Chapter 17

Damien felt like he was back within the blood world as he constantly slaughtered beasts from every side. In this kind of situation, he realized the usefulness of the goblin king’s trait.

This kind of intense melee was a situation where he would inevitably get injured many times, but with the reflection trait, he was able to transfer damage back onto his attackers.

Damien hacked and slashed, becoming a tornado of blood on the battlefield. Black lightning coursed through the ground and splintered it while space distorted with his every movement, crushing countless beasts.

As Damien continued to kill, his eyes became bloodshot and he nearly lost control over himself again. The sight of rivers of blood and a ground littered with corpses awakened the instinct he had been suppressing all this time.

Before he knew it, Damien was already at the front of the beast tide and facing that wolf he had seen. Now that he was up close, he got a better look at the beast and couldn’t help but be surprised.

He sensed an extremely potent bloodline in this beast that surpassed everything he had seen to date. The strange thing was that he felt no desire to consume this bloodline.

However, now was not the time to be thinking idle thoughts. Even with Damien’s earlier rampage, the beast tide was still raging. These beasts were acting without regard for their lives, almost as if they were fated to die if they didn’t capture the wolf.

Not wanting to waste any time, Damien started shooting his lightning bombs into the crowd to cause aoe damage while simultaneously using his spatial distortion and sword skills to kill any beast that came near.

Hours passed like this, and Damien was still fighting. Stamina was never a problem for Damien, as he could replenish it by devouring the bodies of beasts he killed. Even so, Damien was starting to get bored with this constant tide.

None of these beasts were strong enough to entertain him for long, but they were coming in such numbers that even he would be having trouble if that wolf wasn’t fighting with him.

Even after realizing that Damien was fighting on its side, the wolf didn’t react. Just like Damien at the beginning of his fall, the wolf was only focused on survival.

The fight continued, and by the end of what seemed to be an entire day of constant battle, the wolf had exhausted itself. It was prepared to die at that moment, but to its surprise, and beast that tried to get near it was mysteriously turned into a mangled corpse.

This was naturally Damien’s doing. His newly evolved spatial control skill gave him much more variability in his usage of his affinity, and creating a distortion field around specific areas was relatively easy for him.

Another day passed and the tide of beasts finally began to thin out and disperse. At this point, Damien had most likely slain the majority of the beasts on this floor, leading to the current situation.

Once the tide finished, the wolf got up and distanced itself from Damien, eyeing him warily. Even if he’d helped it previously, the wolf had always held the assumption that he just wanted to take her corpse for himself.

Damien smiled wryly seeing the wolf’s behavior. If it was any other beast, they would’ve been correct in this assumption, as Damien wasn’t the kind to show any mercy. But with so many signs telling him to save this wolf, he would be an idiot to continue his usual methods.

“Alright relax, I have no intention to kill you,” Damien said, but the wolf only became warier.

Sighing in exasperation, Damien teleported directly behind the wolf and picked it up by its scruff before it could react. “You see how easy it was for me to grab you? I told you I don’t want to kill you so just relax.”

The wolf gave up struggling after realizing this fact and silently stared at Damien. After a short staring contest, Damien moved to put the wolf back on the floor, only to be stopped by an ear-splitting roar.

Damien raised his head in panic and saw a sight he would never forget. From the slope that led to the next boss floor came a massive beast. A beast bigger than anything he had seen so far.

It was 50 meters in height and had a length that matched. It had 4 legs and was covered in inky black scales, and the most glaring feature that entered Damien’s eyes was its wings. A huge pair of bat-like wings.

‘A dragon!’ Damien exclaimed as his eyes started throbbing. This throbbing was polar opposite to the one he felt when he saw the wolf. If that one was considered as a signal for opportunity, this throbbing could only be translated to one word. Run.

And run he did. He hugged the wolf, who was trembling in fear, to his chest and began teleporting away like a madman. But the speed of this dragonoid creature was insane.

Just like his very first fight with the thunder wolf, the dragon caught up to him within seconds of his teleportation. But different was the scale. Each time it caught up, it stomped its legs and caused slight earthquakes in its attempts to squash him flat.

However, his mentality was much more firm than the first time he was in this situation. Damien maintained his calm and thought about how he could escape this situation.

‘Fuck! Being squashed here would be a way worse death than anything that wolf could have done to me! I need to-‘

But his pondering came to an end when he felt an intense pull attract him in a certain direction.

This wasn’t a physical pull, but rather his spatial affinity reacting to something on this floor. Ignoring everything else, Damien fled in that direction.

Continuously changing his movement patterns to avoid the massive beast that was hot on his tail, Damien felt the source of the pull get closer and closer. But when that source entered his movement range, all he saw was the empty cavern floor.

Damien wasn’t fooled though. He could feel a bulbous disruption between the spatial layers, and without further thought, he teleported into it, disappearing from the cave entirely.

The dragonoid creature appeared shortly after but was left in confusion. The prey it had been chasing had completely vanished from its detection.

Even though this specific prey had continually disappeared, it had always reappeared a distance away. The beast had always been able to track its smell to follow it. This time, the trail ended here.

The beast was furious. It had put in a good amount of work and forced the beasts on this floor to attack the source of the strong bloodline aura it felt, but it was all for naught.

That day, an intense roar of wrath reverberated through the entire floor, scaring every beast residing there into hiding for the next week.

The source of the roar, however, had gone back to the boss floor to rest and prepare until it felt the aura return.