After Fay had his first experience with the short bear like creature his power had grown to that of a mid-level rank one magical beast. After Pax carried him back he awoke on Pax's enormous featherbed. Although he tried to move he couldn't because his arms and shoulders were wrapped in bandages.
After he had finally healed he noticed he had indeed become slightly stronger and faster but not enough to greatly impress. If he was to fight a warrior the same age as himself he would likely be beaten half to death.
For the next three years Fay was constantly out hunting and devouring rank one magical beasts. However despite his initial jump to a mid rank one in power he has been stuck at a bottleneck keeping him from getting to the second rank of cultivation since he was eight, one year earlier.
Today Fay had decided to give himself a break from fighting to the death with wild beasts. He was laying on his back floating in middle of the bottomless lake as he stared at the distant azure sky. He couldn't help but feel like a frog in a well. He loosed a sigh as he closed his eyes. Letting cool water simply soak his body he finally seemed to relax for the first time since he first killed.
The tension from constant battle had long since honed Fay's instincts as well as always keeping him alert. However in this moment when he let his body release this constant physical and mental tension the passive absorption of natural essence seemed spike causing large clumps of energy to rush into his body with no prior warning.
At that moment Fay opened his eyes before his entire body began spasm and thrash about in the water. The enormous spike of natural essence despite helping him finally reach rank two power could very simply kill his weak nine year old human body. His skin began peel and shred, Fay was now completely cover in blood as he began sinking into the bottomless lake. He couldn't even struggle to stay afloat as his entire body spasmed.
He could easily explode from the overwhelming energy trying to force itself into his body. It's at this time when he sank at least twenty feet and with no air in his lungs his consciousness began to waver. All Fay could see before his vision faded was dark figure diving towards him from the surface.
Pax dragged Fay lifeless body onto the rocky shore of the lake before immediately laying him on his back before pushing on his chest in an attempt to expel the water from his lung. One couldn't help but want look away from Fay if they had saw him, his entire body was covered in blood making it almost look like crimson was his skin color to begin with. Eventually Fay opened his eyes weakly as he coughed out a mixture of water and blood.
With his consciousness finally returned to him Fay finally felt the full brunt of the pain washing over his body, an indescribably torturous pain that covered every inch of his person. He let an inhuman howl as he thrashed about on the rocky ground. Pax standing over him didn't know what to do, he could only observe and hope Fay didn't die.
While flailing about on the ground Pax's muscles began convulse and noticeably enlarged to nearly double the size of earlier. His bones began to crack and break under the constricting force of his own muscles, he felt his own body was a cage. As the bones broke they constantly reformed and elongated. The feeling of having one's vertebrae shattered only to be repeatedly regenerated then broken again was especially indescribable for Fay.
Fay had noticeably grown a whole foot taller with sturdy and sleek muscles. Around this point where his muscles stopped convulsing is when all of his dark hair began to fall off of his head in large clumps and his nails slowly peeled off. Then his skin started to grow back however it was still covered by a layer of blood followed by new strands of snow white hair began to grow from his head replacing the old as it was long enough to fall to his shoulder.
As his hair and skin started to regrow Fay turned himself over so he was on his on his hands and knees. He began to throw up what was in his stomach along with lots of blood, even his internal organs were displaced. He clenched his fists in pain as new nails began to grow on his has hands they grew to a point curving downwards slightly, resembling talons. His hand began to drip blood onto the ground as his claws dug into his palm.
Fay's eyes began to dilate as his dark green eyes seemed grow brighter almost becoming a neon green and release a pale green light before finally falling onto the rocky rocky ground.
Pax seeing this bloody and disgusting transformation couldn't help but frown because he couldn't understand it. And the biggest thing he couldn't understand was that Fay's level of natural essence before the transformation was completed was equivalent to that of a peak rank two magical beast. However once this metamorphosis was over Fay's level of natural essence his body plummeted down to the equivalent of a magical beast that was just born and just started to absorb natural essence into its body.
If one wanted to describe Fay's new form one would probably think that he was certainly more beast than man yet more man than beast. It is for this reason one could easily describe that transformation with one word: rebirth. On that day Fay was reborn, becoming something not human or magical beast.
When Fay awoke he was sitting in a wooden tub full of murky water the layer of blood long since washed from his body. The first thing he noticed was that his body felt almost out of place due to the fact that he suddenly grew a foot taller than previously. He suddenly stood up trying to get out of the water after sensing his bodily changes however he was used to be a foot shorter so he tripped out of the tub hitting his head on the floor.
