Chapter 9: The First Transformation.

Saxon expected a reply from Aza'zel, but what he got was something else… Something unexpected. Aza'zel suddenly leaned into Saxon's body, not out of choice, but because he literally went unconscious.

Aza'zel had the naive thought of confronting his demons directly, instead of suppressing them. And so, he found his consciousness inexplicably drawn into a void of total darkness.

He blinked, and the scene changed. An ocean of blood, mirrored by an overcast gray sky. Crimson and gray stretched in all directions, and the ocean beneath bubbled and boiled over, millions of hands reaching through the viscous liquid, confronted by millions of faces peering through the sky above.

Since he could 'see' things clearly, Aza'zel immediately assumed that this was a dream. Only in his dreams would his eyes function normally, or so Rebecca taught him.

In dreams, everything was well within the realms of possibilities.

The faces in the sky and the hands below seemed surprised by the sudden intrusion. Then, they exploded with a riot, their voices like a wall of high-pitch chaos that slammed down on Aza'zel.

Aza'zel didn't shout at them or turn around like he'd used to in the past. Instead, he said, "I can be crazy too…"

As his voice faded, both Soulguider and Exsanguinator took shape in his right hand and left hands respectively…

In no time at all, the world flipped over as a twister pressed down on Aza'zel, shackling him in between.

Saxon was stunned that Aza'zel would simply drop unconscious out of nowhere. That wasn't all, as the young boy's body was heating up quite considerably.

Saxon reached out to lift the hood and cloth to check whether or not Aza'zel was suffering from a fever, as it wasn't normal for someone to drink blood, eat dirt, and seal the deal with loaf bread. However, just as he realized his hand, a person suddenly appeared out of nowhere, their shadow casting long overhead.

Saxon looked up. A woman draped in a long gray raincoat that concealed most of her features, yet highlighted her plump lips, was standing not too far away.

She pointed a finger at Aza'zel and said, "Little Aza needs to rest, I'll return him to you once he wakes up."

Saxon was expressionless, his left eye glowing in the dim grace of the crimson moon as his pupils shifted, stealing a glance at the expressions of his underlings.

As expected, their faces were colored in undisguised shock. Saxon took a deep breath, chuckled bitterly, and raised his hands high. "Sure, sure!"

Saxon didn't even dare talk back, let alone refuse.

This woman was way beyond his abilities, and he wondered if she was on the level of the twelve Rakshas.

Caidie nodded her head imperceptibly, reached a hand to fetch Aza'zel by the arm, and hosted him on her back with a few light, quick, and efficient movements that left no openings to exploit.

Saxon's hand which was tucked away in his pocket from earlier, now its fingers coiled around a sharp shard of glass, suddenly relaxed while sweat poured out.

Her movements left no openings whatsoever, and his senses screamed mortal danger at him the moment Saxon aroused the intent to attack.

When Saxon returned to his senses, Caidie had long since disappeared into the shuffling crowd of people.

His healthy pupil constricted, and he gulped heavily.

"Hey, Sax! What was that all about?"

The girl who just killed Bulldog, with the knife in hand, yelled out with a pale face. Saxon didn't respond immediately, he instead got up to his feet and gestured for her to shut up.

"Let's go!"

His words barely dropped before he walked away.

The girl shrieked, "And the wagon?!"

Alas, there wasn't a response to be heard. Disgruntled, she exchanged glances with the other two, and the trio tacitly hosted as many sacks of loaf as they could in their arms before running after Saxon.

Caidie didn't care about the friends and enemies Aza'zel made in Raksha Town, but she knew that sometimes she must intervene, just like this moment as she leaned into a wall in an abandoned building, her eyes trained on the young boy's exposed chest.

The source crystal was glimmering with faint pulses as the nine prismatic colors were squeezed to the very center, making for a dense point of singularity while a twisting vortex of crimson and gray roiled all around.

Caidie anxiously watched as she muttered, "I can't believe he's already undergoing the first transformation… This must be the hidden potential from the blood sacrifice acting up."

While waiting, Caidie dutifully sat down next to Aza'zel and watched him undergo his first transformation silently. Suddenly, the gray and crimson rays split and introduced a pitch-black glow, overflowing with a dense demonic aura, stunning Caidie.

Before she could react, the darkness expanded, squeezing itself into a region not any less in quality and size to the regions occupied by the gray and crimson lights respectively.

"A third totemic seal!" Caidie gasped, feeling her strength leaving her body.

Just as she was curious about what kind of an ability would this totemic seal grant Aza'zel, the tri-colored vortex calmed down, grinding to a halt.

It reflected a picturesque stillness, a perfect melding of gray, crimson, and black. A miniature world of multicolored rays was compressed to the limits under the pressure of the three totemic bloodline seals.

Caidie blinked.

"What's the meaning of this?" Caidie furrowed her brows and reached towards a scroll parchment by the side, its title read 'Secrets of the Nine Transformations'.

She flipped to the first page and started coursing through the ancient texts. Both Rebecca and Caidie misunderstood that Soulguider and Exsanguinator weren't any ordinary innate totemic seals, but a product brought about by the ancient sacrifice.

Now, just like Caidie, Aza'zel's genuine innate seal started awakening by the age of ten. However, Caidie didn't have the sufficient knowledge to understand the intricacies of this sudden transformation, and so she referred to the parchment provided to her by her mother, Rebecca.

This was meant to serve as a guide, allowing Caidie to slowly guide Aza'zel through his growth as a supernatural being in the future, and she hoped to find some answers to clear her confusion in the ancient text.

"A condensed source crystal is the catalyst for the nine transformations of rudimentary evolution, and they are split into one-color, three-colors, five-colors, seven-colors, and nine-colors crystals. When a body's limit reaches an extreme, the survival instinct establishes the framework for upgrading the body, while the source crystal provides the necessary energy to facilitate the first transformation…"

Her voice was suddenly interrupted as bone-cracking noises echoed from inside Aza'zel. Looking over, a haze of blood energy engulfed the young boy, and his muscles began to contract and expand periodically while drawing in the excessive blood energy.

With Caidie's experience and knowledge, she understood that this was the purified blood energy Aza'zel absorbed earlier on, it's just that she didn't know whether his evolution path after transformation leaned toward the blood path, the soul path, or the demonic path.

Their race didn't have any records of anyone with dual totemic seals, let alone three.

Sighing, she decided to store the parchment away and wait for Aza'zel to awaken, explain the profundities of the first transformation to him, and once again leave him to his own devices after sealing his source energy.