Chapter 366: The Orcs Stop Fighting for Glory—Now They Want Revenge!

The same phenomenon immediately began occurring to every other corpse Luke had created.

Pieces of flesh scattered across the ground lifted into the air, severed limbs returned toward their bodies, and even droplets of blood that had splattered across nearby plants and soil began flowing backward.

Nothing appeared to be left behind.

Then the first Orc suddenly opened his eyes.

"AAAAAHHHH!"

The scream that followed wasn’t one of revival.

His entire body began collapsing inward just as the previous Orc’s had, with muscle, bone, blood, organs, and every other part of his existence compressing toward a single point.

Around him, the same thing began happening to the others.

"AAAAHHH!"

"AAAAAHHH!"

"AAAAHHHH!"

The battlefield filled with agonized cries as the reconstructed Orcs were compressed one after another, and none of them managed to say anything beyond those screams.

It looked as though they were experiencing unimaginable pain while every part of their existence was stripped away and condensed.

One crimson pill appeared.

Then another.

Then ten more.

Soon, dozens of blood-red spheres were floating across the battlefield, each releasing dense vitality while slowly rotating in the air.

Yet what Luke and the Orcs were seeing wasn’t the entire process.

"The Eternal Origin Zero" wasn’t merely rebuilding their physical bodies before refining them.

The moment Luke personally killed someone, that existence became marked by the technique.

Even if the corpse had been destroyed or scattered, every remaining fragment was drawn back together until the target was once again complete, as though not even the smallest piece was permitted to escape.

Only after restoring the target to a complete state did the technique begin its true refinement.

Blood, flesh, soul, spirit, mind, karma, destiny, and everything else belonging to that existence were compressed into a single vessel before "The Eternal Origin Zero" purified it further, ensuring that nothing capable of contaminating Luke’s own mind or spirit remained.

That was also why Emberlyn’s fear that Luke would eventually become a bloodthirsty maniac wouldn’t apply in the way she imagined.

If the technique allowed the resentment, madness, memories, or spiritual corruption of everything Luke devoured to accumulate inside him, it could never have been worthy of EX-Rank.

There was, however, an even stranger part to the process.

Under ordinary circumstances, a cultivation method that completely erased someone’s existence should have triggered a reaction from Valtharion itself.

Yet "The Eternal Origin Zero" avoided even that.

When Luke killed someone, Valtharion first recognized the death normally and collected the soul according to the world’s natural reincarnation cycle.

From Valtharion’s perspective, everything proceeded exactly as it should.

The soul had died.

The world had received it.

The cycle of reincarnation had begun.

However, just before that soul could truly enter the reincarnation pool, "The Eternal Origin Zero" silently pulled it back.

In the next instant, the soul was refined together with everything else belonging to the dead existence and completely erased.

Valtharion never reacted.

As far as the world’s laws were concerned, that soul had already entered the reincarnation process and was therefore no longer something the world needed to track.

That was the terrifying difference between an ordinary forbidden cultivation method and an EX-Rank technique.

It didn’t openly oppose the laws of the world.

It simply passed through them.

And even if Valtharion somehow examined everything that had happened here afterward, it still wouldn’t be able to discover what "The Eternal Origin Zero" had truly done, because above Valtharion itself stood the universe and the technique was also at that rank.

Rather than directly opposing Valtharion’s laws, the technique seemed to be using some hidden authority belonging to the universe itself, So making Valtharion perceive the complete erasure of those existences as an action sanctioned by something above its own authority, if it ever tried to examine this.

Therefore, if the universe itself had erased an existence, then there was nothing Valtharion could do about it.

That loophole was exactly what made Luke safe while using the technique.

"More blood pills!"

The moment the Orcs saw several more crimson spheres appear, whatever hesitation remained among them disappeared almost instantly.

They didn’t seem to care that those pills had been created from members of their own species who had been fighting beside them only moments earlier, because companionship held far less importance within their culture than strength and respect.

For most Orcs, becoming stronger was what mattered.

The moment they sensed that the crimson pills could accelerate their growth, their expressions once again filled with greed as dozens rushed toward the floating spheres.

WHOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH!

Several hands reached them almost simultaneously, yet the exact same thing happened again.

The blood pills abruptly changed direction, slipping between fingers and avoiding every Orc trying to seize them before accelerating toward Luke.

One Orc actually managed to close his entire hand around a pill.

His face immediately brightened.

"I got—"

Before he could finish celebrating, something passed straight through his tightly clenched fingers.

"...What?"

The crimson pill had already escaped.

It shot toward Luke alongside the others before all of them struck his body and vanished inside him.

The Orc slowly opened his empty hand while those around him stared in disbelief.

"How did it escape from his hand?"

None of them understood that once "The Eternal Origin Zero" refined an existence into one of those crimson pills, the result already belonged completely to Luke.

The beings he personally killed had been marked by the technique, and everything refined from those marked existences remained bound to him afterward.

Unless the universe itself interfered, nobody else within that universe could steal one of those pills from him.

Luke, however, was concerned about something completely different.

’Hmm... I don’t feel anything.’

His lips twitched slightly in annoyance.

The moment each pill entered his body, "The Eternal Origin Zero" had already begun working silently, distributing and refining everything it contained while activating the seven internal reformations required for his new Titan foundation.

His blood was already being rewritten as each newly refined portion was inscribed with the principles belonging to every Titan he had currently unlocked, while the remaining transformations continued alongside it without requiring Luke to consciously control them.

Yet despite everything happening inside his body, he couldn’t feel any noticeable increase in strength.

’This is an EX-Rank technique, and I can’t even feel it working?’

Luke clicked his tongue before dismissing the thought.

’Whatever.’

When he looked around again, he found hundreds of Orcs staring at him with such intense hatred that their expressions looked strangely personal.

Luke became silent for a second.

’Why are they looking at me like I slept with all their wives?’

His mouth twitched.

The more he looked at them, the more certain he became that their expressions somehow gave exactly that impression.

"Kill that bastard!"

One furious Orc finally roared, and the others immediately answered with equally enraged shouts as their earlier excitement for battle transformed into genuine hatred toward Luke.

Luke glanced upward briefly.

’System... you’re seeing this too, right? They really look like I did something to their wives.’

[...]

Luke waited for a response for half a second before deciding he didn’t want to hear whatever the System was about to say.

Instead, he tightened his grip around Paragon and charged directly into the crowd.

The situation immediately reversed.