Blood Of Destruction

Inheritance

David was moving toward the spaceship wreckage when a sudden chill ran down his spine. He spun toward the sound that had whispered through the silence, but saw no one. Just as he thought it might have been an illusion, his eyes caught a tiny model house sitting exactly in the center of the dried blood pond.

It was so small he could hold it in his palm. Curious, he reached down to pick it up, but the moment his fingers touched it, an irresistible force yanked him inside.

When his figure reappeared, he was standing before an old man whose very presence seemed to command the space around them.

“So, you’re the successor who has found favor with the lord,” the old man said, studying David with eyes that had watched countless millennia pass.

“Who are you? Where am I?” David asked, his voice tense with wariness.

“You are inside that small house you saw outside. I am the spirit of this house.”

David’s brow furrowed. “Then… the blood outside, the monster I saw when I arrived was all of that kept by you? Where did it go?”

The spirit sighed, an impatient flicker in his ancient gaze. “Shut up, kid. How many questions can you throw at once? Are you that dull? Fine. You devoured everything, the blood and that monster. As for how, that’s a long story. My lord placed many inheritances here for the successor, and the blood was one of the verification trials.”

“So… I’m the first one to get here?” David asked, a faint glimmer of pride in his voice.

“No.” The old man’s answer came flat and heavy. “Many have come, across countless ages. None survived. The monster that lay dead when you arrived was one of them.” 

The spirit paused, letting the weight sink in. “As for the inheritance’s true grade… it is far beyond a universe master. How far, I will not explain yet.”

David pressed his lips together, then asked with hope trembling in his words, “So what is there for me in this inheritance?”

The spirit looked at him for a long moment, then began to explain. “This house is an artifact with many functions. At your level, the most important thing is the virtual space. You’ve heard of the virtual spaces the human race uses, yes? This is similar but far superior. It copies the battle data of ancient powerhouses so you can hone your fighting instincts against them.”

Then the spirit pointed toward the room and spoke.

“Inside the house, there is also the Monument Cave, left by the lord for future successors, a monument of all laws, rarer than what the entire human race possesses. Beyond that, you will receive cultivation methods for body and soul tempering, and much more as your strength grows.”

David’s eyes widened, but the spirit raised a hand. “Before you leap into the laws, you must temper your body and soul to achieve one hundred percent control. You must sharpen your combat instinct until it becomes second nature. On a true battlefield, only fighting instinct will keep you alive.”

The spirit continued, “Your gene level has already surpassed a thousand times baseline, which is excellent. As you temper your body with the blood of powerful monsters, there’s a chance it will reach the absolute limit.”

Then he looked toward David.

“ As for your cultivation in the universe realm it will increase as your other aspects increase, do not increase it for now first recognize a law and temper your body. You can start gathering monster blood from the dead beasts near the wreckage. Their corpses still hold a usable essence.”

David’s heart pounded with a mixture of relief and determination. “Thank you for telling me this,” he said quietly, a trace of long-starved gratitude in his voice.

The spirit merely nodded, as if such thanks were as old as dust.

David stepped out of the house and looked toward the spaceship graveyard. He couldn’t see much beyond the top of the largest wreck. As he moved closer, the true scale of the place hit him like a frozen wave.

“What the hell is this place? Not a single living being… could this be some kind of cursed realm?” he whispered to himself, a shiver in his chest.

The spirit’s voice echoed in his mind. “Not cursed. This is the Dark Lord’s Forbidden Secret Realm. Even a True God passing without permission cannot survive here. Your luck is truly monstrous. All who came for inheritance in the past were the strongest of their respective universes or races.”

A faint laugh, dry as ancient bone. “Who would have thought a mere star-realm kid would be the one recognized?”

David, who had spent his whole life confined to his mother’s ancestral house, had never once left his home planet. Now, for the first time, he was seeing the outside world, its dead monsters, its fallen warriors. He walked among them slowly, memorizing the shapes, the broken armors, the silent stories. In this process he collected many space rings, tucking them away without checking the contents immediately.

Moving further into the wreckage field, he came upon a dead figure bent on its knees, one hand still outstretched toward its space ring, as if trying to retrieve something in its final moment. David didn’t hesitate. He slid the ring into his pocket and kept looking. Nearby, a black sword lay half-buried, its blade coated in dried blood. That too went into the ring.

Corpses were scattered everywhere. He couldn’t tell if this was an ancient battlefield or if the bodies had been thrown here by some cruel force. Every mile held a dozen dead, like discarded dolls. 

A chill crept up his spine, yet beneath it budded a strange, fragile sense of fortune he had survived. He was alive, and he had been given an inheritance that could change everything.

When he reached the largest spaceship, he saw that the entire hull had been crumpled, as if squeezed by a giant hand. Battle scars marred every surface. He climbed carefully, his senses on high alert. He recognized the ship’s grade at a glance S-class or above, fit for immortal-realm warriors.

Spaceships were ranked from D to SSS. D-class vessels could travel at light speed but only sustain a shield of star-realm ninth level. C-class ships flew five times light speed, shielded up to universe-realm ninth level, and carried laser cannons that could repel star-realm warriors, though they’d struggle against stronger enemies. 

As grades rose, materials and capabilities grew terrifyingly powerful; he had heard that SSS-class ships could even slay mighty immortals. He had only ever dreamed of possessing such a ship. This one, he could tell, was at least S-class, and it bore the logo of one of the five super-forces that held the human race’s entire economic structure.

Inside the ship, the silence was oppressive. A dead man leaned against the corridor wall, his face locked in an expression of utter exhaustion. In the central control room, another corpse lay near the table. David moved forward and carefully removed the space rings from their fingers.

“I won’t let your belongings rot here uselessly,” he murmured, as if offering a quiet respect. It was his first time speaking to the dead, and the words felt strange but necessary.

He found the inventory room. It seemed this was where the owner stored items not critical enough to keep in a personal ring. Usually, the most important treasures were carried on one’s body unless heading into a battle where death was almost certain then they might be hidden elsewhere. David punched the door. No alarm. Maybe the energy was depleted, or alarms were pointless in this dead realm.

The door slid open to reveal racks of weapons, most A-grade, a few even S-grade. Over a hundred battle-armor boxes were stacked neatly, alongside rare cultivation resources. David’s breath caught.

“This haul must have belonged to a powerful organization. Perhaps one of these dead men was transporting it, and the other had come to steal it. Now it all lies unclaimed.”

“Everything that was theirs is now hope for me,” he said under his breath, a painful awareness of his own desperation threading his voice.

After emptying the inventory, curiosity pushed him toward the ship’s main control frame. If he could access it, maybe there would be star charts or undocumented data. He forced open the sealed main door and instantly a wailing alarm ripped through the silence.

“Breach in the spaceship main frame!”

“Automatic destruction initiating…”

“Self-destruction mode activated. The spaceship will be destroyed in thirty seconds.”

David’s blood ran cold. “No, no, no !” 

Without thinking, he turned and sprinted out of the ship with every ounce of his universe-realm strength, his heart slamming against his ribs. He misjudged the danger: this was an S-class vessel. Its self-destruct could erase even the world master.

He tore across the dead earth, lungs burning, desperate eyes fixed on the tiny house in the distance. Behind him, a roar swelled 

“BOOM!”

A colossal fire blast surged toward him, swallowing the world in heat and light. David threw himself forward, the edge of the explosion licking at his heels, and screamed into the inferno, the cry of a boy who had already survived too much to let it end now.