The stone forest moved as if something had awakened from the mouth of an abyss. The air, which had been still moments ago, now roared like a blade cutting the sky, and every rock, every trunk, every grain of dust trembled from the intensity of the aura bursting out from Ashen's body.
After the members of the Corpse Purification Faction vanished inside the blood vortex they used for teleportation, a terrifying silence spread…
A silence that did not resemble calm, but the moment before a beast opens its jaws to swallow the world.
Ashen stood firmly among the stone ruins, his body still releasing red smoke like burning sparks from the previous blood transformation. In that moment, he felt something collapsing inside him…
Veins tearing… bones cracking… his heart beating like a war drum.
He muttered in a low, cold voice, as if speaking from between a beast's fangs:
"I have one minute before my body collapses completely… but my current power cannot match that person…"
A short silence, as if he was making a decisive choice:
"…If I use that technique, the minute will shrink to ten seconds, but that time must be enough."
He knew his current body could not endure his power anymore and would fall apart, but he also knew that if he did nothing in these few seconds, he would be crushed by the demonic imperial guard… that monster who was still standing despite the injuries, despite being blasted earlier through a crater three hundred meters wide.
But before the guard moved…
Before he even breathed…
Ashen shouted:
"Absolute Beast Body — Activate!"
The sky exploded.
More accurately:
The savage intent exploded across the surroundings until the entire stone forest began to boil with a strange heat, as if someone had poured a sea of boiling blood over the stone trees.
The color of the world changed.
There was no green or gray anymore…
Everything turned into a dark crimson, like the inside of an ancient volcano about to erupt.
Suddenly…
The space above the stone forest shuddered.
As if a curtain of beastly mist had torn open, and beneath that layer, something appeared… something that did not belong to this world.
A giant creature…
Savage…
Primordial…
Its features impossible to describe, as if the eyes refused to understand them.
A blurry form, but you felt it had horns, claws, wings, or maybe none…
As if its shape changed every second.
Its appearance did not matter…
What mattered was the terror.
The presence of that entity covered everything.
It was not just an aura… it was existence itself.
A presence that made the soul tremble and the blood surge.
Its aura was like a silent scream tearing through the sky and the entire continent.
On top of a strange black mountain, an old man with white hair, his cultivation level unknown, was meditating in silence.
Suddenly he froze.
Sweat trickled down his forehead despite the coldness of the place.
He muttered with fear unworthy of his strength:
"What… is this? This is not a beast… this is a calamity."
In the imperial capital, thousands of kilometers away, the high elder of the imperial city was training inside a lake of boiling blood.
She lifted her head suddenly, her demonic eyes narrowing.
"A power that no human on this continent should possess."
In the Sacred Blood Temple, one of the strongest temples, dozens of ancient statues stopped moving for a full second, as if time stumbled.
A monk fell to his knees, shouting:
"An aura… the aura of a creature beyond classification… where did it come from?!"
Everywhere on the continent, only the strong sensed it.
The weak fell to the ground without knowing why, struggling to breathe, as if a giant beast had placed its foot on their chests.
But beyond all of them, a man who looked in his thirties, with crimson hair and an overwhelming presence surrounded by a wild and bloody aura, muttered in shock:
"This savage intent… this is impossible. No one at the ninth level exists on this remote continent… No, this is not like my own savage intent. It is stronger… impossible… could someone on this barren continent have reached the absolute classification? I must find him."
The giant creature lifted its head and released a silent roar…
A roar that tore apart the souls of all who sensed it.
Then…
It sank into Ashen's body.
No, not a normal entry…
But a savage fusion.
Everything around Ashen within a range of hundreds of meters was destroyed completely.
The ground cracked.
The stones shattered.
The stone trees broke like scratches on glass.
Even the air turned into burning smoke.
And from within all that…
Ashen emerged.
But he was not the usual Ashen.
Not the previous beastly Ashen.
Not a human.
His height returned to one meter eighty… but he was no longer human.
His body turned into a crimson mist, as if made from a liquid flowing from another world.
His aura… an aura that cannot be described.
An aura that destroys the will before the body.
Just looking at him caused fear, madness, and the instinct to flee or die.
The demonic imperial guard, despite his immense demonic transformation, froze.
His eyes widened in shock for the first time.
This creature…
This form…
This power…
Even his demonic body, which had been dark and solid, trembled.
Ashen did not move.
He vanished.
The place where he stood…
Exploded.
The ground instantly sank one hundred meters, as if a giant pit had appeared in a single moment.
Dust rose like a column of red smoke.
In the next moment…
Ashen appeared behind the guard.
The guard did not even understand how he got there.
One strike.
But it was not a strike — it was a compressed massacre.
The air itself tore apart, the rocks turned to dust, and the guard's chest exploded backward as if a mountain had hit him.
He was thrown far away…
A full kilometer.
His demonic body, once invincible, was now torn, broken, deformed.
Ashen did not wait.
He did not breathe.
He did not make a sound.
He vanished again.
He appeared above the giant monster restrained by the talisman the guard had placed earlier.
The monster trembled violently, its giant vertical eye moving left and right, unable to understand what was happening.
The demonic imperial guard shouted, despite his injuries:
"Amazing… amazing, boy. You are beyond every expectation!"
Ashen only gave him a cold, emotionless look that could not be seen beneath the thick savage mist filling his being.
The guard raised his hand, releasing a destructive attack at the talisman.
He tried to stop Ashen, but the result was disastrous:
The talisman exploded.
The massive blood sword embedded in the monster's chest flew away.
The giant monster roared, and a huge wave of black blood burst from its body.
But Ashen did not flinch.
He grabbed the monster by the neck…
Lifted it like a child, despite it being dozens of meters tall…
Then vanished again.
Ashen appeared before the blood disk left behind by the leader of the Corpse Purification Faction.
The disk was shining faintly, losing its energy.
But Ashen did not hesitate.
He shattered it with one strike.
The disk exploded into fragments, and the fragments turned into thick blood smoke that wrapped around Ashen and the giant monster.
Red light filled the place.
The air seemed to burn.
The rocks trembled.
Time itself felt slower.
Ashen, with his crimson mist body shaking from the power, did not look back.
He did not look at the demonic guard running desperately toward him.
He lifted his head, his eyes burning like two embers, and looked toward the imperial guard.
The guard shouted:
"Boy, our battle was the most enjoyable thing I have experienced on this continent… You should be grateful that I did not kill that giant monster. Consider it a kindness from me… You also know that if I wanted to kill it, I would have done so in the first strike."
Ashen spoke, his voice cold and cutting through the soul:
"Then why didn't you kill it?"
The imperial guard said:
"You, boy… I spared it for your sake… I want you. A talent like yours must join the imperial family… stand by my side… This continent cannot contain talents like us, boy. I owe the imperial family of this continent, and that is the only reason I am still here… I want you beside me.
The entrance tests for the higher sects and the Imperial Academy will be in six months… Make sure you join the academy… or I will search the entire continent to find you. Someone like you must either be an ally or not exist at all… remember that well, boy.
In six months, I must see you in the academy, or it will be your end… even this last transformation will not save you."
Ashen did not answer. Only silence came from him.
The ground broke beneath his feet,
and the red light swallowed everything.
Teleportation began.