Aza'zel stored the seven evil blood pearls in his bag and looked down at Mask. Her breathing was shallow and slow, while her body trembled periodically as a telltale sign of pain.
Based on the sounds from earlier, two of her ribs were broken, at the very least. Aza'zel thought for a moment and hesitated.
Should he leave her here to die?
The reason Aza'zel detested killing stemmed from his identity as the Disgraced Prince. In a sense, the natives of the lower abyss were his people… his subjects.
Even with his identity hidden, even when they hadn't acknowledged him as their liege, he had long since acknowledged them as future vassals.
As long as he was self-conscious, he would never allow himself to kill one of them. Now, he wondered whether leaving Mask to her devices at such a juncture would mean that he'd orchestrated her death.
After all, heedless of his advice, she followed him all the way here, hence the current situation.
"Well," Aza'zel mulled over things, shook his head, and turned around to leave while muttering, "I guess I'll help you out a little bit."
As he spoke, his blood slowly began to heat up as flickers of crimson flames jutted out from his skin.
The innate ability of the disgraced race— blood ignition. Despite the inhibition of source energy for ten thousand years, this innate ability allowed the members of the disgraced race to continually improve their bodies at the cost of burning their blood energy in cycles.
Now, Aza'zel started igniting the dense blood energy in his body, and this intense vitality quickly spread into the tunnels of the dungeon.
"Although I can't stick around to protect you," Aza'zel spoke to himself for some reason, even though he knew she couldn't hear him. "Proactively offering myself to these pests might as well help you buy a little bit of time."
Aza'zel furrowed his brows, feeling a hint of discomfort in his body as a pang of hunger assaulted him. He knew that since he hadn't satisfied the desire for blood from earlier, and now that he started the blood ignition, bad could only turn to worse.
The gracing light in this situation was that he no longer needed to keep his power as a third transformation stage super being hidden, and supplemented by both source energy and bloodline energy, each step of his weighed heavily on the ground.
Cracks spread from the soles of his feet as his pace picked up to twice the maximum speed of an ordinary human… thrice the speed… and eventually, it was up to nine times the speed of an ordinary human.
His plan for the expedition was simple: the first objective was to collect empty evil blood pearls to exchange for contribution points, and the second objective was to gather the cores of Abominations, consuming the spirit and blood energy within.
One thing Aza'zel overlooked in hindsight was, the threat to humans in the dungeons didn't stem from the Abominations, but from the omnipresent miasma swirling in the air.
These wisps of miasma crawled into Mask's body through the bullet wound while she lay there, defenseless.
But of course, Aza'zel had other things on his mind to care for—he'd already considered himself kind enough not to outright kill this woman, let alone spend his time proactively serving as bait to potentially powerful Abominations.
Well, relatively powerful when compared with the natives who can't construct a source crystal, hence can't internalize source energy and can only influence the source energy within close proximity of themselves.
As Aza'zel advanced, more and more Abominations rushed at him in vain, but he long since stopped using his totemic seals to deal with these Abominations and instead, he was utilizing close-quarters combat.
He could already pinpoint the location of their evil blood pearls that contained the nurtured souls, and hence, their undying attributes were a joke to him.
Limiting the outburst of energy to 10% in his hands, he could easily puncture through their bodies of flesh and energy.
Within close to three hours of advancing, Aza'zel felt his blood energy dropping to a dangerously low level, prompting him to pause the blood ignition and lean against the rocky surface, panting.
His clothes felt damp and heavy with sweat as they clung to his skin. Slowly, he dropped to the ground to sit down, impatiently thrusting his hand into the sack bag and fetched out a pulsing, warm evil blood pearl.
With no one around, he opened his mouth and bit down on its surface, his protruding fangs sinking deep, a suction force working on the energy within.
One pearl after another was drained dry, leaving an empty shell behind where a remnant soul lay therein.
"Hm," Aza'zel seemed to notice the abnormality as he murmured to himself, "I can't directly absorb the soul energy?"
The more he thought about it, the more he understood.
His first, second, and third transformations were related to the physique, prompted by an unquenchable thirst for blood energy, hence his physique transformed toward a direction allowing him to absorb blood energy directly.
As for soul energy, perhaps his body would slowly exhibit signs of similar modifications from the fourth transformation through to the sixth transformation.
Twenty minutes later, Aza'zel had a bulk of thirty blank evil blood crystals. Their membrane surface was smooth and cold, automatically regenerating from the earlier bite marks, leaving behind the original evil blood pearls.
"These pearls should fetch quite a valuable price when exchanged for contribution points," Aza'zel spoke to himself while weighing the bag in his hand.
His blood energy had stabilized by now, and he was ready to continue exploring the dungeon for more prey.
At least in this region, neither the miasma nor the Abominations held any threat to him, a third transformation stage supernatural.
Suddenly, Aza'zel furrowed his brows as he could hear faint footsteps from the direction in which he planned to explore further. He focused on his hearing, but the sound was too indistinct and so, he couldn't rely on his world of echoes to grasp a clear image of the visitor.
He could only open his mouth and say, "Is something the matter?"
His voice rippled out, and in turn, his world of echoes grew clearer in his perception. The person coming over paused after hearing the voice, a hint of surprise in their eyes.
Aza'zel too was a bit surprised as he added, "Sunflower?"
The person smiled while approaching, "It's Thorns now… Lady of Thorns."
Aza'zel nodded his head slightly as he stood up and slung the bag over his shoulder.
Wendy Sunflower, now going by the name Lady of Thorns, trained her enchanting eyes on the heavy bag of valuables for a moment. She was dressed scantily in a set of clothing that exposed her deep cleavage and a sparkling, tri-colored gem embedded in her chest.
Aza'zel's attention was immediately drawn by the pulse of source energy coming from the gem.
"You can feel it, too?" Wendy chuckled, although she wasn't that surprised. She lifted her fair hand and gently touched the source crystal on her chest, feeling exhilarated as she proclaimed, "I condensed it a long time ago… Isn't it beautiful?"