SSS Awakening: All My Clones Have Divine Bloodlines!

The exchange was brief, but more than enough to make it painfully clear who held the upper hand.

Lirien, who’d watched the whole thing from the sidelines, once again found herself stunned by that crushing display of skill.

She’d already noticed the changes in Adrian, and could tell the man had grown far stronger than before. She wasn’t sure exactly what level he’d reached, but she could tell it was leagues beyond what he used to be.

She didn’t think even their instructor, a B-rank, could have stood a chance against him now. And yet here he was, being tossed around like a toy, struck left and right by this strange, silent being.

’He’s too strong,’ she thought, her admiration for the being only growing with every exchange. She’d thought she’d already seen the full extent of his strength. She was starting to realize she hadn’t seen anything close to all of it.

Meanwhile, cornered by an army of those strange creatures the being had summoned, Adrian felt a strange aura beginning to creep over him, little by little.

"Fuck, just die already! Stay back, or I’ll kill every last one of you!" he screamed, his expression far less composed than before, as he fought to push back the combined assault of the creatures surrounding him.

From the moment that strange tree had appeared, he’d felt his strength drain, and the battle had gone downhill from there. He’d been put on the defensive almost immediately, and no matter how hard he tried to hold his ground, every exchange chipped away at his defense a little more.

His attacks grew slower. His opponent’s tactics shifted, adapting to whatever he threw at it.

He saw it happening. And the realization pushed him past his breaking point.

Without realizing it, Adrian began drawing on more of the strange power his Master had granted him, the very same power that had brought him to his current level.

The veins across his body lit up faintly with a violet glow, his already gray skin darkening even further.

"I’ll kill you all, ALL OF YOU!"

His words were no longer driven by reason. His mind was clouded, consumed by a fury that drowned out everything else.

"You think this little trick is enough to take me down? Keep dreaming." The moment those words left him, his presence surged, and the power level he was giving off climbed higher still, until he broke through into A-rank.

But the power came with a price. His body deformed along with it, growing taller, more muscular, but not evenly, one arm thickening far more than the other, his mouth beginning to split open, twisting into something entirely inhuman.

Adrian’s body kept convulsing, bones cracking and rearranging beneath his skin, muscles swelling and collapsing with no anatomical logic left to them at all.

Then something new began to emerge.

Dark tendrils tore through his back, ripping through his armor like wet paper, thin as young branches but rigid as old bark, writhing through the air as if searching for something to grab hold of. Small, sharp thorns covered their surface, and from some of them a thick, black-green fluid began to seep, dripping to the ground and dissolving the grass wherever it landed.

Lirien stumbled back on instinct, her hand already on her bow, her stomach twisting at the sight.

Adrian’s grayish skin split open in several places, not from pain, it seemed, but almost to make room for whatever was growing underneath it. Green filaments pushed through those cracks, thin as roots, weaving up his arms and climbing toward his neck, as if something inside him were literally sprouting.

"What—" When his voice finally came, it wasn’t entirely his own anymore. It sounded layered, as if two throats were trying to form the same words at the exact same moment, one human, and one that seemed to come from somewhere hollow and wooden, deep beneath the surface.

His mouth kept tearing further upward, well past the limits of a human jaw, revealing rows of what used to be teeth, now closer to thorns, arranged in concentric rings like the petals of a diseased flower.

One of the tendrils on his back suddenly lengthened, blooming at the tip into something that vaguely resembled a flower, its petals made of the same gray, rotting flesh as the rest of his body, and at its center, beating slowly, something that looked disturbingly like an exposed little heart.

Shadow, standing motionless in front of the transformation, showed no reaction at all.

But behind him, Lirien felt, for the first time that entire day, a pure, visceral dread, not because of how strong the creature Adrian was becoming might be.

But because of how little humanity was left in it at all.

The creature finished its transformation with one last, sickening crack of bone, then turned what remained of its face toward Shadow.

A tearing scream ripped out of its deformed throat, a sound with nothing human left in it, half roar, half something like splintering wood, and it lunged straight at him, head-first.

Shadow didn’t move.

He simply raised a hand, and instantly the army of creatures he’d summoned surged forward as one, a dark wave crashing down on the thing that used to be Adrian. Some, massive and clumsy, slammed into it with pure brute force. Others, smaller, darted in from a distance, lashing out with claws and teeth. Others still struck with blades of shadow and dark arrows, every single attack converging on the same target.

The creature took every hit.

Not a single step back. Not a moment of hesitation. It endured every blow with an almost animalistic ferocity, the tendrils on its back writhing to block whatever the fangs couldn’t stop.

Shadow, watching the carnage, decided it was time to end it.

He raised his scythe. The blade lit up with a deep violet glow, thick, almost liquid, dripping down the metal like blood running in reverse.

Without the slightest hesitation, he swung, a single vertical strike aimed straight at the creature.

Sensing the blow coming, it lunged sideways with a speed absurd for something of its size, but not fast enough. The scythe caught it dead center, and the impact sent it flying for dozens of meters, its body tearing through the air like a projectile before slamming into a tree, the trunk snapping clean under the force and crashing down with a heavy, hollow boom.

Lirien, who’d nearly crumbled with terror at the sight of the grotesque thing Adrian had become, finally felt something in her ease at that. But almost immediately, her expression shifted again.

The freezing air stirred up by the attack slowly settled, carrying away the mist of ice and debris with it.

But when the view cleared, there was no trace of the creature left. Only the remains of the fallen tree, its shattered branches scattered across the snow.

The thing had already fled elsewhere, tearing off in the opposite direction, as if it had used the impact of the blow itself to gain ground and slip away.

Lirien felt an odd wave of relief at the sight. But almost as quickly, that relief curdled into something colder. What if it came back?

She turned to her silent companion, looking for some kind of answer, some sign, anything.

But Shadow didn’t move. His gaze stayed fixed on the fleeing creature, his expression, if it could even be called that, behind that hood, completely indifferent.

Lirien wanted to say something. Ask if they shouldn’t chase it down, finish it before it could cause any more harm. But in the end, she said nothing. She just stood there, watching that shrinking shape disappear between the trees.

It was in that exact moment that something changed.

The space around the fleeing creature began to tremble, to warp, as if the air itself had turned liquid. A faint vibration, almost imperceptible, spread through the exact spot where it stood.

The creature noticed it too.

"What—"

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