My Living Shadow System Devours To Make Me Stronger

Chapter 1278: Chapter 1279: Into The Underworld

It was a new sensation. It didn’t quite make sense. The laws of space and time were twisted and folded in ways he had rarely seen. In a way, it reminded him of a past experience, and finally, he landed.

His feet touched a landmass, and Damon found himself standing on a broken world. This world did not have a god, so it was chaos. Rivers flowed through the sky, their waters the color of blood. There was darkness, yet bright, chaotic streams of space created a source of light that resembled...

The world had a very chaotic sense of time, as if time itself were malleable here.

Nothing made sense, so Damon spread his Shadow Perception as far as he could, extending it for many, many miles and touching upon the chaotic spirals that tore at his senses, causing him a degree of pain. But then he realized something.

”I’m on Soltheon,” he muttered to himself, slowly looking across the continent. Even the plants and trees of this world were strange.

”Or maybe it’s the inverse of Soltheon. Then this would be the Peace Continent, as opposed to the War Continent.”

This world was not the opposite of Aetherus, but it was quite close to being its opposite. Somehow, it seemed older.

Ric, who was in his hands, began shivering.

”It’s cold,” he whispered.

Damon hadn’t realized it before, but the world was cold. It was as if a heavy smog hung over everything, one that sought to erase life itself.

He waved his hand, and a wide coat appeared around Ric, covering the boy’s small body. After that, Damon cast a few protective runes on him, watching as they settled into place.

”There, all warmed up.” He forced a smile.

”Now, where is Ashcroft?”

He had jumped right after Ashcroft, but the Demon Lord of Domination was nowhere to be found. Just as Damon was about to decide what to do, Ric pointed at something carved into the ground.

”Heading to the location of the Pillar. The place where we suspected it lay,” Ashcroft had written.

Damon read it aloud and then frowned.

Right, he knew where that was. It would be here in Soltheon, in the Anarchy Mountains, except this entire place was a broken world, so that location might no longer be where it was supposed to be.

Damon touched the words on the ground. They seemed to have been there for a while, far longer than a few days.

”Hmmm, time here is messed up.”

He could feel that much, which meant that anyone who had arrived before him might have been here for days or even months.

Damon bit his lip. He had to find everyone.

”Eva, Iris, Abellona, Leona... anyone.”

Lilith and Renata were also missing. He didn’t even know if they were dead or alive, and the thought made his heart heavy.

This world gave him a sense of nostalgia. As he looked around, he remembered the feeling of despair he had experienced when he first entered the Nightmare of Lazarak, believing everyone was dead.

Now he knew for a fact that someone was dead. Sylvia was gone, and knowing there was absolutely nothing he could do about it made his eyes burn as tears began to gather.

In life, Damon had been unfair to Sylvia. He should have loved her more and spent more time with her. Why had he let seven years of her life pass away from him, only for her to die shortly after they met again?

He squeezed Ric a little too tightly as two landmasses collided with each other. Damon’s eyes flashed, and then something passed him by. He glanced in its direction and saw a creature with elongated limbs staring at him.

Damon didn’t even glance at it for long before a torrent of black flames engulfed its hideous form.

He was more powerful than ever. How dare this thing get in his way?

While he was thinking that, he heard a thud.

Damon didn’t get a chance to be ecstatic before he sensed a large swarm of these creatures appearing around him.

He didn’t run. He only raised his hand and whispered,

”Dominate.”

A few minutes later, Damon was surrounded by a large swarm of dominated entities.

”Go find any survivors,” he ordered, gesturing for them to scatter.

The creatures immediately dispersed in all directions, their elongated limbs carrying them across the broken landscape.

Damon would have killed them because it was easier to destroy them than to dominate their minds, but this world was more tranquil than its chaos suggested.

He took a pained breath. His injuries were still present, albeit to a much lesser degree than before Evangeline had healed him.

It wasn’t long before one of them returned, and Damon’s eyes widened. It had found something he had been desperately hoping to find. He wanted to teleport there, but space was quite volatile, so he didn’t risk it, lest he end up somewhere worse than this.

He left large patches of damaged space in his wake as he moved, even though he was going slower than he could have to protect Ric. When Damon finally arrived, he found...

Corpses. Many of them. As far as his eyes could see, there were piles upon piles upon piles of bodies.

Men, women, and children of different races lay scattered across the broken landscape. He glanced beneath them and found the ruins and wreckage of entire cities below.

Damon floated above them, pressing Ric’s head against his chest so the boy wouldn’t see such a sight of despair. As he moved through the bodies, the sickening stench of death filled his nose.

Among the corpses, Damon saw a little boy lying in the arms of a pregnant woman. Dried blood snaked across her legs.

She was the pale color of death.

A single teardrop fell from Damon’s eyes. He did not know why, but he felt a deep sense of anguish. As a child, Damon had convinced himself that he did not care about a world that did not care about him.

Now, here he was, a grown man, weeping at the sight of strangers who had died. Maybe he was becoming a demon, but they could never take away his humanity.

What shame was there in being sad at a moment of tragedy? Being human was something to be proud of.

Damon didn’t want Ric to see his tears, so he used his shadows to wipe them away. He kept moving, again and again, but every time someone or something was found, it was either a monster or a corpse.