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."