Chapter 280
‘What might be going on there now? I think everyone should be aware by now that I have gone missing, and if I am right, then the clan must also have dispatched search forces to find me. Too bad, they would never expect me to be in the demon territories.’
He shook his head as he lamented, exhaling slowly as his fingers traced absent patterns in the dirt beneath him.
‘Well, the clan guardian might know about my location; she did have some close diviners to her. She might even appear next to me if she wanted to… Haha.’
Oliver guessed that she felt it was unneeded and not worth exposing herself to him so early on; that’s why she hadn’t come yet.
A breeze swept through the barren landscape, carrying the faint scent of charred wood and something metallic—blood, perhaps. He ignored it.
‘Nadia should be under training too…’ His brows furrowed slightly. He felt a little regretful for not being able to be present there for her. Ophelia might be working on suppressing her emotions.
‘Well, leaving that aside, I did get some decent gains this time.’
He recalled the giant serpent that almost devoured him.
Sera did not see the serpent’s corpse because Oliver had taken it with him before leaving there.
The reason was obvious.
“I want to eat its heart…” His eyes were full of desire and hunger, his fingers twitching slightly as he imagined the sensation of sinking his teeth into its dense, pulsating core.
The thought unsettled him—but only for a moment.
Something he could have never imagined doing before.
Maybe even he did not realize this change in himself, this creeping, insidious shift in his instincts. The feeling of wanting to consume the heart as if it was some sort of delicacy, as if it was his favorite dish out there.
He quickly wiped off the traces of drool escaping his lips in time.
Shaking his head, he reasoned with himself, “Not here, I need a safer and more isolated place to properly consume it.”
He knew that the heart of such a powerful monster would hold immense power and energy; he may need a lot of time digesting it fully at his current level.
And from his experience, the hearts of demons had dense amounts of dark espera. Although he was not sure how it worked, he somehow was able to digest them with time despite his body being full of pure espera, the exact counter opposite of dark espera.
Was his body adapting? Or was something else at play?
He closed his eyes and rested for a bit while thinking of mundane things.
‘Ah, come to think of it, I have left her there too.’
He suddenly remembered his diligent ‘student’ and how she must still be hiding, waiting for him to fetch her.
He let out a small laugh as he recalled her determined expression at that time, as if she was ready to fight to the death with him.
That look in her eyes—an ember of defiance flickering in the face of impossibility—reminded him of himself.
He had so many things to do…
Of course, he still had not forgotten his original motive for leaving the clan. It was not something as simple as freedom but instead something deeper and more complex.
It was something that he had been planning for way too long, since the time he stepped foot in the clan’s auction that day.
He focused back on the present as he quickly started to gather espera back. The density of dark espera was much greater in this land, so naturally accumulating espera was quite troublesome and took a lot of effort.
It felt heavier here, sluggish, as if the very air resisted his will.
Yet, he did not give up and slowly but steadily gathered espera.
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“Captain!”
Vasoth exclaimed in horror as he rushed towards the woman in the distance with high speed and reached up to her.
He saw her body riddled with wounds, and her expression was tranquil.
But he, who knew her for a long time, saw through the facade.
He could tell from her eyes; she was erratic at this moment, her mind was erratic and filled with madness.
The way her fingers clenched and unclenched, the way her breathing hitched just slightly—subtle cracks in the mask of composure.
He felt cold as he looked around.
No sign of the summoned serpent.
No sign of the escaped humans.
Only her, with a body marked by injuries.
His legs trembled as he understood that the worst had happened.
The captain was not only unable to capture the humans who had escaped but was also injured by the latter in the process.
A pit formed in his stomach. That shouldn’t have been possible.
He just could not comprehend.
He could not imagine just what sort of human was the boy to be able to injure their captain like this.
If he had just escaped tricking her, it would have been somewhat explainable, but to see their captain in such a state made his face stoic.
A cruel realization clawed at the edges of his thoughts.
Didn’t that mean that the human was just playing around with them earlier when they were confidently surrounding him from all ends?
Didn’t that mean he could have killed his way through or escaped at any moment since the beginning had he wanted to do so?
Were they so insignificant to the human that he had the time to play with them like this?
No, he refused to believe so.
He painfully looked at Sera. Despite him not believing it, the truth and reality were laid bare before him, and he could not reject it either.
“Captain… this…”
He had a lot he wanted to ask and confirm. He wanted to know what exactly had happened there, what tricks had the human used to make her like this, or if it was seriously the human alone that did this and not his allies who ambushed her in the midst of the battle.
Yes, if it was the last possibility, then it made sense.