Anxiously, Aza'zel stood his ground with confusion riddling his mind. Then, the drop of blood quivered gently, rushing into his body thereafter. It couldn't detect blood anymore, and it couldn't sustain itself for long in such a dry environment.
Aza'zel felt a rush of pure bloodline power seep into his heart, and then, the blood energy pulsed into his veins with each thump of the heart.
Steam seeped out from his pores and into the air, courtesy of the boiling blood energy that flowed within.
Aza'zel looked down at his hands and clenched them.
The first direction of his first transformation was his physical body through blood energy, and he could feel his body progressing one step further. His talent stemmed from a nine-colored source crystal, meaning that each transformation of his had nine separate levels.
This was also why those with weaker talents would drift further down on the power pyramid the higher their evolution went. The foundations were simply incomparable.
The blood-boiling feeling resumed for a few minutes before it gradually calmed down, and his heartbeat toned down to a normal pace. Aza'zel breathed out a stream of hot vapor, feeling his body lighten.
Nonetheless, he no longer felt safe underground, not while he remained in oblivion to the source of that white noise. Thus, he quickly made his way to find an exit to the surface while scouring the passages for firearms from the deceased ruffians.
While he couldn't openly use bloodline totemic seals, he could definitely make use of modern firearms like handguns, rifles, and the like for self-defense.
While Aza'zel made his way towards an exit, someone else was making their way toward the self-proclaimed manor of the Ribbon Raksha. Wendy Sunflower had a hint of urgency in her dark eyes as she passed the male pets and trained ruffians standing guard by the entrance. She didn't mind the unspeakable obscenities all around since she had long since grown numb to such atrocities.
"I want to see Lady Raksha," said Wendy, her march halted near the front doors to the house. A female attendant who was standing right behind the door heard the request, peeked through the peek-hole, and responded, "Wait a moment, Miss Sunflower."
Wendy didn't mind the wait, as Ribbon Raksha was already expecting her visit. As expected, not too long later, the female attendant escorted Wendy inside.
Wendy noticed that she wasn't escorted into the main bedroom as per usual, but she was brought into one of the side guest rooms. As a suspicious and intelligent woman, she understood the saying that one's habits die hard, much less the habits of someone as influential as a Raksha.
For an influential persona, their every expression and gesture portrays deep meanings, and those close personal aides and attendees memorize these minute signals to the core. Wendy, as a subordinate, is very tentative about these whims and desires, and so she couldn't help but overthink to herself about every little change in the attitudes or behaviors of her superiors.
After a moment of silence, Wendy began to narrate her report regarding the collapse of the old paved path on 7th Street, while also hinting at some conjectures about the young boy who was currently crawling his way from a sewer's ditch hole.
Aza'zel allowed the wind as it carried the noises of the ambiance to fill his world of echoes, slowly depicting a scene of total destruction and disorderly crowd all within earshot.
Almost five days passed since the collapse, and from the countless search teams dispatched after Aza'zel, he was pretty much the sole survivor to creep out from the underground passages alive. However, he knew that something insidious lurked in the shadows, and only a select few had the fortune of prying past the mask of an ordinary town to see the truth. Whatever the truth is.
The breeze in the air relayed a distinct flavor of the cold night to his skin, and when his conspicuous movements were lumped in with odd behaviors of the crowd all around, no one paid particular attention to the young boy climbing his way up from underground. Even the stench which wreathed his figure fit perfectly well with the base smell of these people.
"Old Butch left town, I heard," said one straggler next to a dumpster fire, "A territorial war is coming, everyone wants a piece of old Butch's butchery… I say, we better stay far from 12th, 7th, and 3rd for a while."
"What makes you think staying away will help? These cold-blooded crocodiles can smell ya ass from a couple of blocks away! They'll tempt ya with warm water and loaf, and next thing ya know, you'd be tossin' ya pitiful life away, mate…" argued back yet another straggler. "The whole lot of you don't understand a thing, drunken wastrels!"
"Stop babbling nonsense, if I had the chance to be drunk, I'd never choose to be sober!"
A few of them kept tossing words back and forth, sometimes they'd say something meaningful and sometimes they'd utter absolute nonsense. However, in his patience, Aza'zel noticed that he could piece together the important clues from their slurred speech while filtering out… Well, the unnecessary blabber.
"What happened to Butch?" Aza'zel decided to ask directly after creeping in near the burning heat in the sting of a cold night. Once he got close enough, it dawned upon him how cold his skin was, in sharp contrast with the seething blood flowing within him.
"Some of the stragglers on the edge of town saw the man leaving in a hurry! He scurried away like cats on wet ground, they said!" answered a straggler, subconsciously. Then, he noticed that the spoken sounds were rather young, immature, and unfamiliar.
He snapped his neck to the side, looked down, and peeled his eyes wide open for a closer look. "You… A child? What's a child doing all the way here?!"
This exclamation, for good and bad purposes, eclipsed the chatter in the pitch-darkness of this narrow corner. Pairs of eyes riddled with numerous emotions, both kind and ill-willed, steered to this side be it gradually or snappily.
"Did someone mention food?"
"I think it was Frederick, and he didn't say 'food' you mongrel, the old man said a child!"
"Same thing, isn't it?"
"Well… You're not gonna fight with Freddy over it, are you?"
"Me and Freddy go all the way back, what would you know? I'm pretty sure my old pal can spare me a thigh or a calf."
Aza'zel locked his eyebrows at the rather unpleasant chatter that drifted to his ears.
Meanwhile, Frederick borrowed a lick of light from the weaving orange flames to glimpse under the dark hood of this young boy, and to his utter astonishment, a thick piece of black cloth covered the latter's eyes.
"Can you see through that, boy?" Frederick asked, intrigued by the anomaly so much that he put the urgent matters of his complaining belly to the side.
"Who cares, old Freddy! You must be crazy, talkin' to food like that!"
A decently old yet bedraggled straggler inched closer with a rustic machete in hand, his slouched body and frail arms made it so he could barely drag the weapon on the cold floor as he walked near. Displeased and impatient, and without even glancing back, Aza'zel aimed the muzzle of one handgun through the veil of his raincoat and triggered a shot. Next thing everyone knew, that slouching man's knee was up for grabs, followed by a powerful ring of a bullet that buzzed within earshot.