He was quite intrigued by this Absolute Order—the very entity that had attempted to interfere during his first contact with Damien.
A subtle sense of anticipation welled up in his chest as he turned the cover and began flipping through the pages one by one.
The mont he did, a stream of unfamiliar text surged across his vision. The script was alien, an eerie fusion of archaic German and flowing French, its symbols winding like serpent tongues across the parchnt.
Yet sohow, he understood it all.
It wasn’t just comprehension—it was as if the aning was being injected directly into his mind, bypassing all logic, all language barriers.
A faint tremor passed through his thoughts. The sensation left a strange tallic aftertaste in his mouth, like tasting old blood laced with rust and ink.
But that unease vanished in an instant.
Because what he read next shattered his expectations.
---
Absolute Order—
A galaxy-encompassing eldritch system.
An invisible force that bent the very fabric of reality.
Its reach unending, its purpose brutal: allow the living to ascend in power through the act of killing.
---
Ricky’s compound eyes scanned each line faster, his focus narrowing with each word. The deeper he read, the more his posture stiffened. His initial curiosity transford into a cold, calculating stillness.
It wasn’t just a system—it was a machine.
A tireless, uncaring, perfect machine that turned entire galaxies into battlefields.
Planets weren’t hos—they were factories. Churning out warriors, refining the strong, discarding the weak. Every breath, every death, every drop of blood spilled was a gear in its monstrous engine.
One line struck him harder than the rest:
"Ascension is a byproduct. The slaughter is the process. Order demands blood."
His mandibles twitched faintly.
The idea that such a force existed—and perhaps still existed—was terrifying. But to Ricky, it was also... oddly familiar.
Ti passed in silence. Ricky turned page after page, barely noticing the passage of ti in the tiless library chamber. Eventually, without realizing it, he reached the final page and closed the book with a soft, echoing thud.
He stood there quietly, the weight of what he’d learned pressing down on his thoughts.
"Does my evolution system also have so connection with Absolute Order?"
He mused aloud, voice low and thoughtful.
His compound eyes reflected a distant light as he stared off into the dimness of the endless archive. The resemblance between his own evolution thod and the workings of Absolute Order was too strong to ignore.
Both rewarded growth through death. Both treated slaughter as a ans of ascension.
And if one looked closely...
When he absorbed lifespan from others—wasn’t that just a different kind of killing?
---
After a mont of contemplation, Ricky gently shook his head, the glint in his compound eyes dimming.
There was no point wasting ti on uncertain theories.
"Ok, let’s first absorb so lifespan."
His voice carried a sharpness, a renewed purpose that echoed in the quiet library. The thought alone lifted his mood, washing away the philosophical weight that had just been pressing on his mind.
Monts later, the Guardian Spirit reappeared like a wisp of moonlight made flesh, her form translucent and pulsing faintly with the lab’s spiritual force.
Without a word, she turned and began gliding forward.
Ricky followed, his steps brisk.
They passed through a doorway that shimred like glass under moonlight—then, everything shifted.
---
The world turned pitch black.
No warning. No transition.
It was as if reality itself had been swallowed whole.
Ricky blinked—or would have, if his insectoid eyes needed to. Darkness extended endlessly around him. There was no floor, no walls, no sky—just a void where light dared not exist.
Even the Guardian Spirit’s presence had beco faint. Barely a shimr ahead. An echo of sothing ancient and intangible.
Then, without warning, he felt them.
Gazes. Many.
Dozens, perhaps hundreds of eyes locked onto him from the void.
Each one pulsing with a primal, savage hunger. Their malice was so raw, so potent, it seed to crawl across his exoskeleton like cold oil.
Bloodlust.
Predatory, ancient, unfiltered—aid solely at him.
"How dare you look at your master with such a gaze!"
The Guardian Spirit’s voice tore through the void like a crack of celestial thunder, sharp and absolute.
In that instant, the air itself trembled. The unseen beasts froze, the hatred in their gazes recoiling, as if struck by lightning.
Ricky felt the entire atmosphere change.
The hunger remained—but it was now buried beneath a suffocating fear.
Even in this darkness, he was the apex.
---
Imdiately, the murderous intent that had flooded the air vanished, as if snuffed out by an invisible force.
"Forgive , master, for this shaful display. It appears I wasn’t able to discipline these beasts."
Her voice rang out once more, softer now, touched with a rare note of embarrassnt.
Ricky couldn’t see her face in the dark, but he could easily imagine it—her usually stoic expression tinged with a hint of sha, cold eyes cast downward in disappointnt.
