Chapter 285: Mark of Death

GROAR!!!

Cerberus released a thunderous roar as he and the dullahan both fought against Damian.

I had no choice. I summoned them both.

My body was just too weak. Every hit felt as if it reverberated within my bones. My knees crumbled, and I collapsed to the ground, coughing up another mouthful of thick, dark red blood.

My blood was boiling. I could see steam rising from it when I spat it out. Everything around me was melting due to the heat wave pouring off my body, and for some reason, my eyes had switched permanently to thermal vision. I had tried to change it and deactivate the skill, but it just wouldn’t budge.

The Dullahan had its whip around Damian’s neck, while Cerberus and the other shadow hounds tried their best to push him back away from me. I had 50 Garmrs surrounding him, all firing different attacks.

Still, it wasn’t enough. After days of fighting, it seemed Damian hadn’t lost an ounce of strength. In fact, he seemed to have gotten stronger.

He was a monster in his own right.

I realized that now more than ever.

I summoned as many shadow hounds and Garmrs from my shadow as I could, but none of them seemed to be slowing them down. Skoll and Hati were exhausted and couldn’t slow time for another hour.

My situation was dire, and I was too weak to move an inch. It meant I had to use my last resort. Something I had been holding onto for a while in case I might need it.

Damian ripped the Dullahan’s whip from around his neck and turned his blood-red eyes in my direction. He didn’t even spare a glance at my phantom pack surrounding him. They were like small fishes fighting against the massive wave known as Damian Dracule.

They didn’t even cause a ripple in his movements as he launched himself into the air. He exploded into the air, arms raised, and aimed at my chest for a finishing blow.

At the same time, I signaled to the Dullahan and switched places with one of my shadow hounds, escaping death just by a fraction of a second.

The moment I gave the signal to the Dullahan, his horse appeared from the clouds and descended towards him.

I climbed to my feet, ready to defend against Damian’s next attack, as he was still coming at me. But just before he got to me, Cerberus leaped into the way.

My eyes immediately drifted to the Dullahan, who was now attending to his horse. The hulking black mount carried something in its mouth. Giving it a closer look, I realized it resembled a human head.

It was the Dullahan’s head; his most powerful weapon. This was the weapon he used to kill Aphrodite, one of the 4 queen witches.

Damian’s hand pierced through Cerberus’s chest, and with such an injury, my trusted companion was forced to return to the shadow realm.

With Cerberus out of the way, Damian’s cold gaze once again met mine, and in a motion that I had seen repeated a thousand times, Damian drew his fist back, his nails sharp as he aimed for my heart. But then, at the last second, he stopped.

As if by instinct, all his attention was drawn to the Dullahan, but it was already too late. The Dullahan held up the severed head as if holding up a lantern towards Damian.

The eyes and mouth on the severed head suddenly opened wide and emitted a cold blue light. Immediately, a blue tattoo appeared on Damian’s chest, and just like that, a curse had been placed.

He was now marked for death.

Contrary to what one would think, this was the Dullahan’s true weapon. His own severed head could plant a curse that marked someone for death.

Of course, this didn’t mean that Damian would suddenly collapse to the ground and die. It meant that his body now exuded the same aura of a dying creature. At this moment, he smelled like a rotting carcass that had been left in the sun for days.

And with his power level, it was natural that he would attract those vultures.

Just as that thought crossed my mind, the ground beneath our feet began to shake violently. Rifts of various sizes were forming on the ground.

Something from another world was crossing over, and from the amount of rifts I spotted, there might be more than a hundred of them. One of the rifts appeared in between Damian and me. From it, a pale, withered hand, with twisted fingernails, shot out.

The nightmarish creature pulled itself from the rift. Its body was long and lanky, twisting in ways it shouldn’t. Hair sprouted from the creature’s face, stretching all the way down to the ground.

Looking at the thing in front of me, everything about it felt wrong.

“A wraith,” Damian mumbled as he looked around us.

There were more surrounding us. They must’ve numbered over a hundred, and they all had their attention set on Damian.

Damian, noticing this, looked around and growled in annoyance. At that moment, I saw a change in him. He was at his limit. Maybe not physically, but mentally.

The veins in his eyes were bulging as the whites of his eyes also turned bloodred.

“What did you do?!”

Even his voice became demonic, and suddenly, the bones in his body began to pop. The sound was loud and sickening.

His fangs and claws grew 6-7 inches longer than they were before. He growled loudly and arched his back as it seemed as if something was about to burst through it, and in the next second, something did.

Massive wing-shaped bones covered in blood shot out into the air. And soon, skin, flesh, and muscle began to weave and construct around the bones until it resembled the wings of a bat.

I almost lost my footing as I took a step back from the monster that had just spawned in front of me. For a moment, I forgot about the wraiths who had spawned until they all attacked Damian at once.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep