In an empty space, Asur was glowing with a faint red glow while his four Asura marks were shining more brightly. His head was covered in sweat but he could not figure out anything as his bloodline power flooded the four marks.

Eventually he exhausted himself and he collapsed and fell down on his butt huffing.

“What am I doing wrong?” he thought.

This wasn’t the first time, he had done this over the last several hours and the sun had already set and he was simply using fire to light up the surroundings. Even so, he didn’t succeed and only felt his muscles and body ache from being flooded so many times with bloodline power.

He actually thought he had too little power to achieve the ability, which was part way correct. He couldn’t ask the Deva tribe because they were clueless much less the Raksha since they were an enemy tribe.

Laying on the ground, he just thought before his eyes seemed to shine as he remembered someone who could possibly know. He grinned wide and laughed before getting up and cleaned himself up before going back to eat and go to sleep.

The following morning he found Adsila and Shira, “I’m going out alone, I need to check on something.” he said.

“Is it dangerous?” Adsila asked worried. She found that a lot of things he did could involve a lot of danger.

“No, don’t worry. I am just going to meet someone.” He said.

She sighed and Shira patted his shoulder, “Don’t worry about us, now that we have some bone smithy we have plenty of weapons already.” He said.

As he said, Asur has trained several people to smith and in carpentry as well as making many tools they needed with the bone metal including a proper wood planer and many other tools for the job.

“I won’t take long, I’ll most likely be back by sundown.” he said.

“Alright, good luck and stay safe.” Shira said.

“Stay safe!” Adsila said worried.

He smiled and kissed her forehead and went to put his armor on before picking up a quiver with bone metal tipped arrows. He took his bow and spear as well as a short blade and a few other tools he strung on his waist before leaving.

In the wild, his face turned stern as he enhanced his hearing and smell senses and began to run.

His target was none other than the Gate of Evolution. Specifically, the gatekeeper. He knew asking her for knowledge came with a price but he wasn’t so stupid that he couldn’t minimize the price depending on what he asked and how it was answered. Even if he got the full answer and was flooded with bad karma, he would still eventually equal it out because the last month or so he had gone from a few thousand karma and crossed the 70,000 threshold already because he was developing the tribe so much.

His current good karma was 3 times that of his bad karma so he could ‘afford’ the answer if need be.

The trek, which was 20 kilometers from the main Deva tribe, was close to 30 kilometers from the exile village.

His strength was much higher than before so he eventually reached the cave of the gate of evolution with much more ease.

As soon as he entered he was stunned as he saw a few small wooden shacks and some rather skinny and weak people just walking about. There were eight people and they actually had three different types of marks on their body. One of them had Deva tribe marks, two had a strange flower like mark at the center of their forehead and the last five had either faint spots or stripes on their back.

They saw Asur enter and became fearful by his armed appearance.

He looked at them for a while before walking to the gate. “Gatekeeper!” he shouted.

His voice resound and slowly the door gave off a faint glow before small bundles of yellow energy began to form in the air and concentrate into one mass and land forming a beautiful tan woman.

“You’ve returned and in quite a dashing form.” She said before she looked at the weapons and her eyes widened. “As expected from someone born and raised in ‘that’ earth. You actually discovered one of the hidden secrets of this world. Good job.” she said.

“Making metal is simply too important to not develop. Anyways i have a question.” he said.

“You know the price right?” she asked.

“I do.” he replied.

“Good, then ask.” She said.

“I have learned that those of the Raksha tribe among the Asura race have an innate ability to transform into a more beast like form. I also heard the Yaksha tribe has something related to nature or plants, that said I never heard of anything related to the Deva tribe.” He said.

“So you wish to know ‘what’ kind of ability it is?” she asked.

“Would it ‘cost’ too much to know the ability?” he asked.

“Your body would suddenly be flooded with about 100,000 bad karma for this answer.” She said.

“Okay then I will find out myself but how much would it take… hmm, let’s see. How much would I pay if you explained at least the basics of how to activate the innate ability? I don’t need details, only the activation process.” He asked.

“Hmm… that is a much easier question, you will only pay with 40,000 bad karma.” She said.

“Great, let’s go with that.” He said.

“Alright, since you have come you most likely already know that the Asura mark on your body is more than just a mark of bloodline purity correct?” she asked.

“Yes.” he replied.

“Good, the Asura mark is the most important power of an Asura because it contains your innate ability. The activation process is to fill it with bloodline power.” She said.

“I have tried.” he said.

“You most likely tried to fill them all at once but that is incorrect. Every person has a ‘first’ mark followed by the second, third, fourth and so on. You must start from the first one. Also each mark must be full and solid and cannot be faded.” she said.

As soon as she finished speaking, the space around them trembled and black lights began to form and suddenly surged into Asur’s body making him feel very uncomfortable as they entered his body.

“Is that all?” she asked.

“Yes, this is very helpful.” He said.

“Good, also about those people, they came from the lower realm through my gate. Please take care of them, they come from the three main Asura tribes but I doubt you will have many problems with this fact.” he said.

“None, don’t worry i will take care of it.” He said.

“Great, they are weakened so you should probably feed them, they have been living off a few fruits in the surroundings.” She said.

“Can they even understand me?” Asur asked.

“Yes. Those who come from the lower realms through the same gate and were the same race, despite coming from different worlds, will always understand each other as if something translated their words instantly. It’s one of the world's mystical laws to make sure the ones coming up could get some support from those who came before.” She said.

“I see. Don’t worry, i will take them under my wing.” He said.

He thanked her and walked away, her body began to turn into small scattered yellow lights which spread all around and vanished. The eight people saw this and were shocked but as they saw him walked over they went on guard.

“Don’t worry, I’m not an enemy.” He said.

The words were in english and one of them men reacted and smiled brightly.

“You are from earth!” he said.

Asur was surprised, “Are we by chance from the same world?” he said.

“Same world? Do you know what is going on?” he asked.

“Yes.” He said and he sat with the people and explained everything he knew making them shocked.

“T-to think such a thing was possible.” He said. “But if you survived that means you saw what happened to the exploration team? The world was shocked to find a city full of bones.” He said.

“Yes… when my group arrived this door on the other side began to open. I had run far away enough that the demons it released didn’t attack me but i saw the entire scene of the carnage before i passed through as the first one from earth.” He said. “How is it on the other side?” he asked.

“Chaotic, Antarctica was completely thawed out by that door and analysis from the many specialists say that the door was remaking earth’s atmosphere. The giant hole in the ozone layer was completely closed and the pollution in the air was completely sucked up causing a drastic drop in temperature. Nature itself turned rather hectic after that as nature seemed to return to what it was before the industrial era and without the greenhouse gases that built up for hundreds of years the temperature dropped. A lot of empty land which was unpopulated also began to produce extremely fast growing plants from many extinct species and even extinct animals began to appear with the appearance of the forests. It left all the specialists baffled.” He said.

Asur smiled wryly as he heard the chaos going on.

“So you were made to pass the gate to see the result?” he asked.

“No, quite a number passed before me but it had many different results. There was even a very strange event when one of the nicest people I knew suddenly became demon-like.” He said.

“If he became like that it means he was far from ‘nice’, he was cruel and cunning.” Asur said. “Well currently we are the Asura race while our tribes are different but it won’t make much of a difference. Let me go get you all some food and then we can return to my village.” He said.

They were all happy to get food, that said, when Asur returned carrying a massive tiger they were fear stricken. He removed its bones and skin and prepared roast meat.

They all thought it was exaggerated how much he prepared until they started to eat. With eight mouths, the giant tiger was eventually gone and they were shocked at themselves.

“Alright, we will be going to my village, you will all need to learn the language first and foremost because it's a different language here.” Asur said.

They all nod and follow behind him. He had to slow down but like he had said, as the sun was setting, he arrived back at the village.

When they walked in, Shira looked with a frown at the eight behind him. “Who are these people and why are there those of other tribes among them?” he asked.

“Don’t worry about them, they aren’t from other tribes, they only have their bloodline.” Asur said.

“If they have the bloodline of one of them, then they are their tribe.” Shira said.

“No, they are like me. They came from a lower realm.” Asur said.

Suddenly it dawned on him, “Really?!” he said shocked. The barrier between bloodlines shrank since he knew they were not natives meaning they would accept the customs made in their village.

