The Tale of the Void Emperor

After hearing Athan's provocation, Sirius and Bunny ears woman were actually tempted to make a move right now. However, they were also afraid of what punishment they might get, so they hesitated.

But suddenly, they heard Dreevindo's voice in their heads.

'Don't make any hasty moves right now! This bastard Athan has been bossing me around and not putting me in his eyes just because he knows that I need him to take first place, and he can take it.'

'I seriously hate him, and as such, once he takes first place and I get the rewards from the Empire because of that, I will make a plan to lead him outside so that you two can kill him.'

Sirius and the Bunny ear woman were internally started but turned their expression into indifference externally.

Both of them looked at Dreevindo, and his eyes indeed showed hate and frustration.

Actually, Dreevindo was really annoyed and irritated by Athan. He also hated him, but Dreevindo was wise. He put his interest above his egoistic feelings and decided to hop onto the potential train known as Athan.

'How are you going to do that?' Sirius asked.

'If you are going to do that, then do it perfectly! I don't want to be caught after killing him. After all, once he takes first place and then it's found that we killed him, the Limbark Empire will definitely demand our punishment,' said the Bunny ears woman.

'Naturally! I also don't want to be caught, so I will do it perfectly, don't worry.'

...

"Don't be too arrogant, Athan. Even if we can't do anything to you now nor in the future, you will surely receive a terrible death in this world," Sirius said before he turned his head away.

"Don't think that your journey will be easy just because you will get a silver spoon from Limbark Empire," said the Bunny ear woman.

"Celestial Hoparin, it's not certain that Athan will win," suddenly, one of the candidates stood up as he had a confident smile on his face. The man looked human without any other body features.

One by one, other candidates also stood up as they seemed to have finished the enlightenment process.

Seeing them, many orchos celestials displayed disappointment in their eyes while some showed joy.

The reason for their disappointment and joy was that generally, the sooner one is finished with their enlightenment, the weaker abilities they got managed to build.

"Indeed. It's not certain that Athan will take the first place. He didn't even go through any transformation process or receive enlightenment like us."

"Yeah, we are already more powerful than before, and our genome powers seemed to have received a slight boost as well. Our recovery speed of genome energy has increased by twenty percent!"

"Humph," Sirius snorted loudly and spoke, "don't be too confident just because you received this power boost. Do you see those who are still in meditation? They will be generally more powerful than you because the longer the enlightenment, the higher the benefits."

"Ho, ho, ho, it's fine, it's fine," Lingardim said as his soothing old man's voice reverberated, "don't be too depressed. You all can still beat them as long as you can fight properly."

"Shameless, old man," Yok spoke with a snort, "we know that both of your candidates got a Mythical-grade Cynrailic Orchos Genome."

Everyone looked at Lily and Huarin, who were deep in meditation.

However, not all orchos celestial knew about what Yok said, so they were shocked.

"Both of them got Mythical-grade COG? fuck...so the top 3 are confirmed?"

"Sigh...this time's round is really unfair. We have three monsters."

...

Hearing the talks of orchos celestials, the candidates who had finished their enlightenment were confused.

They looked at Athan, who was standing there with his eyes closed and seemed to be absorbing orchos energy from the atmosphere.

"Celestial Polaris, Athan hasn't really powered up like us, so...don't tell us that the three monsters you said include him as well?"

Celestial Polari was a snowman with dark ice patterns on his body. Hearing his candidate's question, he smiled wryly and spoke, "the simple reason for Athan being a monster is that we...still can't see through him."

Other Orchos celestial nodded.

"Indeed, we can use our full power here, and even with our full ocular powers, we still can't see through him."

Hearing that, all candidates were startled and looked at Athan with shock before feeling depressed.

"Anyway, we will tell you more about the Orchos Firmament while waiting for others to finish their enlightenment process."

...

Time passed as, one by one, candidates woke up.

After thirty minutes, everyone had woken up aside from Lily and Huarin.

On the other hand, Athan had gathered a lot of orchos energy. However, he couldn't really control it or do anything with it.

He just absorbed it from the atmosphere, and it gathered inside his void region. That's all.

However, he could still do experiments using it to know more about this energy.

He brought a few drops of his blood into the void region and let them near the mass of orchos energy he had gathered.

Outside, this energy was invisible, but this energy became slightly visible after gathering inside his void region. It looked like a faint, very faint light golden smoke.

The five drops of red-colored blood neared the smoke as Athan waited to see what would happen.

This blood was normal blood. It was not mixed with his abyssal darkness. Naturally, he will later bring out blood flowing in his Void Empowerment Veins and do testing as well.

*chriii....*

The five drops of blood attracted the orchos energy as they slowly infused with blood.

Athan observed and sensed the drops of blood getting...thicker, and their power contained in the blood also increased.

After five minutes, the blood entirely turned golden drops of blood. However, the orchos energy also stopped infusing inside the drops of blood after that even though there was still a lot of left.

'Interesting. The power of those blood drops increased by ten times. No wonder those candidates were confident.. Their transformation and ascension to Orchos Firmament must have powered them up a lot.'