Chapter 386: Gaining bloodlines The gray dust of the Primordial Ash candidate’s body hadn’t even settled before Ethan was standing over the remains. The young man, who only moments ago had been a god of destruction in this reality, was now a broken husk, his "inevitable" growth halted by a single, casual stroke of the Sword of Infinity. "Chaos feeds you?" Ethan murmured, his voice echoing in the dead silence of the planet. "Then feed me." Ethan reached down, his palm hovering over the cooling corpse. "Omni-Bloodline: Extraction." Red and gold veins of light erupted from Ethan’s skin, diving into the candidate like predatory vines. The Primordial Ash bloodline was incredibly violent. As it was ripped from its host, it manifested as a gray, scorching mist that tried to incinerate Ethan’s arm from the inside out. It wasn’t just power; it was a sentient urge to decay everything it touched. Ethan’s expression didn’t change. He simply tightened his grip, his own overwhelming aura acting as a forge. For five minutes, the air around him warped and crackled. The gray mist screamed, a sound only heard by the soul, before it was forcibly condensed into a single drop of ashen ichor that vanished into Ethan’s palm. He stood up, exhaling a breath that came out as gray smoke. The information flooded his mind instantly. The Primordial Ash was a "Passive Feed" type bloodline. It didn’t require meditation or cultivation in the traditional sense. It was a catalyst. For every atom he destroyed, for every law he broke, and for every soul he extinguished, a portion of that released energy would be converted into permanent physical and spiritual strength. "A villain’s cheat," Ethan remarked, looking at the desolate planet around him. "In a normal world, I’d have to be a monster to make this work. But in the path to the Throne? Destruction is just the cost of doing business." Then, a screen flickered in his vision. [You have gained 0.001% Authority of the Eternal Domain.] Ethan’s eyes narrowed. "Zero point zero zero one? You’ve got to be joking." The math was brutal. To reach 100% authority through slaughter alone, he would need to hunt down one hundred thousand candidates. For any other intruder, this was a fool’s errand. The cost of jumping between realities, the energy spent fighting, and the risk of being ambushed by "Old Monsters" meant that most candidates preferred to hide and grow slowly. But Ethan wasn’t most candidates. He had the Ultimate Domain to hide his presence and the Sword of Infinity to bypass the cost of travel. "One hundred thousand?" Ethan laughed, a dark, sharp sound. "Then I’d better start moving. I’m behind schedule." Ethan didn’t rest. He became a ghost haunting the multiverse. Over the next nine days, the "Ghost of the Anomalies" tore through one hundred different realities. He was a whirlwind. He would arrive, unfold his mental domain, locate the candidate, and execute. Most were disappointments. He found a "Saint" candidate who refused to fight and tried to convert Ethan with words; Ethan took his head before he finished his first sentence. He found a "Technology" candidate who hid behind a Dyson Sphere; Ethan cut the star in half and moved on. But on the fifth and eighth days, he found the prizes he was looking for. In the 44th reality he visited, Ethan encountered a woman standing in the center of a white void. She didn’t have a planet; she had unmade her entire universe into raw thread. She was the Chaos Weaver. When Ethan appeared, she didn’t look surprised. She simply raised a finger, and the space behind Ethan turned into liquid lead. "You are a stitch that doesn’t belong here," she said. Her voice sounded like a thousand people talking at once. She pulled an invisible thread, and Ethan felt his own heart stop. Not because of a physical blow, but because she had rewritten the fact of his heart beating. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞 "Interesting,", but Ethan was way out of her league. If she had fought someone at the same realm or even a realm higher, she could’ve won the battle easily but she was facing Ethan who had the Axiom dominion level power with the sword. The Weaver moved her hands like a puppeteer. "I am the author. You are the ink." She rewrote the air into fire, then the fire into vacuum, then the vacuum into a crushing gravity that should have turned Ethan into a pancake. But Ethan’s Ultimate Domain acted as a shield of "True Reality." He lunged forward. The Weaver pulled a thread to move him three miles to the left, but Ethan’s Sword of Infinity cut through the very concept of "Distance." He appeared in front of her, the blade humming. She tried to rewrite his sword into a flower, but the Sword of Infinity was an absolute. It could not be edited by her power alone. "Your story ends here," Ethan growled. The Weaver’s eyes widened as the blade pierced her chest. She tried to rewrite her death into a dream, but the Sword of Infinity severed her connection to the "Chaos" she wove. As she faded, Ethan’s Omni-Bloodline lunged forward, devouring the Chaos Weaver Bloodline. "I even killed my own author, how can I die here?", this was the only thought she had before death. He felt his mind expand. He could now see the "Threads" of reality. If he poured enough energy into it, he could edit the world around him just as she had. The second great battle happened on the eighth day. The candidate was a giant, a man who looked like he was made of bark and starlight. He was the World Seed holder. He didn’t fight alone. Inside his own body, he carried twelve different dimensions, each one providing him with the collective power of billions of souls. When Ethan attacked, the World Seed holder didn’t dodge. He simply tapped his chest. "The power of a billion suns," the giant roared. A beam of pure, concentrated life-force erupted from his palm. Ethan had to become serious in this fight. He vanished into the void, reappearing from the giant’s shadow. The giant swung a fist that carried the weight of a world. The collision cracked the reality they were in. "You’re a battery," Ethan laughed, his eyes glowing with the red tint of the Primordial Ash. "And I’m a leak!" Ethan didn’t just slash with his sword. He used his newly acquired Chaos Weaver power to "thin" the giant’s skin. Then, he used the Primordial Ash to start a chain reaction of decay. The giant screamed as his internal universes began to collapse. One by one, the "Seeds" inside him went dark. Each time a world died, the energy was fed directly into Ethan via the Ash bloodline. Ethan grew faster than the giant could heal. By the time the final blow landed, Ethan’s aura was so dense it was visible as a black sun behind him. He tore the World Seed Bloodline out of the giant’s heart. This was the most precious prize. Ethan could now grow worlds inside his own cells. Each world would act as an independent world which would have the potential of becoming a vast dimension like Ethan’s main dimension. By the end of the ninth day, Ethan stood on a lonely moon in the 100th reality. He looked at his hands. They were trembling, not from fear, but from the sheer pressure of the power he had consumed. In nine days, he had gained 123 bloodlines, though 118 of them were "trash" that he simply used as fuel for upgrading the 5 extraordinary ones. But the five "Extraordinary" bloodlines had changed him fundamentally: Primordial Ash: Growth through destruction. Abyssal Monarch: A passive aura of absolute terror. Even Progenitors would find their legs shaking in his presence even without releasing his genesis grade aura. Chaos Weaver: The ability to rewrite local laws of reality. World Seed: Internal universes that could become infinite number of dimensions and power. Absolute Zero: The mastery over the end of all motion. He could now freeze time itself by stopping the vibration of atoms. Ethan checked his status. [Total Authority: 6.601%]