It was only after a long time that my father finally calmed down. Even though that mad-scientist laugh has stopped, I could see the happiness, bordering on giddiness, on his face. It felt that the emergence of Dragonet in his lifetime means a lot to him than I imagined.

He took a deep breath to calm his roiling emotions, and sat down on a rock at the bank of the lake. I too followed him and sat facing him. I have a lot of doubts and questions that I have to ask him. I am a simple scientist from Earth, so my experience in this kind of things is, let’s say, not too detailed. Even though there were some incidents on Earth on the existence of some supernatural humans, they were very obscure and the reasoning behind them is always vague. Some explanations were religious and even were bordering on insane.

So, the experience of me going through Awakening of Blood Legacy is somewhat bewildering at the same time, exhilarating. This once again proves the fact that this world contains some deep secrets and mysteries. If I can research such existences, maybe they can provide the answers to some of many questions that couldn’t be answered back on Earth.

This incident completely sparked my curiosity and stroked my Scientist heart. It has been a long time I felt this excited. Exploring unknown has always been the lifeblood of those who embark on the path of being of Scientist. A low voice brought me back from these inner thoughts.

“Azalon, it has been a long time since I felt this happy. All those lonely years filled with only hardships left me as a shell, a step away from completely collapsing. It was your mother that brought me back, who showed me love and comfort in my darkest time. If not for her, I would have definitely changed into some blood craving killing machine without feelings of remorse.”

I silently looked at my father as his gaze became distant, as if reliving his past. I could feel his pain and hopelessness from the tone of his voice. I was somewhat in the same position in my early childhood. An orphan who was abandoned by parents in a back alley of a city, growing almost like a beggar, fighting for crumbs and leftovers; it was a life without a thought for future except on next meal.

It could not be called living, just I was not dying. It was dark and lonely till that person came into my life. The only person showed me unconditional love, never thought me as a freak like those around me because of my high intelligence; she was my only motivation in my early days of life. Not like those fawning on me to get into my favor, and raise their status with my influence.

Mother Lily Sebastian… my savior, my guide, my friend, my Mother…

Tears threatened to come out thinking about those moments in the orphan house. But I stopped them from rolling out, because I promised her that I would never cry; that I would always smile no matter what the situation is.

My only regret was that she was not around when I became successful, when all her efforts bore fruit; that I could not payback all she had done for me. She was my guiding light and will always be. The reason why my father respects his Master should also be the same. He was the person who saved him, even though for selfish reasons.

Loneliness; only those who truly experienced loneliness can understand, can truly appreciate the presence of a person they can rely on, even if such person is a criminal or outcast in the eyes of the society.

That is the reason why I did not open my mouth to ask about his past, but instead silently waited for him to recover. Mother always used to say that one’s burdens have to be carried alone; no one can share their burdens with others. So I waited patiently, thinking about my own past life. After a long time, he finally recovered and I could see tears at the end of his eyes. All this time he had a distant look in his eyes, not even registering my presence.

He finally turned his gaze to me, and a smile surfaced on his face. I could feel his gratification in that smile. That smile alone spoke volumes to me that his words could not express. I cracked a smile as a response to his that I understood what he wanted to tell me.

“Alright, enough about me. It was in the past and I decided to let go of my burdens. Now, I said there is another thing that I will give you, once you completed your Awakening. But I never expected that your Awakening will be this strong, strong to the extent of activating the restrictions to be placed on you preventing you from speaking about them.”

He flipped his hand, and a simple black ring appeared in his palm as if from congealed from nothing. I gawked at that. Huh? Is this some cheap trick that some people used to trick children back on Earth? It’s not funny, dad. I am not a child, even though I look like one. But before I could ask, his next words caused my expression to take a complete reversal.

“This ring is an inter-dimensional storage artifact. It was one of the things that were saved from the ancient times when our ancestors were being chased. This is an artifact designed by a Void Master, unlike the storage rings of now a day, designed by Spirit Blacksmiths, and has an unlimited storage space. You can even fit a mountain within it and you could not even fill a portion of the space inside it.”

Inter-dimensional storage artifact? The technology of this world developed to that extent? Such technology was still in research stage back on Earth, and what was more surprising is that this was made around 10000 years ago. Just to what extent did this ancient civilization advance to understand the different applications of Energy to create such artifacts?

You have to understand, I have to spend almost a decade just to create a machine to create a small crack in the space. Moreover, the machine was large enough to fill a room and had to be supplied with huge amounts of energy to activate. But this artifact is a ring, with a separate and stable dimension and works on minute amounts of energy supply.

Thinking about this turned my shock into excitement. If I can analyze the workings of this ring, I can understand even more of the things I couldn’t do previously. If I can comprehend the technique behind this ring, I can create machines from my lab back on Earth with ease. Just the thought almost made me jump with excitement.

My father handed over the ring to me and said,” since you are the inheritor of the Blood Legacy, this ring belongs to you from now on. You have to drip blood on it to become its owner.”

I immediately bit hard on my index finger, and a drop of blood landed on the ring in my palm. The drop of blood spread across its surface and various symbols flashed when the blood passed over them. They immediately dispersed before I could get a look at them and the ring returned to its previous lackluster black appearance.

But I could feel a sensation at the back of my mind, linking the space in the ring to my consciousness. I bent down to take a pebble and imagined it to be stored in the ring. The pebble vanished from my hand but I could feel its presence in my mind. With a thought, the pebble once again appeared in my hand. I played with the ring for a couple of times, before my father interrupted with a small laugh, before turning serious.

“Alright, Azalon. You can play with it later at home. Listen to me. The time it took for your Awakening is about a month, and the Inheritances you received are powerful as well. As per my father’s words, normally, it takes around 3 hours and at most it takes around 10 days for the Awakening. And the descendants that undergo Awakening are young ones of more than 10 years of age.”

“But you are only 2 years of age, and the Inheritances are powerful, so your body cannot bear the burden of the Inheritances. So, you have to take some time for the body to adjust to the Inheritances and stabilize before you can start cultivating. In the beginning, I thought to give you a week or two, but with the current situation, I am prohibiting you from cultivating for 6 months. Only after 6 months can you start cultivation and that too under my supervision. Understand?”

I was engrossed on the ring as I heard these words. They felt logical to me, as the human body is inherently of weak physical constitution, not to mention my current body is only 2 years old, so I too felt it was a good idea to let my body adjust to the large changes. I nodded my head in agreement with my father’s words.

But half a year huh? What should I do in that time? Hmmm, that’s right. I smiled as a couple of good ideas popped up in my mind. The next day, we started our journey back home, as it was almost night fall making the journey dangerous. It took 3 days before we can see the outlines of the city gates, and we silently walked to our mansion. My family had our dinner that day in a very happy and relaxed atmosphere...