My Living Shadow System Devours To Make Me Stronger

Chapter 809: Chapter 810: Metamorphosis

With freedom at hand you would think Damon would be eager to leave. However, that was not the case. Instead he found himself standing in the deepest levels of Eidolon once again.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to leave. It was that he couldn’t. His body was shattered and all that remained was his heart of shadows. For that reason he had to rebuild his body.

The way to do that was to devour goddess-race corpses, but he didn’t have any left here. He could only try to find an alternative.

The alternative in this case was the thousands of shades he had left over from the battle with the Mother of Stillbirths.

Bringing the shades down here had been difficult. Many of them were destroyed when Damon passed through the Garden of Hunger, but the ones that survived should be enough to reconstruct his body.

The ones who had been guarding this place were his shadow Ghost, and the lesser demon that had been in his shadow. They had done the important task of ensuring no one destroyed Damon’s heart of shadow.

Lazarak watched quietly as Damon’s astral form slipped out of the Mirror Seraph’s body and drifted back into the floating heart in front of him. The Mirror Seraph’s body fell to the ground as Damon returned to his own, or at least what remained of it.

Returning to his body was a great feeling even if he didn’t technically have one yet.

”Come.” His voice resonated from the heart. At his command hundreds of shades drifted toward the black flames. Their forms shuddered as the fire caught them. They dissolved into the flames one after another. As they died he heard the system chimes.

[You have slain shade]

[You have slain shade]

[You have slain shade]

[You have slain shade]

[You have slain shade]

......

Slowly, as each shade was devoured, the flames and shadows began to thicken. They condensed, forming solid strands that fused to the pitch black heart. A human silhouette slowly emerged.

The form was black and made of writhing shadows. It collapsed like liquid then formed again, repeating the cycle as if Damon were struggling to remember his original shape. Eventually the shadows stabilized. From the inky form a single shadow peeled away and spread across the ground into a flat silhouette.

Damon slowly felt muscle forming, organs pulsing into existence, bones tightening, skin pulling taut, flesh knitting across him. Everything that made him human returned piece by piece. At last the outer layer of shadow slid away from his body and merged with the shadow at his feet.

He looked at his hands with a thin smile, then glanced at the shadow below him.

”Hey there, buddy. Been a while.” He spoke to his own shadow without hesitation.

The shadow raised its hand and waved at him in a playful gesture, its movement radiating excitement.

Damon nodded, understanding the message.

”Hmm. I see. I get it. Thanks anyway.”

Without a body he had no shadow to reflect, but now he was whole again.

He turned to Lazarak, who was staring at him with a stupefied expression.

”What, not gonna say I’m ugly now?” Damon teased, remembering how Lazarak had called him ugly when they first met.

Lazarak raised a brow and looked him up and down.

”Ermm. You are surprisingly younger than I expected. You’re practically a child. I mean, you mentioned you were seventeen but I thought you were joking.”

Damon rolled his eyes. The toddler god looked awkward, so to clear the air he added,

”Nice horn, by the way.”

Damon raised an eyebrow.

”Huh? What?”

Lazarak pointed at Damon’s head.

”I mean, I said you were ugly, so I figured you would appreciate a compliment on that little horn you’re showing off.”

Damon reached up to the right side of his head and felt nothing. When he moved his hand to the left side he froze. His fingers brushed a sharp, smooth protrusion like polished obsidian.

There was something on his head. It was small, but unmistakably there.

He turned to Matia wearing a horrified expression, but she seemed equally taken aback. No. This was an unusual turn of events.

She understood he wanted to see it with his own eyes instead of relying on shadow perception. So she raised her hand and formed a smooth mirror of ice, angling it toward him.

Damon stared at his reflection. His face was smooth and pale like corpse skin. His hair hung long to his shoulders. His eyes were dark and lightless. He looked as handsome as ever, perhaps even more so. His vanity flickered for a heartbeat.

But there, nestled in his dark hair, was a small black protrusion. It looked almost like a decorative ornament, but it was unmistakably a horn.

Not just any horn. A strange aura clung to it.

”This... this is a demon horn.” He muttered in disbelief. He had grown a single demon horn.

Damon shook his head. This couldn’t be happening. No. Not to him. A horn.

”I’m... am I... no. I’m turning into a demon.”

This had been inevitable. Damon’s seed of depravity had grown from his despair, and from that despair and anguish he had begun the unstoppable transformation into a demon.

The first natural demon in a long time.

A true demon.

Still, Damon could not accept having a horn. Not because he despised demons, but because as a member of the goddess races he could not be seen as one.

He reached up, grabbed the newly grown horn that was still soft, and with an expression as cold as ice he twisted. A soft crunch echoed through him and a splitting pain ripped down to his core.

He pulled it free as blood poured down the side of his head.

To close the wound he released a burst of flames over his skull, cauterizing the injury. He picked up a healing potion from the ground and poured it over the burned flesh.

It was agonizing, but seamless.

He smiled as if he hadn’t just done something equivalent to peeling his own skin and ripping out his tendons.

”Now that should do it. I look as human as always.”