After completing the horrific refinent of his new Sovereign-tier fiend, Sunny was entirely exhausted. His civilian mind was completely frayed from the constant, high-stakes theatricality required to survive the Demonic Path.
He explicitly desired nothing more than to curl into a lightless corner, wrap himself in a heavy shadow-cloak, and sleep for an entire lunar cycle.
He unrolled a grueso bone-scroll, attempting to distract himself from his impending panic attacks.
The text, authored by a mad sect chronicler, detailed the strict, elental hierarchies of demonic beasts.
The chronicler stated unequivocally that shadow-attribute fiends were universally inferior to light-attribute manifestations, citing ancient, blood-soaked battlefield statistics.
Sunny explicitly found the ancient demonic logic to be entirely flawed. The Supre rge System had already proven to him that high-tier genetic fusions routinely eradicated these foundational boundaries.
His own Sovereign Ghoul Ape could effortlessly liquefy an Orthodox Paladin’s shield with a re flex of its Abyssal Heart. The Demonic Path was not an absolute science; it was rely a waiting ga until a supre mutation broke the rules entirely.
Before Sunny could close his aching, crimson eyes to rest, the periter blood-wards of his pavilion flared with a sickly, localized pulse of dark Qi.
Standing rigidly outside the heavy obsidian doors was Captain Kael, accompanied by a pale, shivering youth draped in opulent, silver-threaded robes. The youth was Lordling Fen, a wealthy scion from the inner sect’s poison vats.
Fen was trembling so violently that the protective jade amulets around his neck clattered together. He was entirely consud by mortal dread. He explicitly knew the rumors surrounding the Supre Flesh-Crafter. The entire camp whispered that the Young Master’s newly ascended skeletal nightmare could liquefy a cultivator’s internal organs simply by standing near them. Fen firmly believed that stepping into this pavilion was equivalent to walking willingly into an executioner’s at grinder.
"Supre One," Captain Kael announced, his voice carefully devoid of any sudden inflections that might provoke the apex predator within. "I escort Lordling Fen. He humbly begs to offer tribute for your divine flesh-nding arts."
Inside the tent, Sunny felt his stomach plumt into an endless, terrifying void.
More clients. Sunny explicitly hated clients. Every interaction was a razor’s edge where one wrong word could expose him as an uncultivated fraud. He forced his exhausted muscles to lock into a posture of terrifying, aristocratic malice.
He ntally commanded the blood-wards to disengage. The heavy doors ground open, releasing a wave of stale, death-soaked air.
Captain Kael stepped inside, bowing deeply. Lordling Fen followed, imdiately dropping to his knees and pressing his forehead against the toxic ash coating the obsidian floor. He was explicitly terrified that looking directly at the Young Master’s glowing crimson eyes would result in his soul being violently extracted.
"..." Sunny offered absolutely no verbal confirmation. He rely sat upon his spine-throne, radiating a suffocating, heavy pressure of dark Qi.
"Speak your purpose, insect," Kael commanded the shivering noble.
"I... I beg your dark rcy, Supre Patriarch!" Fen babbled frantically, tears of sheer horror welling in his eyes. He pointed toward a heavily chained, massive beast being dragged into the pavilion by two mindless thralls.
It was a hulking, four-ard Venom-Macaque. Its fur bristled with an intense, sickly green aura, and its fangs dripped with highly corrosive acid.
"This is my prized fiend, possessing a flawless, Perfect-grade core!" Fen wept. "I humbly offer an extortionate tribute of five hundred Corrupted Spirit Stones! I beg you to force its ascension to the Commander tier!"
Sunny maintained his cold, apathetic facade, but internally, his uncultivated heart skipped a beat. Five hundred spirit stones was an astronomical fortune.
However, before Sunny could accept the tribute, he casually shifted his gaze to the beast. The Supre rge System instantly projected a glowing blue data fra into his retinas.
[Target Identified: Venom-Macaque]
[Monster Level]: Tier 3 (Peak)
[Monster Grade]: Normal
[Condition]: Terminal Core Fracture (Sustained via forced illusion-dust ingestion)
Sunny’s crimson eyes narrowed. A Normal grade. The imposing, sickly green aura was explicitly an artificial illusion, masking a catastrophically damaged biological core.
Sunny explicitly knew that ascending a Normal-grade fiend required vastly different catalysts. If he accepted the five hundred stones and attempted to pump the beast full of Perfect-grade materials, the Macaque’s core would instantaneously detonate, vaporizing the pavilion.
"..." Sunny let the freezing silence stretch for ten agonizing seconds. He explicitly chose not to expose the biological fraud out loud, maintaining his mysterious persona.
Lordling Fen knelt in the dirt, his heart hamring a frantic, dood rhythm. He explicitly believed the Supre One was calculating the most agonizing thod to flay him alive for offering an insufficient tribute.
"Twenty stones," Sunny finally rasped.
Lordling Fen gasped. Captain Kael stiffened. Twenty stones? The standard rate for ascending a Perfect-grade beast was never lower than four hundred.
Fen stared at Sunny’s unblinking, crimson gaze. In the Demonic Path, discounts were lethal insults. A horrifying realization crashed down upon him. The beast was flawed. The Supre Flesh-Crafter had instantly pierced the illusion arrays. The extortionate breeders had explicitly sold Fen a trash-tier, broken runt.
