Chapter 248: You are basically dead

“The wyrm? The battle?” Damon woke up with a start, his voice hoarse. His eyes shot open, slits of red-gold, burning faintly even in the dark.

For a moment, he didn’t know where he was. The air smelled faintly of moss, wet stone, and soil. A ceiling of dark, jagged stone loomed above him. He was definitely not in the scorched and ruined city anymore.

He tried to sit up but groaned as his body screamed in protest. Every muscle felt like it had been torn apart and restitched with fire. His skin still bore molten vein-like cracks, glowing softly under the surface. His fingers trembled. His body shivered. It was as if he were completely drained and exhausted without a single bit of energy left.

A rustle nearby drew his gaze. Ghost leaned casually against the cavern wall, one knee drawn up, arms crossed. “You’re alive,” he said dryly. “Your health is at fucking one dude. How the hell are you alive? I was pretty damn sure you would die in the next couple of hours.”

Damon chuckled, though doing that made his entire body hurt all over again. “Ah, fuck me.” He cursed and closed his eyes. After a few minutes, he nodded with his eyes still closed. “Thank you, I guess. For saving me?”

Ghost scoffed. “What are you talking about? I simply shadow-stepped. Nothing big. At least nothing like what you have done for me. You were correct, by the way. The legacy I picked up is some very shady shit. This Umbra bastard wants to take over my body or something like that. See this.”

Ghost all of a sudden fished out some sort of worm from his spatial ring. “This is a parasite of some kind. My so-called top-tier mythical grade, hidden legacy, tried to silently put this parasite inside of me.”

Damon raised a brow as he examined the small creature. There was no mana signature from it, and yet it was unique and mysterious in ways he couldn’t understand.

Seeing his questioning gaze, Ghost lightly laughed. “Ya, even I have no idea what the hell is this shit. I did do a couple of experiments, though. Let me tell you. The results were not great. Pretty vile and horrifying. Basically, the host of this thing becomes a mindless killing machine, only focused on evolving and progressing.”

“You mean…”

“Yup. The wolf I fed it to became C-rank in the span of a few days. But its soul couldn’t handle it anymore, and in the end, it exploded into a mess of black sludge and broken shadows.”

Ghost’s tone remained casual, but the glint in his eye was anything but. “Not even a proper death scream. It just burst apart like a rotten fruit left too long in the sun.”

Damon leaned back against the jagged stone, breath shallow. “I see.. It’s good that you figured it out.”

Ghost snorted. “A little late. I am already too deep in. Now everything is a constant struggle.”

Damon didn’t speak for a moment. He simply watched Ghost, noting the tension in his posture, the way his fingers tapped absently against the hilt of his dagger, as if ready to stab not just enemies, but the very thing festering inside him.

“You could’ve left it,” Damon finally said, voice low. “Abandoned the legacy the moment you realized something was wrong.”

“I could’ve,” Ghost agreed, his eyes flickering with something unreadable. “But that would’ve meant walking away with nothing. Tell me, Blood God… would you walk away with nothing?”

Damon did not answer.

Ghost gave a slow, humorless smile. “Anyway. Enough about me. How are you doing? Do you need some health potion or something?”

Damon let out a sigh. He reached into his inventory and took out one of the high-grade health potions, making Ghost slightly shocked. “Rich bastard.” The guy grumbled and walked out to give Damon some space.

Damon leaned his head back against the stone wall, the potion glowing faintly in his hand like liquid ruby. He stared at it for a long second before uncorking it and drinking in slow gulps.

Warmth spread through his chest, comforting warmth, but the next moment, Damon’s eyes widened in shock. His health was still 1?! How was this possible?

No. In fact, even from the healing process, he could feel it. Something was wrong. Something was still missing. He could feel it. The fact that he needed a health potion was itself a sign. Just blood should have healed him. What was going on?

Right now, he should be floating in power-ups. He killed the damn thing, didn’t he? Wait, did he?

Damon hurriedly pulled up all the system notifications and then forced himself to calm down as his sudden movements had once again triggered a wave of pain in his body. He couldn’t even open his eyes, and he felt extremely fatigued.

[Ding! Your soul is currently injured. Exercise caution.]

[Ding! You are in a state of Overdrawn Essence. Immediate rest recommended.]

The next second, Damon found himself kicked out of the game as his vision darkened and he once again appeared back in the real world. Back in the castle.

Damon was speechless, but there were things he needed to do back in the game. His entire fucking family was thrown into prison, and he needed to deal with it. This soul injury had come at the most inconvenient time.

But he immediately remembered how La Rocha had given some elixir to Artimius and instantly healed his soul injury. Now he did not mind getting kicked out as much. Maybe he would have done that anyways.

“La Rocha?” Damon called out mentally. “Are you here? By the way, what is the deal? Can you be in only one place at a time? Can you not be both inside the game and outside?”

Damon only barely reached out when a torturous pain assaulted him. It looks like he was no better outside the game than when he was inside the game. Thankfully, La Rocha responded without him having to drag his ass out.

“What the hell happened to your soul? You are basically dead.” The item spirit mercilessly commented.

“Whatever. Just give me that damn thing you gave Artimius.”

La Rocha snorted. “What did I give him?”

Damon wanted to kill this bastard. He was really choosing his time to inflict maximum pain. “Didn’t you give him something to heal his soul?” He winced and spoke again.

“That was one of a kind. I don’t have it anymore.” Came the prompt reply.

Damon exhaled. “Then give me something else.”

“Do I look like a pharmacy?”

Damon was this close to losing his damn mind. Everything was freaking hurting, and this bastard was sitting here and playing word games with him. “Are you telling me that it’s beyond your current abilities to help me heal my soul?”

La Rocha became silent. Then, finally, after a couple of minutes, he cleared his throat and vaguely answered. “I have a soul cultivation manual.”

Damon blinked through the pain, each throb in his skull hitting him like a lightning bolt. “You what?” he hissed, barely able to raise his voice above a strained whisper. “You’re telling me you’ve had something like that this whole time and you never mentioned it?”

La Rocha, sounding completely unbothered, replied with casual arrogance, “You never asked.”

Damon’s fingers curled into a fist, though even that motion sent fresh jolts of agony down his arm. “I was dying, you smug antique.”

“Well, you didn’t die,” La Rocha said brightly. “Yet.”

“Fucking hell, just give it already.” Damon gritted out through clenched teeth. His patience had long since evaporated, and all that remained was raw pain, a storm of fury, and the pounding echo of his own heartbeat.

A shimmering scroll appeared mid-air.

Damon almost grabbed it out of sheer desperation and agony, but at the last moment, he stopped himself. His brain might be seizing right now, but he still retained some ability to think.

Soul cultivation was anything but simple. Soul cultivation methods were even rarer. Perhaps he needed to approach this with even more caution instead of jumping into it blindly because of his current situation.

There was even a chance that La Rocha messed with it somehow. He couldn’t rule anything out.

“Artimius,” Damon murmured as he forced himself to stand up. It was time he paid the old man a visit and had a conversation. Perhaps he could ask the old man to take a look at the soul cultivation manual.

He had experience in this field before. It was worth having a conversation with him before diving in blindfolded.

“Where is Artimius?” He asked La Rocha.

The item spirit did not answer for a while, and then once again reluctantly spat out. “He is in one of the terraces.

Damon didn’t waste time replying. His body still felt like it had been steamrolled by a demonic forge golem, but he pushed himself upright, each motion accompanied by the searing groan of stiff muscles and fractured mana circuits.

The soul damage made everything worse. He could feel his own thoughts like a chorus of static crackling against the inside of his skull. He gripped the scroll tightly in one hand and dragged his body onward like a corpse.

The upper levels of the castle were eerily quiet. The moonlight filtering in through the carved windows washed everything in pale silver, giving the ancient stones a ghostly sheen. When he finally reached the terrace, the night wind hit his face, cool and sharp.

Damon was shocked to see that there was water all around him. Water and nothing but water. Were they in the middle of a freaking ocean right now?

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep