Chapter 144: Race Upgrade!
Blood dribbled down Seth’s lips, his pupils constricted to pinholes as he looked right down at the claw that had shredded through the uppermost part of his abdomen.
If there was any point Seth had ever been closest to death, it was now.
The charm beast? The Earth’s core? Even his unfair encounter with his family’s elders...
None of them had bruised his heart so closely. A familiar chill washed over him.
One he thought he had always experienced, but in truth the closest he had ever come to it was during his savage brawl against the charm beast...
The fear of death! ’I’m going to die!’ This phrase rang in his skull like a mantra.
Kaiden’s lips stretched into a chilling grin, his tail swayed from left to right, his crimson eyes burning brighter.
In his eyes this battle was as good as over. He had won. He had crushed this human. No matter how frightening a threat Seth had posed, in the end Kaiden came out on top.
Feeling confident, he pulled... but his hands refused to budge.
Kaiden blinked, his smile faltering. He looked down on his prey and pulled again, but his hands didn’t move an inch.
Taking his transformation into account, Kaiden and his fellow Bloodborne stood a few feet above Seth and the others.
In every sense of rhyme and reason he towered over Seth, so why did he suddenly feel so... small?
On Seth’s end, the chilling dawn of near death had pushed his mind to the brink.
His mind went blank, and something seemed to snap and shatter within him.
A force of raw, unfiltered torrent of potential descended. His might ballooned, his eyes went white, his pupils fading.
This time he didn’t reach far beyond what he could handle. Since his first gene refused him progress, he would just go with another.
In the depths of Seth’s being — a space that echoed from the past and existed in the present through the genes of descendants — the gene space.
Within the grand darkness of this vast expanse, a row of teeth glistened. "Atta boy! Embrace it!"
And Seth did!
His will burned and flamed, space itself seemed to crumple in his waking presence. The arm within his gut was overwhelmed with this force, smoldering and blistering.
Kaiden hissed from pain. He shed all hesitation, ripping off the arm with his other claw. His leg crushed into Seth’s sternum, sending his chest caving in and his figure flying.
Trails of blood splashed in the air, leaking from his lips, as his body tore through the terrain, skipping and scraping against the earth as momentum slowly died down.
Regardless, he felt none of it. His mind had transcended beyond the pain, beyond the fear!
His human cells stirred with activity, a cadence of royal purple sparking in their depths, flaming through his being.
His body, akin to a black hole, drew and devoured the essence of the world around him. Light around his frame turned murky, space itself warping.
Kaiden felt a tingle down his spine, and instinctively he knew whatever was happening to Seth had to stop — or it wouldn’t bode well for him or his team.
With tactical understanding, all four whipped forward, their frames tearing through space, their crimson eyes leaving streaking lines of red in their wake.
Within split seconds they were already before their enemy, charging various attacks. But the foe that had once been on the brink, his vitality in the red, now radiated a chilling force of vitality beyond anything they had ever seen.
Mind you, the Bloodborne were figures among the myriad earth-native races that boasted the craziest levels of vitality. But today, even they were flabbergasted.
Reality seemed to roil to a slow halt. They felt so fast, yet so slow.
As Seth’s figure slowly rose into the air, purple flickers burned across his body, his cells in constant evolution and adaptation.
And naturally, the human body couldn’t source its growth from nowhere. It had to have a clear source.
In Seth’s current case, it was something he hardly had the time to advance... the Asura body!
His frame ballooned, the skin underneath burned red then purple. From his chest to his arms, a glyph of pure darkness stirred, a pair of crimson eyes snapping open.
A draconic roar peeled through the sky as a torrent of essence rushed through Seth’s frame, revitalizing his waning supply.
"YES, THAT’S IT, CHILD!" a voice thundered in his mind — intimate yet unfamiliar.
His body continued to undergo rapid evolution and adaptation, his Asura body completion rate ballooning so fast.
He felt at the verge of becoming something more, becoming something less human but more defined.
He was truly becoming an Asura in every literal sense.
And that was the true effect of the Asura body, and why the Duskreaver ancestor was so powerful.
We’re talking about a figure who could access a physique rivaling the potential of a titan-class creature while still retaining the overwhelming efficiency in intelligence of the human race.
A creature that broke the balance of power in every scale or margin, overcoming the vital flaw of the human race — being able to access a godlike physique to pair with the godlike minds of the human race.
He had achieved perfection!
It was as though the very world itself held its breath in anticipation, time slowing to a trickle.
The Bloodborne, though moving so fast, could only progress at a snail’s pace in comparison, helplessly watching.
Seth frowned, his will flaring violently with disagreement!
His almost perfected form instantly crumbled back into nothing...
"No! No! No! Child, not now! You will ruin it!" A voice echoed once more. In Seth’s blank vision he could almost make out the silhouette of a robust elder pulling on his hair in frustration.
Seth blinked instinctively. His blood recognized the figure before him — the progenitor.
Any other person in this case, on seeing their progenitor advising them against it, would have halted all resistance.
But Seth wasn’t any other person. He was Seth Duskreaver, and his body was his!
"I am human! Nothing more, nothing less!" he proclaimed to himself, to the progenitor.
"No! Child, don’t be foolish. The human race isn’t perfect. No race is perfect!" The faceless figure’s voice boomed.
But Seth’s conviction never faltered. Older and ancient didn’t necessarily mean wiser.
And in Seth’s eyes, he was perfect. Why did he have to become something else? Why did he have to outsource?
He was human! He was perfect!
His will flamed brighter, branding deeper into his cells, goading them into the impossible.
Right before the progenitor’s eyes, the human cells began rapidly devouring the newly budding Asura cells.
"Impossible!" The figure was ethereal and faceless, but Seth could almost feel the progenitor’s eyes widen.
Suddenly, something he hadn’t seen since their mission began flashed.
A system prompt...
[You have reached the apex! But you still bear the hunger for more!]
[You have seen the end but still wish to go further!]
[Your human cells have undergone a fundamental shift!]
[Congratulations, you have upgraded your race from "Human (Black)" to "Human (Bronze)"!]
A wave of tempest tore out of Seth’s frame. The Bloodborne and everything in sight were swept away, other battles halted.
Brandon and his foes froze, turning their gaze Seth’s way. Same with Jack and Uriel’s newly revived enemies.
Everyone stared in one breath. Far away from Seth, time moved unimpeded, but the closer one got to his frame, the slower reality crawled.
Seth’s armor vanished. His skin, once purple, was slowly encroached by a simmering bronze.
Everyone could feel it — Brandon and the others especially.
A fundamental superiority they never imagined existed. As humans, they could feel the subservience radiating from their own cells.
The inferiority. Their blood echoed. Seth had become something more!
Somehow, Seth had upgraded his race... while still remaining human!
