Chapter 864: Enhancement, Primordial Dragon Eyes (Mythic)
"To think you managed to secure a material of this caliber... You truly have ascended to this threshold."
The Knight Girl, standing in her mature, adult form, stared at the miniature dragon skull resting in her palm, unable to suppress her awe.
Even to someone of her standing, this was a peerless treasure.
The foundation of the Divine Stairway was simple: slaughter the most exceptional, supreme entities across each developmental stage, using the bones of those pinnacle beings to forge a staircase ascending into the heavens.
Theoretically, if a Reincarnator could harvest materials of sufficient rarity at every single tier, continually smelting those apex biological traits into their vessel...
Even without the reinforcement of specialized active abilities, authorities, or concepts, that Reincarnator would inevitably mutate into a monster defying all comprehension.
After all, an operative who walked that path would embody the synthesized apex of countless supreme species.
Yet Reincarnators truly capable of securing materials that surpassed their operational bracket remained vanishingly rare.
The higher one climbed, the more detached and transcendent the apex became. This was an unyielding battle royale where the strong compounded their supremacy; those who endured to the later stages were never weak.
Kaito Shirogane nodded, signaling her to initiate the appraisal. He deduced that in its prime, the colossal dragon Tiamat was an entity far beyond his current capacity to challenge.
The beast had decayed to the absolute dregs of its biological clock, likely merely days away from natural death.
Even in that twilight state, it had weaponized its draconic mirages to bind and quarantine Saitama. Had Kaito not unexpectedly intervened, Saitama might have remained entangled on the moon for days.
By then, that younger black dragon would have cleansed the vast majority of human civilization.
Yet Kaito felt not a shred of pity toward Tiamat. Failing to conquer the decay of time and mortal lifespan was merely another manifestation of weakness.
In combat, lamenting that an opponent couldn't match you in your prime was merely the pathetic whimpering of a stray dog.
A dense, radiant golden aura erupted from the Knight Girl's frame—a presence poised between battle aura and mana, heavily laced with the unmistakable textures of sovereign authorities and concepts.
Among the disparate powers wielded by Reincarnators, only the elusive Heart's Radiance remained imperceptible to Kaito's senses.
He was steadily approaching the absolute summit; forces that had once appeared opaque were finally resolving into sharp clarity.
Prismatic hues flickered continuously within his retinas. Across the Knight Girl's skin lay a translucent, silvery film.
That membrane disrupted the analytical penetration of the Unknown Art, barring him from directly dissecting and mimicking her systemic traits.
Kaito deduced that this was the sovereign authority of the Space itself: the raw power of Information.
Her expression turning clinical, the Knight Girl raised both palms. The miniature dragon skull spun into the air, swelling as vast reserves of energy and information flooded its core.
The next microsecond, the skull's eyelids snapped open. Blazing golden eyes unleashed a suffocating wave of draconic majesty, the ethereal skull ballooning until it threatened to burst through the walls of the Step Appraisal Pavilion.
Yet neither Kaito nor the Knight Girl budged beneath that concussive aura. The Knight Girl abruptly clenched her fists.
Golden radiance detonated outward.
Crack!
The dragon skull shattered, collapsing into a floating suspension of ruby-like fluid that shifted and coiled mid-air.
[Material Appraisal Complete]
[Material: Skull of the Primordial Evil Dragon, Tiamat]
[Quality: Mythic]
[Description: An ancient dragon birthed from the primordial dawn, born alongside the Dragon God Bahamut, nurturing the absolute essence of pure malice.]
[Effect: Upon smelting, grants one of the following traits:]
A: Anti-Life Dragon Breath · Deathly Silence (Rare): Upon smelting, your vocal tract undergoes specialized biological adaptation, granting a Deathly Silence Dragon Breath equivalent to a pureblood dragon. Destructive payload scales with your total vitality.
B: Blood of the Evil God · Corrosion (World's Rarity): Upon smelting, your bloodstream is imbued with the Blood of the Evil God. Any target contaminated by your blood suffers eternal corrosion, having a random active ability or trait sealed until the corrosion brand is purged. Simultaneously, any entity perishing while bearing the corrosion brand rises as an Evil God Puppet under your absolute dominion.
C: Primordial Dragon Eyes · Eye of Analysis (Mythic): A unique authority native to the most ancient dragon. Upon smelting, your eyes transmute into the Primordial Dragon Eyes (Mythic-tier Mystic Eyes), bestowing specialized visual fields including Clairvoyance of the Future, Absolute Penetration, and Illusory Sight. Furthermore, grants the ocular power to directly parse and deconstruct conceptual-tier targets. Any mystic eyes possessing a lower rating than these eyes will be permanently sealed during unbroken eye contact.
