CHAPTER 75: AN ORIGIN SKILL

The pain was immense. Half of Rhys’s body was gone. Erased.

His flawless regeneration was working frantically, burning through hundreds of millions of years of his lifespan in a desperate attempt to recreate what the void had unmade.

It was a slow, agonising process.

Kaelen cackled, his voice echoing in Rhys’s mind.

’Do you feel it, cousin? The despair? That is the feeling of true power. Something you will never understand.’

But there was no despair on Rhys’s face. As his body knitted itself back together, a cold grin spread across his lips.

The words of the System echoed in his mind.

[Burning lifespan to create a skill]

[Skill [Bloodbend] has been successfully created.]

[Bloodbend]

Grade: Heaven (High)

About: Allows the user to seize control over spilled blood in their immediate vicinity. By imprinting your own signature, you can use this blood as your own.

’That’s it...’ Rhys thought.

For some reason, Kaelen felt more terrible than any monster he had faced in this Labyrinth, including the Titan.

The demon’s power was unpredictable and chaotic. That’s why Rhys had been stalling, using only his basic heaven grade skills, trying to find a weakness, trying to understand why he felt such a profound sense of danger.

Just like Rhys, Kaelen also had his own encounters, landing him with a divine skill. Rhys believed there must be a more powerful skill in his armoury.

He had been right.

But now, by creating a skill based on Kaelen’s own trait, Rhys had gained an immense advantage.

He had found the key.

He looked up, his body now fully restored. A manic grin which mirrored Kaelen, but more terrifying was on his face.

Kaelen’s own smile faltered, a flicker of confusion in his red eyes. He did not understand why his cousin was smiling after being so thoroughly beaten.

Rhys activated Low-distance Jump, anchoring it on Kaelen as always. At the same time, he commanded the Ashen Behemoth to release its gravitational pull on his own body.

Kaelen was yanked forward with incredible force. Rhys shot towards him like a cannonball. They were on a collision course in mid-air.

Kaelen prepared for a physical strike, his blood tendril coiling to defend.

But Rhys did not use a physical attack.

The moment they were inches from each other, Rhys opened his mouth.

"IT’S MORE FUN NOW."

His voice was a physical weapon, amplified by the Heaven-grade Sonic Burst. At the same time, he activated Will of the Sand. The combined mental and sonic assault hit Kaelen at point-blank range.

"AAARGH."

For the first time, Kaelen let out a genuine scream of pain. His mind was flooded with the terror of being buried alive, his concentration shattered by the sonic blast.

He was disoriented, stunned.

Rhys continued the attack. His dagger moved with inhuman speed, a black blur in the starlit void. He dismantled Kaelen’s body, tearing it into thousands of tiny, bloody pieces.

Blood and gore rained down on the crystal plaza. The pieces began to bubble, trying to pull themselves back together, to reform the demon’s body.

But before Kaelen could reconstruct, Rhys acted. He landed on the ground and slammed his hand onto the crystal floor.

He activated Bloodbend.

He felt a new connection form, not to his army, but to the thousands of scattered pieces of his cousin. He pushed his will, his own signature, into every drop of Kaelen’s blood, seizing control.

The blood on the ground fought back, trying to obey its original master. But Rhys’s will, fuelled by the void, was stronger. The bubbling stopped. The blood was now his.

A look of pure, unadulterated terror finally appeared on Kaelen’s face, which was slowly trying to form from the largest puddle of blood. He had lost control of his own body.

Rhys showed no mercy. He raised his other hand, and the black and silver Voidheart Flame erupted from his palm. He burned every last drop of the stolen blood, incinerating it, erasing it from existence.

The atmosphere returned to calm. The screaming stopped. The blood was gone.

Silence.

Only Rhys was left on the battlefield.

’Is this the end?’

The congratulatory voice of the System did not sound. Instead, terrified gasps echoed from the disciples of the great families.

Rhys turned to look at them. They were not looking at him, but were staring in horror at the Ashton disciples.

Rhys followed their gaze. What he saw made his skin crawl.

Every disciple of the Ashton family stood frozen on the spot. Their eyes were wide with a terror they could not express.

Then, thick, red blood began to spill from their pores, pooling at their feet. Within seconds, their bodies shrivelled, their life force drained away until they were nothing but mummified corpses.

All except for Joric Ashton, who watched his clansmen die, his face a mask of utter shock.

The blood on the ground moved on its own. It flowed like a river, converging on a single point.

Before Rhys could even think to use Bloodbend again, the blood merged, reconstructing Kaelen’s battered form.

Kaelen had no smile on his face. For the first time since they met, Rhys saw pure, cold anger in his lifeless red pupils. He had sacrificed his own people to fuel his power.

"Let’s end this little game, Cousin," he whispered, his voice filled with a rapturous ecstasy.

"Witness the culmination of my pain, my rage, my very existence! Witness my law! SANGUINE APOCALYPSE!"

The world turned blood-red. A swirling storm of blood and screaming souls erupted from Kaelen.

The System’s analysis was a shriek of panic in Rhys’s mind.

[WARNING! Origin Skill detected!]

[Skill Name: Sanguine Apocalypse]

[Rank: Unranked (Evolving)]

[Description: An Origin Skill is the ultimate expression of a cultivator’s will and combat philosophy. It is not learned, but created, manifesting as a unique law of reality that reflects its user’s very essence. This is a power typically developed only after the first ascension.]

’Origin Skill...’ Rhys’s mind, sharpened by the imminent threat of annihilation, latched onto the concept.

A skill created, not learned. An evolving, personal law.

He looked at the approaching crimson storm, at Kaelen standing in its eye like a god of his own bloody creation. He had been fighting Kaelen’s techniques.

But this... this was Kaelen’s very soul made manifest.

How could he fight that?

Rhys could feel his own blood becoming chaotic. He saw some of the weaker disciples from the other families simply burst into a fine mist of blood, their life force sucked into Kaelen’s growing domain.

[Host, you can’t fight an Origin skill with ordinary skills. Origins are domains; to break a domain, a more potent domain is needed...]

’That’s it...’

The way to defeat this blood demon. An epiphany struck Rhys.

He had been thinking like a cultivator, using skills established by the world around him. But he was not just a cultivator. He was an anomaly. He had his own concepts.

He had a unique foundation forged from the Void. He had a power source born from an endless Lifespan. He had a command over the cycle of death and rebirth through Ash. And he wielded a Flame that could erase existence.

These were not just abilities. They were concepts. They were the pillars of his own, unwritten law. Creating and rewriting anything in the emptiness. That was his path.

He had been using the tools. It was time to write the scripture.

Rhys reached inward, into the core of his being. He felt the cold, absolute emptiness of the Void. He felt the warm, endless river of his Lifespan.

He felt the gritty finality of Ash. And he felt the hungry, silver-black heat of the Flame.

He began to weave them together, not with Qi, but with pure will. The Void was the canvas, the absolute nothingness upon which all would be written.

The Lifespan was the ink, the fuel for an endless cycle. The Ash was the medium, the substance of creation and destruction.

And the Flame was the pen, the instrument that would write his law upon the world.

He opened an Origin. His own Origin.

Kaelen’s crimson domain was almost upon him. The screaming souls within it reached for him, their phantom claws ready to tear his soul apart.

Rhys opened his eyes. They were no longer just black. They were twin voids, swirling with silver starlight.

"You have your law, cousin," Rhys’s voice was a quiet, resonant hum that cut through the roar of the blood storm.

"Now, witness mine."

"EPOCH OF CINDERS."