Chapter 398: 100 million clones vs 100 million candidates The grey void of the trial ground was no longer silent. It was brimming with candidates. The announcement from the Will of the Eternal Domain had acted like a drop of blood in a shark-infested ocean. Ethan stood at the center of this gathering storm, his expression was unreadable. He wasn’t scared. He wasn’t even particularly annoyed anymore. He had moved past anger into a state of cold, crystalline clarity. "So," Ethan whispered, his voice barely audible over the sound of dimensions cracking. "This is how the game is played. When a piece on the board becomes too strong, you change the rules to break it." He looked at the Sword of Infinity in his hand. It felt light, almost weightless, as if it were an extension of his own will. The sword knew what was coming. It hummed with a hungry, vibrating energy. In the distance, the first wave of candidates appeared. They didn’t come in ones or twos. They came in thousands. These were the "protagonists" of their own stories. Men and women who had climbed from the mud of mortal worlds to reach the peak of power. Normally, they would be rivals. But the promise of two wishes from the Will of the Eternal Domain had turned them into a single, mindless pack of wolves. "There he is!" a voice boomed, amplified by Axiom laws. "The Anomaly! The one who thinks he can stand above us all!" A young man dressed in robes of liquid starlight stepped forward. He held a spear that dripped with the essence of a dying sun. Behind him, tens of thousands of others hovered in the void, their eyes glowing with greed and the artificial power granted to them by the Will. "Ethan Hunt!" the young man shouted, laughing. "You are just one man. We are millions! Each of us is now an Axiom Dominion master." "Do you really think you can survive being drowned by the ocean?" "You’re like a little emperor of destiny trying to save himself from drowning by catching a straw!" The crowd behind him erupted in mocking laughter. The sound was like thunder, shaking the very foundations of the reality they were in. They knew Ethan’s name. They knew his face. The Will had painted a target on his back so bright that it blinded them to the danger he actually represented. Ethan didn’t respond to the taunts. He didn’t even look at the young man who had spoken. Instead, he looked down at his feet. He was counting. One million. Five million. Twelve million. The portals kept opening. The void was becoming crowded. The "ants," as Ethan thought of them, were arriving in record numbers. To the candidates, Ethan looked like he was paralyzed by fear. He was standing perfectly straight, his hands resting calmly on the hilt of the Sword of Infinity, which was thrust into the "ground" of the void. Beside him, a single clone standing silently. It looked exactly like him, containing 1% of his power. "Look!" someone cried out. "He’s so desperate he’s making clones already! And it’s only one!" "Is that all you’ve got, ’Anomaly’?" More laughter. More mockery. "He must be silly out of fear," a woman with wings of fire sneered. "He’s behaving like a statue because he knows his life ends today." Ethan finally looked up. But not at them. He looked through them, as if they were made of glass. "You talk too much," Ethan said quietly. With a simple flick of his wrist, a translucent blue barrier expanded from his body, forming a perfect sphere with a ten-meter radius. It encased him and his single clone. "Attack! That bastard is creating a barrier!" the star-robed young man roared. Immediately, the void exploded with light. Millions of attacks slammed into the blue sphere. Beams of pure energy. Dimensional slashes. Soul-crushing hammers. Elemental storms. The combined power of millions of Axiom-level beings should have been enough to erase a reality in an instant. But the barrier didn’t even flicker. Inside, Ethan sat down. He closed his eyes and continued to wait. Time in the trial grounds was a fluid concept. But for those outside the barrier, ten days felt like an eternity. They never stopped attacking. They took turns, cycling through their ranks, pouring every ounce of their newfound power into the blue shell. "Why won’t it break?!" a candidate screamed, his hands bleeding from punching the barrier for forty-eight hours straight. "It’s just energy! It has to run out!" They didn’t understand. A normal Origin Paragon might have struggled to maintain such a shield against millions. But Ethan wasn’t normal. He was the host of a World Tree. His energy reserves weren’t just a pool. They were an infinite sea. He wasn’t spending energy to keep the barrier up. He was actually doing nothing, the energy was being used in the barrier passively. Inside the barrier, Ethan opened his eyes. "98 million," he whispered. He waited a few more hours. The void was now thick with people. It was a sea of bodies, stretching as far as the eye could see in every direction. The final portals flickered and died. The last of the candidates had arrived. "One hundred million," Ethan said, standing up. He looked at the faces pressed against his barrier. Faces twisted with greed, exhaustion, and hatred. These were the "heroes" of the multiverse, reduced to scavengers. "A little more," Ethan warned, his voice projecting through the barrier. "You bugs should enjoy your life instead of trying to kill me." "If you walk away now, I might let you live in the corners of my world." The response was a chorus of curses and a renewed barrage of attacks. They had lost their minds. The promise of the wishes had acted like a virus, rotting their common sense. "Very well," Ethan’s voice turned cold as ice. "You have made your choices." Ethan snapped his fingers. The blue barrier didn’t shatter. It simply vanished, as if it had never existed. "Yeah! We did it! The barrier is down!" the candidates cheered, surging forward like a tidal wave. "Prepare to die, vermin!" But before the first sword could reach him, the space around Ethan began to warp. Pop. Pop. Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop! In the blink of an eye, a clone appeared in front of a candidate. Then ten. Then a thousand. Then a million. The candidates froze in mid-air. The sight was impossible. The void, which had been filled with 100 million candidates, was now suddenly occupied by an equal number of Ethan Hunts. One hundred million clones. Each one holding a mythical sword. Each one staring with the same cold, predatory eyes. "How is this possible?" the star-robed leader stammered, his spear trembling. "No one can maintain this many clones." "It has to be an illusion! They aren’t real! I bet they aren’t even real!" He lunged at the Ethan clone in front of him, his sun-spear aimed at its heart. "Die, fake!" The clone didn’t move until the spear was an inch away. Then, it caught the tip of the spear with two fingers. The spear, a weapon that could pierce dimensions, snapped like a dry twig. "Real enough for you?" the clone asked. Ethan’s voice rang out from every direction at once. "Ultimate Domain." The grey void turned into a world of pure white and gold. The laws of the Eternal Domain were forcibly overwritten. In this space, Ethan was the only God. "Release," Ethan commanded.