“Open the gate!” a shout came from the exile village gate. The gates slowly opened and shortly after a massive body slowly walked in. The legs weren’t of beasts but of man.

Asur was holding two massive bodies over his head which left others trembling.

Shira was outside when they saw him walk in. His face twitched upon seeing the captured prey. “My brother, your hunting abilities truly are amazing.” He said as he looked at the beasts.

What was over Asur’s shoulders were nothing less than the same creatures that Baal had solo hunted except Asur had hunted two of these beasts at the same time while using his wits and strategies as well as his own power.

In the last week he had worked a great deal because he found his body was different from others.

He found out that the others of the tribe had a faint reduction of blood power in their asura mark but it didn’t even equal 10% and it only improved the quality by a small bit. That said he was different, he directly used beast blood which was transformed into bloodline power and his Asura mark seemed to process this by a great deal and left only 20% of the energy in his body.

Of course that was under normal situations. If he hunted a very powerful monster, in other words an animal with a pure bloodline, the rejected bloodline power would be smaller. That said, he was unable to hunt them because he couldn’t achieve the complete transformation of the Deva tribe yet.

“These two aren’t really that pure blooded.” He said.

“These are still saber horned beasts, an adult couple at that.” Shira said.

Asur smiled before dropping them with a rumble before his body almost collapsed. Although he hunted them, it wasn’t easy. The horns of these Saber horned beasts were sharp. Different from the rounded rhino horn, these saber horned beasts had a wedge shaped horn with the front side having a sharp edge. This horn had almost hit Asur several dozen times and it caused much debris and other such objects to smash into his body. His body was bruised and bloody.

“ASUR!” Adsila shouted when she came out and saw him.

She ran over worried but he just smiled and patted her head, “Don’t worry, just a few hits and cuts.” He said.

She was incredibly worried and made him sit down before going to get some medical paste. He covered his most dangerous wounds to activate his body’s abnormal healing ability and made him drink some healing tonic.

He felt warm with her care.

“So what do we do with them?” Shira asked.

“Cut the horns at the base and bleed them, I took a long time to hunt them down because they have a slightly better bloodline to the common Saber horned beast. Although it's not by much, their horns are harder so I want to try making some swords.” He said.

“How much of your mark have you unlocked?” Shira asked.

“After I pulled back all the bloodline power, I only had the first two sections filled.” He said.

Shira was amazed by how much bloodline power he had to invest. It should be known that Asur had already gone through forty barrels of blood to fill these two reservoirs. In return, the energy he obtained which was released from the Asura mark was much purer. They tested it out, the energy he had was already equal to the other hunters even though he doesn’t have a full transformation because of the purity of the remaining bloodline power and the resulting energy it produced.

By the time Adsila finished mending him, the two Saber horned beasts had finished being bled. Even though these beasts were elephant sized they bled out relatively fast and from the looks of it, the blood also matched near what the earth elephants had. In this case, 10% of their total weight is equal to how much blood they have.

As such, the two elephant sized rhino beasts each weigh 4 or 5 tons each, this is between 3,500 to 4,800 kilos. 10% of this would be around 300 to 400 kilos worth of blood, which is a very large amount. 1 liter of blood is 1.04 g/cc. As such 300 kilos of blood is a little over 310 liters of blood.

With the common 50 liter barrels he personally made, more than 10 barrels were filled up after bleeding the bulls.

Then the male butchers came in after dropping them and began to hammer the nose while another held a bone metal wedge. One unique ability of bone metal is that after being forged, it becomes twice or even three times harder, at least it did when Asur forged it by hand with just simple refining.

“That is a lot more blood than i expected.” Asur said and felt the power coming from the fresh blood.

“We thought the same.” one of the men waiting to butcher the corpse said.

Bang! Bang!

The sounds of the hammering was loud but the horns were much harder than the common bone they had worked with.

After a bit they men growled in anger and they both suddenly began to glow and suddenly their size quickly increased. If not for the fact they were only using baggy leather pants, their clothing would have been ripped to pieces.