D: Mother of Evil Gods · Nest of Calamity (Mythic): The defining sovereign trait of the ancient dragon Tiamat. Upon smelting, grants the authority to birth Evil Gods. Through devouring, sacrifice, or ritual offerings, foreign vitality and exotic energy can be incubated within your core to spawn Evil Gods, or deployed en masse via draconic mirages. The operational ceiling of the spawned Evil Gods cannot exceed your current step by more than one sequence.
The shifting ruby fluid hovered before Kaito, dense streams of information condensing into systemic text across his visual field.
The two Mythic traits, C and D, radiated that exact crimson, jewel-like luminescence across the interface.
Even an utter novice could register the immense systemic priority the Space assigned to those two selections.
A Mythic-tier trait...
A Second Sequence Dragon God Candidate had indeed yielded bounties of this caliber, offering two distinct Mythic branches at once.
"The most ancient, primordial evil dragon... Who knows how many tens of thousands of years it reigned..."
The Knight Girl murmured in an almost dreamy cadence. Though they were all pilgrims ascending the Divine Stairway, bound to devour exceptional lifeforms to fuel their evolution, an ancient beast of this pedigree was something she rarely processed.
A dragon sovereign who had endured for tens of thousands of years, reduced to a stepping stone for a mortal who had walked reality for barely a few decades... It was thoroughly intoxicating.
The golden radiance wrapping her frame expanded further. For the first time, she dropped her standard facade, no longer acting as the cheerful, naive attendant who offered generic encouragement to novice operatives.
Kaito pulled his gaze back from the Knight Girl, studying the offered traits without lingering hesitation.
"I select C."
The Knight Girl nodded, though she offered a rare, quiet prompt:
"Are you certain, Archetype of Terminus and Genesis? Though advising you skirts spatial regulations, the trait of the Mother of Evil Gods is arguably the foundational core of the Primordial Evil Dragon Tiamat."
Kaito understood her point entirely. The Space's administrative tags were rigorously objective: if Tiamat was classified as the Primordial Evil Dragon, then the Primordial aspect representing ancient genesis and the Evil aspect governing destructive authority were its root powers.
Mother of Evil Gods: Nest of Calamity not only allowed the user to incubate horrors exceeding their personal sequence, but also bestowed the sovereign authority of Consumption.
Devouring, incubating, or deploying legions of mirages to flood a theater.
It was an authority around which an operative could architect an entire sovereign combat system.
An ambitious, patient Reincarnator could weaponize that single trait to quietly amass an army capable of conquering worlds single-handedly.
Yet Kaito had long since forged his personal philosophy regarding absolute might—a creed that ran through every strike, every technique, and the Martial God's Ultimate Intent itself.
To him, authentic might was an entirely internal affair.
Shattering a planet with a single fist, shaking the three realms with a roar of Ki—that was true supremacy. Everything else, even incubated horrors summoned from within, was merely external clutter.
Seeing his resolve hold without a tremor, the Knight Girl smiled and thrust her palms forward, sending the ruby fluid drifting into Kaito's chest.
The moment his fingers brushed the liquid, the ruby substance dissolved into an information stream, burrowing violently into his biology.
Twin needle-pricks of searing agony pierced Kaito's retinas, followed by a wet pop as his eyeballs burst into red mist.
Instantaneous regeneration engaged in the exact same microsecond, knitting the tissues whole. Yet across Kaito's pitch-black pupils, intricate golden sigils crystallized—secret divine runes etched permanently into the irises.
[You have smelted Material: Skull of the Primordial Evil Dragon, Tiamat]
[You have acquired Trait: Primordial Dragon Eyes · Eye of Analysis (Mythic)]
Kaito sensed the profound shift within his ocular pathways. Channeling his focus, he engaged the dormant authority.
His dark irises flared with incandescent golden light. This was neither the vertical slit of a dragon nor the runic ring of the Golden Order; his entire eyes shimmered with pristine, unbroken luminescence.
Turning his head, Kaito saw the interior of the Step Appraisal Pavilion saturated with dense, silvery streams of raw Information.
The reinforced walls, the vaulted ceiling, the heavy archways—all of it was forged entirely of Information itself.
He could track the cadence, density, and microscopic permutations of those currents. Given enough focus, he felt he could decipher the foundational algorithms governing their flow.
He had acquired the capacity to perceive the cosmos at the informational dimension.
A qualitative leap in perception.
Shifting his gaze to the Knight Girl, he found her enveloped in brilliant golden light, the bands of completed smeltings etched along her arms flaring brightly within his vision.
Deep purple formed the baseline, overtaken by crimson, crowned by three distinct ruby rings.
What arrested Kaito's attention was that those bands stacked across four full layers, with a single ruby ring blazing on the fifth.
If his systemic comprehension held true, the Knight Girl's authentic tier was... the God Step!
A faint ache bloomed across his temples. The Primordial Dragon Eyes taxed his Spirit attribute in proportion to the tier of the observed target.
