Supreme Bloodline Evolution System

Chapter 176: The Void Magic Grows Stronger

[Proceeding with evolution...]

The system spoke directly into Max’s mind as he floated in the air.

The entire palace had now collapsed beneath them. Broken walls, shattered pillars, and burning pieces of stone fell down the mountain like rain, crashing into the lower cliffs as clouds of dust rolled through the air.

Only the mountain itself remained standing tall and mighty, witnessing the clash above it like some ancient creature that had seen kingdoms rise, fall, and disappear beneath the weight of power far beyond ordinary life.

After the palace had fallen, Arbiter Aurelian remained in the sky.

Wings of light grew from his back, spreading wide and brilliant, each feather shaped from golden radiance that hummed softly in the air. His white mask faced Max, and beneath that long golden smile, the Arbiter could feel the fluctuations in Max’s aura.

The change in his blood.

Aurelian’s eyes narrowed beneath the mask.

"Do not dare!"

For the first time, he roared.

His voice crashed across the sky like thunder falling from the heavens, shaking the broken mountain and scattering the dust clouds below. The brilliant light burst from his body in a violent wave, no longer calm, no longer measured, crashing over Max as if it wanted to consume him whole before the evolution could finish.

Golden chains of light tore from Aurelian’s palm once more, rushing toward Max from every direction. They wrapped through the air like divine serpents, twisting, tightening, searching for a way through the black mist around him.

But this time, they could not pierce it.

The chains struck the mist and stopped.

The black mist trembled around Max’s claw, but it did not break. It did not flee. It swallowed the edge of the golden light little by little, holding the chains back as if the darkness itself had finally learned how to resist judgment.

"Impossible!" the Arbiter gasped.

He rushed to pull the chains back, but Max’s void magic had already begun to devour them. The darkness locked onto the golden light like a starving beast, biting deep into the radiance and sucking it in piece by piece until the chains trembled in the air, no longer fully belonging to Aurelian.

Max’s claw wrapped around one of the chains of light.

A grin spread across his face.

Then he pulled hard.

Aurelian’s body jerked forward.

For the first time since he had appeared, that perfect calm around him broke. Taken by surprise, the Arbiter was dragged through the air by his own chain, his wings of light flaring behind him as he tried to regain control, but Max was already moving.

Max clenched his left hand, the claws folding together until his fist became a brutal weapon covered in scales, darkness, and that strange ethereal light still flowing through his body. He could feel the void magic growing stronger and stronger, as if it had found a hidden root inside his human bloodline and was now drinking from it. Whatever the system was doing to him right now, it was working.

Far more than he had expected.

The void wrapped around his left fist, mixing with the magic of the Spirit Sovereign until the darkness began to shine again, not beautifully, not gently, but with a terrifying glow that made the air twist around his hand.

Max’s black eyes fixed on the white mask.

"Let me see who’s hiding under that mask," he muttered.

Then he struck.

His fist crashed against Aurelian’s face with a force that shook the air between them, and the white mask cracked beneath his knuckles. The long golden smile split first, breaking down the middle like a false god’s expression finally being torn apart, before the crack spread across the rest of the mask in thin, violent lines.

A heartbeat later, half of the golden smile shattered away.

Aurelian’s body flew down into the mountain as his mask shattered, revealing a face that was neither human nor demonic.

For some reason, Max felt his blood run cold the moment he saw it.

There was nothing holy about that face.

Nothing divine.

The skin covering Aurelian’s face was peeling off in thin, ugly layers, as if he had been alive for far too long, as if time itself had tried to rot him but failed to finish the job. Where the skin still remained, it was gray and lifeless, stretched tightly over sharp bones that no living being should have.

His lips were almost gone, cracked and dry, while his eyes were fully golden, dyed so deeply with light that they no longer looked like eyes at all, but two drops of gold ink forced into a corpse that refused to die.

"NOW!" Max heard the spirit women shout.

He turned his head just in time to see them release everything they had gathered.

A massive wave of radiant spirit light tore from their bodies, gathering into one overwhelming current before crashing down toward Aurelian the very second his body struck the mountain. That amount of magic and mana terrified even Max. It did not feel like a simple attack. It felt like a memory of vengeance, like all the hatred these women had carried from the past had finally found a place to explode.

The wave hit.

The entire mountain exploded on contact.

For a moment, there was no palace, no sky, no ground, only a blinding flood of light and stone tearing through the world. The upper half of the mountain cracked apart as if some giant hand had crushed it from within, sending massive pieces of rock flying in every direction.

Golden dust, gray stone, and radiant fragments of spirit magic burst upward, spreading across the air like a storm made from broken stars. The shockwave slammed into Max, forcing his wings open as he crossed his arms before his face, his body pushed back through the air even while the black mist wrapped around him to protect him from the worst of it.

Below him, cliffs collapsed one after another. The remains of the palace vanished completely, swallowed by the explosion as if it had never existed in the first place. The spirit women scattered back through the air, their faces pale, their bodies trembling from the magic they had released, while Agnia was carried farther away by those protecting her, her wide eyes locked on the mountain as the world shook beneath them.

For several breaths, nothing could be heard except the falling stones and the deep groan of the mountain breaking apart.

Then, slowly, the light faded and dust covered everything.

Max hovered in the sky, his claw still wrapped in shining darkness, his black eyes staring into the ruined mountain beneath him. For a moment, he almost believed they had done it.

But then the dust moved.

A golden light rose from the center of the destruction.

It was calm. Perhaps a little too calm.

The broken rocks melted beneath it as Arbiter Aurelian slowly rose from the crater, his shattered mask half hanging from his ruined face while golden radiance wrapped around his body in thick layers. The light grew larger behind him, forming wings far greater than before, then arms, then a head without a face, until it looked as if a massive angel made from pure golden judgment had wrapped itself around him like an avatar.

Aurelian lifted his golden eyes toward Max. And the angel of light behind him opened its wings.