Supreme Bloodline Evolution System

Chapter 185: Crystal Bloodline

Days passed.

Freya remained by her late husband’s grave until every tear in her eyes had dried out, until nothing else came out no matter how long she stayed there, staring at the mound of earth beneath the storming sky.

She did not speak much. She did not eat. She only knelt there in silence, her fingers resting against the cold soil as if some part of her still could not accept that the life she had known, no matter how painful, no matter how suffocating, had truly ended.

Max did not disturb her.

He sat on a broken pillar not far away, watching lightning strike the ground again and again beyond the ruined citadel. Each flash split the dark clouds apart for a heartbeat, painting the shattered stones in pale blue light before the world fell back into gray silence.

He wondered how it would feel to control lightning.

There was something wild about it, something fast and violent that made even his void stir faintly inside his body. He wished he could use the speed the Thunder Dragons could tap into, that terrifying burst of movement that turned their bodies into living storms.

But that thought did not last long.

His eyes turned back to Freya, still kneeling beside Thor’s grave.

Whatever desire he had felt for her before, whatever possessive thoughts had passed through his mind when he carried her in his arms, all of it quieted before the weight of her grief.

For a long time, he knew there would be no intimacy between them.

He glanced back at the storming sky.

"My life is just like this storm," he muttered. "It never settles down, does it?"

He had imagined that he would be free in this world of magic, free to do whatever he wanted, free to take, build, conquer, and live by his own will. But fate had placed hunters on his trail one after another, caging him here like a rabbit that had nowhere left to run.

But Max was not some harmless prey. His claws were sharp. Even if this world had turned into a cage, even if gods, Arbiters, emperors, and rotten madmen all gathered around him, waiting for the moment they could tear him apart, he was more than capable of causing havoc to anyone foolish enough to step inside with him.

[Hello, Master.]

The system’s voice suddenly echoed inside Max’s mind, and a familiar screen appeared before his eyes.

Ever since the system had gained sentience, it had become capable of communicating with him more properly. It no longer felt like a simple tool throwing messages before his eyes whenever it wanted to. There was something behind the words now, something aware, something that watched, listened, and understood far more than it used to.

But that only made Max feel worse.

After everything that had happened with the Arbiter, after the voice of the creator and the system itself had left him feeling betrayed, Max did not answer. He only stared at the storming sky, ignoring the screen as if it had never appeared.

[Your mate Clotilde has successfully become pregnant with your child.]

This time, however, it was impossible to ignore.

Max’s eyes slowly sharpened.

For a moment, he remained seated on the broken pillar, the sound of thunder rolling across the ruined capital around him. Then he stood up and walked away from the place where Freya was still kneeling by Thor’s grave, putting enough distance between them so she would not hear him speak to something she could not see.

"It’s time, huh?" Max muttered, and a smirk slowly rose on his lips.

[Yes, Master. Would you like to receive the Crystal Bloodline?]

Max raised an eyebrow.

Even with its new sentience, the system still sounded cold. Too cold. It did not speak like a person, not truly. It was more like some old-fashioned artificial intelligence from his previous world, one that had learned how to think but had not yet learned how to feel.

"Of course," Max said.

[Very well.]

The moment the words appeared, his heart slammed against his ribs.

Power flooded into his blood without warning, rushing through his veins with a strange, sharp sensation that was nothing like the fire of the Fire Dragon Bloodline or the freezing bite of the Ice Dragon Bloodline. This felt finer. Denser. Almost ticklish at first, as if countless grains of sand were being poured through his veins, scraping gently against the inside of his body before suddenly hardening into something far stronger.

[Upgrading Human Bloodline...]

The system spoke inside his mind with the same cold precision, like a machine carrying out a task.

[Your Human Bloodline has been upgraded into the Void-Crystal Bloodline.]

[Current Bloodline Purity: 23%]

Max’s muscles contracted.

A sharp jolt of pain shot through his entire body, making his fingers curl and his teeth clench together. Even his heart seemed to stop for a second, and his vision darkened at the edges as if his body could not immediately bear the change happening inside it. But then the pain broke apart into pressure, and that pressure turned into strength.

His muscles grew slightly larger, not enough to make him look different at a glance, but enough for him to feel it. Every fiber in his body tightened, filling with a raw, compact power that made his blood feel heavier and his bones feel harder. His void magic raged inside him, stirring violently as if demanding to be released, demanding to tear through the world and empty everything before him.

But now, there was something else mixed into it.

Crystal magic.

Max slowly lifted his hand.

At a single thought, black crystals burst from his palm, sharp, jagged, and filled with void energy. They did not grow like ordinary crystal. They shot forward like a wave of silent destruction, spreading across the ground in dark, gleaming spikes before grinding through the stones in their path.

Everything they touched was shredded, crushed, and reduced into fine dust as if the crystals had swallowed the structure of the stone itself and left only powder behind.

Max stared at the destruction before him.

For once, even he was silent. His jaw slowly dropped.

"Now that’s what I call an upgrade," he said, his smirk returning wider than before. "Are you kidding me?"

But that was not all there was to it.

Max could feel something special hidden inside his crystal magic, something that made it different from what Clotilde possessed, and perhaps even stronger than what her bloodline could ever naturally reach. These were not ordinary crystals. They were void crystals, born from his upgraded bloodline, and inside each dark, jagged piece of them flowed mana so pure and dense that it almost felt like the result of several days of him constantly feeding the surroundings with his own power.

No.

Perhaps it was even denser than that.

Max narrowed his eyes, slowly lifting his hand as a small black crystal formed above his palm. It was beautiful in a strange, dangerous way, its surface dark and clear at the same time, as if a piece of the void itself had been compressed into something solid. But the true value was not only in its sharpness, nor in the destructive force it had shown when it ground stone into dust.

It was the mana stored inside.

With enough of these crystals, he could imagine building defenses stronger than ordinary walls, formations that could absorb attacks, release stored mana, or even feed power back into the land around them. A capital city protected by void-crystal foundations would not simply be a city of stone and wood. It could become a fortress that breathed with his power, a place where every wall, road, tower, and gate carried a part of his will.

And that was only the defensive side.

If used for attack, these crystals could become weapons, traps, spears rising from the earth, walls that shattered into blades, or ammunition filled with condensed void mana. A battlefield covered in his crystals would become a graveyard for anyone foolish enough to step into it.

But there was something even more important.

Life.

Max could feel it faintly, hidden beneath the destructive nature of the void. The mana sealed inside the crystals was not dead. It was pure, rich, and powerful. If handled properly, if spread through the land in the right way, there was a chance it could nourish the soil, strengthen crops, and allow the people of Voidstar to harvest more than they ever had before.

Food. Walls. Weapons. Roads. Power. There was no limit.

His eyes slowly brightened.

With this ability, building the new capital would no longer be only a matter of manpower and time. He could create the foundation himself. He could feed the land, strengthen the structures, prepare defenses, and turn empty plains into the heart of an empire far faster than any normal ruler could dream of.

It would not be easy.

This power still needed control. It needed imagination, practice, and actual skill, not only raw strength. But for the first time since he looked at those empty plains and promised his people a future, Max truly felt that the capital in his mind was no longer just a dream.

It was something he could build with his own hands.

"Max?" Freya called out, and something in her voice sounded different now. "Can we go back?"