My Infinite Cultivation System

He turned slowly.

The woman standing before him was beautiful in the way a predator is beautiful. Her dark hair cascaded past her shoulders like liquid shadow. Her eyes held depths that should not exist in anything mortal. And her smile, that gentle curve of her lips, promised things that Alex’s instincts screamed at him to avoid.

Sofia tilted her head, studying him like a child examining a particularly interesting insect. "You have grown stronger since we last met. I can taste it."

"Taste it?" Alex kept his voice level, though every nerve in his body had gone taut. "That’s an interesting choice of words."

"Isn’t it just?" Sofia took a single step forward. The grass beneath her feet withered. Not dramatically, not with flames or decay, but quietly, as if the life simply chose to abandon it. "Words matter, Alex. Intentions matter. Souls matter most of all."

Behind him, Alex heard his thirteen companions shifting uneasily. They felt it too, that primal wrongness emanating from Sofia. Even Ares, born of a primordial race, had gone pale.

Mira had already backed away several steps. Her earlier confidence had evaporated entirely. "Alex," she whispered. "Her shadow. Look at her shadow."

Alex looked.

Sofia’s shadow stretched across the ground, but it did not match her form. It was too large, too dark, and it moved independently of her body. Within its depths, Alex could see shapes writhing. Faces pressing against some invisible barrier. Hands reaching upward as if begging for release.

"How many?" Alex asked quietly.

Sofia’s smile widened. "You noticed. Good. Most people never look down." She raised one hand lazily. "I stopped counting after the first thousand. Souls are like collectibles, you see. The more you have, the more you want. And yours, dear Alex..." Her tongue traced across her lower lip, red and glistening. "Yours would be the crown jewel of my collection."

Boom.

The world changed.

Sofia released her domain, and reality itself seemed to shudder. Darkness exploded outward from her body, swallowing the clearing, swallowing the forest, swallowing everything. The sun vanished. The sky ceased to exist. Alex and his companions stood in an endless void where the only light came from the faint glow of trapped souls.

And then the ground began to churn.

Shapes rose from the darkness. Humanoid figures, monstrous beasts, creatures that defied classification. They emerged from Sofia’s shadow like drowning victims breaking the surface of a black ocean. Hundreds. Thousands. Each one radiated a distinct aura, a signature of power that marked them as former candidates, former warriors, former beings of considerable strength.

Now they were nothing but puppets.

"Magnificent, isn’t it?" Sofia’s voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere. "Each soul I snatch becomes mine. Not just their power, but their memories, their techniques, their very essence. I am not strong because of some talent I was born with, Alex. I am strong because I take strength from others and make it my own."

Alex watched the army assemble before him. Ten thousand souls at minimum. Each one had been a prodigy in their own right, selected for this trial by sages and transcended beings. Each one had fallen to Sofia.

"Damn," Alex muttered under his breath. "She’s like a female version of Jin Woo."

"What?" Mira asked from somewhere behind him.

"Nothing. Old reference."

Then he smiled a little too.

"Guess what bitch, I take powers from others as well.", but no one heard that.

.....

The realm beyond space and time, the multiversal beings were watching this scene as well.

Supremacy Leon sat upon a throne carved from the heart of a dead star. His laughter boomed across the chamber, drawing the attention of every other watcher.

"Hahaha! She gained the inheritance of my grandfather!" Leon’s eyes blazed with triumph. "The one who transcended even our level. I spent eons trying to claim that inheritance. I offered sacrifices. I completed trials that would break lesser beings. But it never chose me."

He leaned forward, his grin sharp enough to cut reality.

"And now it has chosen her. Sofia’s future is endless. She will rise beyond all of you. Beyond all of us." His gaze shifted to another throne, where a figure sat in perfect stillness. "I hope you have those chaos grade treasures with you, Alexander. I will be taking them soon."

Supremacy Alexander did not respond. His ancient eyes, older than most universes, remained fixed on the viewing portal. His expression revealed nothing.

He simply watched.

---

Alex faced the army of souls, and he felt something strange.

He felt bored.

"I wish I could have entertained you," Alex said calmly. His voice carried across the void, cutting through the oppressive darkness. "But I already had a satisfactory battle before this. I’m not in the mood to prolong this fight."

