My attributes are increasing infinitely Chapter 386: Gaining bloodlines

The drifting gray remains of the Primordial Ash candidate had not yet touched the ground before Ethan loomed over the corpse. Only minutes ago, the young man had been a deity of devastation within this realm; now, he was nothing more than a shattered shell. His supposedly "inevitable" evolution had been terminated by a single, effortless sweep of the Sword of Infinity.

"Chaos feeds you?" Ethan whispered, his words vibrating through the tomb-like silence of the world. "Then feed me."

Bending down, Ethan positioned his palm just above the cooling body.

"Omni-Bloodline: Extraction."

Veins of crimson and gold light burst from Ethan’s flesh, lashing out like predatory vines to burrow into the candidate. The Primordial Ash bloodline possessed a violent nature. As it was forcibly uprooted from its vessel, it manifested as a scorching gray haze, attempting to incinerate Ethan’s arm from within. It was more than mere power; it was a conscious impulse to rot everything in its path.

Ethan’s gaze remained cold and unchanging. He merely tightened his hold, using his own titanic aura as a furnace. For five minutes, the surrounding atmosphere warped and shrieked. The gray mist let out a soul-piercing wail before it was crushed into a single droplet of ashen ichor, which then dissolved into Ethan’s palm.

He rose to his feet, exhaling a plume of gray smoke.

Information instantly saturated his consciousness. The Primordial Ash was a "Passive Feed" bloodline. It bypassed the need for traditional meditation or Cultivation, serving instead as a catalyst.

For every atom he obliterated, every law he defied, and every soul he snuffed out, a portion of that liberated energy would be transmuted into permanent spiritual and physical potency.

"A villain’s cheat," Ethan noted, surveying the ruined planet. "In a normal world, I’d have to become a monster to utilize this. But on the path to the Throne? Destruction is simply the cost of doing business."

Suddenly, a screen shimmered in his field of 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 calculation was daunting. To attain 100% authority through massacres alone, he would need to eliminate one hundred thousand candidates. For any other intruder, this would be a futile endeavor. The energy required to traverse realities, the stamina spent in combat, and the constant threat of being hunted by "Old Monsters" meant most candidates chose to hide and cultivate slowly.

However, Ethan was an anomaly. He possessed the Ultimate Domain to mask his presence and the Sword of Infinity to negate the costs of travel.

"One hundred thousand?" Ethan let out a dark, sharp laugh. "Then I’d better start moving. I’m behind schedule."

Refusing to rest, Ethan turned into a phantom haunting the multiverse.

Over the following nine days, the "Ghost of the Anomalies" tore through a hundred different realities like a whirlwind. He would arrive, expand his mental domain to locate the target, and perform the execution.

Most targets were underwhelming. He encountered a "Saint" candidate who tried to convert Ethan with a sermon instead of fighting; Ethan decapitated him before the first sentence was finished. He found a "Technology" candidate hiding behind a Dyson Sphere; Ethan sliced the star in half and moved on.

However, on the fifth and eighth days, he discovered the prizes he truly sought.

In the 44th reality, Ethan met a woman standing in a white void. She possessed no planet, having unraveled her entire universe into raw thread.

She was the Chaos Weaver.

She showed no surprise at Ethan’s arrival. With a simple flick of her finger, the space behind Ethan transformed into molten lead.

"You are a stitch that doesn't belong here," she declared, her voice sounding like a thousand simultaneous speakers.

She yanked an invisible thread, and Ethan’s heart stopped. It wasn't a physical strike; she had simply rewritten the fundamental fact of his heart beating.

"Interesting," Ethan mused, though she was far beneath his level. Against an opponent of the same realm or even a realm higher, she might have triumphed easily, but she was facing Ethan—who wielded Axiom-level power through his sword.

The Weaver’s hands moved like a puppeteer's. "I am the author. You are the ink."

She rewrote the air into flames, then into a vacuum, and finally into a crushing gravitational force meant to flatten Ethan. However, Ethan’s Ultimate Domain served as a bulwark of "True Reality."

He charged. The Weaver pulled a thread to displace him three miles to the left, but the Sword of Infinity sliced through the very concept of "Distance."

He materialized before her, his blade humming. She attempted to rewrite his weapon into a flower, but the Sword of Infinity was an absolute entity. It could not be edited by her power.

"Your story ends here," Ethan growled.

The Weaver’s eyes widened as the steel pierced her chest. She tried to rewrite her demise into a dream, but the Sword of Infinity severed her link to the "Chaos" she manipulated. As she faded, Ethan’s Omni-Bloodline surged forward, devouring the Chaos Weaver bloodline.

"I even killed my own author, how can I die here?" was her final thought before perishing.

Ethan felt his mind expand, becoming capable of seeing the "Threads" of reality. By channeling enough energy, he could now edit the world just as she had.

The second major conflict occurred on the eighth day.

The candidate was a titan, a man seemingly forged from bark and starlight. He was the bearer of the World Seed. He did not fight alone; within his body, he housed twelve distinct dimensions, each granting him the collective energy of billions of souls.

When Ethan struck, the World Seed holder did not flinch. He simply tapped his chest.

"The power of a billion suns!" the giant bellowed.

A beam of concentrated life-force erupted from his palm.

Ethan was forced to become serious. He vanished into the void, emerging from the giant's shadow. The titan swung a fist that carried the mass of an entire world.

The impact fractured the very reality they inhabited.

"You’re a battery," Ethan laughed, his eyes glowing with the ashen tint of the Primordial Ash. "And I’m a leak!"

Ethan did more than just slash. He utilized his new Chaos Weaver power to "thin" the giant’s skin, then used the Primordial Ash to trigger a chain reaction of decay.

The giant roared in agony as his internal universes began to fail. One by one, the "Seeds" within him went dark. Each time a world perished, the energy was funneled directly into Ethan through the Ash bloodline.

Ethan’s growth outpaced the giant’s ability to regenerate.

By the time the final strike landed, Ethan’s aura was so dense it appeared as a black sun behind him. He ripped the World Seed bloodline directly from the giant’s heart.

This was his most valuable acquisition. Ethan could now cultivate worlds within his own cells, each with the potential to become a vast dimension like his primary one.

By the conclusion of the ninth day, Ethan stood upon a desolate moon in the 100th reality.

He looked at his hands; they trembled from the sheer pressure of the power he had absorbed. In nine days, he had acquired 123 bloodlines, though 118 were "trash" used merely as fuel to refine the 5 extraordinary ones.

These five "Extraordinary" bloodlines had fundamentally transformed him:

Primordial Ash: Growth through destruction.

Abyssal Monarch: A passive aura of absolute dread. Even Progenitors would find their legs shaking in his presence, even without him releasing his Genesis-grade aura.

Chaos Weaver: The capacity to rewrite local laws of reality.

World Seed: Internal universes capable of becoming infinite dimensions and sources of power.

Absolute Zero: Mastery over the cessation of motion. He could now freeze time itself by halting atomic vibration.

Ethan reviewed his status.

[Total Authority: 6.601%]