“HA!” The hammer swinging one said as a strong red glow covered the hammer. At the same time the one holding the wedge covered the wedge with his power.

BOOM! Crack!

With one strike, a glaring crack formed on the horn. With a second hit the horn was broken off. The second horn went faster and they were soon presented to Asur.

“Are you going to make two blades with this?” Shira asked looking at the pieces.

“No, I am going to make only one blade.” He said and put the two horns standing and pointed to the longer and thicker horn from the male. “This one is bigger and tougher but not as flexible while the other one is softer since it has suffered less battle and wear. Frankly, the horn of the female Saber horned beast is fragile for their race but for what I want to do, it is perfect.” He said.

Shira doesn’t understand forging so he just nodded. Asur could only smile wryly and get Adsila to help him with the forging. The skin was given to the tanners, the bones were gathered for him and the meat was distributed.

“Alright Adsila, we are going to forge a very long sword.” He said.

“Okay.” she said, she had a curious expression as she looked at the two horns, “Why do you need two horns for one sword?” She asked.

It had to be known that the horns were a little longer than her own leg.

“It’s because of how we will make the sword, it is called a heavy sword. It’s not normally made like this but it's just a trial. You see, we are going to make this harder bigger horn a kind of… shell while the smaller one will be made into a shape to fit inside.” He said.

“Why?” she asked, confused.

“It's because the smaller horn is softer and can absorb the impact better than the bigger one.” she said.

“Ah!” Adsila exclaimed understanding. “Alright! I get it!” She said getting pumped to help.

“Good because I will need your help with this.” he said.

He put the two horns into the forge. The initial heating was, in Asur’s eyes, the most important. This was because it removed all surface impurities and activated the special energies in the bone which starts to crystalize and expand the minerals.

Asur sat in front of the forge and watched until he saw the softer horn reach the proper heat and the skin burned off. Soon it was glittering just as the larger one began to burn.

He took the smaller of the horns and lifted his hammer covered in bloodline power and began to pound it.

Soon he began to fold it and harmonize the shape. He placed it back in the fire after folding it twice to get it into a longer form by folding at the half mark and then along the long side like a hotdog.

He did the same thing with the other horn and kept alternating as their heat reached the required heat and kept folding with Adsila’s help until it was a perfect ingot of bone metal.

He then began to shape the softer one into a bulky sword shape before putting it to fire and took the other one.

This one he flattened out, “Adsila, now, help me, put the wedge at the middle!” he said and she took a wedge tool and he began to hammer a line along the center before hammering that wedge closed and formed a V shaped piece of metal. He had Adsila hold it and took the other piece and put it into the space and had her hold it while he hammered it into the space and then began to forge it merging the two pieces. The large amount of extra material was hammered and expanded the weapon into a large and heavy sword which seemed exaggerated for human use.

That said this wasn’t without careful thought from Asur. This was because he was taking into consideration his transformed size. He grew twice his own size and his strength increased by a huge margin so they needed armor and weapons to properly match that size.

He was actually planning to make a special heavy plate armor which was made so that when he grew, the loose links would allow the armor to move out of the way and plates which overlapped the armor would fall into place that would normally become exposed. He was still in the design phase and was experimenting so he didn’t have armor for hunting like that.

He continued to forge the heavy sword he wanted to use when he finally achieved full transformation.

When he finally finished, it was night time and he went to the barrels of blood and absorbed them before heading to bed as his body refined that bloodline power which now filled the third reservoir but was being processed at a slow rate.

***

Two days of hard work, Asur had finished the blade of his sword and another day to finish the handle completed the basic form of the sword.

He sighed after reaching this point and chose to relax because today was an important day for their village.

This is the day all the authorized people would be allowed to use Karma stones to purify their bloodline.

This goes back to when Asur first joined. He openly explained the blood purification festival to the exiles who were shocked and disgusted by the ritual and it was also when he gave a brief statement which allowed him to tell them that he could tell them when they could use the stones.

