Chapter 180: Chapter 180: Attribute Exchange & Evolution Just as he sat down to rest, his breathing steadying as the adrenaline of his physical testing began to ebb. He felt powerful. His muscles hummed with potential energy, his skin was impenetrable to common stone, and his eyes could pierce the darkness. But as he closed his eyes to center himself, he realized the greatest change wasn’t in his arms. It was inside. He hurriedly placed a hand over his heart. The hollow cavity in his chest wasn’t just full, it had mysteriously transformed. Before the Rite, the energy had been Ash Gray was a gaseous, mist-like substance that was hard to grasp and easy to exhaust. And most importantly, it was extremely volatile, requiring intense emotional triggers to use. Then, after a few encounters with different beasts and absorbing their soul or soul power, it had condensed into Charcoal... denser, grittier, version. But now? Sol closed his eyes and looked inward. What he saw made his breath hitch. The cavity was a literal lake. The energy wasn’t gaseous anymore. It had transformed into Liquid. It swirled with a heavy, viscous grace, looking like molten mercury. Its color has also been upgraded to Silver... a bright, metallic hue that sloshed against the walls of his spiritual container with a rhythmic tide. It moved with a slow, deliberate weight that screamed of power. "Condensation," Sol whispered, opening his eyes. "It didn’t just refill; it evolved. It went from gaseous to liquid state." "And the volume... it had doubled. No, tripled." Sol whispered, feeling the sheer volume of it. " Density has also increased massively. He felt that one drop of this Silver liquid is worth a bucket of the Ash mist." The encounter with Isylia... the absorption of divine shard and the biological feedback of mating with a Primordial... had force-fed it. He wasn’t just a novice running on fumes anymore. He now had a fucking reservoir at his disposal. "Liquid Silver," Sol whispered, feeling the power thrumming through his veins like a second heartbeat. "Phase Two." He flexed his will, pushing a droplet of the liquid energy out of the cavity and into his arm. WHOOSH. It didn’t resist. It rushed up his arm like a tidal wave in a canal. The speed of the energy transfer was instant... no lag, no hesitation. His arm glowed with a faint, silver luminescence. A sphere of liquid silver light formed above his palm, humming with a low vibration. And unlike before it was stable and obedient. Sol’s breath caught. Unlike before, it wasn’t wild or chaotic. It was his. He felt like he could punch through the obsidian wall without even feeling it. "Let’s see what you can do," Sol murmured, his eyes gleaming. He looked around for a test subject. There were no snakes here, no women. Just the ruins and broken stones. He clenched his fist, the sphere hovering obediently above his palm. "Damn. Nothing but rubble." He tossed the sphere lightly from one hand to the other, marveling at how it followed his intent like a loyal hound. The hum resonated in his bones, filling him with a strange ecstasy. "It’s... perfect. Fast. Controlled. Like a second nervous system wired directly into my will." He exhaled, forcing the sphere to dissolve back into his arm. The silver glow faded, leaving only the faint thrum of power beneath his skin. "Seems like I can only test it later," he muttered, half‑frustrated, half‑thrilled. His grin widened despite himself. "But when I do... gods help whatever’s on the receiving end. But I doubt even god will help, as even goddess was his woman now." He focused back inside to thoroughly see the changes. But as Sol analyzed the new state of his hollow core, he noticed something else floating in the silver lake. It was a shard. Floating amidst the Silver energy was a tiny, fragmented crystal of golden light. It didn’t blend in. It sat there, radiating a distinct, familiar aura. "Hmmm," Sol murmured, "What... is this?" Then he suddenly realized with a jolt what had happened during their climax. He hadn’t just drained her vitality. When the "circuit" had overloaded, when she had poured her essence into him... he had siphoned off a fragment of her Divinity. She was the Goddess of Exchange after all. So, earlier... Did I absorb her unique Law? It seemed impossible. Laws were cosmic concepts, they weren’t some things that one could steal, and she had said that even I did get one, I wouldn’t be able to use it. But... remembering about his transmigration and weird ability to absorb vitality his whole existence was an anomaly. Sol looked at the broken piece of a stone pillar near his feet. Next to it was a shard of petrified wood, black and ancient. An