Ancestral Lineage-Chapter 244: The New Structure of Anbord

Following Ethan Smith's iron-clad ascension to the throne of Anbord, the world began to shift—violently, irreversibly.

Some called it evolution. Others called it the Reckoning. But all agreed: nothing remained the same after the Crimson Ascension.

The battle that shook the fabric of the realm had done more than silence a heretic. It cracked the laws of nature. Space and time, magic and machine, biology and steel—they began to bleed into one another. Something ancient had been disturbed, and something new had been born in its wake.

Across the land, reports poured in. Creatures once bound to natural laws began to mutate. Ordinary wyverns began exhibiting erratic patterns of behavior, metallic growths erupting from their scales. Forest trolls developed cybernetic nerves. Phantom beasts once contained in arcane seals began merging with nanite clouds. Cities that had barely recovered from war now found themselves under siege—not by invading armies, but by aberrations no longer classifiable by previous means.

It wasn't just the beasts. Even the very essence of magic and science began to twist into something... else.

Mages found their mana networks adapting to digital resonance fields. Scientists discovered that quantum cores now reacted to leyline energy. Engineers and alchemists alike abandoned their titles, instead forming a new elite class of Arcanite Weavers—those who fused circuits with sigils, processors with potions.

Change was inevitable.

And so, under Ethan's decree—and enforced by his loyal High Sovereigns and specialists—a new global system was established. The old structures of governance and order were stripped down. Reforged. A new world order to match the new world.

Among the first changes to be formalized was the classification of the mutated beasts—no longer accurately labeled by outdated danger rankings such as "bronze," "gold," or "platinum." These beasts were something far worse. Far more intelligent. And far more organized.

Ethan's council created the Neo-Bestial Classification Order (NBCO). A codex of tiers, used to rank the threat, intelligence, and mutation grade of these hybrid abominations. It wasn't just about power anymore—it was about potential. Contagion. Technogenesis.

And so, the new system was born.

D-Class: Driftlings

Small, unstable creatures born from residual aether-tech radiation. Often mindless and fragile, they operate in swarms and feed on dead zones. Dangerous in groups, but individually weak.

C-Class: Mutates

Beasts that have undergone partial fusion with machine elements—junkyard predators, rogue mana-spiders, hybrid hounds. Often display basic intelligence, making them unpredictable.

B-Class: Machabeasts

Mid-tier abominations with functioning cybernetic organs and reactive mana cores. Capable of tactical behavior. Often seen controlling smaller classes. Some cities have fallen to these alone.

A-Class: Phageborn

True hybrids. Born not from corruption but design. Sentient, strategic, and evolution-capable. Some were once human, others crafted from forbidden pre-collapse arcano-tech. Each one has unique abilities, often including technomancy or localized reality distortion.

S-Class: Sovereign-Class Entities

Catastrophic entities that have fused with entire server-hives, leyline clusters, or ancient divine machines. Often rule over corrupted regions. Each Sovereign-Class requires a task force to subdue—and in some cases, has never been defeated.

EX-Class: Worldbreakers

The rarest tier. Creatures or constructs that defy categorization—those capable of altering the laws of reality in their vicinity. Only three are known to exist, and their locations are state secrets. Entire cities have fallen in failed attempts to classify or contain them.

This system wasn't just for war. It became currency. Rank. Power.

Taming or slaying higher-tier beasts meant prestige. Access to forbidden knowledge. Citizenship in the new cities. Even favor from Ethan's court.

But some whispered that not all Sovereign-Class beasts were rogue.

Some served Ethan directly. Beasts of crimson design, forged during the long coma when Ethan still slept. Guardians, some said. Others, watchers.

And as the world spun on, adapting, bleeding, evolving… the people of Anbord lived under one truth:

Ethan Smith had not simply saved the world.

He had reshaped it.

And in the age that followed, only those who could survive the Neo-Wilds, master the Arcanite symphony, or tame the new beasts… could thrive.

But as beasts changed, so too did people.

The mutations that followed Ethan's conquest didn't end with the wilds. The very nature of life itself bent. Entire landscapes shifted—some fused with forgotten AI bunkers, others swallowed by mana storms or infected by lingering curses from Luciel's fall. And out of that chaos, new orders rose.

To govern this ever-changing world, where beasts wore metal spines and whispered spells, where spirit and circuitry coexisted, a new system of rule had to be forged.

The Kingdom of Anbord, once a loose coalition of city-states, became something else entirely under Ethan's rule. A singular empire. A machine of power and legacy—streamlined, brutal, and unrelenting. The world no longer tolerated weakness, and only those who evolved survived.

