Chapter 1288: Interlude: Birth Of An Eternal Rival
Chapter 1288: Interlude: Birth Of An Eternal Rival
Within the void of the Boundless World, countless realms floated by casually, their realm barriers all that kept the life within from seeing the horrifying creatures that populated this expanse.
The void was sort of like any big country; it was huge, but only a fraction of it was actually occupied by anything. A majority of the void was just quiet blackness, with only the light from nearby realms to illuminate the way forward.
Boundless' void was a terrifying place that even True Gods feared to wander, for there existed Origin and Semi-Eternal beings en masse. These creatures were the famous void monsters that the old Evil Duo had been forced to fight during the First Guild War, the Emergency Event, and the Abyss Event, which threatened to ruin the entire plane back then if left unchecked.
Of course, the ones that broke through into the realm were the weaklings at Ranks 1 to 3, and any stronger would have been purged by the power realm barrier. Even then, this had been a challenge that literally killed members of Umbra down to almost the last man, with only the Evil Duo remaining, as well as some of the five generals.
Draco, when moving with the War Maniac Pavilion, precisely feared encountering these beings even with his 50% bloodline power in the void, opting to fight backward to his base rather than drag it out. If he had been crazy, he could have led the Origin God group toward a Semi-Eternal void monster for mutual destruction, but even he was not that vicious.
So naturally, it was a surprise for Draco to see that nearly 40 Origin Gods were besieging a single void monster at the Semi-Eternal stage, which was shaped like a dragon horse, only that it had two red eyes and a dark black hide that shimmered like crackling flames.
"UWEEEE!!" The void monster screeched in agony as it was thoroughly beaten up, but not before it managed to take down around five of its assailants. The rest were terribly wounded in varying degrees, some far worse than others, their usual dignified states nowhere to be seen.
"Hurry up and finish this!" the familiar voice of Malice roared, using his remaining arm to unleash a full-power blow at the creature that caused it to scream once again.
Cruelty, who now wore a mask as the lower half of his jaw had been ripped off previously, hummed coldly and also released an attack. Even Wrath, that nosy fellow, was unusually subdued, mostly because his horns had been twisted off by something and one of his eyes gouged out.
The group fought hard, holding nothing back, as they eventually managed to slay the void monster. Looking at its corpse, the entire group panted as they rested slightly, not even having the mind to mourn their dead teammates. This was not because they couldn't, but because this had happened so frequently over the past few days that they had become numb.
After the annihilation of the War Maniac Pavilion in the Western Fantasy realm, the main headquarters realized that setting up there again was being hindered by the main Origin God faction in the realm, who were aware of their conflict with their 'golden goose.'
Not to mention that seeing him handle the Semi-Origin Gods, whom they had invested countless resources into and who had the task of slaughtering him, being easily dealt with, their hearts sank as they realized that this problem they had created for themselves was not something that could be vanquished easily, at least not within his home ground.
So upon coming back, while Draco was practicing Refinement all this time, they began to improvise.
If there was no one suitable to take Draco down in their forces, then they would create one!
Create a rival for Draco with the same potential, the same talent, and the same growth speed who could challenge and possibly kill him!
However, this was easier said than done. This rival would have to possess an authentic Eternal bloodline with the potential to reach 100 Eternal Power within a period of time, or at least reach 10 Eternal Power within the Western Fantasy realm and 50 Eternal Power in the void.
Then it would have to possess a power system on par with Control, which was identified to be something similar to the Unity of Heaven and Man from the Eastern Fantasy realm, a fabled system that led right into the Celestial Realm in cultivation standards, or the Eternal Realm in universal standards.
Control was Draco's strongest power system outside the game's class-based system and his various other powers like subjective magic, so once that was achieved, then it would be generally okay.
These two requirements already set the bar extremely high for these Origin Gods, but what made it worse was the need to make sure that this cultivated rival was able to grow in this given power as fast as Draco while also being hidden from Draco until it was time to strike.
However, it was either that or wash their necks and wait for Draco to come and behead them!
As such, they put out all the stops, taking out the deepest, most precious resources from their vaults and making the kind of sacrifices that would chill even the Demon Lord.
They tried three main methods: natural birth, cloning, and implantation.
For natural birth, the lofty female Origin Gods like Passion and Pride, who previously showed up untouched by the hand of anyone, willingly gave up their wombs to be used like breeding farms. From there, they allowed the best males found in all manners of realms to mate with them, using their Origin Energy to nourish the various offspring extensively and staying within realms with an incredibly fast flow of time to give birth quickly.
However, most of these offspring were judged to be talented but fell far short of the mark.
