Chapter 363: The Eternal Origin Zero Extracts an Entire Existence?!

If he was already going to rebuild his entire existence through "The Eternal Origin Zero", then there was little reason to settle for an inferior foundation merely because the requirement was difficult.

However, just as Luke made his decision, the System’s tone suddenly changed.

[Sigh... unfortunately, there is one more condition.]

Luke immediately became suspicious.

[This technique requires you to personally hunt the beings whose essence you absorb, because calling it Blood Essence is actually an oversimplification.]

[Once you personally kill a suitable target, "The Eternal Origin Zero" doesn’t merely absorb its bloodline essence; your body extracts everything useful from that existence, including its soul, spirit, mind, karma, destiny, and other aspects connected to its existence.]

Luke’s expression changed slightly after reading that.

[That’s why you must personally hunt them.]

[Otherwise, you could simply find yourself a sugar mommy and ask her to bring you an SSS-Rank corpse to absorb.]

"..."

Luke completely ignored the sugar mommy comment, although he didn’t particularly mind the requirement itself.

Hunting the targets personally would allow him to accumulate combat experience while cultivating, and more importantly, Luke had never liked depending entirely upon someone else for his own growth.

With that settled, he turned slightly toward Emberlyn, who was walking beside him with her usual calm expression.

"You said earlier that your father ordered Rhaenyra to protect this territory for one year, right?"

Emberlyn came out of her thoughts and glanced toward him.

"Yes, and she also has to eliminate the invading forces occupying this region."

"Invading forces?"

Luke looked genuinely confused.

He couldn’t immediately understand what kind of species would have enough courage to invade the Dragon Continent, especially after learning just how powerful some of the beings living here were.

Noticing his confusion, Emberlyn explained.

"The Dragon Continent is connected to many islands and surrounding regions where different species and tribes live, and many of them know very little about the civilizations outside their own territories, so we generally call them barbarian tribes."

Luke listened while continuing through the forest.

"Since those tribes aren’t powerful enough to threaten the Dragon Continent as a whole, the elders usually allow the younger generation to deal with them, which gives young dragons actual combat experience without placing them in excessive danger."

Luke nodded after hearing that.

It made sense.

Emberlyn continued, "There’s another reason as well. Among the major continents, the Dragon Continent is second only to the Demon Continent in how closely parts of it border the Endless Forest."

"So species from the Endless Forest occasionally emerge and attempt to occupy nearby regions of the Dragon Continent whenever they find an opportunity."

Luke raised an eyebrow slightly.

"The elders still don’t explore too deeply into the Endless Forest, but most tribes that come out aren’t particularly powerful and usually don’t possess any demi-gods, so they’re treated as another form of training for the younger generation."

Emberlyn paused briefly before adding, "And whatever resources those tribes possess can naturally be taken by whoever defeats them, provided they have enough strength to claim them."

"Ohh, I understand."

Luke finally understood why Rhaenyra had been assigned to this territory.

Her task wasn’t merely to defend the region whenever something attacked; she was also expected to locate the invading forces already occupying parts of the land and remove their established bases.

Luke looked around at the dense forest surrounding them, where the trunks of the gigantic trees stretched upward until much of their upper canopy disappeared from sight.

Considering the size of the Dragon Continent, even this single territory could cover an absurd amount of land, which meant searching blindly for hidden enemy bases would be extremely inefficient.

"So, do you know where any of those outposts are?"

Emberlyn nodded almost immediately.

"A tribe of Orcs recently emerged from the Endless Forest and started occupying several nearby areas, and I found one of their outposts while exploring during my free time."

Luke’s expression immediately brightened.

"Perfect. Take me there."

Emberlyn gestured for him to follow, and before long, the two disappeared deeper into the forest.

---

Some time later, Luke and Emberlyn sat upon a thick branch high above the ground, looking down through the leaves toward an Orc encampment hidden between the gigantic trees.

Nearly everything inside the camp had been designed to blend with the forest, with tents, cloth coverings, wooden structures, and even parts of their equipment dyed in different shades of green, making the settlement considerably harder to notice from a distance.

The outpost was also heavily fortified despite the lack of metal walls, because thick earthen barriers nearly fifty feet high surrounded the entire settlement, although compared with the trees towering around them, even those walls appeared strangely small.

Luke carefully observed the movement inside the camp before his attention settled upon a particularly noticeable Orc.

The creature stood nearly ten feet tall with dark green skin and carried a long staff in one hand, while shells, carved stones, bones, small skulls, and various strange ornaments covered much of his body.

