Chapter 584: Evolving Darkness (Lost The Memories But Not The Insanity)
Elements were capable of evolution.
It didn't happen naturally, but through the Gods who had those elements.
To explain it in simpler terms, when the Supreme of Flames had risen, his Concept became a Universal Law.
His understanding of flames was that they 'burned'.
As he reached the pinnacle and fused the Fire Element into the Universe, that understanding didn't remain personal.
It reshaped reality itself.
From that day on, flames were born across the universe, and they gained the inherent ability to burn.
Other Gods had their own Concepts.
Concepts allowed them to apply new rules to their elements.
There could be a God with a Concept of Flames that healed.
To him, fire wouldn't be destruction. It would be life, warmth, and renewal.
His Concept would create flames that healed instead of harmed.
These flames still belonged to the Fire Element, but they operated under his Concept – his [Personal Law]. They could knit flesh, mend bones, even soothe the soul.
But they remained isolated – the were not a [Universal Law].
That is, until he reached Stage 7 and merged with the Fire Element.
And when he did, healing flames became a natural phenomenon.
His Concept fused with the Fire Element Universal Law and evolved it.
Now, unique bonfires in remote villages existed that could heal cracked skin, lava pools in uninhabited worlds could emit warmth that nourished rather than destroyed.
This how the elements evovled.
The Supremes might've created the Element, but the Gods who came later were the ones responsible for the element's evolution.
Nameless Death understood this.
And that understanding both tempted and burdened him.
Right now, Darkness couldn't devour existence.
It devoured techniques, Concepts, Elements, memories, but not existence.
If Nameless Death succeeded in evolving his Concept, that would change.
His darkness would gain the ability to consume existence itself.
It would become a 'new' Darkness. Then, he would become someone who could help Darkness Element evolve if he decided to become a Stage-7 Darkness God.
Or he could create a new Element.
Whatever his choice would be, it would create a new Universal Law.
He exhaled softly.
The idea that he could shape the future of the universe was exhilarating.
But achieving it was far from simple.
Evolving an element using Void was far more dangerous than evolving the Element's Concept.
But Nameless Death had to do this.
He already had a Concept, and evolving it would only turn it into a new type of energy that had the property of his Concept and was strengthened by a large margin.
To be exact, it would be strengthened compared to his Concept, but it wouldn't have new abilities.
It wouldn't be able to devour Existence, since that was not how his Concept worked.
So…
Nameless Death would mutate and evolve the element itself.
With the element being evolved, it would strengthen the Concept too.
It was something that not even Void Gods dared to do.
For Nameless Death, even with experiences and instincts returning over time, he still did not had memories of using Void to evolve anything.
And yet, he was trying to do something experienced Void Gods wouldn't do.
Nameless Death sat alone below a tree.
He churned out titanic amount of World Energy.
The overload of energy began to destroye his body, soul, Core and even his Seed of Existence.
The air around him trembled. After experiencing Four Layers of Death, he remained alive only by sheer manipulation of the Death element.
It helped him increase mastery over Death Element rapidly, but that was not his focus right now.
The central layer of his Seed of Existence cracked open.
Inside, it revealed the sapling born from his Seed of Darkness.
Since his mastery of Darkness had grown, the Seed of Darkness had germinated into a sapling.
It was a small, gnarled tree. Pale black, trembling as though aware of what was to come.
He wrapped it in World Energy, and established the sapling as a part of his territory.
Then, he began.
Void crept in.
It wasn't destruction. It was the source of evolution. Unfiltered, directionless, and overwhelming evolution.
Or Corruption, as most would call it.
The sapling tree began to mutate.
It pulsed once. Then again. Its branches twisted and curled. Its roots unraveled like thread.
And then it screamed. Not audibly, but through the feeling that shot into Nameless Death's mind. The mutation had failed. It was losing control.
He immediately cut off the Void and crushed the sapling with World Energy before it could spiral out of control.
The first try was a failure.
He stared at the empty space where it once was.
But this was where things became interesting.
The Seed of Existence had layers for a reason.
Outer layer for shallow restoration. If things stored there were destroyed, they had a small chance of being recovered over time or when the person was revived.
Inner layer had deeper recovery.
But the central layer? That could retain everything.
He allowed himself to die.
His body was already gone. His soul was already scattered. His Core and Seed of Existence were obliterated.
The only thing sustaining him was the Death element, and now, even that was released.
Then, only Consciousness remained.
It churned, producing World Energy, and used that energy to activate Shadow Core Concept stored within the Abyss Mirror.
Using the Shadow element as the medium, it reconstructed everything—body, soul, Seed of Existence—all from nothing.
He was alive again.
And he immediately began to destroy himself.
This time, as his Seed of Existence cracked open, he found the sapling tree of Darkness again. It still retained its original, uncorrupted form.
Thankfully, he had crushed the corrupted version before the changes became permanent, so when he revived, his sapling tree of Darkness was fine.
He used Void again.
The sapling tree began to mutate, and once more, the mutation went wrong.
The evolution was too chaotic, and uncontrollable. He destroyed it before it went wild.
Suddenly, a thought struck him.
"What if I recreate just the sapling tree of Darkness?" he murmured.
Using the Shadow Core Concept again, he formed a new sapling from scratch. It was completely identical to a natural one.