"Your... your judgnt is absolute, Supre One," Fen whispered, his voice trembling with a mixture of sheer terror and violent rage directed at his own retainers. He practically threw a small pouch of twenty stones onto the obsidian altar.
Fen imdiately drew his communication jade slip. "Executioner," he hissed. "The Head Breeder of the eastern pits. Seize him. Throw his entire bloodline into the marrow-boiling vats. He sold a hollowed-out runt."
He crushed the jade slip, panting heavily, then pressed his forehead back into the ash.
Sunny observed the political execution with complete apathy. He utilized a minor telekinetic array to drag the struggling Venom-Macaque into the darkest corner. He swiftly crushed a handful of cheap, stabilizing roots, forcing the paste down the beast’s throat. Within minutes, the artificial illusion-dust was purged, and the Macaque expanded slightly, its core stabilizing into a legitimate, albeit weak, Commander-tier state.
When Sunny erged, he pointed a pale finger directly at the entity hovering just over Fen’s shoulder.
It was a small, semi-translucent crimson leech, pulsating with a faint, warm light.
Sunny explicitly wanted that creature. It was a Blood-nding Leech, a rare fiend capable of localized tissue regeneration. In a sect where a papercut could lead to demonic gangrene, Sunny desperately needed a biological dic.
"That parasite," Sunny commanded coldly. "Explain."
Fen flinched, his eyes widening in sheer horror. He explicitly believed the Supre One was demanding the rare healing beast to consu it for a dark ritual.
"I-It is a Blood-nding Leech, Supre One!" Fen stamred, frantically unhooking the soul-tether chain. "It is a worthless, non-combat anomaly! I beg you, take it! Consider it an absolute tribute for your peerless mastery!"
Sunny maintained his freezing silence, stepping forward to claim the soul-tether. Internally, he was weeping tears of pure joy. He finally had a healer.
The next cycle, Sunny stood at the edge of the Vanguard’s blood-soaked sparring pits.
The heat was agonizing. To combat the oppressive temperature, Sunny had commanded his spatial anomaly, the Abyssal Void-Sac, to float directly over his head like a bruised, pulsating canopy.
To the gathered cultists, the sight was terrifying. The Supre Flesh-Crafter wearing a living organ as a hat projected an aura of absolute madness.
"..." Sunny ignored the terrified whispers, taking a sip from a chilled skull-goblet he had just extracted from the Void-Sac’s dinsional pocket.
Instructor Mian, a scarred veteran executioner, stood upon the raised obsidian dais. He gestured toward a massive, heavily warded iron cage.
"The Vanguard requires absolute lethality," Mian rasped. "This beast was captured near the Orthodox borders. Who dares to test their fiend against a true threat?"
He pulled the release lever.
A massive, plated beast erupted from the cage. It was a Siege-Horned Rhinoceros, heavily mutated. Its thick hide was fused with jagged, dark-tal plating, and its single, massive horn crackled with volatile kinetic energy. It scraped its heavy hooves against the stone, its eyes glowing with feral rage.
Sunny observed the beast, the System instantly providing its stats. It was a Peak-Commander tier, possessing near-absolute immunity to standard physical trauma and low-tier elental arrays.
"I shall demonstrate the futility of brute force," an arrogant voice echoed.
A young, heavily ard cultivator nad Vance stepped forward. He commanded a massive, bipedal Gore-Hound. The hound was a formidable beast, its jaws capable of crushing bone.
Vance was explicitly attempting to show off in front of the surrounding captains, desperate for a battlefield promotion.
The Gore-Hound charged, a blur of muscle and teeth, aiming directly for the Rhinoceros’s throat.
Sunny watched with chilling apathy. He explicitly knew the Hound’s physical bite was entirely useless against dark-tal plating.
The Rhinoceros did not even attempt to dodge. It lowered its massive, spiked head and t the charging Hound head-on.
The kinetic impact sounded like a detonating spirit-cannon. The Gore-Hound was violently launched backward, its ribs explicitly shattered by the sheer, unyielding force of the armored beast.
Vance staggered, spitting blood as the psychic backlash of his injured fiend tore through his soul-tether. He looked at the Rhinoceros in absolute disbelief; the beast hadn’t even suffered a scratch.
Instructor Mian sneered. "Pathetic. Who else wishes to offer their beast as fodder?"
Sunny remained perfectly still, taking another slow sip from his chilled goblet. He explicitly had no intention of volunteering. His Scorpion was his primary assassin, and he was not going to risk its delicate carapace against a walking tank just to satisfy the Vanguard’s bloodlust.
"I will pass," Sunny stated, his voice a freezing whisper that cut through the clamor of the pits. "My arts are reserved for absolute slaughter, not trivial exhibitions."
The surrounding cultivators recoiled, explicitly interpreting his refusal as supre arrogance. They firmly believed the Young Master viewed the armored behemoth as so utterly beneath him that he wouldn’t even bother deploying a fiend.
Mian’s eyes narrowed, but he dared not push the issue. The legend of the Sovereign Ghoul Ape was too fresh.
Suddenly, a deafening, tallic screech echoed from the far side of the sparring pits.
A massive, multi-segnted Obsidian Centipede had just breached its containnt ward. It was a wild, Frenzied-grade beast, significantly larger than the Rhinoceros.
It reared up, its countless bladed legs clicking, preparing to unleash a torrent of corrosive acid upon the unprepared crowd!
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