"Is that a shaman?"

"Yes."

Emberlyn glanced toward Luke with faint surprise, apparently wondering how he had recognized the Orc’s role so quickly.

Luke’s mouth twitched slightly.

’Why do these Orcs look almost exactly like the ones from novels and comics?’

He didn’t waste much time thinking about it, however, because his attention quickly shifted toward something far more important.

Their numbers.

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

[ORC OUTPOST 1]

Total Population: ~50,000 Orcs

Highest Realm: B-Rank

Power Distribution:

B-Rank → 1

C-Rank → 80

D-Rank → 8,000

Below D-Rank → 41,919

Total → 50,000

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

"Hmm... only one B-Rank."

Luke rubbed his chin thoughtfully and he felt the different aura of each being.

The outpost was almost perfect for his current situation, because although its population was large enough to provide a meaningful amount of Blood Essence, the strongest individual present was still within a range, that he could handle.

More importantly, fighting through the outpost would allow him to sharpen his combat experience instead of simply relying upon the overwhelming abilities granted by his Titans.

Nyx, Caelith, Myrkhal, and Sevaroth floated nearby without interfering, because they had already decided to let Luke determine how he wanted to proceed.

Emberlyn behaved similarly, settling more comfortably upon the thick branch while watching the camp below with mild curiosity, clearly interested in seeing how the Hero of Light intended to deal with the Orcs.

Luke stood up and glanced toward her.

"Alright, beauty, wait here. I’ll deal with them soon."

He gave Emberlyn a playful wink before stepping from the branch.

’Weird person.’

Emberlyn completely ignored the gesture and continued watching.

Luke dropped through the canopy.

WHOOSH!

Several branches bent beneath the force of his descent before his body struck the ground near the outpost.

BANG!

Dirt, leaves, and broken twigs blasted outward from beneath his feet, while the impact immediately caught the attention of the Orcs stationed upon the nearest watchtowers.

The guards turned toward the source of the sound before raising their weapons.

"Intruder!"

Their warning echoed through the outpost.

Luke looked upward in mild surprise. ’They speak Valtharion’s common language?’

He hadn’t expected a tribe that had recently emerged from the Endless Forest to communicate using the same language, although he didn’t have time to investigate the reason yet.

---

Deeper inside the outpost, a heavily built green-skinned Orc sat comfortably upon a throne-like wooden chair while drinking wine from a large cup.

Several women were performing in front of him, although they clearly weren’t Orcs.

They were inhabitants of the Dragon Continent.

True dragons represented only a small portion of the continent’s overall population because of their naturally low birth rate, while numerous half-dragon species lived throughout their territories, and these women belonged to one such race.

Their lower bodies resembled serpents, while their upper bodies remained humanoid, with patches of draconic scales visible across different parts of their skin.

Yarvokh, the Orc captain responsible for this outpost, had been casually drinking while watching their performance when an Orc Shaman suddenly entered.

"Yarvokh, the outer guards have spotted a humanoid intruder, and he doesn’t possess any visible draconic characteristics."

Yarvokh paused with the cup near his mouth before looking toward the Shaman.

After considering the report for a moment, he casually leaned back against his chair.

"Then it’s probably one of those young dragons walking around in humanoid form, because those older, lazy, arrogant dragons would rather sit inside their lairs than personally come all the way out here."

He resumed drinking without showing much concern.

Their outpost stood near the edge of the Dragon Continent, and Yarvokh didn’t believe anyone truly powerful would personally bother coming this far merely to deal with them.

This wasn’t the Orc tribe’s first conquest either.

Before arriving here, they had fought repeatedly throughout different regions of the Endless Forest, where conflict over safe territory was common despite the forest’s seemingly endless size, because much of that land contained dangers that even established tribes preferred to avoid.

For that reason, many species competed over already-secured territories rather than blindly expanding deeper into unexplored regions, and the Orcs had been no different.

Unfortunately, their most recent campaign had ended in defeat, forcing the tribe to retreat with what remained of its population until they eventually reached the Dragon Continent.

After discovering the weaker inhabitants living near its outer regions, the Orcs’ old habit of conquest quickly returned, and they began attacking settlements while establishing bases throughout the surrounding territory.

Yarvokh took another drink before casually waving one hand toward the Shaman.

"Go and bring me his head."

The Orc Shaman nodded and turned toward the exit, while Yarvokh looked back toward the frightened half-serpent women standing before him.

"Why did you stop? Keep dancing."

The trembling women immediately resumed their performance while the warning cries from outside continued spreading through the outpost.