Chapter 25 - Overcooked

The rift appeared near the outer border, but the event's consequences spread like a wildfire.

Countless sects were jumping at the opportunity to be the heroes of the story and send their best to protect the citizens.

Granted, nobody wanted to go anywhere near the winged lizard that was presumed to be a diamond-rank threat. But there were plenty of people to evacuate and a whole load of silver-rank snakes to exterminate.

A small group of gold path cultivators was looking for those caught up in the blast radius of the dragon breath. Very carefully, too. Nobody wanted to find themselves in the path of another blow like that.

They located quite a few corpses along the way. Anyone below the silver path that had even been grazed by the intense energy was either dead or dying.

They spotted something peculiar as they approached the edges of the destruction caused by the breath.

A trail of blood.

They assumed they would find a corpse at the trail's end, but the more they followed it, the more it seemed endless. Eventually, the path of blood ended, and there was no body to be found. There was no time to contemplate this.

Many snakes still slithered around, so it was likely that whoever it was had been eaten by now.

May the heavens bring them salvation, the cultivators thought inwardly as they changed their priority to snake extermination.

***

Neave thought it was rather lucky the rift didn’t cause an invasion of the undead. If it had, he would immediately be mistaken for one and attacked.

At first, he had used his shapeshifting skill to try and change his form into something more maneuverable than an open bag of organs, but his extensive injuries proved too much to use his spirit power fully.

Thus, he instead resorted to crawling like some sort of bloody slug. His blood endlessly poured out of his body. As he hunted snakes and devoured them, usually by directly showing them into his open stomach, he slowly regenerated his body and produced more blood.

Most of which rapidly vacated his body through his countless wounds.

Neave assumed his distance from death spirit power allowed him to stay alive even in this form. That was the only thing that had stopped him from croaking after that ungodly blast by the dragon.

Neave wasn’t really thinking about the dragon now, however. His priority was maintaining the delicate balance of his barely-alive body.

He jumped from one snake to another, requiring immense energy to recover from his wounds. His body hadn’t merely been reduced to a stump, but it had also been burnt quite horribly. The purple flames, energy, or whatever the hell that was, didn’t leave regular burns behind either.

Slowly but surely, Neave managed to consume enough snakes to at least close his torso back up. Then he grew back small stumps which he extended with his shapeshifting power into quasi-limbs.

Eventually, he fully regrew his limbs back as well. This was just barely enough to allow him to function normally again. He was still short on skin practically everywhere on his body, and most of his muscles had been burnt into stiff jerky that could only be moved by his shapeshifting spirit power.

Luckily for Neave, the snakes were packed with energy and practically everywhere. Now that he at least had a vaguely normal-shaped body, he could get to work.

Neave flew from one snake to another and slurped them up like violet noodles. The sight of a skinless, charred child hopping around and eating snakes alive could keep any child up at night, probably well into adulthood too.

Neave cursed as he realized his dimension ring was gone. He had moved everything into the dimension ring given to him by Maecy. And now it was just fucking gone. He didn’t know whether it had disintegrated or flown off somewhere in the distance.

Either way, with how far he had been thrown by that blast, there was no way in hell he could find it anyway.

Surprisingly, Neave’s spirit wasn’t doing nearly as bad as it should have been. In fact, he felt it recovering quite smoothly. He very strongly suspected that had something to do with integrate being capable of digesting monster cores, but he couldn’t directly feel that happening.

Slowly but surely, he recovered his body as he hopped back toward the rift. Neave’s mind whirled as he contemplated his options.

What could he possibly do against this dragon?

***

Right below the rift open in the sky, another army of lizardmen was starting to gather. Some snakes were still slithering from the rift, but they served as little more than a distraction.

The lizardmen waited patiently, forming a line of defense around the perimeter as the dragon feasted on corpse after corpse.

It wasn’t eating particularly fast. It was evident that it was taking its time to enjoy its meals. Suddenly, it perked up.

It sensed a mighty spirit approaching it from behind one of the larger buildings, although very well disguised. The dragon opened its mouth, preparing to blast the enemy into pieces before it could even see it coming.

The dragon blew breath toward the building, and an explosion of purple energy decimated the nearby area.

As the smoke settled, it noticed that in place of the now-annihilated building, there was an earthen ramp. Countless wisps of purple energy dissipated through the atmosphere as it appeared that the ramp had redirected its attack up at the sky.

The mighty spirit walked from behind the ramp, maintaining a casual pace. As it stepped into the light, the dragon faced the enemy directly.

A fully armored human stood before it. But it sensed something unusual. It felt human, but there was a distinct undertone it could sense from beneath the armor.

The human pulled a gigantic axe from its dimension ring and lifted it into the air.

