Guild Wars

Of course, this Qi could only be used to pay for the Serpent God and Goddess of Light Inheritance Techniques, not the other two. Still, this was a great discovery, and something that caused the blood of Draco and Eva to quickly boil.

Draco stopped his cultivation on the spot and joined minds with Eva, the two of them calculating everything they knew as well as plotting out a certain event.

When they were done, they both opened their eyes and gazed at each other with playful smiles. They had finally managed to find a path for themselves in the real world.

Before we go through their plan, let's take everything from the top.

Draco and Eva were the carefully prepared and constructed incarnations of Lucifer and Amaterasu, two Pseudo-Deities that had so much power that they could not even fathom their limit.

The other 7 High Humans had similar levels of infinite power. None of them had anything like Bloodline Energy limitations, since each 'Bloodline Generator' was working at max capacity.

That was why in a world devoid of Worldly Energy like Earth, they could summon out all the various avatars that had been recorded in legends and mythologies throughout history.

All of them were supplied by the limitless Bloodline Energy of their progenitors, so there was no issue for them to display 100% of their respective powers.

As a consequence of this power, their genetics were too chaotic. First of all, this 'limitless power' was created because the remnant DNA of the best of humankind - who had the OG Control and were the rulers of the galaxy - fused with all the other bloodlines of all the races in the Gerdo Galaxy that banded together to take down this arrogant and powerful race.

The fight was pyrrhic, with both humans and those races perishing. Humankind fled on their ship which contained the bodies of the top echelon, kings, emperors, and rulers of the various races.

You could say that the dramatic final battle happened in that ship, and everyone died. The best humans with the highest Control and the best Dragons, Phoenixes, Demons, Devils, Angels, Divinities, etc.

With such top-tier blood source, it was natural that when they fused into 9 separate beings, those beings would have power unheard of. After all, just a single individual of any one of those races could destroy planets and cause galaxies to shift.

In other words, Lucifer, Amaterasu, and the rest all technically had every single kind of DNA inside their blood. They just happened to specialize in different bits.

Yes, that meant that Draco could technically unearth the three known Pangu Inheritances, and so could Eva. Local Lord could also unearth the Serpent God and the Goddess of Light Inheritance.

However, this was theoretical but would likely never happen. This was because, even with no limiter on their power, Lucifer and co could not use the abilities of their counterparts.

However, they certainly had more 'categories' than the ones they left in their bloodlines. In other words, Lucifer was more than just the three Inheritances we saw all the time.

Obviously, there were many aspects of him that were not linked, like his Light Angel self, his ability to control Dawn Energy as the Morningstar, and his ability to resurrect souls not through Nuwa, but through Necromancy.

Same with Amaterasu, who could control the actual Sun and decide to switch it off - she did that before - as well as her ability to control the weather and create storms - Susanoo had that ability, but she gave it to Susanoo and he was an avatar of her anyway - or the ability to control the moon - Tsukuyomi was also an avatar of hers.

Draco and Eva lacked these abilities because when forming the lineages, the 9 High Humans had to code their abilities into their bloodlines.

A bloodline was, essentially, a set of genetic code unique to the progenitor that was passed down to descendants by way of blood inheritance. Their descendants were then able to manifest the features and use the abilities that the progenitor coded into their bloodline without understanding the logic behind it.

To compare, it was like racing. The progenitors would be genius drivers with epic driving skills, able to use a manual transmission car to curve, speed, and swerve through the toughest of tracks.

The bloodline inheritor would then basically inherit the progenitor's car, which had been futuristically modded to have an AI that had recorded all the progenitors driving skills.

So when racing, you just sat back and let the car do the job for you. You might not even have a clue which pedal was which, but you were able to partake in pro races thanks to the progenitor's skill passed down through the car.

So the car (bloodline) contained the skill (coded abilities) of the progenitor, and with the necessary AI (bloodline percentage/purity) you could use all his skills with varying effectiveness.

This also led to the important major topic, bloodline percentage of purity. This one was easily misunderstood because it meant more things than one more often than not.

Now, when a child was born of two people, it would inherit its genes from both parents and not always equally. And the issue with bloodlines is that if one parent had the true source and another had no source or an alternate source, the child would not inherit 100% of the bloodline.

I.e. if the child's father came from one of the Lineages and its mother was a normal woman, it would have weaker and diluted bloodline capabilities compared to its father. On the other hand, if both parents came from the Lineages, the child would inherit both bloodlines, either in equal or unequal amounts.

So how to ensure 100% of the bloodline is passed on? Well, you've found the problem that has hounded Medieval Europe and all forms of noble families/houses in human history.

The answer they came up with was incest.

Let those with the same bloodline mate. That was the only way to keep it pure and clean. For the sub-humans, this led to defects along the line because cross-breeding with humans with a genealogy apart from your own was vital to introduce new code that strengthened the bloodline.

As they say with dogs, mongrels are the last to die because their breeding would not be curated, allowing them to inherit all sorts of genetics that fortified their blood, not to mention that cross-breeding was a vital part of racial evolution.

It was like a group of students. Each of them had the same time limit until it was time for their big final exam. Unable to do everything on their own, they all decided to learn one thing and then share with the others.

Student A to E then proceed to learn Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Maths, and English respectively, then teach each other their understanding slowly, helping the others grasp it without using the same amount of effort or going through the same danger/trauma.

That was cross-breeding. One person may get a virus-based illness, survive and develop immunity. When he mates with another, that immunity would be passed onto his child most likely, creating a generation resistant to it.

This would prevent the fellows of another city from undergoing it, since that child married into their city and spawned a child that carried this immunity and it spread through generational cross-breeding.

But in-breeding… sigh. Not only was it weird and disgusting, but it also limited the future of a genetic code. It was only by being introduced to the same thing over and over again, with no need for new discoveries. It does not adapt or grow, so the disease that the 'mongrels' had become immune to would be fatal for the 'pure-blooded'.

Why was this important? We had to talk about the effects of cross-breeding and inbreeding for the Lineages for things that came after this to make sense.

The Lineages cross-bred and inbred. This was because, unlike sub-human bloodlines, theirs were, for the lack of a better word, 'magical' with actual power. Their bloodline would surmount and suppress anything weaker than itself, which was how they had maintained dominance.

So what the Lineages had done was that every generation, they would fully cross-breed. They would have hundreds of new spawns from sub-human mothers and fathers from various parts of the world, carefully handpicked for any special or unique trait they had.

No two chosen sub-humans were the same. If one was from India, then it was the only Indian there, so that every child would be unique.

Then, the generation after that, all these children would inbreed to maintain the bloodline purity and fortify it. So the bloodline would have absorbed the unique genetic values of the non-Lineage parents of the previous generation and now be thickened for the next batch.

The next batch after the inbreeding would cross-breed again, and the cycle continued. This was how they had survived centuries of drought since the progenitors left, as there were no new infusions from them.

Back when the progenitors had been around, Lineage descendants had around 30%-70% bloodline purity. Now, 500 years or more later, the standard has been reduced to 1%-30%, with 30% and above being thought of as generational prodigies.

This was the best they could do, and it was impressive to last so long.

Dante, Lilith, and Fyre's generation was an inbred one, which had been carefully calculated by Lucifer and was how Draco and Eva had been born. Dante and Lilith were cousins, so too were Akihiko and Kiyoko.

Draco's generation was a cross-breeding one, though that had little interest. Now, since the previous generation was an inbred one, one might understand why Kiran's parent's elders were furious.

You could understand just how much they lost by having their best descendants on either side cross-breed and birth an aberrant.

Whatever the case, coming back to Draco and Eva. At birth, Draco had 95% bloodline purity, while Shangtian had 90% and Eva 85%. Eva's was so low because - unbeknownst to the Evil Duo - Amaterasu handled her inheritance really sloppily.

She coded the Heavenly Eye Inheritance wrong and made so many mistakes due to reasons unknown for now. Draco's was so high because Lucifer was adept at this and he had made little to no mistakes.

Draco was 'crafted' so well that he had even spawned with a default Soul Black Dragon, something which the two Martial Ancestors had explained to be extremely tough.

Great job, Lucifer!

Hm, maybe that might be why Draco was good at crafting while Eva sucked at it? Damn.

Whatever happened after their birth, the duo had lived their lives till now. Their bloodline purities had been high, but they had been limited by the binding agent, their sub-human genes.

This had not been a problem until they had first mated, and their bloodline sources had exchanged and perfected themselves, allowing them to grow. Now, they felt uncomfortable being both at 99% because that last 1% felt like it was separated by a canyon.

It was actually easy to get to 100%. They just needed to shatter their sub-human DNA and rebuild their bodies again, becoming like Lucifer and Amaterasu. However, without that binding agent, they would never be able to reproduce with each other again.

Besides, Lucifer and Amaterasu had created them specifically as a way around their own limitations, so going down the same path as the duo would not only be pure foolishness, but would basically be spitting in the face of the two Progenitors.

So the idea was to reach 100%… but still have the sub-human gene to stabilize them.

This was it.

This was the entirety of the difficulty they had been facing since they had mated. This was the entire issues that had stopped them from going straight to Rank 4 even now.

There was no easy way to do this, and even the AI with all its research and processing power was taking so long to find a solution. This was a conundrum for Draco and Eva to solve over the span of years.

BUT!

Today's events had shown them a possible path. It was not an instant one, but it was still a viable path. That was the usage of Qi Energy.

As stated before, Qi Energy and Worldly Energy were not the same. They had similar functions, but they were like Noble Energy of the Buddha Lineage and Internal Force of Cultivation.