Then, he began corrupting it again using Void after surrounding it with World Energy.
The mutation still failed.
But instead of stopping, he created another sapling.
And another.
And another.
Each time, he allowed the Void to mutate it. And each time, the corruption failed.
From creating a new sapling of Darkness, to corrupting it, and failing, the whole process took one second.
One second.
It was…. incredbly slow.
Nameless Death didn't had time to waste.
He decided to take things to another level.
He recreated two saplings of Darkness, and corrupted them together.
When the mutation, failed. He created three saplings of Darkness at once and corrupted them.
It wasn't easy to create multiple Elemental saplings of the same element inside the central layer of Seed of Existence, and doing so took effort.
As Nameless Death kept creating more and more saplings of Darkness, he got the hang of having multiple elemental saplings inside his seed of existence.
Soon, tens of thousands of sapling trees of Darkness were born, corrupted, and destroyed at once each second.
He was drowning in failure.
But with each attempt, he was learning the corruption patterns, the reactions, and where it was going wrong.
Reality around him groaned.
The fabric of space twisted, unable to withstand the pressure of so many elemental births and deaths.
The Berserker, watching from afar, and the Universal Codex couldn't believe what they were seeing.
"Hahaha! People called me lunatic? They should've seen this guy!" the Berserker laughed, unable to believe his eyes. "How did he even come up with an absurd strategy to grow stronger? Hahaha!"
Berserker and the Universal Codex weren't the only ones watching him.
Something greater had sensed the obscenity that Nameless Death was doing.
Above the Site, a pressure descended.
The Will of the Universe appeared.
The members of the Alliance waiting outside the Site felt the presence. They froze, and some of them dropped to their knees with their bodies shaking uncontrollably.
"What's going on in there…?" Dren gasped, his face pale.
The Will of the Universe didn't usually intervene. Its purpose was to maintain order, and enforce the Heavenly Principles.
Unknown to them, the Universal Will was watching Nameless Death and....
It was hesitating.
Because what Nameless Death was doing wasn't forbidden.
It should've forbidden been. But it wasn't.
The Heavenly Principles had never considered this scenario, and thus never made a rule for it.
No one had ever dared to repeatedly destroy and recreate thousands of Elemental Seeds inside themselves.
No one had ever thought to corrupt thousands of elemental saplings with Void just to force evolution by brute force.
How could they?
Even if someone had techniques capable of doing what Nameless Death was doing, they weren't insane enough to come up with such a crazy training method.
The Will of the Universe frowned, as if deciding what to do.
But there was nothing in the laws that allowed it to stop him.
Nameless Death was still going.
Each time a sapling mutated and failed, it was instantly replaced.
He wasn't aiming for perfection.
He wasn't waiting for the perfect outcome.
He was creating a storm of probability so vast that, eventually, at least one mutation would be successful.
The Berserker was going crazy from excitement from watching Nameless Death.
"Yes! This! This is how Void is supposed to be used! Not how those weak, coward Gods use it! You are supposed to let it destroy, and evolve! And find the beauty in that!"
Flashes of black and purple light flickered around Nameless Death as Void kept mutating the thousands of Saplings of Darkness.
The moment the mutations strayed too far from the root concept of Darkness, he erased them.
A few of the saplings almost succeeded.
One nearly absorbed the Void, another nearly bent space to hide its own presence. Another seemed to bleed darkness like a living wound.
Finally, a sapling evolved.
The Darkness within it had the property to obscure presence.
"Wrong. I don't need this."
He crushed the sapling and recreated another uncorrupted sapling.
As his experience of corrupting the saplings increased more and more saplings evolved successfully.
But none of them had the Darkness he wanted.
Nameless Death didn't stop. He wasn't even bothered.
This wasn't about skill. This didn't need talent.
He was brute-forcing the evolution. He only needed one sapling to have the darkness he needed.
With growing experience, he was soon creating, mutating, and destroying over a million saplings per second.
Not enough.
This still wasn't fast enough.
What if he needed over a quadrillion attempts to reach the answer through sheer probability?
A million attempts per second were pathetically slow.
He used Time Dilation on himself to increase his speed by several dozen folds.
Ten million saplings per second.
Fifty million saplings per second.
Hundred million saplings per second.
One billion saplings per second.
The number kept increasing.
The sheer amount of pressure he was putting on himself made his muscles and blood vessels burst.
But it didn't matter to him.
He was already dead.
His body was still 'alive' only to due Death Element.
His soul has been long pulverized to ash due to the titanic amount of energy he was creating.
His core had been destroyed and rebuilt twice before he stopped paying attention to it.
The Seed of Existence at the center of it all was cracked open, its deepest layer exposed to the world.
Inside that central layer, several trillion saplings were being born and erased each second.
And finally, another sapling was born.
This one didn't collapse immediately. Its roots spread inside the energy. The corruption didn't spiral out of control. It didn't try to devour itself or revert into raw Void.
Instead, it began to hum.
Nameless Death paused.
He didn't destroy it.
The sapling kept mutating slowly, but not wildly.
Its trunk thickened slightly, as if adapting to the pressure of Void around it.
Its leaves shimmered, turning from black to translucent, as if made from the absence of form itself.
Namesless Death checked its ability.