on a jellyfish, practical on a frog, and now, on the forehead of a proto-horse, unmistakable in its intent. It was also exactly at crotch height for the fisherman. The universe's commitment to the bit was genuinely impressive.

  "I look like someone described a horse to an AI and the AI had a stroke halfway through," Andy thought, climbing to his feet with the wobbling determination of a newborn colt. "But I have a HORN. I've ALWAYS had a horn. Every version of me has been horny and now it's GOING SOMEWHERE. It's going to horse. Horse is going to unicorn. Unicorn is going to mythic creature. And mythic creature is going to have HANDS, or the ability to GET hands, because I didn't die a virgin and evolve through four tiers of increasingly weird bodies to end up as a medium-sized horse with a glow stick on its forehead. I have been the most armed, most evolved, most determined virgin in history for four straight lifetimes and I am CASHING IN."

  He took a step. Wobbled. Caught himself. Took another. Wobbled less.

  [XP: 0/1000]

  [NEXT MILESTONE: TIER 5 EVOLUTION]

  One thousand. The numbers kept getting bigger. But so did he.

  A weird, ugly, stubby-horned, three-toed, mohawk-maned, rat-tailed proto-horse the size of a large dog, with a glowing forehead and the soul of a virgin vet tech.

  Magnificent.

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