“I will teach them the language so don’t worry. That said, for now let’s make some place for them to rest because it was a long walk.” Asur said.

“Alright, i need to go try something out, just follow him and he will take you to a place to sleep.” he told the newly recruited villagers.

They nodded and looked at Shira. He sighed and waved them, he gave each of them a room while Asur walked to an empty space outside.

“Now… one mark at a time.” he thought before looking at his marks and wondered which was the first one. He could only find out by trying. He started on his left leg.

What he found was, amazingly, a steel hard barrier. Without activating the others the power would not enter. He tried the right leg and found it was weaker but would also reject without the arms.

This proved the arms were the starting point. Next he tried the right arm and there was no barrier.

“Okay, so right arm, left arm, right leg, left leg.” he said, figuring out which came first.

He finally focused on his right arm and began to randomly flow the bloodline power, fully into the right arm mark.

He found that the marks weren’t as simply, when he closed his eyes, he felt like he had entered a separate space. There were hundreds of walls and passages.

He sat there while he used his power to find the way, there were hundreds of thousands of dead ends that filled up as it went but in his mind he began to map the passage instinctively. The shape actually matched up with the mark. He eventually reached an immense bottleneck.

Within his senses he could feel what felt like a bottomless abyss which the bloodline power flooded into. If one compared the marks inner structure, it would make one think of a dam's inner pipes where water was only starting to fill up.

His power kept going and filling. As he did this, his body’s aura began to drastically change. It didn’t go unnoticed because it caused all the warriors to freeze and feel their heart palpitate and look over.

Eventually Asur coughed and stopped. His bloodline power had almost drained to fill that abyss and barely succeeded.

He was able to fill it with all his bloodline power and when he opened his eyes, he found that the asura mark was glowing strongly and it released a peculiar energy back into his body. It was in small amounts but when he stood up, he noticed a very distinct thing. The first was that his armor was small and second, everything else also looked a little smaller. His body didn’t look out of proportion but when he looked around he found that he was taller but only just a bit.

As he bottled up this energy, his body returned to its natural size and found his strength also returned to normal but he could clearly feel that his bloodline power was firmly absorbed into the asura mark’s abyss. Only the part which was along the countless passages returned to his body but that abyss held onto his power and released a different energy that was like bloodline power but more condensed.

Because the others all felt what happened, they were watching and Shira, who had returned, was there to ask, “What was that?” he asked.

Asur grinned, “That is the Deva tribes innate ability.” He said, making them gasp.

Asur told them that only those with solid asura marks could stay and listen. Those who remained, Asur told them about the ability and how they should slowly fill up the reservoir with their bloodline power.

Shira was the first to try. His mark was complete because the exile village used the karma stones unlike the main village.

Soon they noticed a change in his body as it began to expand. They heard popping as Shira opened his eyes and his Asura mark turned from red to a deep blood red and he stood up as his figure began to expand to nearly 230 cm tall with explosive muscles.

“Amazing!” he said, his voice a tone deeper.

“So how was it?” Asur asked.

“There are five abyss, with each one filled up it makes more and more of a strange energy and when the fifth is filled a flow is formed in my mark. Now my bloodline power is flowing naturally into it filling up all the remaining space while this energy comes out constantly.” He said.

The clothing on him had ripped off and he was left with nothing on.

He slowly controlled the energy and returned it to the mark causing his body to revert back to normal.

“Urg!” he suddenly vomited a blob of black blood. Amazingly, his left leg tattoo shined and faintly a tattoo formed on his right arm.

“Your bloodline purified a bit.” Asur said and he saw the transformation. “How do you guys gather bloodline power?” He asked.

“Consuming the blood of other beasts.” one of them said.

That was common knowledge which was why they ate raw meat but now it was different. Blood could be absorbed through the asura mark, with more loss, but less disgusting eating habits.

The habit of bleeding animals has already taken root. Of course, this was for those with solid marks because if it was only half formed marks then it would not work.

Asur nodded and saw the rest of them sitting down. Shira was gripping his hands after his body was improved. He felt very happy and ran off to tell his partner.

Asur returned to his own home and met Adsila with food already cooking.

“What was that strange feeling i felt?” She asked.

“You will know when you use your Karma stone.” He said.

