A total of six hands, and they pulled apart.

CRAAAACK!

A sharp sound, similar to glass cracking, echoing louder and louder as cracks spread through the cocoon.

And all at once,

SHATTER!

The entire cocoon crashed to the ground, revealing a figure coiled tightly like an egg. Quietly, it began to uncurl before coming to rest on its back.

"Ahhhhhh..."

White opened his lips, and an exhale of pitch-black smoke filled with tiny blue dots spilled out of his mouth.

His senses slowly spread across what he had become as every single organ began to relinquish its natural control to him, allowing him to quietly make out his shape.

"A six-armed human standing at seven meters in height."

That was the exact base definition of his evolution, but of course, things were far beyond what he had simply called out.

For one, his arms were of the same definite proportion, not one larger than the other, and they were each easily three times the size of a grown adult human’s thigh.

They seemed to have been carved from some glassy obsidian-black ore, and one wouldn’t be able to find a single vein beneath them.

Instead, there were simply blue dots of light hovering slowly and randomly within them, giving one the illusion that the Void itself was trapped inside each arm.

While his arms were dark, they were the only things that were.

His entire torso, along with the rest of his body, was white and possessed extra musculature that could be found in neither a human nor an Umbrawyric body.

Even his hair itself was white and long gone was the overgrown hair.

It had shortened considerably, no longer flowing down his shoulders or neck but instead hanging in the air, the strands never once remaining in place, almost as if White were standing in a windy area.

But of course, there was no such thing within the hall.

The face he had taken, though, surprised White a bit.

It wasn’t his original human face. To be fair, he had long lost that one back when he fused with the Umbrawyr’s body.

But it also wasn’t the face of his old Umbrawyric body with the two horns, the one he had been expecting.

No.

It was an entirely different face, one that was almost square-like, then carved from the sharpest of chisels.

It wasn’t skin like soft human skin, though it appeared similar enough that any human would mistake it for possessing an almost unnaturally glassy complexion.

But what it truly was simply didn’t exist in human terms.

And if one peered at the face, they would notice a layer beneath it, almost like a void, but not dark.

Instead, tiny blue dots of light, just like the ones within his arms, hovered beneath it all.

Overall, his face was far more human-looking than Umbrawyric, with no extra horn protrusions at all, nor any fangs in his mouth.

But no human would ever be worthy of comparison to him.

It wasn’t merely his appearance that set him apart. He existed on an entirely higher tier of life, a level of existence so far beyond humanity that the two could not even be meaningfully compared.

And seemingly resting above his head was something familiar:

A crown of blue.

Not made of iron, nor pointed and rising high upward.

It was like branches, soft coiling ones rolled together to form a circle, with small thorns all over them.

It didn’t exactly sit upon White’s head, simply because it wasn’t physical and could not be touched.

It was completely made of energy, easily fooling any eye into believing it was a real crown, but it wasn’t.

It was more like a phantom manifestation, one that only White truly understood.

But more than his physical body, White was curious about one thing, and he called out,

"Activate System Interface!"

Instantly, it flashed, and this time, he noticed a change.

The system had also transformed, especially the color.

It wasn’t golden anymore, but blue, and there was no background were letters were being displayed on.

It was simply words being displayed directly into White’s mind.

|| System Interface ||

|| Name: White Sinclaw ||

|| Title: Umbrawyr King ||

|| Race: UnoUmbrawyr ||

|| Cultivation Stage: Sol Realm ||

|| Level: 131 ||

|| EXP: 180,000/270,000 ||

|| Level Up Cards Left: 5 ||

...

"So that’s the new title. An Umbrawyric King. Of course."

White mused beneath his breath.

He couldn’t help but notice that his race name had also changed.

From being an Umbrawyr to becoming an UnoUmbrawyr.

As for what exactly an UnoUmbrawyr was, White knew perfectly well.

Essentially, they were the highest evolution, the most powerful version an Umbrawyr could ever racially grow into, and ever since the dawn of existence, there had only been two UnoUmbrawyrs.

And White had just become the third UnoUmbrawyr in existence, a hierarchy that had not existed in the universe for 22,000 years.

His previous cultivation realm was the Lumen Realm, which was the cultivation stage of the Aether Orb, and he had always been uncertain about exactly what it was.

But now, he also knew what the Aether Orb was.

And he knew very well what the Sol Realm was.

The Aether Orb cultivation’s true name was Anya.

A cultivation process for a unique category of racial beings known as God Candidates.

[A/N: If you find the word familiar, it’s because it was mentioned before in Chapter 119, Destroy or Be Destroyed.]

In this universe, there were quite a number of God Candidate races.

Well, at least in the beginning of it.

Now, he knew they had become rarer and rarer over time, with many having simply disappeared from existence altogether.

The Lumen Realm was the second cultivation stage of Anya.

And the Sol Realm?

That was the realm White was currently in, and it was the third cultivation stage of Anya.

Anya itself possessed only five cultivation stages, and they were beyond difficult to progress through.

As for how one advanced through its cultivation stages, it was by...