My Living Shadow System Devours To Make Me Stronger

Chapter 991: Chapter 993:The Crownless Ruler

While the drums of war heated across the demon continent, Damon stood in a tomb before a massive stone door veined with ancient runes.

He glanced at Lilith beside him.

Bruises mottled her skin. Scratches cut across her arms. Blood slid down her fingers and dripped lazily onto the floor.

A sigh of frustration escaped her as she closed her eyes.

”Well... that was a disaster.”

Her voice was cold, but the tightness in it betrayed how much this failure weighed on her.

Damon studied the door in front of them, its surface scarred from the recent battle, then let out a slow breath.

”I guess Lazarak didn’t hold back with this place’s guardian. I suppose my plan didn’t work.”

Lilith limped to the side and sank onto a short flight of stone steps. She pulled a potion from her pouch with trembling fingers, uncorked it with her teeth, and drank.

Damon understood her frustration.

They had been trying to breach the final chamber in the Tomb of Lesser Gods. This time they had brought an entire assault force hundreds of shadow drones.

All of them had been wiped out.

Damon and Lilith had barely escaped.

Mostly Lilith.

This was only Damon’s shadow clone standing here.

”A monster at the peak of the sixth class is really no joke,” Damon said quietly. ”Expecting us at the fourth class to succeed is asking too much.”

Lilith buried her face against her thighs and said nothing.

Damon walked toward her. One of his arms was missing. A massive crack split through his armor, and several wounds gaped across his torso, leaking shadow instead of blood.

He lowered himself beside her and gently placed a hand on her back, stroking her hair.

”Don’t be so hard on yourself. We can recover anything we lost today.”

Lilith raised her head and shook it.

”That’s not it.”

Her eyes were sharp now, intense despite the exhaustion.

”We are on a timer we cannot see. There’s the Unknown God with an equally unknown goal. Then there’s the Goddess we are certain exists but has made no move. Acting under her, we are sure there is a minor god, Aetherus. And then there is the imminent threat of the Outsiders—vastly powerful beings from beyond our world.”

Damon simply watched her speak.

He understood her worry.

Lilith bit her lip hard enough to draw blood.

”We can lose. We can die. Ittorath is already partially free. How can we be sure he’s not already acting based on things we don’t know?”

She pointed at the door to the final chamber.

”This dungeon is our only hope.”

Her voice dropped into something fierce, almost fanatical.

”And I will stop at nothing to take control of it.”

Damon exhaled slowly. She was right. They had enemies on every side.

His gaze drifted to the door where three keys sat in carved sockets. The first was Lazarak’s true key. The second had been bought from an antique shop, its owner ignorant of what it was.

The third was the replica they had forged to imitate the last.

’Maybe it’s because we never found Lazarak’s final key.’

Lilith let out a tired scoff. ”Yeah, and I suppose you can go back to Lysithara and dig through ruins for one key.”

Damon shook his head and stepped closer to the door, boots scraping softly against stone.

”No. I’m saying Lazarak was a cunning god. The guardian attacked because we forced our way through without all the real keys.”

Lilith glanced at him, then rubbed her temple with two fingers. ”You were his friend. If he was going to hide the last key, where would he keep it? He was most likely dead by the time Lysithara was created.”

Damon nodded slowly, eyes unfocusing as he pictured the fallen minor god.

”Yes. The ones who made Lysithara were Lyn and Sithara. Lazarak would have entrusted the key to them.”

His attention shifted to the second key. He reached out, pulled it free from the socket, and held it up between his fingers.

”Appraisal.”

[Key of Lysithara]

[In honor of the two siblings who accompanied Lazarak through his journey, carrying the name of their dream. On their separation, he gave them two keys—one in honor of them, the other forged to honor a crownless ruler they could not remember. This key has been passed along with the wishes of Lysithara and the dead god, traveling through many hands to fulfill its purpose.]

Damon read it aloud, his eyes moving slowly over each word.

