Chapter 362: Normal, Legendary, Forbidden… and Eternal Titan Zero! Foundation!

After Zephyrielle left, Rhaenyra remained silent for a moment before slowly walking toward Luke.

STEP.

Once she reached him, she stopped directly in front of him and looked straight into his eyes.

"Forget my grandma’s words. I can deal with my own problems."

Luke listened without showing much reaction before giving a simple nod.

"Well, I don’t even have time to deal with that, because I have my own problems to handle."

Rhaenyra’s expression shifted slightly, clearly not expecting that answer, yet before she could say anything else, Luke had already moved past her and started heading toward the exit of the artificial world.

’He didn’t pester me or complain?’

Rhaenyra watched his retreating back with growing confusion, because she had expected him to once again insist that she was his wife and shouldn’t speak to him that way, which was the kind of behavior she associated with humans and their strange attachment to marriage.

She had even expected Luke to ask her for resources so he could increase his realm faster, especially after everything that had happened between them, yet he hadn’t asked for anything at all.

"Let’s go, Emberlyn."

Luke spoke without turning around as the wings of his Winged Titan emerged from his back, and with a strong flap, he rose into the air.

Emberlyn looked toward him for a moment, then quietly followed without questioning where he intended to go, leaving Rhaenyra standing behind them.

"...Why is my sister listening to him?"

Rhaenyra muttered in confusion as she watched the two disappear into the distance, genuinely unable to understand what had happened between them during the short time she hadn’t been around.

"Ahh, whatever!"

She quickly pushed the matter aside and left as well, because she still had to deal with the Orcs that had invaded this region.

---

Outside the artificial world, Luke and Emberlyn walked through the dense forest, where towering trees stretched far above them while insects moved through the undergrowth and small docile beasts occasionally wandered between the thick roots.

Emberlyn remained quiet while walking beside Luke, although one question continued bothering her.

’Why did I agree to follow him so easily?’

After thinking about it for a while, one possibility came to mind.

’Maybe I just want to see something new.’

Ever since staying on the Dragon Continent, where she wasn’t allowed to casually leave, most of Emberlyn’s entertainment had come from spending time with her elder sister or other members of the family, so following Luke around was at least something different from her usual routine.

Luke, meanwhile, wasn’t thinking about anything nearly as casual.

His cultivation had already become his highest priority, and after obtaining "The Eternal Origin Zero", there was one question he needed answered before deciding what to do next.

’How many ranked beings do I actually have to kill?’

That was the important part.

If he needed Blood Essence to cultivate, then he needed prey, but knowing exactly how much essence his new body required would determine whether he needed to hunt a few powerful beings or slaughter entire armies.

’System, tell me.’

The familiar blue screen immediately appeared before him.

[Here is the calculated number of beings required for you to reach C-Rank.]

The moment the System responded, Nyx, Caelith, Myrkhal, and Sevaroth also materialized around Luke, clearly curious about the requirements of the Eternal-Rank technique.

’Alright.’

Luke continued walking while reading through the long panel that unfolded before him.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[BLOOD ESSENCE REQUIREMENT CALCULATION]

Current Realm: D-Rank

Target Realm: C-Rank

"The Eternal Origin Zero" has calculated several possible Blood Essence requirements based on the quality and scale of the Titan body being constructed.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[OPTION I — HIGH REQUIREMENT]

Equivalent Blood Essence Required:

D-Rank → 100,000

C-Rank → 10,000

B-Rank → 1,000

A-Rank → 100

S-Rank → 10

SS-Rank → 1

Any mixture of Blood Essence may be used as long as the required total equivalent is reached.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[OPTION II — LEGENDARY TITAN LEVEL]

Equivalent Blood Essence Required:

D-Rank → 500,000

C-Rank → 50,000

B-Rank → 5,000

A-Rank → 500

S-Rank → 50

SS-Rank → 5

SSS-Rank → 1

This amount is sufficient to reconstruct a body approaching the biological standard of a Legendary Titan.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[OPTION III — FORBIDDEN TITAN LEVEL]

Equivalent Blood Essence Required:

D-Rank → 1,000,000

C-Rank → 100,000

B-Rank → 10,000

A-Rank → 1,000

S-Rank → 100

SS-Rank → 10

SSS-Rank → 1

Conversion Ratio:

1 SSS-Rank

= 10 SS-Rank

= 100 S-Rank

= 1,000 A-Rank

= 10,000 B-Rank

= 100,000 C-Rank

= 1,000,000 D-Rank

This requirement corresponds to the reconstruction of a Forbidden Titan-class body.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[OPTION IV — ETERNAL TITAN ZERO]

Equivalent Blood Essence Required:

D-Rank → 2,000,000

C-Rank → 200,000

B-Rank → 20,000

A-Rank → 2,000

S-Rank → 200

SS-Rank → 20

SSS-Rank → 2

This requirement corresponds to the construction of an Eternal Titan Zero-class foundation.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[NOTICE]

Blood Essence from different realms may be combined.

Example:

D-Rank Blood Essence

+

C-Rank Blood Essence

+

B-Rank Blood Essence

+

A-Rank Blood Essence

can collectively fulfill the same breakthrough requirement.

Only Blood Essence obtained from D-Rank beings or higher can be absorbed by the current cultivation process.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Luke continued staring at the panel for several seconds, and the deeper he went through the numbers, the stranger his expression became.

’System... are you kidding me?’

Even the four Titan spirits appeared somewhat surprised by the sheer amount of Blood Essence required for someone still in D-Rank, although the numbers became considerably more manageable if Luke hunted beings above his own realm.

The System naturally noticed their reaction.

[Luke, creating a higher-grade Titan body isn’t a joke, because the quality of the body directly determines the benefits you receive from it.]

[Look at your own Titans. Their Forbidden-class bodies possess ridiculous compression and compatibility with their respective Authorities, which is one of the reasons they can naturally comprehend and control their elements far more easily than ordinary beings.]

Luke understood the logic, although understanding it didn’t make the numbers look any less ridiculous.

[That’s why I’m giving you several choices. If you don’t want to pursue the highest possible foundation, you can simply choose Option I and construct that level of body instead.]

The System paused briefly before another message appeared.

[However, if you choose Option IV and construct an Eternal Titan Zero body, then yes, the requirement is extremely high, but the benefits will be equally ridiculous.]

Luke’s attention immediately returned to the panel.

[You won’t see the true result until you successfully enter C-Rank, but I guarantee that you won’t be disappointed.]

[For example, if you reach C-Rank using Option IV, then attacks originating from D-Rank will become completely ineffective against your body.]

Luke slowed slightly.

The System continued.

[It doesn’t matter whether that D-Rank attack contains Divinity, Forbidden power, an Authority, or some other extraordinary property. As long as the attack itself remains at D-Rank, your Eternal Titan Zero body will be immune to it.]

[Even if billions of D-Rank beings attacked you simultaneously, they wouldn’t be able to move your body, much less leave a scratch.]

Luke stopped paying attention to the surrounding forest for a moment, while the four Titan spirits also became noticeably more serious after reading that claim.

The concept that enough weaker beings could eventually overwhelm someone stronger existed throughout Valtharion just as it did anywhere else, although there were obviously limits depending on the difference in realm.

An infinite number of mortals couldn’t simply kill a god, but when the difference narrowed enough, overwhelming numbers could still become dangerous, and there were even theories that sufficiently large numbers of demi-gods could bring down a genuine god.

’But if I build that body, then anything below my realm becomes completely irrelevant.’

Anticipation immediately appeared within Luke.

He already possessed several methods suited for fighting large numbers of enemies, especially through his Titans and their Forbidden powers, so armies had never been his greatest concern, yet there was still a difference between being powerful against numbers and becoming completely immune to them.

’What if an entire world ambushed me someday, though? What if billions of beings from my own realm attacked at the same time?’

Luke’s expression became slightly ugly when he imagined that possibility, because despite everything he possessed, he knew exactly what the answer would currently be.

He would lose.

Luke was strong for his realm and possessed abilities that broke ordinary logic, but he was nowhere near truly invincible, and that was a title very few beings could ever claim.

If "The Eternal Origin Zero" could eventually erase even that weakness, then the absurd requirements of Option IV suddenly didn’t seem quite as unreasonable.

Meanwhile, the four Titan spirits exchanged glances, because even at their former Eternal Rank, their bodies could still be damaged by beings capable of reaching them, despite each of them possessing a Forbidden Titan physique.

Their bodies had been extraordinarily powerful, but those physiques had never granted them absolute immunity against attacks from beings below their realm, while this so-called Eternal Titan Zero body was apparently capable of doing exactly that.

As for what kind of logic allowed such a body to exist, even they didn’t know.

’Fine.’

Luke continued walking through the forest before finally making his decision.

’I am choosing Option Four.’