Hades was stunned by Essence’s last minute heroic breakthrough.
How could it be possible for anyone to withstand his Bewitchment ability??? This was something that never happened before.
Essence himself was panting and sweating profusely. He felt like he had been drowning in a mire of mud the whole time and was struggling to reach the surface, managing to breakthrough at the last second when his air was about to run out.
And this was solely thanks to the fact that he was a dual lineage inheritor, with the Serpent God Inheritance and the Dark Angel Inheritance! Thanks to his dark angel side, his mental strength was potent enough to resist the bewitchment at the last second.
Still, Essence felt fear in his heart. He had first tried to use his Serpent God power, but it proved useless in front of such a thing. It meant that if one did not have something like a Dark Angel inheritance or a mental related ability, you were but putty in this guy’s hands.
What a terrifying power he had been hiding all this while!
Everyone had thought of him as the guy with physical strength who could use a bit of elemental ability. Somewhat in the same category as brutes like Keira or Kiran. Even when considering his base devouring ability, he was only ideally in the middle of the God Serpents in terms of threat value.
However, this new side of him had definitely placed him at the to of the entire guild, making him a threat that made the other core members shiver in their boots. However, their reaction was nothing compared to the actual God Serpents, minus Nidhogg himself.
When their inheritors questioned them as to what was wrong, their answer spooked them so much that they gazed at Hades like he was a monster.
.me.
“The Bewitchment ability is not part of the three Inheritances the Progenitor left behind! It was an ability from one of his other smaller category of powers!”
Draco and Eva had already explained to them what the Inheritances meant and what they truly were, not counting those who already knew in depth like Nightwalker.
To Lucifer and co, there were nothing like Inheritances, just different categories of powers they could use. So Horned Demon would just be Demonic powers, Dark Angel would just be Devil powers and Serpent God would just be Dragon powers.
They only became what we knew as Inheritances when these progenitors encoded their mastery of these categories of powers into a clean, systematic network of abilities and theories for descendants to use at will.
Just like a Professor condensing all his scattered knowledge in a field into a textbook for students to use for education. This enables them to acquire the information without having to spend the hours of tedious research that the professor did to acquire this knowledge.
With bloodlines, this allows usage of its abilities without foreknowledge. Things like the Basic Manifestation Technique that have to be practiced and taught were not encoded into the bloodline, but abilities developed by the descendants themselves after studying and developing the bloodline over centuries.
According to the God Serpents, they knew this ability and it belonged to an “inheritance’ not part of the three Lucifer passed down. This made Hades both a prodigy and an aberration, for he had ‘unlocked’ a fourth Iinheritance.
However, after seeing Essence breakthrough the skill, they calmed down greatly. Many breathed a sigh of relief, and the sweat that metaphorically formed on their foreheads dissipated.
The God Serpents then explained to their inheritors that what Hades unlocked was not the entire category of power, but only some abilities from it, namely the Shadow Body and the Bewitchment ability.
The human inheritors were naturally surprised by this and also relieved, but they had to ask, why would it be a problem if Hades had all the abilities of that Inheritance anyway?
It was just another system of power within the bloodline. Just like how Serpent God and Horned Demon were there, but neither was necessarily stronger than the other. For example, if a freak like Pedro who had both Horned Demon and Dark Angel fought against any other God Serpent apart from The Showman, he would not have necessarily lost.
To this, the God Serpents were silent before releasing a truth that stunned the inheritors to silence.
“In the scope of our Progenitor’s power… not all systems of power are equal. The God Serpent, Horned Demon and Dark Angel weren’t chosen to be the three passed down because they were the most powerful of his abilities, but because they were the ones he grasped the best.”
This naturally implied that all of the 9 Original Humans likely had access to powers that were greater than anything seen so far, but unless one was like Hades who incidentally inherited parts of them, they were things the God Serpents themselves had seen very often.
After all, the 9 were not stupid enough to access parts of their power that they had little knowledge or control of, even if they had beef with each other.
And now, it also became extra clear to the God Serpent Inheritors exactly why Draco and Eva needed to enter seclusion. Just getting used to the changes in the three inheritances they were familiar with was quite the task, much less dealing with all these new systems of power that must have emerged when they achieved 100%.
Whatever the case, Hades’ threat value had greatly increased, and the God Serpents marked him as someone not to be messed with.
But if we were saying such a thing, then Essence himself was far higher up the scale than anyone else. After he had rescued himself from the edge of oblivion, he was naturally full of fear and fury. As such, he no longer held back and went all out.
With a roar, a wealth of Aurora Energy burst out from his body, forming a giant wave that crashed towards a shocked Hades. Hades immediately exited his shadow form and stretched his hands out in front of him.
A swirl of darkness energy manifested that looked like two mini black holes formed within his palms. These black holes spun faster and faster, releasing the essence of devouring into the atmosphere.
