"What did you do to me?"
Saina trembled as she lifted her hands, her complexion pale as paper, devoid of any color.
Her body was the same; her bloodline was the same, but she could feel that she was no longer pure—Wayne had altered her mind and her flesh.
"A gift of mutual trust."
Wayne’s lips curved into a smile; he had given a similar gift before, and Philomena was the receiver.
Unlike the deliberate transformation of Saina, Wayne’s contamination of Philomena was accidental, ceasing immediately upon realizing something was amiss.
That gift brought Philomena’s Golden Triangle into greater balance and incidentally cleansed the grey impurities from her body, keeping her thought process efficient and rational while her Magic Power became almost flawlessly translucent.
Saina was a different case, the transformation was more profound—it was the first time Wayne had let go and acted freely.
Without experience, Wayne didn’t know what Saina would become before he began; now, seeing the result, he could only say that everything turned out rather well!
Saina had become Wayne’s shape!
It shouldn’t have been so complete; Wayne, inexperienced, had also transformed Philomena unintentionally, always considering contamination as an attack skill.
Like Vigil, Sercy, Dolly, and others, they lost their sanity to contamination and became but walking corpses.
Only Saina was to blame; she exposed her thoughts to Wayne without any reservations, allowing him to mold them as he pleased. With any resistance, the worst outcome for her under Wayne’s impotence would have been to become just another walking corpse.
Looking at Wayne’s profoundly sinister smile, Saina shivered all over, with a vicious glint in her eyes; her single hand transformed into a dragon’s claw and she lunged forward ferociously.
Her speed was so fast, too quick for the naked eye to catch.
A tearing sound was heard, and Saina’s arm pierced through Wayne’s chest, her dragon claw ripping through his torso, her entire right arm buried within him.
Yet Wayne’s smile remained, and not a drop of blood flowed from his punctured chest.
As Saina looked at the face just inches away, her terror intensified, and she attempted to pull her arm back to flee. Struggling, she was horrified to find her arm fused with Wayne’s chest.
The froth writhed, her right arm slowly disintegrated, breaking cleanly at the shoulder.
Staggering backwards, Saina stared at her severed limb—no blood, no bone, not even a hint of pain.
A bone-chilling cold swept through her body, and as she shook, the notion of the Star Beast’s flesh contamination terrified her to the core.
Wayne looked over the stark beauty of the severed limb, lifted the stump from his chest, and rolled it into a ball before flinging it at Saina’s face.
The flesh merged into Saina’s body, her arm extended, regrowing a slender, unblemished hand, with long, delicate fingers, exquisitely porcelain.
Saina’s form collapsed instantly, her whole body reduced to a prone mass of froth on the floor; she tried to reconstruct her form with her mind, but could only extend a multitude of tentacles, unable to assume an upright human shape.
Contamination—no, Wayne had not warned her during her evolution to remember the form of a human.
Wayne leaped down from the altar, tall and imposing, approaching the Tentacle Cluster; his body stretched to three meters, a pale faceless figure with a vertical split opening at his chest, revealing the Great Eyeball that suddenly opened wide.
Four tentacles reached out, entwining with Saina’s randomly flailing ones, shaking them as if to handshake.
Saina lost control over her body and, without a mouth, could not speak. The fear nearly drove her mad, but her mind’s threshold for insanity had been raised due to the prior transformation, making it impossible for her to lose her sanity.
Even Wayne found it bizarre as his tentacles dispersed his thoughts, aiding Saina in reshaping her body, reminding her of the human form.
The perfect female body reformed, and her golden waves cascaded over her shoulders.
Saina, horrified, looked at the white monster in front of her, instinctively stepping back to avoid the demonic gaze, her teeth chattering, "What exactly are you? You can’t be human. Are you an invader from the void?"
"Quite the contrary, I am a pure-blooded human, of the most pristine bloodline."
A tentacle emerged from behind Wayne, wrapping around Saina’s neck twice, its tip opening into a pale, toothless mouth: "The Protogenos Bloodline, the earliest forefathers, descendants of a deity."
At these words, Saina was taken aback, instinctively turning to look back at Wayne, catching sight of the Great Eyeball and quickly turning her head away.
Her body and her mind were innately fearful of the demonic eye.
That fear stemmed from Wayne’s ability to dominate her mind and body, puppeteering her as he wished, leaving her watching helplessly, unable to do anything.
Her emotions were incredibly complex, putting aside the fear and anger of being manipulated; there was longing, aspiration, and inexplicably, adoration—as if the monster in front of her was indeed the one true faith.
Goddesses and such, now they needed to step aside.
Saintly understood that her mind had been tampered with, and realizing what this entailed, she said instinctively, "The domain of a Demigod—that’s what you’ve made me into, your retainer. You’re not Wayne Lando at all; you’re a Demigod who’s returned from the void."
Demigods, beings that surpass the Legendary Mage, with their Life Force Fields evolving into Life Domains, powerful in thought and capable of affecting anything in their vicinity, endowing their powers onto others—namely, their retainers.
Power is knowledge, and retainers learn from their master’s knowledge, subconsciously aligning their existence with that of the master, resulting in changes to both body and mind.
Thinking of Wayne’s inner cosmos and considering her own changes, Saina deduced that Wayne was not really Wayne, but a Demigod from the void.