The footprints made of flames stretched into the distance. Even though the giant now looked minuscule, the scorching flames showed no signs of depletion.
The lightning blade slashed, and everything was cut in two. A scarlet vortex flashed and disappeared, leaving no corpse behind.
The mechanical slaughter created the purest 'nothingness.' Ryan was at full throttle, moving forward relentlessly like an assembly line.
Advance, slash, constrain, devour, and integrate the energy into this body.
Ryan even felt a sense of exhilaration and intense hunger, like a gourmet discovering a delicacy, frantically absorbing energy. His pace was unhurried, as if he hadn't noticed the ominous giant tree.
"As expected, it's not using its full strength to kill me." He muttered to himself. The attacks he encountered so far were all instinctual resistance. Attacks of this level were sufficient for Kalpas and the others, but insufficient for him, who had bypassed the Constraint and possessed eight Authorities, and knew how to utilize them.
This reaction was intriguing. The last skeletal giant had self-destructed without a word, causing damage without letting him benefit. So, why the 'cutting of flesh to feed the eagle' this time?
Did you twist the Honkai's will?
Ryan couldn't be sure, but it didn't prevent him from using this opportunity to strengthen himself as quickly as possible.
"Too slow. Every extra effort now can increase the chance of victory by zero point one percent."
Even with electric arcs covering his surroundings, carbonizing everything that approached, Ryan was not satisfied. Poking with a Divine Key was simply too inefficient.
Clap.
He clapped his hands together. More Honkai energy was infused. The blazing giant behind him expanded significantly, growing four more arms.
One held a flame shield, another a lightning sword, another an ice sledgehammer. With crushing force, they frantically attacked the surroundings. The thrown Crimson Helix transformed into a scarlet arrow, streaking quickly across the night sky.
All 617 Dominance threads were deployed. With concentrated effort, Ryan transformed an area of ten kilometers into a domain. He controlled everything as if he had grown hundreds of extra arms. He himself brought his fingers together like a knife, focusing his Authority like the Herrscher of Constraint.
Shua—
Over a dozen thicker roots were severed. They split in the air, forming dense, incoming spikes. They slammed against the flame shield and ignited spontaneously. The scarlet arrow flashed through, and the fragments disintegrated once their energy was devoured.
The air emitted a dull roar. The root system, like a sea wave, gathered and twisted in front of him, turning into a whip several hundred meters thick.
It was colossal, or rather, magnificent was more fitting. Everything in its path was flattened. It quickly swept toward him.
This was enough to crush the blazing giant into ash. But as Ryan slashed with his hand-blade, the overwhelming force instantly froze. Even the inertia vanished in a moment.
Before it could break free from the Constraint, a meteor streaked across the night sky. A spear made purely of flames violently slammed into it.
BOOM!!!
Like a nuclear explosion, the whip blocking his path vanished. Countless fragments flew into the sky, where they were absorbed by a point of gravity, churned into the purest energy. The scarlet spear then pierced through, igniting a crimson flower from within.
First Rated Output: Crimson Flower.
The Honkai energy in the air was frighteningly dense. Some hail-like crystals, which were almost solidified energy, rained down. Ryan opened his hand, clenched a crystal, and it quickly disappeared.
He experienced an epic rush of pleasure, a noticeable look of satisfaction on his face.
"Thank you for the meal. It's been a while since I encountered such a generous opponent."
With the Authority of Blood pushed to its limit, he was like a vacuum cleaner stealing money. It was exhilarating, yet he felt no sense of luck.
His ability to seize the opportunity was hard-won, step by step. Every Herrscher who had died by his hand had become a stepping stone.
"And now I tread on their bodies, slowly climbing to this point."
Four years was by no means fast, but Ryan felt his ascent was steady. The steps beneath his feet were especially firm. He was climbing higher and higher upon a pile of corpses.
The sound of muffled thunder persisted. Flames and lightning intertwined. He advanced along the mountains. After progressing about several dozen kilometers, the giant's steps finally halted. It and Ryan, floating before its chest, looked up together.
"Entering the next phase. Any reaction yet?"
He was only advancing in one direction. He couldn't limit the contraction of the thousands of square kilometers of roots in every direction. Now, the roots from the other directions had retracted, layering thickly upon the trunk like ropes, making it appear even thicker and taller.
There was no visible anomaly, but Ryan instinctively felt a change, as if an invisible gaze had locked onto him.
Unlike the previous instinctive resistance, this was a conscious malice.
"Here it comes."
The moment he spoke, the bark of the tree decomposed and reorganized like a blooming flower bud. In the center of the bud, a cross-shaped flash of light made the sky as bright as day.
Blood Shield.
Whoosh—
Just as the giant's colossal shield burst into scarlet blood-fire, a blinding torrent of light closed in from the distance. Ryan adopted a defensive stance, planting his feet firmly, only to be violently pushed back, his center of gravity shifting instantly.
A red and blue beam of light, rushing forward like a flood, pierced through the mountains and the night sky, instantly slamming heavily into the blood shield. It finally dispersed into countless trickling streams spreading outwards.
"The power is unprecedentedly strong."
Ryan instinctively raised an eyebrow. Even with the dampening effect of the Authority of Blood, he felt a powerful pressure impact him. Truthfully, he had encountered many energy cannons, but the intensity of this torrent was still unparalleled.
Buzz, buzz, buzz...
He couldn't hear anything over the sound of particle collision. Under the suppressing fire, Ryan still had no intention of dodging.
The unmoving giant was advancing slowly and steadily. The splashing energy leveled everything around it but never managed to breach the defense. Ryan looked up at the torrent filling his vision and the cracks appearing on the shield, yet he felt no fear.
This was the significance of crossing the Constraint at such a massive cost. This Authority was essentially a BUG on the imaginary side, capable of using 'quality' to equalize the gap in 'quantity.'
Boom!
The blood shield finally shattered, but the torrent also reached its limit. In the instant before it hit Ryan, he swung his hand into the empty space, and the torrent vanished without a trace.
Not a single particle or ray of light remained. In front of Ryan was only a deep, lava-filled canyon, and he faced the giant tree directly.
"Very strong, but its strength is limited." Ryan's expression was unchanged. In a sense, this was a duel between 'Beast' and 'Herrscher,' except the Herrscher possessed multiple Authorities and knew how to coordinate them through years of combat.
Why was the 'Beast' that once forced Venus into mutual destruction abandoned? Beyond reasons of flexibility and camouflage, it was mostly a contest between 'power' and 'rule.' Creating a monster larger than a planet with 100,000 HW could indeed drill through the Earth, but if that energy were transferred to the Herrscher of Constraint, a snap of the fingers could plunge the planet into silence.
Higher efficiency, faster slaughter, special effects were meaningless.
"In other words, I am your evolutionary version. The difference in energy can be neutralized by rules."
The opponent showed no signs of wavering. Its surface decomposed, and dozens of hundreds of giant hands slapped toward him, filling the path ahead. Ryan simply stepped forward, holding the spear with one hand, and continued to advance.
Dong, dong, dong.
His pace quickened. Gradually, the blazing giant ran ahead, wielding its swords, spears, and glaives, agile enough to show no signs of being puppeted. The closer he got, the greater the resistance became.
Each of those giant hands was like the Wailing Wall to humans, but their proportion was just right in front of this hundred-meter-tall giant.
Lightning Slash.
The glaive sliced the surroundings. Then, the giant crouched low, curled up beneath the flame shield, deflecting the falling debris that struck its head. It then sprang thousands of meters into the air, seeing that the spot where it had stood was already pierced by roots, which only snagged a few remnants of flame.
It spun in the air like a dancing flame, seeing the roots coalesce. Dozens of pale white flowers slowly bloomed.
Storm Halberd.
A hundred-meter-long halberd broke through the air, slamming violently into the center of the flower cluster. The condensed tornado burst, shredding everything within a few square kilometers like a blender.
Whoosh whoosh—
The flowers spat out dozens of bright beams of light, crossing each other in the air. However, the windstorm caused them to lose their aim, scarring the ground with dense cracks.
The roots seemed to realize that fighting the blazing giant was pointless. The ground quickly arched up, looking like countless hundred-meter-tall mountains being newly born, all converging on the trailing Ryan.
"Capture the king first. It has indeed recovered its intelligence." Ryan nodded in agreement. Still, he had no intention of retreating or evading. As rock shards flew and countless roots erupted from the earth—
BOOM!!!
The giant slammed into the center. A spectacular wave of rock splashed up. Under the Authority of Dominance, it was not a puppet on strings but Ryan's alter ego, identical in thought, consciousness, and even instinct.
The ice hammer smashed a meteor crater into the earth, severing the roots. Before Ryan could harvest, the roots in the air and underground grew wildly and entangled in an instant.
Binding and twisting, the giant was cloaked in a fibrous armor, and its volume visibly shrank.
"The inside of the roots has grown countless mouths, frantically devouring Honkai energy?" Ryan saw the chilling sight and watched more 'mountains' form, bypassing the human-shaped target and surging toward him.
Ryan already knew the consequence of being tangled. He extended his right index finger and gently pointed forward.
"Then, Flame Burst."
RUMBLE—
Ryan didn't bat an eye at exploding 'himself.' Even when agile, the giant was purely composed of Honkai energy; it was a remote-controlled bomb.
8,000 HW of energy instantly exploded. The multi-Authority combo created a nuclear fission effect. Even wrapped in roots, the power was astounding.
The perpetual night turned into perpetual day again. A column of fire shot straight into the sky, seemingly competing with the giant tree in height. All kinds of still-burning wood fragments flew everywhere, some large, some palm-sized.
They were still active. As they flew through the air, they changed shape, transforming into spikes or mouths full of sharp teeth. Splitting into millions, they seemed even harder to deal with.
Ryan looked up. The palpable malice even exceeded his perception limit, but this was not a helpful act.
Authority Deployment: River of Blood.
A single drop of scarlet blood flowed from his fingertip. Before it landed, it had expanded countless times, roaring like a surging flood that had breached a dam.
Ryan watched the torrent spiral around the fragments, dissolving them without a trace, instantly engulfing everything within a kilometer.
The River of Blood touched the fragments. The Authority manifested, dissolving them into basic energy particles, which were then channeled back into Ryan's body.
"It's too big for me to swallow whole, but pulverized, it's the best food. Did you really think I only know how to poke with the Divine Key?" The man showed a satisfied smile, but his brow remained tightly furrowed.
If he could, he would have stopped and used every method he had to stock up.
But Ryan was exceptionally skilled at suppressing his greed. This giant tree was clearly problematic, resisting his approach. To stop now, like a miser, would be utterly foolish.
"Besides, you aren't without countermeasures."
His gray eyes reflected the change in the giant tree. The previously pure white surface took on a crystal-like texture, reflecting the residual fire and bloodlight, becoming kaleidoscopic.
A bad feeling rose in Ryan's heart, but he stubbornly stepped forward, continuing to close the distance between them, even knowing that the resistance would only grow stronger.
The crystal tree loomed ahead. With a flash of light strong enough to sting the eyes, Ryan instinctively clenched his fist.
Wailing Ice Wall.
Dong!!
The newly condensed ice wall let out a crisp sound, pierced like a sheet of glass. Ryan held his spear with both hands, flipping it up, and saw a bright spark.
A tough one.
A crystal spear grazed past him, making his tiger's mouth slightly numb. The scarlet color that had stained it quickly faded.
Targeted evolution to avoid becoming sustenance?
He immediately understood. The opponent must have realized that more 'quantity' only meant more food, so it chose to increase its 'quality' to counter his Authority.
Since crushing means immediate consumption, I'll just be too hard for you to crush.
The reaction was swift. No need for repeated experiments to verify. It was instinctively choosing the most correct path.
"Hmph, my least favorite kind of underachiever!"
He swung his hands. The crystal sword flew into the sky. Then, as if alive, it flipped once and split into hundreds of meter-thick crystal spikes, filling every space for evasion.
Ryan had no intention of engaging in close-quarters combat. He shifted his gaze to the side, gathering Authority in the empty space.
Simulated Black Hole.
A sphere deeper than the night appeared. The spikes were sucked into the quicksand, quickly flying backward and being swallowed by the black hole.
You can max out your physical defense, but you still can't break free from the rule. Even if you're tougher, Ryan has ways to deal with you.
Ignoring the result, he turned his head forward, his brow slightly furrowed.
"You're not going to stop just because you found something useful, are you?"
More crystal swords were launched toward him, breaking free from the black hole's gravity with greater kinetic energy. From a distance, it looked like the Ten Thousand Swords Return to the Sect from a fantasy novel, only each sword was dozens of times larger.
An unknown construct based on Honkai energy, its strength surpassed Soul Steel. Although still within the range of destruction, its intention was clear.
If the Authority of Blood could not be used, this would become a true war of attrition. The most sensible choice would be to slowly retreat. Given the concentration of Honkai energy in the air, he could replenish quickly, while the giant tree was not infinite in energy.
Something was clearly happening. Taking a cautious approach now would not only be cowardly but also foolish.
"You want me to retreat, but I will deliberately advance."
Ryan charged toward the rain of swords, not even wasting energy on defense, because—
DONG!!!
Residual flames in the sky and a fireball in front rose up sequentially. The masked man kicked a crystal sword toward the ground, then blocked another with an elbow strike. He didn't even look at the giant sword behind him, which was large enough to crush him into powder.
He simply shook his hand, feeling slightly annoyed that he couldn't shatter the sword with a single punch. A thick, azure beam of light then swept past him.
The crystal sword aimed at the man was struck, spinning a few times in the air. Ryan, as if fully anticipating it, turned his head and saw several battleships emerge from the clouds above.
They were lined up in a battle formation, pressing down like a thundercloud.
"Who said I wanted to solo you?!"