I Can Copy And Evolve Talents

Chapter 1294: Extraction [part 2]

Northern said nothing, just stared at the Summon. The game he was playing was dangerous—perhaps recklessly so—but he wouldn’t be attempting this if he didn’t trust Nebulous Lord.

The Summon had the ability to become anything he ate. What Northern wanted was simple in concept, impossible in execution: Lord needed to consume Chaos and embody it without devouring the Queen herself.

Even Northern found this difficult to conceptualize. But that was precisely the point—he wanted Lord to find a way past this trial. He wanted all of his summons to grow stronger.

The alternative was unpleasant to consider. He could kill Lord and Abyss Tyrant, bind them as echoes, anchor them to his soul permanently. There were advantages to that approach. Recursive Generation would apply to them then, driving constant evolution. But there were costs too.

If they remained unbound, they stayed their own persons. Independent. Capable of decisions he hadn’t predetermined.

Northern watched Lord pace before the Queen’s still form, and something strange stirred in his chest. He had created Lord. Fathered him, in a sense.

He wanted more for the Summon than mere spiritual bondage. He wanted to develop Lord, push him toward strength through every available path. And if the issue with Kryos’s incomplete echo never resolved itself, Northern wanted Lord to one day be capable of consuming that fragment without being consumed in turn.

’Long-term planning,’ he reminded himself. ’Always long-term.’

He was mentally mapping out trajectories for his summons because the Empire wasn’t the real threat. Neither were the Northern or Eastern continents.

From fighting Origins and the different ancient human races that still existed in the shadows of the world, there was no telling what adversaries might emerge beyond them. Northern was trying to cast his vision as far into the future as possible.

If the First Origins had been forced to weave their own mother—the Void herself—into a Weapon and still couldn’t overcome their oppressors, then what chance did he have? Nothing was sufficient. Not yet. To fight both the Origins and whatever had subjugated them, he couldn’t afford a moment’s complacency.

So every opportunity like this one, he intended to exploit with ruthless greed.

Besides, Lord possessed [Omniform] as an ability and [Formless] as an attribute. He couldn’t have all that potential and Northern wouldn’t push him to discover its limits.

So he watched Nebulous Lord struggle to remove the Chaos Heart from the Queen’s mundane heart.

Lord stood before the Queen’s prone form like a child confronting an exam he hadn’t studied for.

He studied her body—up and down, back and forth. His dark eyes scanned her skin, searching for any viable approach, any angle of attack.

Finally, he turned back to Northern, scratching the back of his head like a confused student.

"Master... a little help would do me a lot of good."

Northern gave him a flat stare. Not hostile. Simply... unhelpful.

Nebulous Lord recognized that expression. No assistance would be forthcoming. He turned away with a chagrined look in his eyes and resumed his examination of the impossible assignment.

Time crept forward. Minutes passed.

Lord was still there. Still staring. Though now his gaze had drifted toward the window, watching the birds that clustered in the trees outside, their beaks clutching tiny worms plucked from the earth below.

Northern leaned back in his chair, eyes closed. He looked peaceful—or perhaps he was genuinely sleeping. It had been a long time since he’d rested properly.

Lord’s eyes went wide. He glanced back at Northern, then snapped his attention to the window again.

Without opening his eyes, Northern spoke, his voice low and grating.

"What is it?"

"I think I might have gotten an idea!"

"Lower that rotten voice of yours..."

Lord dropped to a whisper.

"I really think I might have gotten an idea."

Northern cracked one eye open. He looked faintly amused.

"And what is this idea?"

Lord grinned.

"A surprise."

’Will you look at this...’

"One minute!" Before Northern could respond, Lord shot toward the window and vanished through it in a blur.

Northern frowned, staring at the empty frame. He didn’t bother standing, but his expression shifted to something approaching bemusement.

A moment later, something small dropped onto the window frame and crawled onto the Queen’s bed.

A worm.

A very tiny, little worm.

A thin smile spread across Northern’s lips.

"Will you look at that..."

Nebulous Lord had devoured a common groundworm, and now he was one—an obsidian speck crawling steadily toward the Queen’s ear.

Northern watched as the minuscule dark shape climbed her earlobe and burrowed into the canal. Then Lord vanished from ordinary sight.

The blue glow in Northern’s eyes intensified as he tracked the microscopic obsidian worm through the Queen’s body.

[Shingan: Layer 1 & 2 - Combined Active]

[Tracking Nebulous Lord’s Movement]

The tiny worm—Lord in his devoured form—navigated through the Queen’s ear canal with surprising precision. Northern observed as the creature slipped past the eardrum, entering the inner ear’s labyrinthine passages.

[Current Location: Inner Ear - Eustachian Tube]

Lord’s obsidian form shimmered faintly even in this shape, a telltale sign of his Formless nature at work. He was adapting, shifting, becoming something capable of traversing these biological pathways without causing damage.

The worm slithered into a hairline capillary and entered the bloodstream. Northern’s eyes tracked the dark speck as it flowed through veins, carried along by the sluggish current of the Queen’s weakened circulatory system.

[Entering Bloodstream]

[Current Location: Jugular Vein]

The journey was slow—painfully so. The Queen’s blood moved like thick syrup, another symptom of the Chaos Heart’s corruption spreading through her system. But Lord pressed forward, his form undulating with each faint pulse.

[Passing through: Superior Vena Cava]

Northern leaned forward slightly, his concentration absolute. It was like watching a race where everything depended on the outcome. Though in truth, this was far more tension-packed than any race—failure here meant consequences he preferred not to calculate.

[Entering: Right Atrium]

Lord had reached the heart.

But not merely the physical heart—Northern could see the overlay now, the shadow-organ that was the Chaos Heart pulsing in perfect sync with the Queen’s own heartbeat. The parasitic vestige writhed with dark energy, its tendrils embedded deep into her soul structure like roots through stone.

[Target Acquired: Chaos Heart]

[Threat Assessment: Extremely Dangerous]

[Warning: Direct contact may corrupt Nebulous Lord]