Chapter 1870: New Face 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂 To reach the twelfth level of the nameless technique for both his flesh and spirit, Rowan spent a century, which was much quicker than he expected when he had initially thought he would have a thousand years to reach this level. Settling down on his wooden throne, the glyph upon it had reached one percent completion, and it would inevitably grow more complex as he deepened the complexity of this glyph. To fit everyone he knew on this throne, he would need a throne the size of a star, but Rowan wanted this challenge. In that time period, the boy had visited him three more times, and he had cooked for him, and Rowan could now see that soon the nose of the boy would be exposed, and he expected that two more feeding rituals would give the boy a complete nose. The two nameless techniques reached the higher level simultaneously, and Rowan gasped as pure power and lifeforce flowed through his body and spirit. His broken body was healed, and his power exploded to the peak of the eighth-dimensional level. Rowan took the time to assess his new power and state of mind. Without wasting a single moment, he activated the suction ability and began drawing in all the bones inside the cave. This time, the cracks in space multiplied, where there had once been dozens; it exploded to hundreds, and the lives that poured into Rowan at every moment were not in the thousands but in the hundreds of thousands. A well-balanced mind would have hesitated or flinched before bringing such a heavy burden into their body that would inevitably kill them, but Rowan did not think twice; he held up his side of the bargain. He would never look back. Once again, the pain started, and the madness rushed into his body and spirit. Rowan gritted his teeth so hard that they began to bleed, as year after year went by and he collected the bones in the cave. As time went by, Rowan was dimly aware that he was screaming in pain, but he could not find the strength to hold himself to any sort of grace when he was fighting to hold onto his conviction. Suddenly, it was over, and Rowan gasped, not expecting his pain to end so soon. He slowly opened his eyes that had become stuck shut from the blood that had dried from his eyes, as they had been previously weeping blood. Sweat and blood had been flowing from his pores, and when he looked around him, there were no longer any bones in the cave; instead, it was filled with blood. His mind began to clear, and he realized that he had spent fifteen thousand years devouring every single bone in this cave. When he had previously collected only a million lives, in this session, Rowan had taken within him fifty-two billion! “SLURP…. SLURP…” A lapping sound like that of an animal drinking water from a river entered his ears, and Rowan strained to look deeper into the dark cave. His sight was weak, barely better than a man’s, but slowly his eyes adjusted, and he was able to track the sound. He saw the boy kneeling in mid-air, and bending down like a dog, his head was bent and his tongue flashing rapidly as he lapped the blood that covered the ground. Every now and then, a low chuckle would emerge from the boy, and his tongue flicked out faster. From what Rowan could see, with the rate at which the boy was drinking his blood, he must have bled an ocean’s worth. The head of the boy snapped upwards with an audible crack as if he felt Rowan’s eyes on him, and he grinned, showing off his blood-stained teeth. Rowan noticed that his nose was fully revealed, and soon his eyes and the top half of his head would be shown. “Ah, you are finally done consuming less than a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction, of a… You know where I am going with this… You could have had a much easier time of this. Instead of choosing yourself and feeding on these lives, you choose to carry them with you. Ah.… Rowan, you are on a sinking ship, and you should be trying to survive, not bring more burden onto your boat. Nevertheless, this does not concern me, but I get hungry Rowan, so hungry that I began to eat the only mortal fare left to me… your blood. Still, I like it.” The boy grinned once more and began drinking his blood, fully submerging his head into the warm pool of blood and coming up for air when he could no longer hold his breath any longer. Rowan groaned as he slowly walked to the entrance of the cave and stopped before he exited. If he did, he expected the rain of bones to begin, and with his present state, he would die instantly under the barrage. Then he felt a pair of small, cold hands on his back and the voice of the boy, “Hmm, you are weak now, and it would be so easy to push you.” Rowan did not turn around. “You have grown taller,” he said, “Your hands could only touch my thighs before; now they reach my back.” The boy was silent for a while and then slowly removed his hands from Rowan’s back, “Or perhaps you have grown smaller.” Rowan could hear the rush of air behind him as the boy vanished, and he smiled. A moment before, he had felt the touch of death take over him, and he knew that the boy would have pushed him outside, and he could not have stopped him. He did not know the reason why the boy did not push him, but Rowan had no fear for his death; he only felt fear for the loss of the flame he was kindling inside his core. At first, the flame was so small, but now it was a blaze that filled his entire being, and although Rowan was weak, this flame inside him gave him a strength that could not be defined. The boy was changing, but Rowan had expected this might happen. He had not forgotten that one of the first things the boy said to him about his origin had struck him as problematic. According to the boy, Rowan barely knew how to control the power of End; he did not even understand this power, and despite his luck in obtaining the basic requirement to wield this power, Rowan would have failed. It was only because he had something assisting him… he had the power of Enoch. The hand that Rowan had been shattering belonged to Enoch, and when Rowan gave his order to this power to consume the Primordials, it pulled on the framework of Enoch’s power to ensure that this order was successful. This led to certain irregularities happening, and somehow, Rowan had jumped straight from the frying pan into the fire. Yes, he was in the Cradle of Enoch, but he was not alone. His companion all this while that he had been feeding… Rowan believed that the boy was Enoch.