My Infinite Cultivation System

Alex descended slowly until his feet touched the ground. The spatial pressure around him remained active, holding the three survivors from each race in place. They floated several meters above the surface, suspended like specimens awaiting examination.

He approached the first group, three dark creatures whose forms flickered between solid and ethereal states. Their immortal nature had been confirmed by his analysis, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t experience pain.

Alex extended his hand and wrapped spatial threads around one of them.

"I will ask once," Alex said. "How did you discover this planet’s true nature?"

The dark creature’s hollow eyes met his gaze. For a moment, defiance flickered across its distorted features. Then its body convulsed as the spatial pressure intensified, compressing its immortal form to the breaking point.

"I will not break," it hissed. "We cannot die."

Alex tilted his head slightly. "You cannot die permanently. But you can experience the sensation of death repeatedly. The difference is academic."

He tightened his grip further. The creature’s form began to crack, dark energy leaking from the fractures like blood from wounds. It screamed, a sound that echoed across the empty battlefield.

"Stop," another dark creature said. Its voice was steadier, carrying the weight of calculation rather than fear. "I will tell you."

Alex released the pressure slightly but did not lower his hand.

The creature continued. "The ancient humans told us."

Alex’s expression did not change, but the temperature around him dropped noticeably.

"They came to us a while ago," the creature said. "Before your trial began. They sought alliances, protection, resources. In exchange, they offered information about this world, its true nature, its origin, its value."

"Those bastards?", Alex pointed toward the ancient humans.

"Yes." The creature’s voice grew more confident as it spoke. "They conducted their own examinations of this planet. They discovered its residual properties, its connection to the previous universe. They knew what they were sitting on, and they knew they could not defend it alone."

Alex absorbed the information silently.

Another survivor, a vampire elder whose crimson eyes had dimmed considerably, spoke unprompted.

"The ancient humans performed extensive research. They developed methods to measure the planet’s origin coefficient. They confirmed it was a prime world, one of the few remaining from the previous universal cycle."

"And they shared this information freely?" Alex asked.

"They traded it," the vampire corrected. "They received protection from multiple races in exchange for access. The agreement was simple. The ancient humans would maintain stewardship of the planet, and the allied races would receive priority rights to its resources when the time came."

"When the time came," Alex repeated. "You mean after the trial."

The vampire nodded slowly. "The trial was a formality. A mechanism to determine whether the current human population was worthy of continuing stewardship. But the value of the planet itself was never in question."

Alex turned his gaze to the dragon general who had spoken earlier. The dragon’s wings were pinned against its body by spatial restraints, but its expression remained defiant.

"And you examined the planet yourselves?"

The dragon laughed, though the sound was strained. "Of course. Do you think we would trust the word of humans without verification? We conducted our own analyses. Our own measurements. The data was consistent. This planet is a prime origin world."

The werewolf among the survivors growled low in its throat. "Every major race has confirmed it independently. The dragon clans. The phoenix lineages. The vampire covens. The werewolf packs. Even the dark dimension entities have verified the readings."

Alex stood in silence for a long moment.

His mind processed the information systematically. The ancient humans had not simply failed to protect the planet. They had actively marketed it. They had traded its secret for survival, treating it as currency in a cosmic negotiation that spanned generations.

And now the current human population, his population, was paying the price for that decision.

Something shifted inside Alex.

It was not anger in the conventional sense. There was no heat, no explosion of uncontrolled emotion. Instead, a cold fury settled into his core, dense and absolute, like a star collapsing into a singularity.

His hands trembled slightly.

The spatial pressure around the survivors intensified without conscious direction. Two of the dark creatures began to crack again, their immortal forms straining against forces they had never encountered. The vampire gasped as his limbs bent at unnatural angles.

Alex noticed the effect and forced his control to stabilize.

He could not afford to lose composure. Not yet.

But the fury remained, coiled and waiting.

He wanted to kill the ancient humans here but he hold back his anger.

