Su Ze immediately logged into the Dongli Kingdom’s official internal network to check his rewards.

One Class-B Commendation!

Fifty thousand contribution points!

Fifty thousand contribution points were worth five hundred million. Considering the value Su Ze had created during the city’s defense, this amount wasn’t much—it was even a bit low.

The corpses of the mutated beasts he had killed were worth well over five hundred million alone, but things couldn’t be calculated that way. Dongli had to reward the regular soldiers who fought in the battle. Many of them had been injured or even sacrificed, and the government certainly had to provide for their families.

Su Ze was aware enough to understand that.

Besides, with his current net worth, he didn’t care too much about a few hundred million. Things like clearance and commendations were more useful to him.

He checked his personal profile.

Name: Su Ze

Department: Secret Operations Department

Rank: C-Rank

Nothing else had changed. His rank was promoted from D-Rank to C-Rank, which meant his clearance level had also increased.

Su Ze immediately went to the redemption page. As expected, the list of items he could exchange for had grown. His contribution points had also reached 220,000—a considerable sum.

However, he wasn’t lacking anything at the moment. It was better to save up his contribution points for when he really needed them.

Su Ze knew that while he might seem wealthy now, his fortune would be nowhere near enough once he completed his third evolution to reach the Butterfly Stage and needed to absorb a Tier Four extract.

High-grade Tier Four extracts were astronomically expensive, starting at ten billion. And that wasn’t even considering that he would only accept an S-grade one. All the money he had wouldn’t even cover a fraction of the cost.

After getting up and freshening up, Su Ze went to the dining room to find something to eat. He found Liou Wenxin in the kitchen, making breakfast.

Liou Wenxin made Su Ze a bowl of shrimp dumplings and asked, "Up so early today? Are you going to class?"

Su Ze paused. He’d almost forgotten about his classes. He did a quick mental calculation: his advisor had approved seven days of leave, and today was only the sixth day. Not only did he not have to go to class today, but he was also free tomorrow.

Besides, he had just received a Class-B Commendation, and the official announcement was already public. That was more than enough to prove his leave of absence wasn’t for personal reasons—he’d been off defending the nation!

’I took a few days off to serve my country. My advisor can’t possibly have a problem with that, can he?’ 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

"Wenxin, maybe I should just stop going to classes and focus on research with you. By the way, I still have those Coral Insect corpses with me. I’ll go with you to the lab in a bit," Su Ze said.

Liou Wenxin knew Su Ze had no interest in his classes. She smiled teasingly and said, "A couple of days ago, I hired Han Xiaoke as a lab assistant. You can join the lab too, but you’ll have to coordinate your duties with her."

A sense of crisis immediately hit Su Ze. Han Xiaoke was a first-year evolution student. What could she possibly do in the lab? Nothing more than grunt work.

The problem was... Su Ze only knew how to do grunt work too.

’Han Xiaoke is trying to steal my job!’

’Looks like I’ll have to find a way to produce some real results. I can’t just plan on coasting and letting others carry me.’

After breakfast, Su Ze followed Liou Wenxin to the lab.

"Here are the corpses and coral stones from the Tier One to Tier Three Coral Insects. This box contains the Tier Four Coral Worm Tentacles and their coral stones."

Su Ze took everything out of his Storage Pendant.

Liou Wenxin was clearly more interested in the Tier Four specimens. She placed the Tier Four Coral Worm Tentacles onto a tray and examined them carefully for a long while before finally placing them into an instrument to begin testing and analysis.

"Didn’t you say you also had a vial of Mutated Electric Eel Extract? Did you bring it back?" Liou Wenxin asked.

"Right here." Su Ze took out the Mutated Electric Eel Extract and handed it to Liou Wenxin.

Liou Wenxin placed the Mutated Electric Eel Extract into an instrument. A moment later, information about the extract appeared on the screen.

[Unknown Mutated Eel Extract]

Grade: Tier Three, S-Class

Obtainable Skill: Unknown Electric Skill

’Just as I expected, only one skill!’

Su Ze said, "Mrs. Ning—General Ning Yushen—told me this Mutated Electric Eel was incredibly powerful, one of the absolute strongest among Tier Three mutated beasts. It also possessed an enhanced version of the ’Frenzied Electric Body’ skill."

Liou Wenxin analyzed, "The instrument is showing Tier Three, S-Class, but that’s only because S-Class is the highest grade it can register. In reality, the quality of this extract should be S+. This is another case of an Ultimate Mutation, just like the Mutated Giant Crocodile and Mutated Upright Ape you mentioned. The extract contains only a single initial skill."

Liou Wenxin was the one who coined the term ’Ultimate Mutation’ for creatures like the Mutated Giant Crocodile, which had mutated to an S+ Class within their tier.

"Then doesn’t that mean my previous theory was correct?"

Liou Wenxin nodded. "A couple of days ago, some of my evolutionist friends sent me the data they had on specimens of Ultimate Mutations. Including the three vials you’ve come across, I now have information on over ten extracts from Ultimate Mutations. That’s enough to prove that they contain only one powerful, initial skill."

Su Ze grinned. "Does that mean I have a research finding to my name now?"

"You have to write a paper and get it published first."

The mere mention of writing a paper gave Su Ze a headache. "Why don’t you write it, Wenxin? It’s our joint discovery, after all."

Liou Wenxin didn’t think much of such a minor finding, of course, but she still shook her head with a smile. "Fine. What’s a big sister for, right?

"It might have to wait a little, though. In about half a month, I have to go to Lin Hua Country for an academic conference on evolution, so I’ll be pretty busy until then."

"An academic conference on evolution? What’s that?"

"It’s an academic conference hosted by the Sovereign Country. The dates are never fixed, and you can only attend by invitation. This time, a total of four evolutionists from the Dongli Kingdom received an invitation, myself included. That’s what the meeting I attended yesterday was about."