Lilith lowered her head. Most of her wounds had healed, but faint scrapes still marked her face.

”You’ve read that a thousand times. We still have nothing. If we had a clue...”

Damon raised his hand without looking at her, cutting her off mid-sentence.

”This key was made in honor of the two siblings and their dream. They were given two keys. Including a third, made to honor a crownless ruler they could not remember.”

Lilith frowned. She didn’t follow.

”The third key is talking about me,” Damon muttered.

She sighed heavily. ”We figured that out the first day.”

”What’s your point?”

Damon crossed his arms and looked back at the door.

”A crownless ruler...” he murmured.

Lilith stared at him, waiting.

A slow smile began to form on Damon’s face as memory surfaced.

”When we were in Lazarak’s nightmare, Lyn and Sithara asked me if I was a king. I told them I was a king with nothing to my name.”

He had said it to sound impressive then.

But now...

That nightmare might not have been just a memory. It might have been a record. A truth Lazarak embedded into reality.

Lilith simply watched him, still confused.

Damon exhaled sharply. ”We don’t need the fake key we created. We already have the third key.”

She kept staring at him.

He realized she couldn’t read his mind.

Damon turned to her fully.

”It’s the crown. The Crown of Lysithara. Remember? The crown has a key inside it. The archive that stores all of Lysithara’s knowledge.”

Lilith’s eyes widened.

The pale crown really did have a key.

It wasn’t just a crown. It was a control interface for Lysithara itself.

But what if it wasn’t meant only for Lysithara?

What if the tomb was also part of what it was designed to control?

No...

What if the tomb was the original system, and Lysithara was built from it?

Lilith’s eyes widened further, then she slowly sat back down on the steps.

”The crown is all the way in the demon continent... with your real body,” she said quietly. ”And you need to wear it at all times to stay sane.”

Damon let out a dramatic sigh.

”Ahh, bummer. If only there was a way for me to use the crown all the way from the demon continent.”

Lilith tilted her head at him slowly. ”Are you being sarcastic right now?”

Damon nodded once, then closed his eyes. A faint outline of the crown appeared in his mind.

”I can just summon it. I only unsummoned it there. I can resummon it here. Easy.”

Distance meant very little for objects bound to him. The only things he struggled to summon across such space were Matia and his shadows.

But the Ascendant armor and everything tied to it had no such restriction.

He stepped toward the slot where they had wedged the false key earlier and pulled it out. As soon as it left the socket, the runes across the door dimmed slightly, their glow weakening.

Then the crown appeared in his hand.

The moment his fingers wrapped around it, a violent rush of impulses and emotions flooded his mind. Voices began whispering over one another inside his skull.

Damon smiled with dark amusement as madness clawed at the edges of his thoughts. He ignored it.

Slowly, carefully, he brought the pointed end of the crown toward the final keyhole.

It slid in perfectly.

His breathing quickened.

With deliberate slowness, Damon turned the crown like a key.

A burst of white light exploded from the door, washing away every rune, every mark, every layer of magic carved into its surface. The glow spread through the chamber like a wave of cleansing energy.

Lilith’s eyes widened. This had not happened before.

One by one, the locks inside the door began to disengage with heavy, echoing clicks.

Damon reached forward to push the door open.

Lilith grabbed his wrist firmly and shook her head.

”No. Not now.”

He looked at her.

”We’re still injured. That thing inside can kill us both.”

She held his gaze steadily. ”Let’s recover first. Then we enter.”

Damon bit his lip. The urge to push forward pulsed inside him, but he forced it down.

She was right.

There was no guarantee the guardian would ignore them just because all the keys were present.

He pulled the crown free and placed it back on his head. Instantly, the madness receded. The voices faded into distant murmurs.

Damon inhaled deeply.

”You’re right.”

Lilith’s expression softened, her earlier frustration gone.

”We are so close,” she said quietly. ”If we succeed, we won’t just gain the Lake of Tears.”

She looked at the door with steady eyes.

”We gain leverage against the Temple.”