idea, wild and impossible, sparked in his mind. He picked up the stone in his left hand and the wood in his right. He didn’t use the Sovereign’s Gaze, (the name he had recently come up with for using free use power, as it only required just a gaze to control, at least in the eyes of others.) He reached for the golden shard floating in his chest. He pushed a stream of Silver energy through it, using the shard as a lens. He then pushed the Silver liquid into both objects simultaneously. He visualized the properties of the stone... heavy, brittle, cold. He visualized the properties of the wood... fibrous, lighter, flammable. Property: Hardness. Property: Flexibility. Swap. The air between his hands distorted. A line of silver lightning connected the two objects. ZZZT. He felt a sudden, nauseating lurch in his gut, like he was trying to lift a weight with his stomach muscles. The Silver energy drained rapidly... far faster than when he first controlled the snake. But he held on. But the effect was visible. The stone in his left hand changed. It didn’t change shape, but the texture shifted. The cold hardness vanished, replaced by a warm, organic feeling. He squeezed it. The stone gave. It had the density and flexibility of wood. He looked at the wood in his right hand. It had turned heavy, cold, and unyielding as a stone. He tapped it against the floor. Clink. It sounded like rock. "Holy shit," Sol breathed. He had swapped their fundamental properties. He had made stone into wood and wood into stone. He watched closely. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. Snap. The stone instantly hardened back into brittle rock, and the wood turned back to wood, well it turned back into wood. "Temporary," Sol noted, wiping sweat from his brow. "And weak. I can’t turn water into wine yet. But I can turn a sword into a noodle for three seconds. I can only swap basic physical properties for a few seconds." Honestly that in itself was terrifying. In a fight, three seconds of an enemy’s weapon turning soft... or their armor turning brittle... was a death sentence. It was a debuff that defied physics. But the implications went far deeper than combat. Sol stared at his hands, his mind racing at a million miles an hour. "Attribute Exchange," he said, naming the power. It was weak. It was incredibly temporary... it had lasted maybe three seconds. And the cost was high; the Silver lake had dipped noticeably just for that small parlor trick. But the implications were terrifying. This wasn’t just the Free Use command. He had rewritten the fundamental properties of matter. He had told the stone to be wood, and the stone had obeyed. The Law of Exchange. He looked at his hands, trembling with excitement. "If I can absorb Vitality from a mortal..." he reasoned, pacing the dais. "And I can absorb a Law Fragment from a Goddess..." "What else can I absorb?" Sol mused, his eyes gleaming with greed. He dropped back onto the throne, laughter spilling out of him... soft at first, then sharper, edged with disbelief. It was absurd. It was broken. He thought about the "Path of the Body." He had assumed it was just about Vitality... about healing, strength and endurance. But this... this changed the game. "Does that mean I can absorb other things?" he muttered, leaning forward, fingers drumming against the armrest. "If I sleep with a mage, can I steal her mana capacity? If I sleep with a warrior, can I steal her talent for the blade? What about bloodlines? Elemental affinities?" "Of course, it’s another matter if this world has any mage or warrior, but still..." His mind raced, greed igniting like wildfire. What If he slept with other races like? Sol mused, "If I bed an Elf, do I get their Life-Sense? Their unique magic talent?" "If I bed a Dragon (in human form, preferably), could I absorb their powerful scales or their Breath?" He leaned back, eyes narrowing, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "If I bed a Succubus... do I get their charm? " The possibilities stretched out before him, endless and intoxicating. He wasn’t limited to his own human potential. Nor was he just a sponge for health. He was a genetic thief. He was a cosmic parasite that could steal the very essence of what made a species unique. "I could build the perfect body," Sol realized, a greedy light igniting in his crimson eyes. "The ultimate body. I could take the best traits of every race and beings I conquered and make them mine." He clenched his fist, extinguishing the silver light. "Super excited doesn’t even cover it," he grinned. "I’m going to need a bigger harem." The harem plan wasn’t just about influence or pleasure anymore. It was about Evolution.