Chapter 837: Lust for the Three Ultimate Transformations
"I heard that the West and East Districts won't be going to war anytime soon."
"Who told you that? Mercenary Tao is a raving lunatic; he might decide to butcher his way across the border any day now!"
A trio of Reincarnators was trudging through the snow-laden alpine forest, dressed like winter hikers in brightly colored down parkas and weighed down with heavy expedition packs.
Endless snowfall blanketed the mountain range year-round, burying all mundane tracks under fresh drifts of powder.
Yet through spiritual vision, traces of human movement remained impossible for natural blizzards to conceal. The three travelers were certain of their bearing; this path was the exact trail paved by the legions of Reincarnators who had marched before them.
Now that Reincarnators had cast aside all restraint to operate openly across the physical world, operatives of mediocre strength found safety in short supply.
Numerous territories had been seized by territorial assemblies that waged campaigns of subjugation against unaffiliated operatives in their zones. Anarchy had broken out. Within the administrative sphere of the Paradise, however, every drop of blood was documented.
In Mercenary Tao's doctrine, documented slaughter was simply another expression of order.
Many Reincarnators trembled in dread, terrified by the rumblings of total war between the East and West Districts.
Beneath that suffocating backdrop, the [Erdtree Faction] emerged.
At first, whispers circulated like urban legends through covert channels. Yet as an increasing number of Reincarnators joined its ranks and confirmed the claims, the rumors ignited an uproar.
The operative codenamed Amatsu had planted an Erdtree on Earth and nurtured it to maturity. Reincarnators who pledged fealty to her banner could receive the blessings of the Golden Order, ascending as undying champions of the Erdtree.
While within scripted mission worlds the mechanic of "returning to the roots" could not trigger—leaving operatives vulnerable to death as usual—on Earth, standard abilities could no longer put an end to these golden warriors.
Upon suffering fatal trauma, they resurrected directly beneath the boughs of the Erdtree.
The Reincarnators cared nothing for whether the Golden Order harbored flaws or hidden corruption. Securing immunity to death in reality and resurrecting at the roots of the tree was a windfall beyond measure.
Vast hordes of Reincarnators set out on pilgrimages toward the fabled tree. Amatsu raised no barriers, publicly confirming the mechanics within the public hub, which fueled the rapid expansion of the [Golden Order] assembly.
Crucially, this faction had received simultaneous recognition from both Yoko of the West and Mercenary Tao of the East.
That dual sanction propelled the fledgling assembly beyond established syndicates, ranking it beneath only apex organizations such as the Throne of Illusions, Destiny, Avalon, the Paradise, and Azure Sky.
Low- and mid-tier Reincarnators rushed toward the territory like moths to a flame.
Along the trek, many travelers were ambushed and butchered by rival syndicates. Slaying operatives on Earth carried a high drop rate for Crimson Drop Cards.
Under the Paradise's posted decrees, tasks such as "Hunting Passing Reincarnators" could be formally registered. Based on the target's combat rating, successful hunters were awarded faction merit points.
The pilgrimage toward the Erdtree had become a perilous migration of spawning salmon, fraught with ambushes. Under this bloody reality, many Reincarnators disguised themselves as mundane backpackers, trekking toward the frozen tundra under the guise of adventure tourism.
They used social media to promote the vistas surrounding the tree, sparking an authentic travel boom among mundane mortals. That influx of civilians introduced complications for predatory Reincarnators, as stray collateral damage invited heavy scrutiny.
Extreme malice invariably forged extreme righteousness; absolute chaos bred its own peculiar brand of order.
With anarchy unfurling across the continents, assemblies unwilling to witness civil collapse began mounting operations in the physical world, taking the initiative to purge syndicates that massacred civilians and shattered infrastructure.
Such defensive campaigns were granted identical operational permits by the Paradise.
The three companions hiking through the blizzard had no idea that a translucent silhouette was trailing their footsteps through the snow, committing every word of their exchange to memory.
Wuxin watched the newcomers cross the border, his gaze conflicted. His pupils bore no golden hue; Amatsu had strictly forbidden him from joining the ranks of the Golden Order.
To Wuxin, that refusal confirmed that Amatsu held no genuine faith in the Greater Will or the Erdtree.
The Golden Order was merely an expedient measure. Whether the sovereign of the East or the queen of the West, the moment their underlying objectives were secured and total war commenced, both would scour these undying pawns from the board.
Before absolute power, the promise of returning to the roots was an empty dream.
Wuxin moved far faster than the group of hikers. Backed by the expansion of the Golden Order and Amatsu's strategic maneuvers, the trio lacked no resources.