It almost made him laugh.
Almost.
But he restrained the chuckle that built in his throat, instead speaking with a playful edge:
"Why don’t you introduce these friends to ?"
The mont his words fell, the shadows receded like a curtain being pulled back, revealing the creatures hidden within.
And what creatures they were.
The one nearest stood over ten feet tall, its fra impossibly wide, chiseled like a statue forged from raw steel. Jagged spines jutted from its shoulders, and its obsidian skin shimred like it had absorbed the night itself.
Monsters. Primordial and brutal.
"These are Shadowmires," the Guardian Spirit said, gesturing toward the towering beast. "An exotic species that thrives deep underground, feeding on concentrated darkness to accelerate their growth. They are naturally drawn to dense spiritual fields and possess abnormally high levels of darkness affinity."
Her voice took on a scholarly tone as she continued, "The Divine Researcher hoped to understand the anomaly behind their mastery over darkness—"
But before she could finish, Ricky raised a forelimb, cutting her off.
He wasn’t interested in the science.
Not now.
Not when his own power hungered for growth.
"They’re fuel," he said simply, his compound eyes narrowing with purpose.
With a single flap of his wings, his body lifted into the air—silent and swift, a shadow among shadows.
"Immobilize them."
His command was cold, absolute.
The Guardian Spirit nodded once. Her athyst eyes glead, and a vast pressure exploded outward, washing over the chamber like a descending tide.
Every Shadowmire froze.
The hulking creatures stiffened, muscles locked by an invisible vice. Their eyes, glowing faintly in the dimness, flickered with fear.
Ricky didn’t thank her. He didn’t need to.
He simply flew forward, his proboscis tightening like a drawn blade.
The nearest Shadowmire, though paralyzed, trembled internally. Its heartbeat quickened, pounding like drums before an execution. It knew.
And yet it was helpless.
Ricky dove without hesitation. His sharpened proboscis sank effortlessly through the Shadowmire’s iron-like hide. The creature let out a muted, strangled groan—one born of agony and resignation.
Lifespan flowed.
And so did power.
One system prompt after another flashed before Ricky’s eyes, but he was about to ignore them, already eyeing his next prey—until a large blue box flashed before his vision, pausing him in place.
---
[Ding! DDD-Grade Darkness Manipulation skill detected.]
"Use 10,000 years of lifespan to learn the skill."
Ricky blinked.
Then frowned.
His antennae twitched violently, scrunching up like coiled springs.
Hell. Fucking. No.
He had just finished accumulating that hard-earned 10,000 years of lifespan! Finally, he’d felt a little rich—spiritually speaking.
And now the system wanted to rob him?
Again?
"Damn bloodsucker..." he muttered—ignoring the irony.
He threw a silent fit, wings flaring in irritation as if trying to slap the air itself. His mind whirled with protest, with curses that would make even a corrupted Void Leech blush.
But despite all that...
Despite the indignation that flared in his tiny mosquito heart...
He let out a long, weary sigh.
The kind of sigh that belonged to a man who’d just realized rent was due, and the landlord was the universe.
"Fine..." he muttered through gritted mandibles.
The skill was just too good. A DDD-grade Darkness Manipulation ability? That wasn’t sothing he could just walk away from—not when he literally breathed shadow.
So, like a miser parting with his last coin, Ricky begrudgingly confird the prompt.
10,000 years of lifespan—gone in a blink.
His soul winced.
---
Unknown information surged into Ricky’s mind—a torrent of knowledge that felt both alien and eerily familiar, as if it had always been buried within him, waiting to be awakened.
Symbols, formulas, instincts... flashes of pitch-black energy and rituals older than mory flooded his thoughts.
"Darkness... the consuming and all-devouring force... it doesn’t discriminate. It assimilates everything."
Ricky muttered under his breath, his voice hollow, like a whisper from beyond the veil.
A strange black fla flickered in his compound eyes—dancing like an echo of so ancient truth.
Sothing inside him shifted.
Changed.
Suddenly, when he looked at the Shadowmire before him—still frozen in place, its eyes trembling with primal fear—he didn’t just see a beast.
He saw... kin.
Not by blood, but by elent.
By nature.
A strange warmth, dark and dense, spread through his chest—an unexpected feeling of closeness blooming in his heart. It was almost comforting... almost dangerous.
Ricky narrowed his eyes.
"We’re not so different, you and I."
But only one of them would walk out of here stronger.
And Ricky was never one to waste an opportunity.
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