"Was that guy seriously trying to grow scales just now?"
Theo muttered to himself, scratching the back of his neck as the vault door slammed shut, sealing away the sound of Malakor’s muffled screaming.
He felt a bit bad for a split second, but the guy had basically walked into a room full of monsters and tried to assert dominance over a janitor.
Theo took his first real step onto the floor of the third-tier vault.
Instantly, a wave of predatory killing intent slammed into him like a wall. Even with his Primordial Abyssal Meridians working overtime to devour the ambient qi, Theo actually felt a sharp sensation crawl across his skin.
His Minor Purity Water Body, which had easily shrugged off a blow from the Sect Master himself, felt like it was being compressed in a vice.
"Okay, the residual aura in here is no joke," Theo whispered, his breathing turning shallow. "It’s at least ten times denser than the cages outside."
Fortunately, his constant exposure to Vespera’s experiments over the last week had saturated his foundation.
If he had walked in here on his first day, his lungs probably would have collapsed on the spot.
Theo raised his gaze, taking in the layout of the legendary third-tier vault.
He had expected to see bars holding skyscraper-sized monsters. Instead, the vast cavern was eerily empty of living creatures.
The left side of the cavern was coated in a layer of blue frost, while the right side was warped by a dry heat that cracked the floor.
In the center of the room stood nine elevated stone pedestals.
Only five of them held anything. Resting atop those five pedestals were crystalized beast cores, each suspended in a stasis field of swirling array formations.
Theo slowly approached the first pedestal, which held a crimson core that pulsed like a beating heart.
Carved into the base was a dusty inscription.
Theo wiped away the grime to read it.
"Zhu Zichong, the first bio-alchemist of the Ninth Peak, managed to sever the heart of a Heavenly Void Behemoth during the sect’s founding. Unable to destroy its immortal vitality, he sealed it here to serve as the ultimate genetic blueprint for future generations. Rated as an Apex-Tier Bloodline."
Theo’s eyes widened.
An Apex-Tier Bloodline?
In the System Shop, bloodlines were categorized by Mortal, Spirit, Demonic, and Calamity.
He hadn’t even seen an Apex-Tier tab yet. It was completely off the charts.
If Vespera was playing with scraps of low-tier demonic beasts outside, these cores were the holy grail of alchemy!
He continued reading the smaller text carved below the main inscription.
[Elder Kael, third master of the Ninth Peak, successfully extracted a single drop of essence today!]
[Elder Rulong, sixth master, humbly requests permission to study the Void Behemoth’s core!]
[Elder Thorne, having mastered the Iron-Blood Sutra, seeks to graft the Behemoth’s vitality!]
The intervals between the later inscriptions grew longer and longer, spanning decades, then centuries...
Theo’s thoughts raced.
This meant that fewer and fewer people in the Silent Thunder Sect were actually capable of withstanding the pressure required to study or extract anything from these primordial cores.
Eventually, the elders had simply given up, locking them away down here where only a madwoman like Vespera dared to occasionally tread.
"How exactly do you extract a bloodline from a crystalized heart?" Theo wondered aloud.
He couldn’t deny the greed bubbling up in his chest.
If his Parasite class could absorb just a fraction of this Apex-Tier Bloodline, his stats would shatter the system’s limits.
Hum...
As if sensing his greedy thoughts, the core on the pedestal suddenly let out a low vibration.
The next moment, Theo’s vision blurred.
He found himself standing on an endless plain of blackened glass. In the sky above, tearing through the very fabric of reality, was a colossal beast.
It had no distinct shape... just a shifting mass of crimson scales, jagged bone, and eyes that burned like dying stars.
It simply looked down at him.
The sheer weight of that gaze conveyed a singular message:
*Devour me, if you dare.*
"Great Sage!" Theo shouted. "Can we eat this thing?"
[Analyzing target... Warning. Target is a localized psychic phantom of an Apex-Tier entity. Attempting to deploy Parasite class assimilation.]
Theo felt a familiar surge of energy as the system tried to cast its invisible net over the colossal phantom.
But the moment the system’s energy touched the beast, the phantom unleashed a wave of fire.