She pouted and gave him a playful punch. “Come eat, the food is done.” She said. She gave him a large bowl filled with the meat stew.

Although it was good, to someone who ate many different types of dishes daily and possessed the mentality of a healthy diet, fruits, nuts and meat everyday did cause one to feel dull. The thing Asur most wished for was some kind of grain, an egg laying beast and fruits made for making juice like lemons.

The fruits he knew were much dryer and smaller. Not to mention the number of seeds they contained inside. Asur felt helpless about this because it was a situation which could be considered, prehistoric. There aren’t a great number of domesticated fruits, of course there are some. For example the ones the Deva tribe have all around their village and is gathered from, they are domestic fruits grown in the wild. Annoyingly though, the exile group didn’t even possess 1/10th of the number of trees of similar fruits and had to satisfy their needs with the wild fruits and nuts.

Although the hunting capabilities of the exiles was much better, the fruit situation was much worse and even worse was the accessibility to water. It was too dangerous to reach the water's edge and it needed a number of hunters and gatherers to work together and fill large pottery pots to get the water needed because it was a water hole which many creatures frequented and so it was also a danger zone where predators waited.

Then, the water also needed to be purified through a series of several boilings to make the sediment sink and to kill the bacteria. Before this they only boiled it to kill the bacteria and didn’t remove the earthy sediment, only after Asur made them do the process to improve water quality did they begin doing this as well as stocking up water. Rainwater was another solution but it is hard to gather that even when it rains every two or three days because there are insufficient rain catching tools.

There was a lot to do and too little manpower to accomplish.

“Is there a lot of gathered beast blood?” Asur asked while eating.

“Yes, there are probably about twenty barrels.” Adsila said.

These barrels were from blood Asur gathered himself and drained from his catch.

He fell quiet and ate calmly and when he finished and stretched, “Help me get those barrels.” He said.

They went out and walked into a room next to their home and they began to move the barrels out one at a time and open them up. The strong iron smell of the blood spilled out but they were used to this smell. He placed his arm into the barrel and his body began to react.

This mark began to activate and the blood began to get absorbed into his body. Very soon the asura mark felt like hot iron and Asur pulled it out and the remaining blood slowly moved into the mark.

He began to process the blood waiting for it to become bloodline power before he redirected the newly made energy into his Asura mark.

His mind reopened the ‘space’ inside and the new vigorous energy surged inside following the path directly into the first abyss. It fell in and quickly filled up the place and began to enter into the next area. The first section also began to fill up as he flooded the energy.

This was Asur’s solution to his lack of Bloodline power which was normally a slow accumulation problem. He would transform beast blood into his own bloodline power using this ability of the Asura race.

He soon ran out as he filled the second section but he didn’t pull back the energy. Instead he began to absorb more energy.

“What is going on?” Adsila asked as she watched him.

“I’m unlocking an ability of our tribe.” He said simply and kept going he filled his body to the limit each time and kept filling his mark.

Soon the energy reached the second abyss which seemed even larger and the flood began.

For several hours he focused on emptying the blood filled barrels. Amazingly he used all twenty barrels to fill his first Asura mark and much to his surprise, when he activated the Deva tribe transformation, he was like Shira, tall and strong but at the same time, when he returned, he vomited a lot of blood.

This blood was not impurities, it was bright red. He felt the reservoirs slowly empty but not because the blood was leaking but because his asura mark was purifying the energy. The proper method of absorbing beast blood is to absorb and assimilate. This would decrease the quantity but increase the quality. Now all five reservoirs were below the limit and he could only sigh at the fact and wait for his body to process that blood so that he could refill it.

He lay down tired and sore.

“Did you succeed?” She asked.

“Almost but i will need more blood because my body is… processing the blood decreasing the amount.” He said and smiled wryly.

What he didn’t know was that he was the only one like that, it required a very high quality bloodline to possess this ability. The quality would be rapidly increased but this caused development to decrease but when the overall power is put into comparison, his power would end up higher but at a higher price.

“Let’s go to bed for now and tomorrow i will go out and hunt for more creatures to finish this.” he said.

She nodded and joined him after cleaning up and putting the barrels away. The bloody smell that lingered didn’t reduce the desire which lit up once the lights were off.