Chapter 625: A Change
But Atherion had been unwilling to destroy his greatest creation. Instead of putting it to death, he chose to preserve it—freezing the demonic being in a suspended prison deep within the citadel.
A monument to his madness.
A reminder of what lay at the end of his pursuit for perfection.
"This Devil God Transformation and Null Transformation are oddly familiar. In both cases, one would lose their true self... but in the Devil God Transformation, it was instant—the moment they transformed, the human side of them would die. The Null Transformation, however... it could still be controlled, at least for a time," Max muttered to himself, his thoughts heavy as he stood in the eerie stillness of the final stage.
The parallels were too strong to ignore. He recalled what Blob had said—that the Witch of the North once mentioned Ascendants who could undergo the Null Transformation had their physiques altered using just a single drop of blood from Mark.
And the Nulls themselves? Beings birthed from the remnants of Mark’s body after it had been sealed away... That meant every Null, every Ascendant who had undergone that grotesque shift, carried a piece of Mark within them. It explained a lot—the unnatural strength, the overwhelming transformation, the madness. But it also raised a question Max couldn’t shake. What was Mark?
Why did he possess infernal energy so potent that just a scratch of his essence could reforge human physiology? Why was a drop of his blood enough to spark such monstrous evolution? What made him so special? A god? A monster? Or something else altogether?
And then there was the Devil God Bloodline. It didn’t belong among the Four Divine Bloodlines—the blessings passed down from the sacred beasts: the Dragon, Phoenix, White Tiger, and Black Tortoise. Those were hailed as divine, the cornerstones of the Four God Nation.
But the Devil God Bloodline... it was an anomaly. A curse in the form of power. A hunger that twisted the soul and birthed monsters. Where did it come from? What being—what entity—had given rise to it?
"A devil?" Max whispered, brows furrowed. The term ’devil’ wasn’t foreign in Acaris. It was the title given to those who lost themselves in lust for strength, who drowned in blood and madness for the sake of more power—people like Drevon.
But was there something more literal to it? Was there truly a Devil... a real, ancient being whose bloodline had seeped into humanity like a poison gift? If so... how was it tied to Mark? And why did the infernal energy—his infernal energy—resonate so violently with the Devil God remnants?