My Living Shadow System Devours To Make Me Stronger

Chapter 946: Chapter 947: Child

There was a chilling silence as something crawled out. Everyone stood frozen, watching the malformed entity squat there over the remains of what had once been a knight.

The air was thick with fear and the lingering, overwhelming stench of blood.

The creature hunched over on its back. By comparison it was about the size of a human child around the age of five or six. Its head was bald with a few strands of hair sticking to it. The bones of its spine were visible beneath its thin skin, and its eyes were inverted, facing the wrong way.

For such a monster the odd thing was its mouth. It was supposed to be serrated with monstrous teeth, yet instead it was toothless like a newborn baby.

What it lacked in teeth it made up for with long thin claws that glinted under the dim light.

Damon didn’t wait for it to attack. His hands snapped forward and black flames erupted across the entire area.

However the creature skittered across the wooden deck with unnatural speed, its limbs twisting as it evaded the flames. Part of the ship’s planks exploded apart from Damon’s attack.

Ash spread through the air as the ship’s runes flickered violently, struggling against Damon’s power. He clicked his tongue and immediately forced his power back, clenching his fist and suppressing the flames before he accidentally turned the ship to ash.

This whole vessel was as fragile as a house of cards to him. Its defenses were largely built on the outside, leaving the interior comparatively fragile against someone of his power.

The creature suddenly darted forward.

It climbed toward a knight who stepped forward and raised his fist to punch it, clearly seeing it as nothing more than a weak and slightly ugly creature.

He was wrong.

The monster lazily flicked its claw.

A cruel slice flashed through the air.

The knight’s nose was cut clean off his face.

He groaned in shock, stumbling backward while clutching his face. Before he could recover the creature lunged again, its claws digging into his throat. Blood spilled out as he staggered.

A blast of magic struck the creature from the side and sent it flying across the deck.

“Careful! It’s in the third class advancement!” Lana screamed, having instantly recognized its power.

It was the same rank as the person it had just come out of.

That was not a good sign.

It meant that after gestating inside a host, the creature inherited the rank of the person it killed.

The creature slowly lifted its head from the deck and pointed its claw at the mage who had just blasted it.

Lana’s eyes widened.

“No way…”

Yes way.

What she was seeing was the insane ability of this creature. It didn’t only take the rank of its host.

It also stole their skills.

“Soul Lance…”

This was the skill of the knight who had died. A lance of destruction capable of ignoring any defense as long as it struck directly.

The mage reacted instantly. He blasted a ball of magic beneath his feet and used the recoil to launch himself sideways. He was no amateur either. He was a battle hardened veteran who had seen many horrors.

“He can only use that once a day!” someone shouted.

The skill had a cooldown limit.

Just as they were thinking that, the creature raised its hand again.

To their horror it used the same skill a second time.

Before the attack could fire, Seras moved.

Her body blurred.

She raised her tachi and drove it straight down.

The blade stabbed through the creature’s head and into the wooden deck beneath it, pinning the monster in place. With a brutal twist she crushed its spine.

Seras exhaled slowly, letting out a soft annoyed breath.

However something suddenly wriggled inside the creature’s body.

Its stomach bulged.

A worm burst out of the corpse.

Black flames instantly engulfed it.

Only then did the creature finally die.

Damon let out a small cough as the vile stench of the creature’s carcass filled the deck. The smell of rot and blood clung to the air like a suffocating fog.

For a moment no one spoke.

A heavy silence settled over the deck as a sense of pure dread filled the air.

“It’s only been four days. There shouldn’t have been a birth yet,” Damon muttered to himself, his eyes narrowing as he felt the air suddenly turn colder.

“You’re telling me that thing was a premature birth… how strong will it be if it wasn’t,” he added quietly.

Even so, the people on the ship were far from ordinary. Many of them possessed superhuman hearing. Damon had not even tried to hide his words.

Those who carried parasites in their stomachs visibly trembled.

They would be next.

Their deaths were not far away. At any moment one of them could be ripped open and another monster would emerge from their bodies.

Damon walked slowly toward the knight’s corpse.

The lower half of the man’s body had been torn open. Blood soaked the wooden planks, and organs were smeared across the deck. His face remained frozen in a mask of fear and horror.

This was how he died.

He must have been a veteran of many wars. A soldier who had survived countless ordeals.

Now he lay here dead.

Damon couldn’t help but remember how he himself had once lamented the nature of war when he died.

’I wonder which battlefield I would be laid to rest on… and if I would even have an intact corpse.’

The thought passed through his mind quietly.

But the dead were dead.

What mattered now were the living.

Even so, the living still needed closure.

Damon slowly turned his head toward the captain.

“Prepare some wood. We should give him a funeral.”

They couldn’t just toss his corpse overboard, not with their current morale. And the smell of blood and organs would only attract more monsters from the sea.

They would have to burn the body.

Giving him a funeral was also for the soldiers here. If they knew their bodies would be respected after death, they would be slightly less unwilling to face it.

Even though they were a well-trained group, it was still important to remember they were people too.

Soon smoke and ash rose into the air from the ship.

Damon didn’t use Ashborn to burn the body. He simply lit a normal fire.

Everyone remained silent.

Some offered soft prayers to their gods. Others simply stood there quietly with lowered heads.

The flames crackled as the body slowly turned to ash.

After a while Damon raised his head.

“We are about two weeks or so away from the demon continent… and we will not make it that far unless one of you comes clean.”