Both Wuxin and Wushang were far stronger than they had been in cycles past.
Wuxin swept like a freezing gale past the scattered squads traversing the tundra. The moment he cleared the treeline, golden luminescence washed over his senses.
Across the vast permafrost, a colossal Erdtree spanned the heavens, swaying gently in the polar winds. Golden motes drifted through the air like incandescent embers.
Scattered across the plain, over a hundred figures bearing the golden blessing went about their routines. Snow and ice thawed beneath the canopy, replaced by lush green sod. Timber lodges rose from the soil, while shape-crafting mages who had recently enlisted were attempting to raise perimeter walls.
With every passing hour, the camp shifted, methodically modeling itself after the royal capital celebrated in the lore of the Elden Ring.
Given sufficient time, Amatsu seemed capable of erecting a Golden Dynasty grander than the legend itself.
Wuxin sped across the plain, returning to a white stone sanctuary beneath the tree's roots. Five or six figures were gathered within the chamber.
Beyond Amatsu and Wushang, several high-tier operatives who had joined in recent days were present.
The leader of the assembly [Destined Death], a Reincarnator bearing the unique title [Deadly Blade] codenamed Broken Blossom. He was a gaunt young man whose dark bangs curtained his eyes, wearing a cloth mask and walking with an irregular, disjointed gait. Amatsu had noted that his combat prowess ranked among top-tier Reincarnators.
Beside him stood the woman codenamed Dragon Princess, towering and rugged of feature, her neck and earlobes weighed down by heavy gold ornaments.
Both had enlisted out of sheer fascination with the Golden Order, rather than being driven to the sanctuary by the fear of mortality.
In the corner lingered an operative whose presence was imperceptible unless one strained their senses: the most elusive member of the former Four Demons of the East District, [Mind Demon: Dead of Night].
Rumor claimed she had once collaborated with Mercenary Tao, yet she had bypassed the Paradise to cast her lot with the Golden Order.
Only by stilling his pulse and focusing inward could Wuxin resolve her coordinates. To him, this woman radiated the sharpest sense of danger in the room.
"Miss Amatsu, another wave has crossed the perimeter—roughly twenty operatives. Are we accepting them as well?"
Wuxin frowned. As one of the few in Amatsu's confidence, he understood that her Golden Order harbored foundational flaws.
While returning to the roots granted lower-tier Reincarnators a measure of immortality, it converted them into hollow puppets dependent on the Erdtree for their very breath.
Furthermore, he remembered the pact Amatsu had struck with Lord Mercenary Tao and Lady Yoko Ekaterina: these golden warriors were designated to serve as a sacrificial buffer zone between the rival districts.
These blessed operatives were destined to be slaughtered repeatedly by western forces marching east and eastern forces marching west.
Thanks to their immortality, they would die and revive, trapped in an endless cycle of slaughter.
Wuxin felt a pang of pity. He wished to turn them away, yet knew not how to shatter the dream of cowards terrified of death.
Much like the Infinite Tsukuyomi: even if people knew the final destination was damnation, an operative offering such an illusion in the real world would command legions of willing disciples.
"Heh. Here we go again. Miss Amatsu, this companion of yours is wholly unsuited for the Infinite Dimensional Space," Dragon Princess sneered, looking down on Wuxin's soft-hearted nature. A bleeding-heart relic like that should have been buried alongside the King of Miracles.
Reincarnators were a breed governed by predatory selection: the crueler the hound, the fiercer its bite!
Golden light linked into a seamless ring within Dragon Princess's pupils, sharpening them into vertical dragon slits. Carrying the bloodline of an ancient dragon, her base attributes and elemental resistances far outstripped ordinary operatives.
As Mercenary Tao's terror continued to spread, Dragon Princess grew more confirmed in her convictions. She revered the man's unbridled savagery, yet refused to wither beneath his shadow, opting to establish a third power from within the Golden Order.
Amatsu's calm smile remained unchanged, her blonde hair catching the light like spun gold.
"Wuxin, Tan Zhishan has aligned with the Paradise. It seems he rejected my proposal?"
Though Amatsu could simulate branching futures through her talent, [Mister Mouse], the escalating strength of apex Reincarnators was spawning diverse abilities designed to distort destiny.
She verified every conclusion through ground-level intelligence.
She walked a razor-thin wire where a single misstep would drag everyone into the abyss. Few could fathom the crushing weight resting upon her shoulders.
Wuxin nodded. His departure from the tundra had been to confirm whether Tan Zhishan's squad, the Final, had folded beneath the Paradise. The rumors had proven entirely factual.
The Final—a renowned Fourth Step team led by a former Sovereign Monarch—had surrendered its independence to become Mercenary Tao's vanguard.
Concurrently, the celebrated squad [The Heaven] had enrolled, with the sadistic Su Enfei and the Virtue-bearer Su Qingqiu joining the ranks of the Paradise.
That revelation stirred an emotional reaction from Broken Blossom of Destined Death. He had initially broadcast intentions to lead his squad under Mercenary Tao's banner.
Yet the Paradise had extended zero special courtesies, requiring them to complete standard registration forms and surrender unredacted dossiers like common sellswords.
To Broken Blossom, that was an intolerable insult.
As the most lethal squad within the Third Step specializing in assassinating Reincarnators, every operative in his unit carried the [Black Knife] trait and execution-tier instant-death abilities. For their martial strength to be treated with such casual disregard was unforgivable.
He had reversed his decision, bringing his talents to the Golden Order, with whom his lineage shared deeper affinities.
Amatsu nodded gently, a hint of regret touching her eyes.
Had Tan Zhishan heeded her counsel, he could have bred cursed spirits across the physical world, investing heavy resources to manifest the systemic memetic curse from the Jujutsu Kaisen universe.
The stronger jujutsu sorcerers grew, the more formidable cursed spirits became, and vice versa—a self-reinforcing equilibrium.
Reincarnators could have weaponized that memetic engine to elevate their baseline power.
By staging horrific atrocities to harvest mortal panic, they could have birthed terrors from the ether, allowing the handful of operatives wielding jujutsu builds to passively harvest attribute boosts.
Such a project would have secured Mercenary Tao's backing without fear of a purge.
Had the systematic proliferation of curses triggered the emergence of native sorcerers among the populace, Mercenary Tao would have granted the project his protective mantle for restructuring the world.
Lowering her gaze, Amatsu watched the timeline—one where millions of civilians wept in terror while Reincarnators scaled new heights of power—snap and fade into the void. Though she had foreseen the divergence, the loss was lamentable.
"Tan Zhishan's vision remains far too small," Amatsu remarked with cool detachment.
She knew with absolute certainty that no operative on Earth craved the total alienation and violent restructuring of the material world more than Mercenary Tao.
Whether an invasion of Outer Gods, an incursion of kaiju, or the re-emergence of an Age of the Gods—so long as it reinforced reality along metaphysical and physical vectors, Mercenary Tao would lend it his total support!
A mountain of mortal corpses meant nothing to him.
In fact, Yoko Ekaterina would have granted her blessing just the same.
The world was hurtling toward the Final Calamity; sentimental benevolence was utterly meaningless. That was the foundational truth she had hidden from Wuxin.
[The Infinite Dimensional Space has concluded its system upgrade.]
[Re-entry to the public space is now authorized.]
On the seventh day of his meditation atop the Black Tower, having metabolized another strand of foreign Ki, the long-delayed notification flashed before Kaito Shirogane's eyes.
He dissolved from the physical realm in an instant.
The familiar private quarters showed no architectural changes. Jin Yue'an and the others had floated ideas to remodel the estate, but lacking Kaito's explicit directive, they had refrained from altering his domain.
Kaito turned the brass knob of the exit door, pushing it outward into a blinding wash of white data.
The data parted, and Kaito stepped out onto a vast white jade plaza.
The narrow white jade bridge from previous cycles had been completely wiped away.
The public space had expanded to a staggering scale.
The second Kaito manifested, celestial anomalies traced across the sky. Three streams of colored light spiraled in from the rim of the starry firmament, converging directly above his coordinates.
[Special Unit: Archetype of Terminus and Genesis has entered the plaza.]
The prompt pulsed across the interfaces of every Reincarnator present in the public hub.
Kaito glanced across the white jade plaza, which now spanned the area of several urban districts. Guarding the long stairway leading up to the Goddess's Sanctuary stood two white jade stone lions, their frames enlarged to over a hundred meters in height.
He strode toward the ascent; the twin stone lions parted their stances in deference.
Kaito watched the Goddess descend through the drifting mists. Her eyes held an added layer of spiritual clarity; the Space's upgrade had evidently conferred benefits upon her as well.
"Goddess. I wish to extract the specialized power sealed within this relic."
Kaito presented the peculiar material. He had long lusted after the bottomless potential native to Son Gohan. If Ultra Instinct remained out of immediate reach, the manifestation of Beast Gohan was an exceptional alternative.
Ultra Instinct, Ultra Ego, and Potential Unleashed—he intended to claim all three for himself.