He took a single step forward.

His hands remained clasped behind his back.

And then golden light exploded from his body.

The domain that erupted from Alex was not like Sofia’s darkness. It did not consume. It did not devour. It was like the hope in a calamity. An absolute presence across the battlefield.

Every soul in Sofia’s army froze.

Sofia herself gasped, her confident smile finally cracking. "What... what is this? My talents... I can’t feel them..."

The golden light washed over everything, and wherever it touched, power simply ceased to function. Talents went dormant. Skills fell silent. The fundamental laws that governed supernatural abilities recognized something greater than themselves and bowed.

But that was not all.

Until this moment, Alex had been using his Telekinesis at a restricted level. He had held back, testing himself, enjoying the game. Now he felt ready to show what he could truly do.

He snapped his fingers.

Boom.

The pressure that descended upon the trial grounds defied description.It was not merely physical force. It was existential weight. The undeniable truth of Alex’s presence pressing down upon reality itself. It was a cataclysmic pressure.

Across the entire battlefield, millions of prodigies felt it. Warriors locked in mortal combat suddenly found themselves on their knees.

Every single candidate, regardless of race, regardless of power, regardless of pride, knelt.

Sofia was no exception.

Her knees hit the ground hard enough to crack the earth beneath her. She struggled, muscles straining, willpower screaming against the impossible weight. She managed to lift her head, to look up at Alex with eyes that finally understood what kind of monstrosity she was facing right now.

He floated above her.

His silver hair drifted in currents of power that only he could perceive. His eyes held the calm of someone who had already seen the end of this confrontation and found it unremarkable. He looked less like a candidate in a trial and more like a transcended deity who had deigned to walk among mortals.

"No," Sofia whispered. "This isn’t possible. I have the inheritance of a being who transcended the Supremacy level. I have ten thousand souls. I have—"

Alex pressed his right hand downward.

Above Sofia’s soul army, a massive black palm materialized. It was not darkness like hers, not the hungry void of stolen power. It was simply the absence of everything, a hand shaped from the space between stars.

It descended.

And like balloons popping,all the souls burst.

One by one, then hundreds at once, then thousands simultaneously. The army that Sofia had spent so long building, the collection she had nurtured and grown, vanished into nothing. Not destroyed, not released, but simply... erased. As if they had never existed at all.

Sofia screamed.

Blood erupted from her mouth, her nose, her eyes. The backlash of losing so many bound souls at once tore through her like a storm through paper. Her body convulsed once, twice, and then went still.

She did not die. Alex had not willed it. But she would not wake for a long, long time.

Alex lowered his hand.

The golden domain retracted. The pressure faded. Around the trial grounds, millions of candidates slowly, shakily rose to their feet, wondering what cosmic horror had just passed over them.

Alex descended to the ground and looked at his twelve companions. They were still on their knees, staring at him with expressions that had moved beyond fear into something approaching religious awe.

"We should keep moving," Alex said. "I still need points."

---

The tremor Alex caused in the multiversal entities’ room was far more terrifying than anything that had happened in the trial.

Every Supremacy stood up at that point. Their eyes were wide opened.

"Chaos level talent," Supremacy Alexander’s voice was barely above a whisper, but it carried through the entire chamber. "The oracle was right. It was indeed possible to give birth to a chaos level talent in the boundary of a multiverse."

His hands, hands that had shaped universes, were trembling.

Supremacy Leon swallowed hard. His earlier confidence had evaporated entirely. "Supremacy Alexander. Congratulations. Please... please do not forget us when you rise. We will provide whatever help you need."

He was not alone in his sudden deference. Every other Supremacy in the chamber was looking at Alexander with new eyes. Not as an equal, not as a rival, but as something that would soon be far above them.

Alexander did not acknowledge them.

His eyes remained fixed on Alex.

And when he spoke again, his voice held a finality that no one in the chamber would dare challenge.

"Merlin. You are not worthy to become his master."

The words hung in the air like a death sentence.

"Call that boy here. He does not need to fight anymore. He does not need to complete any trial. I will take him as my disciple."