Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

Ryu looked down at the blood crystal in his palms. He had taken it out rather than hiding it, illuminating the surroundings once more.

Selheira was still on his back in a deep meditative state, but she might as well have been in a deep sleep.

His focus was primed, and he tried to sense the unique characteristics of the crystal. His thoughts were more malleable than others, so how he looked at things was also different. The moment he realized that he could keep beasts away, he wondered if he could attract them. And then, he took it even a step further than that... was it possible to attract a certain kind of beast?

It couldn't have been a coincidence. He was attacked the moment he tried to leave the boundary of the trial by that Omniscient God Beast. Then, when he entered the first layer, all the way to the third, he was continuously attacked by beasts.

Did the fourth layer suddenly become so mellow, or was there another explanation for it?

The beasts should have a unique method of sensing the surrounding creatures, and if Ryu was correct, it should be related to their mutations.

The humans and Demons that entered this place obviously didn't have the same ghastly mutations as the beasts that lived in this place. This should be a strong distinguishing factor.

In fact, those mutations that the beasts experienced should be their own weaker form of Bloodline Resonance. It was just that they had to suffer a lot more for it.

Didn't that mean that if he reversed it...

The waters churned, and Ryu quickly put the blood crystal away. He spread out his senses and felt for what was happening.

'... I might have gone a bit overboard.'

Large beasts, each one at the pinnacle of the True Sky God Realm, and some at the Half-Step Perfect Sky God Realm, all surged toward Ryu.

Luckily, they lost their connection with him soon afterward, but that was when Ryu realized something interesting.

'They teleported here. There's no other way for them to get here so fast. Are they being spawned? Or...'

Ryu's pupils constricted as he dodged. One of the beasts had come close enough that it stumbled onto him and he was forced into a retreat. Unfortunately, that retreat led him into the range of yet another beast.

'If this continues, I'll be swamped by them all. If I have to worry about stepping into another's territory, I won't be able to fight to the best of my abilities, either.

'I have to go through them.'

Ryu picked a direction, and his body churned. He punched out, eliciting Bloodline Resonance to drill a lance of rotting waters forward.

The result was out of Ryu's expectations.

The rotting beast seemed to gain a crimson glow from their eyes, and the strength of Ryu's Bloodline Resonance weakened considerably.

In the end, instead of losing its head, the beast was just knocked away.

Ryu was taken aback, but it didn't slow his reaction. He rushed forward and out of the encirclement, his path ahead clear for the time being. But because he didn't manage to kill the beast, he had to use up more Vital Qi than he was expected, so a wave of fatigue hit him soon after.

He circulated his Emybronic Qi, using up five droplets, but the process of recovery was too slow. He could only use up another five when he sensed that the beast had already recovered and was coming after him.

At the same time, the second tentacle beast that had assaulted him had never been knocked off its path to being with, so it was already pursuing him.

As though this wasn't bad enough, the other beasts started to catch wind of the commotion through the churning of the waters.

Ryu shook his head. He had already held back, worrying that something like this would happen, but to think that he would still somehow summon a half dozen of these monstrosities.

'The one I attacked should have a blood crystal in it. It was able to use that blood crystal to cancel out my resonance, which I didn't expect...'

It seemed that even Bloodline Resonance wasn't a guaranteed victory. Well, the Demon Kings had described it as the bare minimum to enter the final layer. It was just that Ryu didn't know that.

'No choice but to kill them all,' Ryu decided.

With Selheira on his back, he had to be a bit more cautious.

He suddenly spun around as a tentacle was about to slap out against him, throwing a punch.

This punch contained nothing more than the bare minimum resonance he needed to glide it through the thick waters smoothly. But it was also a test.

The beast that had caught up was the second one, and Ryu wanted to see if it could weaken his resonance as well.

He quickly got his answer. It couldn't.

Ryu reeled back, the strength of the beast too much for him to take with a simple punch, but he still managed to punch out again, ready for the result.

This time, he put the full brunt of his Bloodline Resonance behind it.

BANG!

The thick, rotting waters were forced into a tight spiral that tore a line toward the beast. As expected, this time, it could do nothing, and its head was ripped apart in a splatter of blood.

'Good to know. Only those with blood crystals can cancel out my Bloodline Resonance. Doesn't that also mean that I could use the crystals as a method to cut the time I need to comprehend down?'

Ryu was already retreating again. The remaining five beasts were still after him, the one with the blood crystal being the closest.

But now he was wondering if any of the others had a blood crystal as well.

With such a good opportunity before him, he couldn't possibly let it fall into the hands of someone else, right?

As he was thinking about his next step, the commotion he caused started drawing other participants of the fourth layer over.