The transition from the intense life-or-death battle to the point when everything ended was so drastic that the girls couldn’t make heads or tails out of the whole situation.
They only knew the intense fear they had felt from seeing Damien’s condition. Even if it had been a while, Damien was still accustomed to the perilous situation that he had just gone through, so from his perspective, it was just an entertaining fight.
To the girls who had only ever seen him dominate his opponents, though, the shock factor was intense. Realistically, he had almost died in that fight.
His skin was torn off, his muscles were melting, and his regeneration ceased to function, but he took all the pain with a grin on his face. It was truly harrowing.
‘What does someone have to experience to shoulder that kind of pain with a smile?’
The same thought was running through both Rose and Elena’s minds. Rose especially was told the story of what happened to him in the dungeon, but hearing about it and seeing first hand was different.
He was bestial and insane during the fight. His aura and entire personality had gone through an immense change. He was like a different person, a person none of them had seen before.
The only one relatively unaffected by the situation was Zara. Since she had been with him during many of the intense fights he went through in the dungeon, this wasn’t anything new to her.
She had also seen him at his worst when his humanity had all but escaped him, so she saw this behavior as normal.
Her emotional intelligence hadn’t reached a level where she could tell that this change was concerning.
Damien had been slowly improving. Either that, or he had successfully suppressed his insanity after prolonged periods of human contact. But it wasn’t something he could simply get rid of.
Especially when he finally met an opponent that could challenge him and a beast that could grant him another trait, he lost himself.
Even now, after the battle had ended, he stood atop the sea dragon’s corpse with the same light in his eyes. The light of mania. His muscles and skin were already healing, but they didn’t look as pristine as they once did.
Due to the fact that his regeneration had failed, the scars and burns of the battle stayed with him. Albeit they weren’t grotesque and were instead faded as if they were years old, they were still present.
It was then that the girls heard Damien speak. In his voice which was still hoarse due to his vocal cords being slightly fried, he said that single word.
“Devour.”
An abyssal black fog materialized around him, wrapping around the sea dragon’s head before expanding and covering its entire body. Slowly but surely, the corpse began to vaporize into motes of energy.
As the energy entered his body, Damien once again went through a change. His organs, which had already been refined, were broken down and restructured to be more suitable for combat.
A strong outer defense wasn’t enough to get by. Even if the damage of an attack was negated, the force of its impact could still rattle the internals and kill a cultivator easily.
Along with the hardening of his organs, the other areas of his body began to change as well. Unlike his previous evolutions that were mostly centered around one area to house the new trait he gained, this one was different. The storm trait of the sea dragon wasn’t something that was concentrated on a single area of the body.
But something interesting started to occur in his blood. Damien’s beast bloodline was something he gained through his first mutation, and due to this it wasn’t complete and evolved into something new every time he devoured a suitable beast.
The last time it experienced this kind of evolution was when he devoured the wyvern on the 40th floor and being the most powerful beast he evolved from until that point, its bloodline took priority.
And now, Damien had devoured another subspecies of dragons. When the two bloodlines came into contact with each other, they immediately reacted negatively, seemingly fighting each other for dominance.
Damien’s blood literally boiled at the collision between the two prideful sources, causing his body to jerk and stiffen from pain. It wasn’t an external impact this time, but his own body fighting itself.
His veins bulged as he clenched his teeth, grinding them together hard enough to produce an audible sound. His body began to spasm as his blood burned. However, this collision wasn’t allowed to continue for long.
In some unknown location within him, Damien’s Void Physique became active, sending its essence into his bloodstream. The second this essence met the two opposing bloodlines, they instantly calmed down.
The effect was magical. The adverse reaction he was having stopped abruptly as his two dragon bloodlines began to calmly fuse under the guidance of this new essence.
His eyes widened as his usual cross-shaped pupils continuously alternated to a more vertical and reptilian shape.
Two bumps formed in Damien’s skull, causing protrusions in his forehead that his skin couldn’t contain. It quickly burst, letting two blade-like horns erupt. However, they were quickly evaporated into essence and returned to his body.
The same happened with his skin. It hardened and separated into shining ink-colored scales before returning to normal. Now that his beast bloodline had tipped towards becoming a wholly dragon bloodline, the physical traits threatened to show themselves.
Yet, his Void Physique continued to disallow it. Any external changes to his body were destroyed and turned into energy to supplement the strengthening of his physical body.
As the evolution process came to an end, any liquid within his body began to churn. Logically, this should have caused more pain, but that didn’t occur in the slightest.
Instead, the churning seemingly empowered him. It felt similar to the sensation of extreme anticipation, making Damien want to roar into the heavens.
And so, he did.
The seas raged and storm clouds gathered in his vicinity. Thick black streaks of lightning danced through the air. Whirlpools formed in the water below him and the waves once again peaked.
No sea monster dared to go near the area. Even the ones who had planned to investigate after sensing the disappearance of the sea dragon’s aura hesitated.
The storm was much smaller than the previous one, but its intensity didn’t lose out in the slightest. But after only 10 brief minutes, the entire thing subsided.
Damien slowly opened his eyes feeling refreshed. He hadn’t felt such excitement in a very long time, not even during his time infiltrating Niflheim. These kinds of head-on collisions were his favorite.
With his battle finished, Damien flew back to the area where the girls were watching, not even aware of his changed state during battle. The blood-red aura had receded, and his eyes had returned to their usual yin-yang pattern of red and amethyst.
He interpreted the extreme urge to kill that he had experienced as the thirst for battle he hadn’t felt in so long, subconsciously avoiding the subject.
Reaching the girls, Damien let out a light smile. “Let’s get to dry land now, shall we?”
Rose and Elena had a mountain of questions they wanted to ask, but seeing that he was stable again, they didn’t want to push it.
‘I have no idea what triggered that state, and I don’t want to bring it up and induce such a thing again.’ Rose thought.
She knew there was a problem, but she had no idea how to fix it. It was something that they’d need to talk about at another time, but that wasn’t now.
Meanwhile, Zara was simply excited. “That was awesome! Watch, I’ll be able to do something cool like that, too!”
Damien smiled as he patted her soft fur. “I’m sure you will.”
Even after so long, he had no idea what her bloodline was, and this spoke volumes. An unknown yet powerful bloodline would surely grant her an overpowered trait. And the fact that she hadn’t received one yet was testament to this fact.
The group flew in relative peace for the next day, everyone in their own thoughts as they reached their destination and set foot on dry land once more.
‘Finally, the Central Continent.’