Supreme Bloodline Evolution System

Chapter 172: Refusing the System’s Command

Max shook his head.

"No," he said quietly.

His fingers tightened around the grip of the void blade until his knuckles turned pale beneath the dark veins of mist crawling over his hand. He could tell that the person before him was insanely strong. Far too strong. His earlier strike had not moved him. Not even a little. It had felt like crashing against a mountain covered in sunlight, something ancient, unmoving, and completely beyond the weight of normal power.

Only now, after the black mist spread out from Max on its own, had Arbiter Aurelian finally moved away from him. As if that was the only thing here that could make him cautious.

Max! You must listen to me. If you let your arrogance get ahead of you, you will die!

The words of the system creator echoed in his mind once more, sharper this time, almost desperate. A screen appeared before him. Then another. Then another. They multiplied infinitely at a speed the naked eye could not follow, surrounding him from every direction until the broken room was drowned beneath flashing crimson letters.

[DANGER!]

[DANGER!]

[DANGER!]

The warning did not stop.

The screens trembled in the air, stacking over each other, shaking as if even the system itself was panicking. The crimson light reflected in Max’s eyes, but his gaze remained fixed on the masked man standing before him.

Aurelian’s golden smile did not change.

His sword of light hummed softly in his hand, and the air around him began to burn with a heat that did not feel like fire. It felt clean. Holy. Merciless. The kind of light that did not destroy because it hated, but because it had already judged everything before it as something that had no right to exist.

"It’s not because I’m arrogant," Max said softly.

He moved forward, one step at a time, and allowed the black mist to return to him.

Agnia watched from the side, confused by who he was talking to. But that did not matter right now. Her fingers curled until her nails dug into her skin, and her eyes slowly drifted to the side. She knew she would be nothing but a burden to him if she remained kneeling there. Forcing strength back into her trembling legs, she moved fast toward the broken wall, one hand still pressed over her stomach.

"It’s because I am a man," Max said, his voice low, but steady. "And a man must protect what is important to him. If I run from my duty, then I am unworthy of leading my own kingdom."

His eyes narrowed.

"No. My empire."

Agnia’s heart fluttered at those words, and tears slowly gathered at the corners of her eyes.

The black mist vibrated in the air, as if torn between two forces. One part of it wanted to flee. One part of it wanted to devour. It twisted around Max like a living storm, resisting him, warning him, almost begging him to move back.

But Max demanded it.

The mist fought for one more breath before it gave in.

It wrapped around his void blade in thick, violent layers, stretching the weapon longer and wider until the edge looked less like a sword and more like a piece of darkness torn from the sky itself. Gold and purple flames burned across its surface, mixing with the void, while the ground beneath Max’s feet cracked from the pressure gathering around him.

Arbiter Aurelian finally shifted his stance.

Max moved before his mind could think any further.

The cracked ground beneath his feet burst apart as he pushed himself forward, his wings folding behind his back for a single instant before spreading again with a violent rush of wind. The void blade in his hand dragged the black mist with it, thick and heavy, wrapping around the edge like a beast that had finally been forced to bare its teeth even though every part of it wanted to drag Max away from this place.

Arbiter Aurelian raised his sword of light.

There was no hurry in his movement. No panic. No surprise. He lifted the blade as if he had already seen the attack before Max even made it, and when darkness and light collided, the force did not simply explode outward. It pressed down on the whole room, crushing the broken stones into dust, making Agnia’s breath stop in her throat as the air between them twisted into something neither bright nor dark, a strange, suffocating glow where Max’s void and Aurelian’s light devoured each other without either side giving way.

Max’s arms trembled beneath the weight pressing through the blade.

The sword of light looked thin, almost weightless in Aurelian’s hand, but the moment Max’s blade touched it, it felt as if he was trying to push away the sun itself. His muscles tightened, veins rising across his arms as the gold and purple flames around his blade burned harder, yet Aurelian still stood there without moving back, the golden smile on his mask aimed directly at him.

"Return what belongs to the Land of Gods," Aurelian said.

"Come and take it then," Max growled.

He twisted his body and let the black mist burst from the side of his blade, trying to swallow Aurelian’s arm before the masked man could react, but thin threads of light appeared around him at once. They were so fine that Agnia almost could not see them, yet the moment the mist touched them, it was sliced apart into countless fading fragments. Max felt the cut through his own body as if those threads had reached his nerves, and blood slipped from the corner of his mouth.

Still, he stepped closer.

He did not give himself room to retreat.

Aurelian’s free hand rose, and golden light gathered around his fingers before stretching into long chains made from pure radiance. They moved without sound, slipping through the air like snakes, aiming not for Max’s body, but for the black mist itself. The first chain wrapped around the mist near his shoulder. The second caught the mist around his blade. The third pierced straight through the shadow beneath his feet and pinned it to the ground.

Max’s eyes widened.

The mist shook violently, almost screaming without a voice.

Max, run!

The system creator’s voice tore through his mind again, but Max clenched his teeth and dragged his sword forward anyway, forcing the chained mist to move with him even as golden light burned into it. His skin cracked along his wrist. Black blood mixed with red. He could feel something being pulled from him, not flesh, not mana, but something deeper, something connected to the reason this Arbiter had come here in the first place.

Agnia forced herself to stand near the broken wall, one hand pressed over her stomach, her other hand reaching toward Max even though she knew she could not help him.

"Max..." she whispered.

Aurelian turned his masked face toward her for only a moment. That one glance was enough to freeze her blood.

Then the Arbiter drove his sword into the ground.

A circle of golden light spread beneath Max’s feet, filled with symbols no dragon of this world had ever seen, and the black mist around him suddenly stopped moving as if the whole world had grabbed it by the throat.

"Servant of the Forgotten Creator," Aurelian said, his voice still calm, still empty. "Your judgment has begun."

The golden circle rose from the floor like a cage, and in the next instant, Max’s void blade and armor shattered into a million black pieces.