Chapter 384: The parasite lotus The gray dust of the battlefield settled, but the air inside Ethan’s lungs felt like liquid lead. He stood alone in the center of his Ultimate Domain, the space still bruised and flickering with the dying embers of the Law of Entropy. In his palm, the Primordial Astral Marrow throbbed with a rhythmic, sickening heat. It was the concentrated essence of Rozers the Executioner, a literal piece of the negative universe’s authority. "Nini," Ethan called out, his voice rasping. "Master, the Marrow is highly unstable. If we are to initiate the evolution to the Chaos Rank, we must begin immediately. But be warned. The energy requirement will be astronomical. I will have to draw directly from your inner dimension." "Do it," Ethan commanded. Nini nodded, her form dissolving into streaks of blue data that wrapped around the Marrow. The Space Cube expanded, its geometric faces spinning and unfolding into a complex, multi dimensional tesseract. It began to drink the Marrow, the silver gray essence of the Executioner being pulled into the Cube’s core. The air began to hum with a low frequency vibration that signaled the birth of a Chaos Rank artifact. But as the Cube began its transformation, a violent tremor shook Ethan’s very soul. Ethan’s consciousness was violently pulled into his inner dimension. Usually, this place was a serene expanse of golden light, but now it was a war zone. The World Tree, which formed a party with the creation lotus a while ago started absorbing the lotus. Its roots, normally deep and still, were lashing out like gargantuan whips. They had completely ensnared the Creation Lotus, the source of Ethan’s ability to process Entropy. At first, Ethan felt a wave of terror. If the Lotus was destroyed, his ability to fight the inverse world would vanish. "Stop!" he roared, his mental avatar rushing toward the collision. "World Tree, back down! We need that Lotus to survive!" He poured his willpower into the Tree, trying to force its roots to retract. But for the first time, the Tree, his most loyal anchor, ignored him. It was not just defending itself. It was hunting. It began to pull the Lotus into its main trunk, the wood groaning as it started to swallow the cosmic flower whole. "What the fuck is going on here?" Ethan’s voice echoed through the void of his mind. Then, a voice, sharp, cold, and dripping with ancient arrogance, erupted from the center of the trembling Lotus. "Boy! Order this tree bastard to get away from me! Or else I’ll destroy your entire foundation alongside with me!" Ethan froze. The voice did not come from his own mind. It came from the Creation Lotus, he was sure about it. The Creation Lotus, the thing he had nurtured and relied on, was actually a sentient being. And it was not just sentient. It was a parasite. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖 The warnings of Jian flashed through his mind like a lightning bolt. "Don’t let the lotus take control over you." Ethan had thought it was a warning about the corruptive nature of power.But he realized now, with a chilling clarity, that the Lotus was a living being, a Trojan horse designed to wait until its host was strong enough, then take over the "throne" of the soul. "You’ve been hiding in my house this whole time," Ethan whispered, his terror turning into a cold, murderous rage. The World Tree was not attacking his foundation. It was purging a virus. The Tree, connected to the Infinite Source and the legacy of something higher existential, had sensed the Lotus’s true intent the moment the symbiotic link was formed. Ethan started attacking the lotus manually now. "What are you doing? Do you want to die?" the Lotus screamed again, its petals turning a jagged, poisonous black. "Without me, you are nothing but a speck of dust in the eyes of the Inverse Gods! I am your only shield! Stop this wooden beast!" Ethan looked at the World Tree. Its leaves were glowing with a fierce, protective light. It had been with him through every trial, a silent friend that asked for nothing. "I’m sorry I doubted you, buddy," Ethan muttered to the Tree. He did not pull back. Instead, he channeled every ounce of his authority into the World Tree. He did not care about the Law of Entropy anymore. If the cost of that power was being a puppet for some ancient entity, he would rather burn his soul to the ground. "Punk," Ethan smirked at the Lotus. "Do you think I’ll prefer slavery over death? In your dreams. I’ll fight you till the end. And looking at my friend here, I think we’re at the winning position. So shut the fuck up and die already!" With Ethan’s support, the World Tree let out a psychic roar. Its roots pierced the heart of the Lotus, shattering its "will." The arrogant voice turned into a pathetic wail of agony as seventy percent of the flower was absorbed into the Tree’s bark. "Please... let me go... I’ll take you as my real master... I’ll give you everything..." the Lotus pleaded, its voice fading into a whisper. Ethan did not answer. He watched with a grim satisfaction as the last petal vanished into the World Tree. The dimension went silent. The World Tree began to pulse with a strange, new energy. It was no longer just a tree. It was a hybrid of life and the void. It began to wrap itself in a thick, crystalline cocoon of golden green light. It was evolving, moving toward a state of being that neither the positive nor negative universes had ever seen. Far, far away, in the deepest reaches of the Negative Plane of Existence, a place where the concept of light was a forgotten myth, a being sat upon a throne. This being was known to the few who survived its gaze as a fragment of "The Presence," the ultimate god of the inverse world. The being’s eyes, which contained the deaths of a billion suns, slowly opened. A strange sensation had prickled its consciousness. It felt as though a finger had been cut off, but when it looked at its hand, the finger was still there. "Something... is missing," the being murmured. Its voice caused the surrounding dimension to crack. "A part of my essence has been erased. Not destroyed. Erased from the very record of Fate." It tried to remember. But it couldn’t. Everything felt so hazy. The being stared into the void for a long time. Then, with a sigh that sounded like a collapsing galaxy, it closed its eyes again. If the memory was gone, then the part of itself was gone. In the grand scale of its existence, a single seed was a drop of water in an ocean of essence. It went back to its eternal slumber, unaware that the "drop" had just become a poison that would one day come for its heart. Back in his inner world, Ethan sat cross legged. To his left, the Space Cube, Nini, was encased in a shell of chaotic, shifting geometry as it climbed toward the Chaos Rank. To his right, the World Tree was a silent, glowing cocoon. He was momentarily "powerless" in terms of his external tools, but his own body, the Body of the Supreme One, felt more refined than ever. The fusion of the Tree and the Lotus had left behind a pure, filtered version of the Law of Entropy that was now truly his. Not a gift from a parasite, but a trophy of war. "I can’t wait for them to finish their evolution," Ethan mused. He looked at the Thalor Mandate Bloodline he had extracted from Rozers. It sat in a sealed vial of energy, its black blood churning with enough power to level his inner dimension. "This bloodline is too heavy for me right now," he whispered. "If I try to absorb it at my current level, I’ll explode before I can even scream." He needed to grow first to do that. He needed more. More bloodlines. More power.