After a few months of experiment with the stones themselves and they figured out more or less how they were used.

First off the amount of karma needed isn’t fixed. Instead, it depends on the bloodline purity. In this manner, the more pure it is, the more karma required, which is reasonable.

This was obviously tested on the villagers. Those with only a faint mark need a minimum of 10,000 karma of either type to activate the stone. On the other hand, those with one solid mark needed over 50,000 karma of either type to activate.

Above that, it was currently unknown but Asur thinks it's around 200,000 but since no one had that much Karma he couldn’t tell. As for himself, he really had no idea.

Today was the day only for those who didn’t have a complete mark. Asur wanted to elevate the quality of the entire village’s people. This actually included the outcasts who were still not so open but they were depressed when they heard about the blood purification ritual they once believed in. More of the younger ones among them were a bit more open and were doing the Karma stone festival they were doing.

“Greetings to all, today we shall do the first of many Karma Stone Festivals. This, just like what the Deva Tribe wishes with their bloodline purification ritual, we will purify our bloodlines but unlike them, we shall use our own karma for ourselves. One can only think of crossing the Gate of evolution when you have the power and intelligence to gather karma to cross its threshold. Now come forth the ones chosen to take your first step!” Shira said as the one hosting and doing the ‘formal’ announcements.

A number of outgoing men and women from the exile group and a few younger teens among the outcasts walked forward.

“Prepare your karma stones.” He said.

They all extracted a stone the size of their pinky digit.

“Good, be aware this is many times more painful but the returning power is many times greater.” Shiva said. “Now place the karma stone upon your Asura mark!” he ordered.

Everyone watched in anticipation. Adsila was at the front and Asur was next to Shiva and had a clear view of his partner.

As soon as the stone touched the mark, the dull glow became very strong and the stone began to melt.

Everyone saw this and became excited as they watched it liquify and enter the body through the mark.

Slowly the air began to tense and soon all of their chests began to shine. It wasn’t completely like the gate of evolution where the life seed comes out but it does react to the karma stone. Suddenly karma began to materialize around each of them and they began to feel weaker. The karma flowed out of their body and into the glowing space in their chest where the life seed resided. It kept going for a short while before all their karma was consumed.

WOO!

Suddenly the light expanded and there was a faint shockwave. The light began to surge through their veins and all of them began to thin out but with that also came the cracking of their bones and they all began to collapse.

“AHHH!” they all began to shout and roll as the energy began to invade their muscles. Like with Asur’s evolution, it began to kill and expel the bad cells and began to multiply the good ones. It all slowly came out through their skin as a thick sludge while the blood was growing thicker and their organs were burned with the new and powerful energy coming from the life seed.

Those with much more Karma would obviously ‘grow’ more. Like Adsila, she had enough to do two karma stone rituals but it was done at once. Not only was her body undergoing a cleansing, it was actually advancing much faster compared to the others who had only some 20 or 30 thousand.

Soon, everyone saw their Asura marks solidifying making those watching cheer but what was amazing was when they saw some of the people even start forming their second one. The faint outline formed and suddenly all of them opened their eyes and coughed before turning face down and vomiting a large blob of black blood which was the impure blood and cells from their organs. This happened several times before the blood was a dark red and their bodies finally stopped ejecting all that blood.

Still their muscles were still undergoing the process as was their bones and one could hear the cracking and popping.

This part went on for several hours and the bad cells were ejected through their skin leading them to having a very horrid appearance. Only when they finally collapsed and their breathing stabilized that they knew it was done.

Those there cheered and took their loved one to wash with the prepared water and others cleaned up the blood and filth in the area.

After they were put to rest, the hunters and remaining gatherers all spread out to go hunting but as Shira was walking out with the hunters and Asur behind him they all stopped because of what was in front of them.

