Evolving My Undead Legion In A Game-Like World

Chapter 942: Domain Clash

Two in the same night.

Shojo was filled with suspicion.

In five centuries of running this forest as his personal cultivation ground, a great many things had happened under his nose. For example, a group of mages experimenting with taboo magic had once set up in a corner of his territory, and he had eaten a few of them for entertainment before they got too far with whatever they were attempting.

Strange occurrences were not new to him.

But two of his crops ascending to his rank on the same night from the same location had never happened once in all that time. The probability alone felt wrong. And anything that felt wrong in his forest warranted investigation.

This was how it found Michael.

After devouring that opportunity many years ago, as Shojo grew in power it had gained something beyond simple strength.

It gained the ability to sense fortune.

Intelligent races seemed to call it bloodline or something similar, and the terminology varied depending on who was speaking, but Shojo understood it in simpler terms. Certain creatures carried something special in their blood, a density of fate or fortune that set them apart from ordinary existence in ways that went beyond rank or level.

When Shojo encountered one of these individuals, it knew. The sensation was distinct and unmistakable, like the difference between ordinary food and something rare.

It preferred devouring the special ones. The quality was simply better. The gains that followed were not comparable to what it received from consuming ordinary creatures, no matter how strong those ordinary creatures happened to be.

At one point, centuries ago, Shojo had attempted to cultivate its own supply. The logic had seemed sound at the time. If special bloodlines produced better results, then breeding them deliberately within his territory should have been more efficient than waiting and hoping.

The process had been slower than farming ordinary monsters. The special quality in the bloodline did not accelerate under cultivation the way ordinary strength did. It developed at its own pace and could not be meaningfully rushed.

In the end, impatience had won over strategy. Shojo had devoured its undeveloped offspring and their mothers before the experiment could reach its intended conclusion. The breakthrough that followed had been significant, bittersweet, but significant nonetheless.

It had not attempted the experiment again.

The last time Shojo had encountered someone carrying that special quality had been less than a decade ago. That individual had carried themselves with the bearing of a dragon and seemed to have been of important status among humans given how they conducted themselves.

They had been of similar strength. The fight had been dangerous and Shojo had won only narrowly and with injuries. However, risk and profit went hand in hand.

The advancement that followed had been the most significant Shojo had experienced in a very long time. But the injuries and the recovery that followed were also what had pushed it toward the extended period of rest it had only recently emerged from.

Since that battle, Shojo had not encountered another being carrying that quality.

Until tonight.

In its entire life, Michael was the most special being Shojo had ever encountered.

That was not a small statement. Shojo had lived for a thousand years and had crossed paths with countless creatures. None of them had felt like this.

Shojo was not a creature that sought death. Seeing two Rank 4 peers standing beside the human youth should have been enough to discourage it, but for some reason it did not feel like turning away.

The pull of what it sensed in Michael’s blood was stronger than the calculation.

It made Shojo remember a long forgotten feeling from when it had first received that opportunity. It felt exactly like this moment.

This was fate.

Yes. The heavens were blessing it again.

Perhaps if Shojo had stilled itself properly and taken the time to examine its own behavior, it would have noticed that something was off. But Shojo did not stop to examine itself.

It believed what it had always believed. Risks and profits went hand in hand. Every significant gain in its long life had come attached to genuine danger, and the greatest gains had come attached to the greatest dangers.

If it devoured this human youth, everything would be worth it.

Rank 4 supernaturals did not fight the way those below Rank 3 fought.

Below Rank 3, combat was largely a matter of applying the forces of nature available, or pure or mixed bodily strength. Powerful in its own right, capable of devastating results when wielded with enough force, but ultimately grounded in direct application. One thing hitting another thing, with varying degrees of sophistication in how that contact was arranged.

Rank 3 represented a step beyond that. At that stage the strongest attacks were law skills, abilities born from the cultivator’s personal law seed.

But Rank 4 was different again.

When Rank 4 beings fought, the first priority was not attack or defense in the conventional sense. It was to gain home ground advantage.

The ability to drag an opponent into one’s own domain and hold them there was the defining advantage available at that stage, and the ones who understood how to establish and maintain that advantage were the ones who won fights more often than they lost.

The law domain was what separated Rank 4 from everything below it. Where a law seed existed internally, cultivated and refined within the soul that had partially merged with the physical body, a law domain was the external manifestation of that same law projected outward into the surrounding world.

A Rank 4 supernatural who activated their domain did not simply become stronger. They changed the rules of the space they occupied, bending the conditions of the fight toward themselves.

When two Rank 4 beings of similar strength activated their domains simultaneously, the competing influences tended to cancel each other out, producing a contested space where neither held a clean advantage and raw strength became the primary deciding factor again.

This meant the one who established their domain first had the biggest advantage in most exchanges. Being inside someone else’s domain was not simply disadvantageous. Getting out of a domain once inside it was possible, but it required exceptional strength capable of overpowering the influence directly.

In most Rank 4 battles, who moved first carried the greatest advantage.

Which was why the first move in a serious Rank 4 confrontation was rarely an attack.

It was a domain clash.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​