The three ethereal figures formed a line of defense. The little girl raised the earth to create a barrier, the tall man plated it in purple crystal, and the muscular one ran past to flank the enemy.

As the muscular one jumped toward the armored figure, it surprisingly managed to land a perfect kick straight at the torso of the invader. The armored man didn’t even budge. White mist surrounded the enemy invader, and a massive axe materialized above them.

This wasn’t going to be a straightforward fight.

***

As Neave approached the rift, he saw the giant white axe form in the sky. The earth sank a bit as it descended, and he felt the ground drop beneath his feet. The shockwave from the tremendous technique flattened a giant area around the rift, not quite reaching Neave or any of the places that still had cultivators running around.

But the aftershock still shook Neave.

He approached the last few buildings standing and looked at the sight. Neave gaped at the massive crater left behind by the technique. He spotted the dragon crawling out of a crystal dome it had constructed to defend itself while the ghastly figures flickered in and out of existence as they restabilized.

Neave wasn’t looking at any of this, however. He stared at the armored man.

The cultivator that had arrived was clearly on the diamond path. He was well outside Neave’s spirit sense range, but Neave didn’t need those to tell that this person was a league above platinum path cultivators.

He also didn’t need his spirit senses to feel something was off.

Terribly so.

His heartbeat sped up for some reason. Was he just afraid of the power this man held? No, that wasn’t it. There was a characteristic in his movements. A peculiarity in his posture. Neave’s perception spirit power was telling him something, but he couldn’t understand, or perhaps he didn’t want to.

He witnessed the man enveloped in white mist again. The cultivator flew and fought through the ethereal figures, dodging or outright ignoring their attacks as he charged toward the dragon.

With every strike the dragon dodged or blocked, Neave’s blood flowed a bit faster. Neave's hair stood a bit taller with every movement of the armored cultivator.

Only once enough of the cultivator’s qi residue reached Neave, he realized what felt off.

The qi felt wrong. Simulated. There was a layer that wrapped over its true essence. An essence that Neave could recognize anywhere.

But it made no sense.

That was absurd.

This was a diamond path cultivator sent by the empire itself.

So how the hell is this person a demon?

Neave’s heart pounded, and his crystal veins crackled and chimed beneath his skin. He wanted to fight. He wanted to kill the dragon and interrogate the demon, peel the armor off, and see for himself what lay beneath. He wanted to ask what it was doing here.

He wanted to ask what its goals were.

And he wanted to ask whether it was connected to the devils.

It had to be. Or maybe it didn’t. Neave honestly didn’t understand or know enough about demons to conclude anything. Most of his dislike came from his experience within the loop, as well as from his hatred of the devil that created the damn loop in the first place.

But… Well, he didn’t really like the gods either. Or humans, honestly. Shit, Neave seemed to hate everyone. Regardless of race, it was evident that anyone could be a shitty individual. Granted, demons had a reputation, one that they definitely deserved, but that was only from the human perspective. But there was so much he wanted to know about this demon.

Seriously, what the fuck is happening?

Neave really wanted to get in there and fight, but, well… That was unrealistic, to say the least. The dragon reduced him to a roasted bag of overcooked organs with a single breath, and that was ignoring the fact that the ethereal figures alone were too much for him to handle.

But he really wanted to fight. He felt a deep itch all over his body to rush in there. First of all, how dare that fucking dragon do that to him?

Didn’t he say there would be no weaknesses? Didn’t he say there would be no limits? Didn’t he say that there would be no compromise?

Neave knew he was getting ahead of himself. He took a few deep breaths to relax. This wasn’t his fight, not yet. There was no need to rush. He needed what? Months? Weeks? Days?

If he properly utilized the mysterious realm he entered whenever he fell unconscious, he could make insane progress quickly. There was no need to take a stupid risk.

That was right. He could step back and wait. Soon enough, he would be powerful enough to do whatever he wanted. Neave tried turning around to step back but noticed his hand was a little stuck.

When he arrived here, he had peeked from behind a building and grabbed a metal rod to lean on it.

He had squeezed it so hard that the metal completely deformed under his grip.

Who am I kidding?

Neave grinned. He freed his hand and started walking toward the fight.

But then he stopped. There was a spirit behind him, veiled heavily, but it was one that he recognized. A cloaked cultivator wearing a pitch-black cloak with veiling properties ran toward him. It was the green-haired boy from the library, or rather, Dukean.

Neave was unsure what this young man wanted from him, especially now that he was disguised, but he waited, and eventually, Dukean approached him.

Once Dukean stood in front of him, he bowed a little.

“I apologize for my rudeness. I know my timing is awful, but there is something essential I have to talk to you about.” Dukean raised his gaze and stared Neave right into his eyes, “How much do you know about demons?”