Before he could ask the ancient humans, a shift occurred in the atmosphere.

It began as a subtle pressure at the edge of his perception, a distortion in the fabric of space that did not originate from the planet itself. The pressure grew rapidly, expanding from something barely noticeable to something overwhelming in the span of seconds.

Alex looked up.

The sky had changed.

Where there had been clear air moments earlier, now there were ripples, waves of energy propagating through the atmosphere like stones dropped into still water. The ripples converged above the battlefield, creating a focal point of compressed space.

Alex’s eyes narrowed.

These were not random fluctuations. They were arrival signatures. Multiple entities were preparing to descend, and their approach was already affecting the planetary environment.

The survivors sensed it too.

The dragon general’s restrained posture shifted. His eyes gleamed with renewed confidence. "They’re here."

Alex turned to look at him. "Who?"

Before the dragon could answer, the spatial restraints around the survivors vanished.

Not broken, erased. Alex’s control was simply overridden by a superior authority. The prisoners dropped to the ground, and the moment they touched the soil, dark energy enveloped them. Their forms dissolved into shadow and were pulled upward toward the rippling sky.

Alex reached out with his spatial control, attempting to intercept the extraction.

His power met resistance, not a wall, but an entire ocean of opposing force. The presence behind the extraction was not simply stronger than him. It operated on a different scale entirely.

The survivors vanished completely.

Alex lowered his hand slowly. His face was pale now, though not from fear. The pressure descending upon the planet was immense, enough to make the ground tremble and the air grow heavy. It was the kind of pressure that preceded destruction, the kind that announced the arrival of beings who considered planets temporary.

He did not have time to pursue the vanished prisoners.

He did not have time to interrogate further.

He had seconds.

Alex looked upward again. The ripples in the sky had stabilized into four distinct formations. Each formation expanded outward, revealing the source of the disturbance.

Four enormous vessels descended through the atmosphere.

They were not ships in the conventional sense. They were structures of condensed space and solidified energy, their surfaces reflecting light that did not exist in the normal spectrum. Each vessel radiated an aura that pressed against Alex’s senses like physical weight.

The first vessel gleamed with scales of living metal, dragonscale armor that shifted and breathed as if the ship itself was alive. Its aura was ancient, primordial, carrying the weight of epochs.

The second vessel was formed of feathers that burned with contained flame. Each feather was a blade of fire folded into shape, and the heat radiating from the vessel did not warm the air so much as redefine it.

The third vessel was darkness given structure, shadow made solid, with edges that absorbed light and surfaces that reflected nothing. It moved silently, without the vibration that accompanied normal travel.

The fourth vessel was raw physical presence. It had no ornamentation, no artistry. It was simply dense, so dense that space bent around it, creating a gravitational wake that made the planet’s rotation stutter slightly.

Alex identified them without needing analysis.

Dragon. Phoenix. Vampire. Werewolf.

The four races that had dominated the invading forces had sent their elders.

The dragon vessel descended lowest, positioning itself directly above the battlefield. A voice emerged from it, calm, measured, and absolutely authoritative.

"Release them."

The command was not loud. It did not need to be. The words carried an inherent weight that bypassed the ears and spoke directly to the fundamental laws governing the area. Alex felt his spatial control dismantle at the conceptual level, his authority over the prisoners erased as if it had never existed.

The survivors vanished from his grip.

Alex’s hands remained at his sides.

He was not surprised. He had anticipated escalation. The only variable had been the timing and scale.

The dragon general who had been restrained moments earlier now stood freely, his body restored, his wings fully extended. He looked at Alex with undisguised contempt.

"Hahahaha." The dragon’s laugh echoed across the silent battlefield. "Do you know the price of a prime world? We top races wouldn’t even hesitate to kill an entire race to get our hands on it."

He stepped forward, his confidence fully restored by the arrival of his elders.

"And you," the dragon continued, his voice dripping with disdain, "are just a sub-species of a normal race. Even the most powerful humans wouldn’t even dare to bark in front of us."