And so, beneath the Nexus Crown, Ethan's Hierarchy was born.

The Emperor sat above all.

Updat𝒆d fr𝒐m freewebnσvel.cøm.

Ethan Smith—reborn in storm and flame, slayer of Luciel, and wielder of the Ancestral Essence—became more than man. Crowned in the Sphere of Accord beneath an eclipse sky, he rewrote the laws of power. He became the center of Anbord's structure, its axis of war and peace, its living myth. He alone could break or bind a world.

Beneath him stood the High Sovereigns—each ruler of a dominion carved from the ashes of the old order. These were not politicians, but conquerors, tacticians, scholars of power. Their provinces bore names like Bloodvault, Asterra, and Vyrenth. They managed planetary-scale defenses, controlled the ley-grid networks, and steered the megacities from orbiting citadels or crystalline spires. Together, they formed the Imperial Circle, the closest voices to Ethan's will.

Then came the steel minds of battle—the Grand Strategarchs and Arch-Marshal Lords. They directed sectors, commanded elite battalions such as the Void Blades, Skybreaker Armada, and the Draconian Wardens. Some walked battlefields wielding techno-spirit armor linked to hundreds of soldiers through neural net-bond. Others planned entire wars in silent thought-spaces measured in milliseconds.

Where law was needed, there stood the High Magistrates and Techno-Judicators. They did not simply interpret law—they were law. Their judgments were final, their minds laced with cyber-psionic implants that let them process truths in ways humans never could. They ruled courtrooms in floating tribunals or flame-lit temples, overseeing even the noble bloodlines when necessary.

But power flowed not just through arms and judgments. The Dominion Lords—noble houses of ancient blood or earned valor—held sway over provinces, floating arcologies, and inner-circle politics. They wore ancestral rings that unlocked forgotten vaults and piloted ships bound to their lineage by spirit-code. Some were allies. Others, vipers in silk.

Beneath them, yet no less vital, rose the Guildmasters and Order Primes—leaders of the Arcanite Guilds, Technomancer Circles, and Beast-Hunting Orders. They shaped young minds and trained elite cultivators in Spirit Sync and Bio-Magitek. When a relic awakened or a Sovereign-Class beast stirred, it was often their students who answered.

Field command fell to the Commanders, Overseers, and the Spirit-Chosen—those granted dangerous authority to lead units into shifting wildlands and dimensional warzones. These individuals often bonded with Draconic Relics or were chosen by the ancestral code of old dynasties, marked by glowing sigils that burned with destiny.

Then came the Knights, Sentinels, and Core Enforcers, the shield-bearers of Anbord. They served in orders—Aegis Blades, Crimson Knights, Sky Sentinels—protecting megacities, safeguarding portals, and patrolling the wastelands. Armed with pulse-forged blades or ancestral beast-companions, they upheld Ethan's law at the ground level.

The soul of the empire, however, remained with the Citizens—from spirit-bonded engineers who constructed living machines, to artificers who imbued armor with spells. Many walked side by side with bonded creatures, from synthetic wyverns to whispering wolves made of stardust and sinew. These were the builders, the dreamers—the reason the Empire did not fall into ruin.

And yet, even in Ethan's empire, not all stood equal.

At the very bottom of the hierarchy, one found the Vassals, Sub-Citizens, and Exiles—those born of conquered bloodlines or stripped of rights for crimes or failure. Many were forced into reclamation squads or lived in broken dome-cities on the fringes of the empire. Others disappeared into cursed zones, never seen again.

Yet rumor held that some returned. Changed. Evolved.

Power in Anbord was no longer simply a matter of blood or coin. It was rank, bond, and capability. It was how deeply one was connected to the evolving reality of the world—a world where beasts could speak through data-screens, where swords carried memories, and where the Empire was both a promise and a prison.

The hierarchy stood not as a ladder, but as a living engine—its gears turning endlessly beneath Ethan's watchful eye.

And somewhere deep beneath the glowing spires of the capital, the Ancestral Core pulsed.

Waiting.

For its master. The one who still slept, going through an evolution of his own.

Very soon.

Ethan Smith, the Crimson Emperor, will awaken.

…

The world shimmered in hues of red and gold, laced with silver veins and drifting rivers of blue light—

A realm where thoughts had weight and silence spoke truths.

There, in the hush between pulses, floated a spirit—formless, endless, watching.

Neither bound by time nor place, it whispered:

"All things return to essence. Even gods fade into breath."