For cloning, they used the technology of high-tech realms—minus the sci-fi world, which was akin to Western fantasy where their top echelon were too strong—to try and make replicas of Draco. When they previously fought the fellow, he had coughed out endless amounts of blood, which they had collected after the fight to try and make use of.
Cloning was one of the methods they took, but to their shock, his blood was too potent. The amount of resources needed to turn a drop into a fully functional clone was steep enough to buy an entire realm, and when they finally managed to create one who was sentient, it simply sneered and self-destructed, unwilling to betray the main body.
Unfortunately for the WMP, they did not know that Draco himself was a clone of another person, so he was the type that when a clone was made of him, it would never betray himself. If that was the case, then Lucifer would have used him as nutrients rather than let him be born.
Finally, they tried implantation, which was to input the bloodlines of various special creatures into willing—and unwilling—targets with the highest compatibility to create a being that could beat Draco. However, this ended up similar to their previous efforts in cultivating those Semi-Origin Gods, making entities that were strong but not strong enough.
These repeated failures had cost them so much that if there were a public market for the void, the stocks of the WMP would have dropped by almost half. This was a force that existed for eons and had conquered countless realms, gathering countless riches.
Previously, to vanquish the elves of the Wizard Realm, the WMP paid a tiny price to make something that could literally destroy them from the ground up. Yet when dealing with Draco, they seemed to hit a wall in every direction, causing them endless frustration.
It was then that they changed their tactics. Rather than separate these three streams, they decided to merge them for the best effect. The female Origin Gods drafted into this would take the seed of exemplary males and species with the best compatibility, then birth them after bathing them with copious amounts of Origin Energy right in the womb.
These offspring would then be placed in a growth tank and have their cells cultivated into countless clones in other tanks, where special bloodline combinations made from various creatures with high potential would be implanted into them to see which one worked.
Countless of these infantile clones exploded, became crazy, or downright melted from the combinations, causing the losses to pile up and hope to dwindle. However, it was after this raid on the Semi-Eternal Dragon Horse that cost the WMP five good Origin Gods that they finally saw a change.
In this period of time, the WMP had drafted Origin Gods from the weaker realms they conquered into their void monster hunting plan by force, having slain over thirteen overall so far. Gathering these different bloodlines and mixing them with other non-void species that could form binding agents—species like humanity that could mate with everything, for example—they finally created an Eternal bloodline with the void monster genome as its core, along with other basic abilities like magic, great combat skill, long-lived life, strong intelligence, great soul power, etc.
They basically covered every field, even if only a little was put in. What mattered most was that after their effort, they created a combination that was certified to be Eternal Rank at its base, not Semi-Eternal or Pseudo-Eternal, but a true Eternal bloodline!
However, this bloodline was far inferior to the one Draco possessed in that it did not have the infinite energy trait. In fact, energy would be a big problem for the holder of this bloodline, and that was just one aspect. The other part would be a constant battle of will to resist the erosion of one's mind, as the void monster bloodline would turn the wielder into a thoughtless monster.
This was non-negotiable, unfortunately. The wielder could resist it for a time, but the stronger they became, the harder it would be, so it was inevitable that they would assimilate later on. However, the WMP could not afford to care about that at the moment given their lack of time and resources, not to mention that they even felt this was good.
This would give them a platform to manipulate the offspring into doing their bidding and, once it forcibly assimilated later on, allow them to prevent another problem from growing by dealing with it in its moment of weakness after killing Draco.
A perfect plan!
Next came testing and multiple implantations of all clones of all the offspring, until one day, one of them worked. They then replicated the same procedure on other clones and achieved an almost 100% success rate, which was enough for them to risk it all by trying a live implantation on the main offspring.
They had to do this because cloning came with defects in the soul area; only natural-born creatures could have perfect souls. This was why Lucifer also had the Evil Trio be born naturally after many generations rather than creating them on the spot.
Everything was staked on this because the WMP had already entered a strong negative in terms of wealth, having emptied out their resources for this harebrained plan. If this child failed, whether it was in terms of implantation or in terms of actually killing Draco assuming the implantation was a success, that was it.
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There would never be another like it, because the amount of accumulation and resources one needed to create this 'rival' was enough to even bankrupt a small Eternal faction in the Eternal World.
With so much riding on it, and with the Origin Gods watching over the procedure with bloodshot eyes, akin to gamblers who had staked everything on one last bet, even their own bodies, it was natural for the process to… fail!
Hah, what were you expecting? Sure, the procedure had almost a 100% chance of success, but against Draco's 520,000 luck stat, even a 0.00001% fail chance was practically 100%!
Origin Gods of the War Maniac Pavilion, wash your necks and wait!!!