First, ambient energy was sucked in, the Aurora Energy that Essence released crashed into Hades and began to enter his storage as well. Seeing this, Hades smirked as he finally got an answer to the question that plagued him, since he knew he would eventually fight essence.
Could he devour Aurora Energy?
After all, he couldn’t exactly devour Origin Energy, so Aurora which was on the same tier should be impossible. However, the confident Hades could tell that he could do so, and this significantly raised his chances of winning this battle.
… and yet Hades’ smile froze the moment he saw Essence sneer at him and stop sending Aurora Energy over. Then Essence folded his hands into his pocket like he had won the battle already and the rest was a matter of theatrics.
Seeing this, how could Hades not realize something was wrong? But before he could do something about it, the negative effects of his actions erupted at once.
“Wha?”
Hades only had a second to exclaim before he suddenly cut off his devouring ability and roared in agony. He felt to his knees and clutched his body, thrashing about as if he was being boiled from the inside out.
The truth was not so far off. When he opened his mouth to scream in pain, what same out were cubes of Aurora Energy that floated over to Essence. Essence collected these two cubes with a raised eyebrow.
“Unsurprisingly, the quality of these two is way higher than expected.” Essence stated calmly as he toyed with the energy.
Hades’ skin began to glow green, and then slowly shifted from pink flesh to green light, which peeled off his body slowly and formed green cubes of Aurora Energy that combined together before flying over.
This happened slowly enough that the entire crowd got to watch a powerhouse they feared turn into literal cubes of energy that his opponent collected into his storage casually like it was formed from his own comrade.
After Hades turned into a mass of energy, Essence walked off the stage with a calm expression, looking entirely unfazed.
The entire group of core members couldn’t help but gulp while sweating, while the God Serpents shook their heads. It was not easy to fight that Aurora fellow, as even Lucifer had given it a lot of leeway in the past despite being an avatar.
What was surprising was that he secretly allowed the Aurora fellow to reincarnate just like they did and pick an inheritor. He must have had a reason and a task for the fellow to complete, but then again, Lucifer always did.
However, just like back then, he never shared such plans and reasoning with them, so they were in the dark about what it was supposed to achieve in the body of Essence.
Whatever the case, Essence won this fight.
1st Battle: Essence wins!
2nd battle begin!
Nightwalker yawned arrogantly as he climbed upon the stage and gazed at… No one. He had no enemy for this round, so she shouldn’t have even gone up on the stage.
But then, how could he rub it in for these guys to feel envy, hatred and regret?
He even arrogantly bowed towards Misery and AP who graciously allowed him this opportunity. If he had to made to with either one, it would have been a tough battle in which the true victor could not be easily decided.
However, thanks to their camaraderie, he could advance without breaking a sweat, leaving him at his peak to deal with his toughest foe yet.
Seeing him being so smug angered the core members and many wanted to rush up to beat him up for his insolence. However, they were stopped by two hooligans who were angered the most.
“INSOLENT!”
“BEASTLY BEHAVIOR!”
Misery and AP jumped on stage and pointed accusatory fingers at Nightwalker, who was stunned by their actions. Immediately, he felt like something was wrong and wanted to flee, but Misery and AP blocked his way off on either side.
“What are you trying to do?!?” Nightwalker roared with fear.
“Hehehe, just making sure our kindness is not taken advantage of.” Misery snickered as he closed in on Nightwalker.
“Follow us down Brother Night and leave the arena for Boss Essence. It’s not like you could win anyway.” AP advised kindly, but smiled menacingly.
Nightwalker summoned Jormungandr and tried to enter a Calamity Portal to run, but AP instead manifested his Xingtian power and increased his speed to the limit as he tackled Nightwalker. Misery then cast 5th Order binding magic that tied Nightwalker like a prisoner.
“NO! I AM NOT WILLING!” Nightwalker roared as he squirmed and tried to escape.
“We know, That’s the best part, hahahaha!” Misery and AP laughed evilly as they carried the fellow away and cleared the stage.
2nd Battle: Justice and Righteousness wins!
3rd battle, Ghostpro VS Shadowheart begin!
Ghostpro lazily clambered onto the stage and glanced at his foe, Shadowheart. Shadowheart’s lips twitched as he dealt with Ghost, but he sighed in the end.
“I won’t bother to use my class against you with your own class’s ability, so it will be bloodline only.” Shadowheart revealed after calming down.
Ghost nodded slowly. “I guess it’s the same for me. My class is best for suppression, and I prefer using bloodline anyway.”
Ghost titled his head and glanced at Shadowheart sharply.
“And against a powerful time element users like you, I have no intention of holding back even an inch.”
Saying that, he immediately teleported behind Shadowheart and released a huge gout of flame, ice and poison that could swallow an entire area zone. Ghost had burned almost 100% of his bloodline energy to release this sudden, powerful attack.
Shadowheart smiled and tapped the butt of his staff on the floor, speaking one word.
“Time Reversal.”