They were generated using different means, had similar properties, but also had defining traits that fundamentally separated them.

What was Worldly Energy? It was the most basic energy of the world, generated by the planet you inhabit after converting Origin Essence from space/the universe downwards.

Please remember, Divine Energy, Aetheric Energy, and all those other energies apart from Aurora and Origin Energy were NOT naturally occurring energies. They were downgraded from primarily Origin Energy, at different levels of quality, and produced through different means.

Worldly Energy was produced by the planet for its inhabitants to survive and nurture life. It could be used for anything as it was all-purpose.

What was Spirit Qi/Qi Energy? It was the most basic energy of the heavens released down to the earth, generated by the yin-yang cycle, specifically the sun and the moon.

It was rather produced through Aurora Essence, hence its similar but different nature. After being refined by the sun and moon, the energy would spread through space and could reach various planets.

That is why in the Cultivation World, there were legends like Purple Qi rising from the east, how Cultivation Methods were specifically separated into yang type and yin type, and how Cultivators could, eventually, grow entire worlds inside their bodies through cultivation.

Qi Energy was not produced for humans, it was produced for planets. However, planets had their own system, so this energy just lingered about until the first cultivator discovered how to absorb it into their bodies.

The line dividing these two energies for Draco and Eva was that Worldly Energy was useless directly to their bloodlines. They couldn't absorb it to cast techniques, they had to do that with Bloodline Energy.

They could only offset the cost AFTER the technique was cast if it was a continuous one, but letting their summons or whatever it was they were casting absorb Worldly Energy manually to fuel itself.

Qi was different. It could directly pay the cost of Bloodline Techniques and also uphold them without drawing even a lick of Bloodline Energy. If Draco and Eva had enough of it, they could literally raze the entirety of Boundless World in a few months with endless spamming of their apocalypse-level bloodline powers.

After all, we saw that ancient Mayan video of Zeus beating up a Primordial until it was crying for its mama. He didn't even do anything flashy, he just abused his infinite Bloodline Energy to spam endless lighting, bombarding the poor thing until it fainted.

The guy didn't even break a sweat.

Now, this kind of limitless power was before Draco and Eva. How could they not be filled with endless greed?

However, their circumstances disheartened them. Firstly, all of this only mattered if it was done in the real world. Doing it in the Tower or in Boundless would not help in the least, not for this obstacle.

Miscellaneous things like reducing costs could be achieved with a few tricks, but something as big as this was not possible with such methods.

Secondly, Qi Energy didn't exist on Earth naturally. Like Worldly Energy, it had either been seized, or most likely, the ozone layer prevented it from filtering onto the planet.

Thirdly, even if they found Qi Energy on Earth, they were lacking the key ingredient that was giving them hope now, the Martial Spirits!

It was through the Martial Spirits' absorption and refinement of Qi that Dragon and Phoenix Qi could be produced, and it was this special brand of Qi that offset bloodline costs, not raw Qi.

For the other Inheritances, they would need Demon Qi, Devil Qi, Angel Qi, and Heavenly Qi respectively. You could just imagine how tough that would be.

However, that was why Eva and Draco had spent so much time thinking. They had found possible loopholes they could use.

One, was to enter space from Earth and check if Qi existed out there. If so, they could try to use the Cultivation Methods they had learned here to absorb it or not.

Two, was to use the God Serpent Nuwa's ability to mimic Refinement and create a Qi Stone on Earth, even an impure one. They would then use their Bloodline Avatars as a replacement for Martial Spirits and hope that absorbing Qi through them would yield similar effects.

Three, was to overclock their bodies using the pods. In the game, they would create hundreds of Qi Stones and use them to cultivate madly, hoping that such intense stimuli would trigger something outside.

Alas, options 1 and 3 were fatal. Option 1 because they would have difficulties reaching space and surviving there if they didn't transform into a Black Dragon and Light Phoenix respectively.

Luckily, the training on the Floors of Reflection allowed them to minimize Bloodline Energy consumption when transformed, so they could last 10 mins in each form.

Eva, though, would need to practice a bit in time dilation, but she had the foundation since she always interfaced with Draco after their training. In essence, she had the theory, but would need to do some practicals to hone her precision.

Option 3 would be trying Draco's brand of retarded power-ups. In fact, the idea was solely drummed up by Draco, as one could imagine. This fellow was really pushing his goddamn plot armor to his limits, firing plot nukes at it with each stupid thing he did.

Yet he kept doing it!

Wasn't he scared that one day, it might disappear?!

…

Yeah… dammit.

It's probably only going to get stronger henceforth. Sigh.

Anyway, this idea was thankfully firmly rejected by Eva. She didn't mind accompanying Draco in his suicidal and retarded attempts to try things that would not work for anyone but him, but she had a baby in her belly that she was not going to joke around with.

So, it seemed Option 2 would be the best choice here.