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Hearing a loud crash Pax opened the door to the washroom only to see Fay sprawled out on the floor. Although initially careless Fay realized that even if it's a bit bigger it's still his body so he used his sense of touch to reassess his balance as he got off of the floor. Pax couldn't hold it in any longer as he let out a burst of laughter. Hearing Pax's laugh Fay couldn't help but become a little indignant as he yelled: "Shut up! It's not like I asked for this!"
Hearing this Pax immediately silenced himself. He let out a deep sigh before responding to Fay's anger: "Yet in the end you really did ask for this, did you not? I have told you before that no human has ever tried the Devouring Method of cultivation before, this was simply inevitable with your previously weak body. Your result based on my thinking is actually on of the more desirable, if anything had gone wrong your body could have easily been torn apart from the inside causing you to explode."
Hearing this simply made Fay angrier as he roared at Pax: "Then did you know this was going to happen! Were you simply waiting for my body to simply explode into tiny pieces so that you can munch on my bones!?"
Pax shook his head partially ignoring Fay's harsh words then simply shrugged his shoulders before blandly replying: "Nope, I had no idea this would happen, didn't really think about it."
Hearing Pax say he 'didn't really think about it' only helped to fuel his misdirected anger. Right at that moment Fay was angry and he truly felt rage at seeing Pax's face. He wanted to leave this place simply to get away Pax at that time. He swallowed some of his rage before stating: "I'm leaving."
He walked out after putting on some loose rag-like clothes that were sitting in a basket off to the side of the room. When Fay left Pax let out a sigh before whispering to himself: "Well, he is still but nine years old... a little tantrum now and then should be quite average."
After Fay walked out of the house he directly left the mine before heading east, towards Sky Dragon Road. He wanted to get used to his new body and let off some steam.
As Fay was walking he noticed that the moon was in the sky, yet he could see everything as if it was day. His ears twitched as they heard sounds of movement from over hundred feet ahead. His nose could now pick up smells unlike before. Fay crouched down to hide in the grass before swiftly moving towards those sounds and the scent of burning wood.
When he was finally within about thirty feet of his target he saw them. People, this had been the first time he had seen real humans that he could remember. The group of people formed small caravan with ten wagons which were off to the side of the main road. Only what confused Fay was that seven of the wagons were open and had inch thick iron bars lining the outside. What really startled him was that within these carts were other humans. They all wore dirty rags and were bound in shackles. They were all crowded into the carts, about twenty individuals per cart, and could hardly move or breathe. Fay could smell the stench of death hanging over them.
The other humans mostly wore heavy iron plate armor while carrying large two-handed broadswords. Fay had heard of such people before he remembered Pax told him most caravans that travel the Sky Dragon Road hire mercenaries. The other humans all wore nice elegant clothes which made Fay think to himself, those are probably merchants or noblemen. He had heard that merchants like to display their wealth in the form of attire so they can approach high class customers easier.
Fay sitting and watching from afar really felt an urge to interact with them because he simply didn't understand them at all. However before he could even start to approach them a slave in one of the carts let out a pained scream. The slave was sleeping upright against the cold iron bars when he suddenly had a night terror. Hearing the slave's howling a tall sturdy individual dressed in plain leather clothes walked over then took out a bull whip from a bag on he had on his hip. The man held the handle of the whip then lashed out at the slave's back as he roared: "Shut up and know your place! We are trying to rest you dirty piece of trash!"
The slave's rags on his back were torn away to display gory flesh in its wake. The slave's howls only grew with every crack of the whip. This scene went on for a whole twenty minutes before slave died. Seeing this all the slaves' downcast expressions only grew to be more so. Their spirit had been broken long ago. Fay witnessing this scene was inwardly furious. Yes he had killed before but something in his heart told him what he just saw was wrong. That slave couldn't even fight against the man with the whip.
Fay had always fought against magical beasts to the death but he would never kill something that couldn't fight back. Just seeing the actions of that man left Fay with a bitter feeling. However he knew he couldn't do anything with those mercenaries there, not to mention he just had his rank of power go back to the start. Knowing he was powerless against someone only served to make him more frustrated and feed his desire to be more powerful. He quickly ran away from that place before he did anything rash.
On his return trip home he killed and devoured several magic beasts but it didn't stifle that bitter feeling from earlier. By the time Fay returned to the mine he had already forgotten he was ever really angry at Pax but was rather angry at himself for being so helpless to do anything at that time.