One by one, the fallen monsters began to rise.
Their grotesque forms shifted with unnatural vigor.
Their eight legs cracked back into place, and their hollow eyes gleamed with renewed malice.
Neo gritted his teeth.
He stopped healing himself, and abandoned his attempt to repair his Seed of Existence.
He had no choice but to divert all his remaining power into manifesting Death Essence.
A dark mist began to coil around his blade, twisting like ethereal serpents.
The monsters lunged, and Neo responded in kind.
His broken body screamed in protest, but he did not falter.
Divine Swordsmanship Fourth Form: Ryu no Mai
He weaved between their attacks. His movements were smooth and precise. It looked as if he was dancing.
His blade carved through their twisted forms.
Each swing was slow—far too slow compared to his peak—but his precision remained unmatched.
Even with his body in ruins, his techniques did not weaken.
Blood splattered. Limbs fell. The stench of death thickened.
The monsters did not stop. They kept coming.
Neo fought without hesitation, but he knew his body would not last.
So he did what he had to do.
He devoured them.
As soon as he consumed the first monster, an unimaginable chaos erupted in his mind.
It was as if a second consciousness had been forced into his skull.
His thoughts became tangled in a web of hunger, rage, and primal instinct.
The personality of the spider monster surged forward, clawing at his sanity.
His vision distorted.
He felt the urge to move on eight legs, to scuttle into the shadows, to hunt, to feed.
“What is this…?” Neo grunted, clutching his skull.
He had consumed minds before.
Darkness brought back a portion of the original’s essence when he devoured them.
The echoes of their thoughts still haunted him.
This time, he wasn’t just hearing their voices. He was becoming them.
Memories that were not his flooded his mind.
He saw flashes of an underground realm, the home of these creatures.
He saw darkness swallowing their world, turning them into pitiful immortal existences.
Pain lanced through his skull.
He staggered.
He didn’t see the next attack coming.
The monsters swarmed him. Their grotesque limbs pinned him down.
Razor-sharp mandibles tore into his flesh. He felt his body being eaten alive.
Neo’s instincts screamed.
His body, honed by years of combat, tried to retaliate, but it was breaking apart—crumbling like fractured porcelain.
His strength was failing him, and yet his thoughts continued to spiral into madness.
Hunger.
Rage.
He wanted to kill. To consume. To become stronger.
“No,” Neo muttered. “Those aren’t… my thoughts.”
The memories of the spider monsters twisted around his own, trying to merge with him, and to overwrite him.
‘This… is far from enough… to trouble me…’
Neo’s will churned.
‘Get the fuck out… you bitches…!’
With a final surge of will, he seized control of the invading thoughts.
The voices in his head shrieked, and resisted, but he crushed them beneath his indomitable will.
His darkness did not consume him.
He consumed it.
Devouring the monster brough a powerful surge of energy.
His shattered limbs reformed, his flesh knitted together at an accelerated pace. Strength returned to his muscles, and he could finally move without the fear of breaking down.
The monsters sensed the shift.
They hesitated.
Neo lifted his sword.
Divine Swordsmanship Eighth Stance: Kami no Shinpan.
A single slash.
A wave of destruction followed.
The ground split apart, and an explosion of force erupted outward.
The nearest monsters were obliterated in an instant. Their bodies were torn asunder by the overwhelming might of the attack.
Neo exhaled slowly.
He had devoured the monster’s memories, its experiences, its knowledge.
This was True Darkness.
True Darkness devoured everything.
It was not bound by luck or chance. It did not merely take fragments of memories or stats—it consumed entirely.
True Darkness became what it devoured.
Neo clenched his fists.
A giant wave of Darkness erupted from his body.
It surged outward like an endless sea.
The malevolent energy devoured the spider-like monsters in a single gulp.
Their chitinous limbs flailed, and their twisted screeches filled the cavern.
They clawed at the ground, at each other, even at their own flesh to resist.
The monsters tried to resist the pull of Darkness.
Neo exhaustion had reached its peak.
He did not have time for another prolonged battle.
His World-Energy reserves were running dangerously low. His body was teetering on the verge of collapse.
Without hesitation, he reached out and consumed his own left arm.
A sharp, searing pain tore through him as his flesh and bone vanished.
And, a torrent of power flooded him in return.
The cavern trembled as he unleashed the energy.
A storm of red lightning bolts, each larger than mountains, burst out from his body.
The impact was catastrophic.
The air split apart with a deafening crack as the lightning struck, incinerating everything in its path.
The creatures shrieked.
Their bodies convulsed as the sheer magnitude of the attack tore through their defenses.
Smoke and the acrid scent of burning flesh filled the cavern. Silence followed.
Their resistance was crushed, and True Darkness devoured them with ease.
Tens of thousands of memories burst forth into Neo’s mind.
He staggered back. His mind was overtaken by confusion, and chaos.
His nails dug into his skin as if trying to claw his own face apart.
His head felt like it was splitting open from the inside.
He could see it all.
Tens of thousands of monsters.
Their centuries of hunting, of consuming, of dying and reviving. The hunger. The rage. The endless cycle of devouring and being devoured.
His hands pulled at his hair. He couldn’t breathe.
The sheer mass of personalities was tearing his sense of self apart.
Neo had done this on purpose.
He could feel his mind breaking apart, and shattering like fragile glass.
His thoughts weren’t his own anymore.
Voices, urges, instincts that didn’t belong to him roared within him.
He could feel their memories, their desires, their pain as if they were his own. His mind was splitting at the seams.
He collapsed to his knees with ragged breathing.
His mind was in tatters, but he didn’t care.
This was necessary.
The only way he could recover.
His body, no longer being attacked, would mend itself in peace while his mind bore the brunt of the madness.
Even if he went insane.
Even if he lost himself in the process.
He was okay with it.
Because once he regained his strength, he could use the Ouroboros.
He was prepared to touch the madness, if it helped him meet her a minute faster.
His vision blurred, flickering between reality and the illusions forced upon him by the stolen memories.
He clenched his teeth until blood dripped from his lips. His identity. His existence. His everything. It was all being ripped apart.
But Neo was not someone who broke easily.
With a hoarse breath, he forced his trembling hands together and gritted his teeth.
If this was the cost, then so be it. He would endure it. He always had.
His mind was screaming. His soul was fraying.
But his body—his body was recovering.