Parsing entities as high-ranking as the Knight Girl or the infrastructure of the Space imposed a measurable load on his reserves.
Against conventional adversaries, however, analytical tracking would carry zero strain.
[You have completed Advancement Quest: Flesh of the Enemy, Sustenance of Mine IV]
[You have advanced to: Fierce]
[Anchoring metrics... Reincarnator EX051 tier updated to: Fierce · Rule-Breaker]
[Prerequisites for the next Advancement Quest met. Please report to the Step Appraisal Pavilion to accept the assignment]
Reviewing the updated telemetry, the Knight Girl smirked. Seeing an operative wielding destructive output capable of threatening whole worlds only now formally anchoring into Fierce: Rule-Breaker struck her as amusing.
"Growing in power too swiftly is fine, but do not neglect your ascent along the Divine Stairway."
The cycle separating Kaito's ascent from Strong: Rule-Breaker to his current functional ceiling exceeding the Madness tier had been remarkably brief. He had previously delayed accepting the advancement quest due to a lack of suitable materials.
Now that the catalyst was secured, there was no reason to stall.
[Accept Advancement Quest: Flesh of the Enemy, Sustenance of Mine V?]
"Accept."
[You have acquired Advancement Quest: Flesh of the Enemy, Sustenance of Mine V]
"While we are here, I have another material. Appraise it as well."
Kaito drew forth the severed black wings harvested from that respectable young dragon.
Still maintaining her mature form, the Knight Girl accepted the miniature black wings.
"Another exceptional set of draconic wings..."
[Appraising...]
[Appraisal Complete]
[Material: Wings of Deathwing, Neltharion]
[Quality: World's Rarity: Extreme]
[Description: The most exceptional young dragon from the Dragon's Homeland, a world-ending titan harboring the Authority of Death.]
[Effect: Upon smelting, grants one of the following traits:]
A: Dragon's Reverse-Scale (World's Rarity): Replaces your four core attribute efficiencies with the specialized Dragon's Reverse-Scale modifier. Baseline efficiency remains fixed at 2.0 under normal conditions, but spikes to 3.5 under the influence of extreme emotional states such as wrath or terror.
B: Wrath of the World-Ender · Calamity Storm (World's Rarity: Extreme): Grants the active ability Wrath of the World-Ender (S). This ability cannot be suppressed, silenced, or purged by any anti-magic or dispelling authorities. Upon activation, consumes all stamina, energy, and authorities to unleash a devastating chaotic tempest. Radius and destructive output scale directly with your total vitality, attributes, energy reserves, and authorities.
C: Dragon King's Domain · Ruins of Interdiction (World's Rarity: Extreme): Grants the Dragon King's Domain. Upon activation, systematically suppresses and nullifies all supernatural forces—including traits, bloodline authorities, active skills, and sovereign authorities—wielded by any entity within the domain whose life tier or power tier is inferior to your own.
The wings yielded three distinct traits. While none breached the Mythic threshold, their individual parameters were remarkably potent.
Their universality was vast: virtually any Reincarnator could integrate them without mechanical friction.
The first trait, Dragon's Reverse-Scale, was mechanically absurd, outstripping the ceiling of Kaito's current Qilin Armor.
So long as the reverse-scale was agitated, a flat 3.5 attribute efficiency modifier functionally doubled an operative's physical baseline.
The remaining two traits—whether that oppressive domain or the S-Rank cataclysmic storm—were equally formidable.
Yet none of them aligned with Kaito's current operational needs.
He lacked no wide-area cleansing tools to purge weaklings.
Against adversaries below his tier, his strikes executed them instantaneously.
He had no need for a life-draining calamity storm, and an ability-suppressing domain was thoroughly redundant with traits he already commanded.
Kaito resolved to put the wings up for trade.
Turning his focus back to his personal build, he drew forth the [Material: Fractured World] he had acquired earlier, preparing to initiate its smelting.
Out in the public plaza, a massive crowd of Reincarnators remained gathered before Kaito's designated stall. Black Butler and Jin Yue'an had already issued a formal communique through the Paradise:
The Paradise would assume operational oversight of the global Spiritual Calamity, progressively demarcating designated civilian preservation zones and spiritual containment sectors.
The announcement had provoked immediate controversy. It practically declared that moving forward, human society was expected to accept the permanent coexistence of spiritual entities on Earth.
"Is Lord Mercenary Tao not going to purge the calamity entirely?! Billions of mortal lives are under direct threat!"
Black Butler kept his eyes lowered, offering zero reply until Lord Mercenary Tao returned.
He understood the cold truth: the terraforming of the physical world was an irreversible tide. Both Mercenary Tao and Yoko were actively pursuing this metamorphosis.
The successful anchoring of the Golden Order across the Siberian tundra had been entirely dependent on their tacit approval.
He could only pray that the planet wouldn't be completely unraveled by the two sovereigns before the board settled.