My Living Shadow System Devours To Make Me Stronger

Chapter 787: Chapter 788: Hard Trials

It was the same familiar memory of that same day of the same kind old man.

Damon sighed when he saw the memory return. His heart felt cold. He was tired. He was tired of seeing it, of reliving it. His shoulders sagged and his burned chest rose and fell in a rough rhythm.

The day he had killed Carmen Vale.

“What a pain .. its like every single entity that wants to fuck with me mentally resorts to the same tired old trick … don’t you have something original..”

He spat the words out, his jaw tightening, his fingers twitching with irritation. Guilt was not what filled him now. What Damon felt was anger.

What the hell. It was like the whole world was trying its best to make sure he never forgot that day.

“So what I screwed up…. I always screw up ….. nothing new there … I was wrong back then I admit it I accept my own weakness..”

He let out a sharp chuckle. His voice was cold as ice and his burned, battered body ached everywhere. His hands curled slightly from the pain but he kept standing.

“But that is not an excuse to become stagnant and trapped. I lived up to my sins and acknowledged my own faults and regrets but I won’t feel guilt and give you the satisfaction.”

Damon slowly shook his head, the movement stiff from the lingering burns.

“Not anymore.”

The Archivist had been quiet, waiting for Damon to finish speaking. Slowly he moved his quill, the movement deliberate and precise.

“You are a splendid liar. Sadly you can not lie to your own heart. The trial punishes guilt and your heart is full of it ..”

Damon’s expression stayed cold. He wanted nothing more than to wipe out the guilt inside him but he could not.

Something that deep was carved into the heart. It could not be washed off or forgotten simply because one wished it so.

“Maybe you can argue for your crime of cannibalism. But you never changed your ways. You carried on as a glutton, feasting on many souls.”

Lazarak gritted his teeth and shouted.

“Don’t let him get in your head. You have to argue back. Convince yourself not him..”

Damon bit his lips with his half destroyed teeth, his hands trembling slightly.

’Convince myself easier said than done’

“I didn’t have much of a choice. Can you blame a bear for hunting deer, can you blame a goat for eating grass. This is just the nature of the food chain. Someone must die for one to live…”

Damon raised his head weakly, blood and thick pus clinging to his chin.

“I had no choice .. I chose to live.. maybe I hurt a few people by my choice. Maybe I fed into the same vicious cycle that cultivated someone like me. In the end I survived and there is nothing wrong with that …”

Right. He did not have to feel guilty for cannibalism. Maybe other options existed, but for him back then there were none.

“I have tried to atone and right my wrong…”

While he killed Carmen he also took the man’s daughter under his wings. If anyone was to judge him it would only be her.

The Archivist raised his quill and shook his head calmly at Damon.

“Your words are moving. Sadly your guilt remains. You shall be punished for the sin of gluttony with the cradle court.”

The familiar sensation of chains wrapped around him. Damon heard them clatter and tighten around his limbs as he was pulled forcibly down into the chamber of his punishment.

Dozens of cradles filled the room. Inside each lay a figure Damon had once devoured. Every face here was vivid, trapped in the haunted expression they wore in their final moments.

The first was Lark Bonaire who wore an expression of fear. His mouth silently formed the same pleading words he had offered Damon that day.

Slowly Damon walked through the cradles, each step heavy from hunger and pain. He saw different faces as he passed them until he reached the one he was looking for.

He stopped. The expression on this cradle’s face was gentle. He wore a warm smile. Unlike the others he did not look like he had seen a monster.

No. There was a weary yet gentle expression to him, almost resigned.

Damon stood there staring at Carmen Vale’s face, then sighed and looked away. He raised his head slowly.

“I wonder what horrible torture I’d suffer this time..”

As soon as he said it Damon heard a small ringing in his ears. He touched his head, his fingers trembling, feeling his skull grow heavy as a familiar sensation overtook him.

“Grrriuui”

His stomach growled loudly. His head throbbed hard as the feeling of intense hunger coursed through him.

Damon struggled to breathe but every breath through his empty stomach made him nauseous.

’Ahhh ..’ he groaned softly as he reached into his shadow storage to pull out some food supplies.

But he felt something sticky on his hand as he pulled something out. It was large enough to fill his palm and dripping with red liquid that was slightly viscous.

The smell was familiar. It was a common smell. The smell of blood.

A human heart instead of the apple he had wanted to retrieve.

Damon threw it away without hesitation, falling to one knee from the hunger. His vision blurred. His eyes were darker with fatigue, then his nose picked up an overwhelming delicious scent. Something edible.

It came from all around him, from the cradles. He forced himself up and walked to one. Inside lay a pile of human organs with the face of one of the people he had devoured through his shadow in the past staring up at him.

“Don’t eat me, please.” the face called out.

Damon’s hands trembled but he no longer had any control of his body. His fingers plunged into the bleeding pile of organs and shoved them into his mouth. The vile taste of raw flesh overwhelmed his senses even more than the hunger.

He gagged but his mouth refused to open except to take more. Blood smeared across his mouth, face and chest as the crunch of raw organs echoed from his teeth.

The face among the organs watched him with every bite. It cried out in pain, begging him not to eat it, calling out memories and relationships it once had.

“For the gluttonous cannibal a feast in cradles. From the raw flesh of your victims let them bear witness to how you consume their remains.”

The voice of the Archivist echoed as Damon moved from cradle to cradle, feasting again on his victims. Except this time it was not his shadow devouring them. He was eating with his own mouth, consumed by the sin of gluttony.