Hearing Bruce’s words, Evan couldn’t help but shiver a little.
The mere thought that a being superior even to the gods themselves was trying to eliminate the planet was terrifying, but the fact that this being had been limited because of something done in the past was at least somewhat comforting.
That said, the relief was short-lived, because Evan quickly remembered something Bruce had said just moments earlier.
’Wait, why are the restrictions suddenly collapsing? What does this Supreme have to do with any of this?’
Evan couldn’t help but connect the two.
The restrictions were lasting far less time than they should have, according to Bruce, which meant something, or someone, was weakening them. And Evan couldn’t help but suspect that this entity was exactly the one responsible.
"Hey, why are the restrictions falling apart?" Evan asked Bruce directly, and Bruce, as if he’d been expecting the question, answered without wasting any time.
[It’s due to several factors, and while I’m not entirely certain of the main cause, I can tell you it’s because that Supreme is starting to regain its strength.]
Those words were said in a way that made them sound like nothing much, and yet their implications made Evan’s blood run cold.
"What?!" Evan found himself deeply shaken by what Bruce had just told him.
Just a moment ago, he had thought that this being was too weak to act against the planet.
But now Bruce was telling him that this same existence was gradually returning to the peak of its power, and had already begun taking action?
"Didn’t you just say it can’t do anything because its powers are limited? Why this sudden change now?"
[It is true that it was limited before. However, as I told you, the situation has changed. The Restrictions in this dimension that have kept the Abyss Gods imprisoned here all this time have already begun weakening for a while now. In fact, just recently, they have almost completely collapsed.]
[The Abyss Gods here are currently recovering, and soon they will be able to return to the Abyss. That is also why I had to bring you here so early. If I had been even slightly later, everything we have worked for up until this point would have been lost.]
Bruce’s voice was serious, tense almost, as if the idea of something going wrong genuinely bothered him.
’We?’
Evan couldn’t help but notice that last word.
’We, who? Someone Bruce knows? ’ Evan wondered.
He wanted to ask more, but the dark space around them soon began to shift.
Out of nowhere, six glowing lights appeared, blinding both Bruce and Evan for an instant with their sudden brightness, before stabilizing, rotating slowly around them with an almost ceremonial calm.
Once his vision recovered, Evan looked at them carefully.
They all possessed a nearly solid appearance, almost as if they had physical bodies.
Almost.
The light they emitted seemed to erase that final trace of solidity, making it impossible to determine whether they were truly material or not.
’Crystals?’ Evan thought.
The six objects had the shape of crystals, with each one resembling a slightly imperfect rhombus.
They were not flawless geometric shapes. Some edges were chipped, others were uneven, while certain parts appeared sharper or more irregular than others.
Yet despite those imperfections, their overall form was unmistakably that of a rhombus.
Each crystal had a different color, and each one carried a completely distinct aura.
One was a deep, almost somber violet.
One was pure black, a black that seemed to absorb the surrounding light rather than reflect it. If it hadn’t been moving, Evan might not have even noticed it was there at all.
One gave off an incandescent orange glow, like living embers.
One was a sickly yellow-green.
One was a dark blue-green, deep like storm-tossed ocean water.
And the last one was a dark blue that gave the impression of holding a starry night sky within it.
Each one gave off different sensations, almost tangible against the skin, distinct forces Evan could feel pulsing in the air around him, some of which felt strangely familiar.
’Hm? Could it be...’
Evan recognized at least three of these crystals well, or more precisely, recognized the sensations they gave off. And of course he did, he had a fairly strong affinity with them after all.
’My bloodlines?’ Evan thought, unable to help but consider it.
At first, he thought they might be elements, since several of them gave off the same sensation as the various elements he had a fairly strong affinity with, but he quickly reconsidered.
They didn’t seem to be direct manifestations of those elemental concepts, but rather something more concentrated, more pure, as if each crystal held the very essence of a principle, distilled down to its purest form.
And that was when his bloodlines came to mind.
The dark one seemed similar to Shadow’s, the orange one similar to Ash’s, and the greenish one bore a strong resemblance to Seraphine’s bloodline, which was now also his own.
As for the other three, even though he didn’t carry those particular bloodlines, his affinity with them was strong enough that he could tell exactly what they represented.
In the end, Evan couldn’t help but look at Bruce, who had stayed silent, and said,
"These... are my bloodlines?"
[Yes, or more precisely, they’re concept cores of the concepts those bloodlines represent]
Bruce said, catching Evan off guard once again.
"Concept cores? Wait, don’t concept cores only form once someone reaches Overlord rank?"
Evan remembered that Bruce had told him back at BranLeaf that concept cores were the higher form of mana cores, and only formed once a being reached Overlord rank.
Setting aside Overlord rank, which was S-rank, Evan hadn’t even reached A-rank yet at this point, so how was he suddenly staring at six concept cores that had appeared out of nowhere?
[Yes, normally that’s how it works, but as you know, your situation is unusual. More precisely, the bloodlines you’ve obtained are special.]
Hearing that, Evan nodded. After all, they were divine bloodlines, of course they were special, but how was that supposed to change anything for him?
[As I told you before, the reason I’ve been helping you was so you could adapt to all of these bloodlines. But do you know why I’m doing it through clones of yourself, instead of placing them directly into you?]
Hearing Bruce’s words, Evan wasn’t sure what to think.
Why the clones? Evan had never given this point much thought, since when he first obtained the system, it had been called the Divine Clone System, so he’d simply taken that at face value and never questioned it much further. But now that Bruce himself was asking him this question, he found himself curious.
’He didn’t give the bloodlines directly to me, but to versions of me, which then became my clones,’ Evan thought it over for a moment, then remembered a detail.
’Right, the synchronization percentage, I’d almost forgotten about that,’ Evan thought, recalling that he’d asked Bruce in the past what exactly it was for.
Even back then, Bruce had been vague about it, but he’d told him it represented how much he was synchronizing with the bloodline of that particular clone.
As for why that mattered, based on the abilities it granted him, Evan had assumed it was meant to raise his affinity with that specific element tied to that bloodline, since the abilities he gained were always related to that element.
In other words, by using the clones, Bruce had been adapting his body to those bloodlines. As for why, Evan thought of something else.
Seraphine, back when he’d first ended up in this place, had told him that a person couldn’t handle more than one bloodline, let alone ones of divine rank like hers.
On top of that, she’d told him that a being needed many divinities to reach the rank of Supreme, something that turned out to be only partially true.
She’d also told him that seeing a person possess more than one divinity was extremely rare. She’d said that the individual who started the Cycles and had been fighting against the Abyss had mastered two Concepts: Space and Time., and had achieved divinity in both.
He’d been the only person to possess more than two, according to her, the only one who did, which had made her think he might be connected to that individual, because that was exactly what that being had wanted to do, find a way to absorb more divinities and reach the rank of Supreme.
Evan had, in fact, walked the same path. He already possessed several of them, three, to be precise, or perhaps even more, judging by the six crystals currently floating around him.
"I see, so you’re using the clones to develop an affinity with these bloodlines, no, these concepts, so that my body can absorb all of them without issue, and maybe reach the rank of Supreme."