Standing close to 50 meters away were a group of beings who were not human but had parts of humans. They looked like a lamia, half human and snake and behind the group of twenty lamia-like creatures was a large short legged snake. It was unknown if it could even be called a snake since it had two arms and legs but since it was moving still on its stomach and used the legs to aid its movement and had a snake head it could be called a serpent at least. This creature had many bags and baskets making it look like a cargo beast.

Asur narrowed his eyes and moved to grip his staff but Shira lifted his hand, “Don’t worry, they aren’t… totally enemy. This is a travelling merchants group from the Naga race.” He said.

“Isn’t it lamia?” Asur asked.

“No, lamia are a female only tribe in the Naga race who use other races men to breed. They are a special tribe but similar to the Asura, there are many subgroups.” Shira explained quietly.

Although it was said like this, it did not calm Asur down in the least. Shira walked forward and the leader of the group also came forward and stopped a dozen meters forward.

“Greetings friend of the Asura.” it said in a rough asura language.

“Greetings friends of the Naga.” Shira nodded, “You have come earlier than expected.” Shira said.

“Danger lurks in depths. Four tribes gone.” He replied.

Shira put on a troubled expression making the Naga smile, “Bring scavenge and tool.” He said.

“Like always we don’t have much trade.” Shira said.

“We need… medicine.” he said.

Shira sighed and told the men to withdraw into the village and the caravan drew near but stopped 20 meters from the village and were ready to defend. The few true merchants brought out the baskets of goods.

Asur looked from the wall while Shira was next to him waiting for the bundles of medicine to be prepared.

“What kind of situation is this?” Asur asked.

“The Naga race have a nation deep in the forest, they are a powerful race but not much different from the Asura who we came from up north. These caravans are simply ‘watchers’ to check the borders.” He said quietly.

“I see. How strong are they?” Asur asked.

“Look at their tail…” Shira said and Asur did that. He saw that there were circles in the scales. “The circles are the Naga Mark. It is similar to the Asura mark for us and it contains their racial powers. The purer the bloodline, the more rows of circles they have. It is said that the royal Naga have a golden circle at the center line while having the power to command every tribe of their race.” he said.

“The Asura have none of this?” Asur asked.

“I wasn’t raised in the nation of the Deva tribe so I wouldn't know. That said I believe the three biggest tribes protect a gate of evolution but aren’t united.” He said.

Asur shook his head but stayed quiet. The medicine paste bundles soon arrived and the women began to barder and choose some relatively cheaper items among the rarities of the deep forest.

When the medicine trade was done, there were also Deva tribe fruits as well but the fruits weren’t as important and could only get much less trade and only in baskets.

What came in return were special herbs which can make special kinds of medicine but these were taken to be replanted to grow more.

Eventually all the trading was done and the Naga left.

The tribe remained for a while before going out to hunt.

In the travel caravan, the trade leader who spoke with Shira walked over to the leading warrior.

“So what do you think?” He asked in his native tongue.

“From what i saw, their numbers have greatly decreased. It also seems something happened with a lot of their women and even more of their hunters. From the damage visible on their walls, it seems they suffered great damage but their weapons seem better than before.” he replied.

“Having better weapons and fewer people doesn’t mean anything. This is good, it seems these savages aren’t growing and are actually growing weaker as time goes back.” he said.

“That is indeed true, we can report to the lords that the north possesses no true dangers anymore with the destruction of the villages further in.” He said.

“Good, we also don’t need to return to this backwater shithole through mud and beasts anymore. We can give this to some of the poorer bastards who are competing with me.” He said with a sneer.

The men laughed happily that they didn't have to come up north anymore and they vanished into the woods.

Back at the village, the hunters eventually began to arrive with a few prey caught and several groups who went closer to the Deva tribe to pick lots of plants and fruits to help their own recover. Because it was closer to night, there were much less people so it was done relatively secretly and quiet.

By the time the villagers woke up, hungry and weak, the food was finished and they had a big festival for the awakening of their bloodline and improving the strength of the village by another notch, completely unnoticed by their many enemies all around them.